The commander of the 8th Corps of the Airborne Assault Troops — Brigadier General Dmytro Voloshyn — never headed the Joint Rapid Reaction Forces, the decree on the creation of which was signed by President Volodymyr Zelensky back in July.
Voloshyn himself said this in an interview with the BBC.
"My status in this process is unchanged — I have nothing to do with it, just as I had nothing to do with this. Because I was and remain the commander of the 8th Corps of the Airborne Assault Forces. All the time. I have never been dismissed from my position, I have not been transferred," he noted.
According to the general, for some time he tried to get a little involved in the formation of the command of this branch of the army, until the military-political leadership of the state changed: "In addition, some trends on the battlefield changed, all this led to changes in my candidacy for this position".
Answering a journalistʼs question about whether the new Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapaty has a different vision of the expediency of creating and using assault troops than his predecessor Oleksandr Syrsky, Voloshyn noted that the tasks assigned to him under Syrsky regarding the formation of a new type of troops continued to be carried out under General Drapaty, no one changed them.
"If the military-political leadership of the state determined that these troops should exist and I had to deal with it, then I — as a regular military man — carried out the order and did things that depended on me. When they told me that was all, and I didnʼt need to deal with it anymore, then I returned to performing my regular duties," he said.
Voloshyn also denied the UPʼs information that he had planned to appoint airborne troops to 80% of command positions in the attack aircraft. According to him, the plans were for less than 20%.
- Zelensky reported the creation of the Joint Rapid Reaction Forces on July 10. The president then said that this should be a new component of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which would combine the combat capability of assault troops, the necessary unmanned and artillery components, and other means for the most rapid response at the front.
- On the same day, Zelensky reported the transformation of the assault troops due to existing problems, including the attitude towards the military. This statement came due to an investigation by Babel into the deaths of mobilized men in the training centers of the “Skelya” regiment and the “Grunt” media outlet into the mistreatment and possible shooting of fellow soldiers in the 225th assault regiment.
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