Joint Forces Commander: Over 2,000 Russian career officers stationed in occupied Donbas

Joint Forces Commander: Over 2,000 Russian career officers stationed in occupied Donbas

Ukrinform
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation has formed and keeps in Donbas a task grouping of Russian-occupation troops as part of the 1st (Donetsk) and the 2nd (Luhansk) army corps with the overall number of more than 35 thousand personnel.

“Currently, over two thousand Russian career officers are stationed in the occupied part of Donbas,” Joint Forces Commander Volodymyr Kravchenko said in an interview with Ukrinform, answering a question about the size of Russian troops in Donbas.

“To control the temporarily occupied territories of Donbas, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation has formed and keeps a task grouping of Russian-occupation troops as part of the 1st (Donetsk) and the 2nd (Luhansk) army corps with the overall number of more than 35 thousand personnel who are operationally subordinate to the army of the Southern Military District of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The bulk of key and command personnel of the regiments, brigades, and command staffs of the army corps are the career officers and generals of the Russian Armed Forces who are being sent to the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine on a rotational basis. Today, over two thousand Russian career officers are stationed in the occupied part of Donbas. At the same time, the posts of junior enlisted and commanders of the tactical units are taken up mainly by local residents and mercenaries from Russia,” Kravchenko said.

He also informed that in order to maintain the administrative-police regime and ensure the functioning of the occupation administrations, other “security agencies” had been created – the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security which are directly managed by the Russian Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Apart from maintaining and backing the armed formations, the Russian Federation uses the territory of Donbas as a military training ground and tests cutting-edge weapons systems for its army, the Ukrainian Commander emphasized.

Over the course of military confrontation in Donbas, the Ukrainian military have seized and documented many samples of weapons that are exclusively in service with the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, which once again proves Russia's direct involvement in the armed conflict in the territory of Ukraine.

According to the Commander, Russian Torn-MDM electronic intelligence systems, Leer-3 RB-341V, 1L269 Krasukha-2, RB-109A Bylina, Repellent-1 electronic warfare systems, Kasta 2E2 radar systems, etc. have been found in the occupied territories by means of intelligence.

"The use of 9M133 Kornet anti-tank guided missiles, 3OF39 Krasnopol guided missiles, Orlan-10 and Eleron unmanned aerial vehicles by the enemy has been recorded. The UAVs are also used for strikes. The grenades of grenade machine guns and fragmentation hand grenade are used for this purpose,” Kravchenko said.

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