Interfax: Russian Defence Ministry again says it has no troops in Ukraine

(Interfax – Moscow, January 30, 2015) The Russian Defence Ministry has once again denied the claims of the Ukrainian military that Russian forces are fighting on the side of the militia.

“It is difficult to imagine even one defence ministry in the world in which public statements are made on the principle of ‘every cock wants to crow’,” Russian Defence Ministry official representative Igor Konashenkov told journalists on Friday [30 January].

He was commenting on a statement by Serhiy Galushko, deputy head of the department of information technology at the Ukrainian Defence Ministry, about the alleged presence of Russian forces in the “second echelon” of militia forces.

Konashenkov pointed out the contradictions in the statements of Ukrainian officials.

“Viktor Muzhenko, chief of the General Staff and commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, officially acknowledged in a briefing for foreign military attaches yesterday afternoon that ‘Russian forces’ were not taking part in military operations in the southeast of the country,” Konashenkov said.

He said Muzhenko “directly heads control of the military operation in the southeast of the country; his statement is now a juridical fact that cancels out all the numerous accusations from the high tribunes of NATO and Western countries about the alleged ‘Russian military invasion’ of Ukraine,” he said.

“However, it unexpectedly came to light yesterday evening that the chief of the Ukrainian General Staff has a subordinate, Galushko, who is considerably better than Muzhenko himself, who grasps all the subtleties of operational arts and is better informed about the real situation in southeast Ukraine,” Konashenkov said.

“According to Galushko, it turns out that the ‘Russian forces’ are in fact in some ‘second echelon’. Whether Galushko was talking about the number of a railway car [the Russian word “eshelon” can mean “troop train”] or the flight level [another meaning of “eshelon”] of an aircraft with ‘Russian forces’ he did not make clear. But it is noteworthy that this ‘strategist’ serves not in reconnaissance and not even in the operational control of the General Staff, but in the department of information technology. That is, he works on setting up computers in the Ukrainian Defence Ministry,” Konashenkov said.

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