Nataliia Humenyuk received the position of deputy head of the communications department of the Operational Command (OC) "South". In April, she was dismissed from the leadership of the Strategic Communications Center of the Southern Defense Forces.
In a comment to Detektor Media, Humenyuk confirmed the information about her appointment.
"This is not a new appointment for me, but I cannot name the dates. When an officer is appointed to a position is confidential information. I am currently the deputy head of the communications department of the Operational Command ʼSouthʼ. My powers include everything related to communications," Humenyuk said.
Humenyuk noted that there is some difference between her current and past positions.
"At least even in the fact that now it is not the Defense Forces, it is a slightly different entity, already within the competence of the OC ʼSouthʼ. This department was created as part of the communication reform in the Armed Forces as a whole. This is a fairly new structure, but its main vocation is to improve communications with the conclusions that have been drawn since the beginning of the full-scale invasion," Humenyuk explained.
What preceded
On April 16, Ukrainian media persons asked the military leadership to replace the head of the press center of the Southern Defense Forces Nataliia Humenyuk with a "more competent" one and to prevent her from communicating.
More than 70 journalists, publications and organizations signed up to these demands. In the statement, they claim that Humenyuk forbids the coverage of Russian war crimes in the Kherson region and does not provide access to the military. The most egregious case in the statement was the ban on entering the Kherson region in flooded towns and villages on the day of the explosion of the Kakhovka HPP — then the world media was flooded with references to the testimony of Russian "military personnel", because there was almost no information from Ukrainian journalists.
Humenyuk said that she considers the criticism unjustified. She stated that the journalists allegedly did not provide any evidence of obstruction of their work, and the press center of the Southern Defense Forces did not violate any command orders.
Already on April 19, Nataliia Humenyuk was dismissed from the position of spokeswoman of the Southern Defense Forces.