Yury Lutsenko has been an MP since 2002, interior minister in Tymoshenko’s cabinet (2006-2006, 2007-2010), chairman of Poroshenko’s party (2014-2015) and most recently – from 2016 to 2019 – chief prosecutor of Ukraine. In 2020, he is being treated for cancer. In an interview with “Babel”, published on July 8, the former chief prosecutor tells how he signed up for the territorial defense and went to defend Ukraine as a volunteer.
“From February to March we defended Kiev, we were on duty under Irpen. From April to August – service on the administrative border of Mykolaiv and Kherson regions, then a short service in Kanev. And this is the most important moment in the whole story. In Kanev, I understood , that I could only serve on the front line. Walking around the fairly peaceful city and explaining to everyone what you were doing there in a military uniform gave me no satisfaction. I didn’t understand my role in the rear.”he says.
In September, he turned to the Commander-in-Chief of the Military Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, with a request to send him to the front.
“I wasn’t alone, it’s about the platoon whose commander is the famous Robert Madyar Brody. We were 26 people, and when they brought the order to Zaluzhny to sign, he ordered them to call and ask if Lutsenko is really ready to serve in Bakhmut. I said, that this is the best assignment and I am very grateful”he continues.
Later, already in Bakhmut, he received the rank of captain. After media reports about the new rank, Ukraine’s top political leadership ordered “immediate recall” from the front.
“The story was funny. President Zelensky is coming back from a press conference, where some opposition media asked him unpleasant questions. He is irritated, and his assistants show him the news about my new title and say: “This person has already created two presidents, what are you waiting for the third one? To put it briefly, after 7 p.m. I was already in Kyiv at the disposal of the commander of the territorial defense, without the right to leave the city,” Lutsenko continued. It’s not clear who they meant by the third president, he says.
Following the instructions of the leadership, he left his battalion and headed to Kiev, but he could not come “under the order of the commander”, they did not let him on the pass.
“This lasted for 29 days. During that time, my battalion was sent from Kanev to Bakhmut. Already in the first days, the drones ran out there, and the battalion was practically “without eyes”. Heavy street fighting. Our battalion held half of the plant, the Orcs – the other half.
Russian paratroopers attacked yesterday’s kindergarten teachers, graphic designers, agronomists, who half the time fought without drones. I was mad with despair, and on the 30th day I wrote to the commander that during the time I was at his disposal I had not received a single task, therefore I considered the money paid to me to belong to Art. 2, paragraph 191 (waste of budget funds in particularly large amounts).
To be honest, I’m exaggerating, but the military really doesn’t like to deal with laws and the Penal Code. After 20 hours I was in Bakhmut”he continues.
For another month, the battalion in which Lutsenko served fought in Bakhmut, and then it was returned to Kanev by rotation. At this moment his health “reminds itself”. He ends up in the hospital with acute pancreatitis, there they find problems with his shoulders, for which Lutsenko must undergo an operation. After the operation, they make the relevant note in his card that he has a disability due to cancer. The conclusion of the medical and sanitary expert commission (corresponds to our TELK) is about disability. He does not show this document in the army.
“I didn’t show it to anyone. As soon as the army finds out about a fighter’s disability, they send him to a military medical commission. Then, without submitting an application, the commander referred me to this commission in the central hospital in Kyiv, where they did all the consultations, checks , studies. As a result, I was declared unfit for military service and removed from the military record.”
According to him, these are old ailments that existed even before the service at the front. In response to the comments that with these diseases they should not have accepted him at all, Lutsenko says: “On February 24, who will ask you? In the territorial defense, you do not go through any commission, you write an application there, a commission is not foreseen”.
“Of course, and at first I could hide with disability, age, and other things, but I think that a person who has been talking about the EU and NATO for 20 years should be in this war because it is for independence and for Europe. For that was important to me”he concludes.
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2023-07-09 12:29:26
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