Ukrinform
August 5, 2014
Donbas battalion commander says army almost unchanged
KYIV: The commander of the Donbas volunteer battalion, Semen Semenchenko, believes that the Ukrainian army has almost unchanged.
He told this to the Focus magazine in an interview.
“I’ll tell you a nasty thing: our army has almost unchanged. The soldiers just psychologically are already ready to fight – it is a big step forward, but as for the rest nothing has changed: structure, organization, logistics at the same low level as before. We should immediately move from the Soviet model to the model of NATO,” he said.
Semenchenko believes that “amid blockade from Western countries on the transfer of military technology and weapons, we have to use the diaspora, even at the expense of smuggling, bribing someone, etc. Now the end justifies the means.”
Speaking of discipline in the Ukrainian troops, the battalion commander said that for the time spent in the ATO area the Donbas battalion changed 20% of the personnel, including “for drinking, for trying to pillage, for excessive cruelty, when people get pleasure from killing, lack of psychological readiness.”
“At the beginning the Donbas battalion was a mixture of a society in which there is always a certain percentage of scoundrels, villains, etc., and in the end I want to get a military unit, which could be proud of,” he said.
========================================================
Ukrinform
August 5, 2014
Military will not announce assault of Donetsk and Luhansk
KYIV: Military will not announce the assault of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The ATO forces will not publicly announce the beginning of the assault of Donetsk or Luhansk, but they will inform only about the release of these cities.
Spokesman of the NSDC Information-Analytical Center Andriy Lysenko told a briefing, Ukrinform reports.
“We will not announce the beginning of the offensive, we will only talk about the moment of the release of these cities,” Lysenko said.
According to the representative of the National Security and Defense Council, the preparation is underway now for the release of Donetsk.
“It is an industrial city, near which there are private sector areas, they are also considered to be Donetsk. The main ATO forces approached just these regions, but it does not mean that it is already an assault – it is preparation for the release of the city,” he stressed.
Source