Rotation of incompetents. How many times do we have to do this?!
Yesterday, long-awaited news leaked to the media. Brigadier General Lutsenko has been removed from the command of the OTG "Donetsk". This untalented general had been in command of the most problematic area of our front for about a year.
I know dozens of episodes when this general's inept leadership led to local encirclement, senseless losses of people and defence lines. In particular, very convenient defence lines. It is to him that we "owe" almost all the bad news from the frontline, which has been rolling from Avdiivka to Pokrovsk all year. In the spring of the 22nd, in the course of my combat work as an artillery intelligence officer, I spent a lot of time in the defence line of the 79th Airborne Brigade. At the time, I did not know that Colonel Lutsenko was the brigade commander, but my overall impression of the quality of the brigade's command was extremely negative. Suffice it to recall the abandonment of Yampil without a fight and the D-30 battery forgotten in the forest. At the same time, individual battalions of this brigade fought like lions. For example, during the defence of the Lyman.
A year ago, Lutsenko replaced the equally inept General Moskaliov as commander of the OTG "Donetsk". I remember Moskaliov from the spring of '22, when he became commander of the JFO after General Pavliuk, who was quite respected in the troops, was recalled from the front for some "mysterious" reasons. After Pavliuk was replaced by Moskaliov, the quality of command on the Eastern Front, in my opinion, dropped significantly. At that time I was assigned to the 26th Artillery Brigade and I was driven with my complex to different parts of the OTG "North" theatre of operations (from Lyman to Toretsk). In the autumn of 23rd, when he was already the commander of the OTG "Donetsk", Moskaliov's ineptitude was manifested in the loss of control during the battle for Avdiivka. At the time, OTG "Donetsk" was still part of OSGT "Tavria", commanded by General Tarnavskyi. The neighbouring OSGT "Khortytsia" was commanded by General Syrskyi. Syrskyi did not lift a finger to help his neighbours with fire on the advancing Russian troops. And he not only had the opportunity to do so, but it was more convenient to inflict fire on the Russians advancing on Avdiivka Coke Plant (the main direction of the attack) from his direction. When Syrskyi was appointed Commander-in-Chief, he appointed General Sodol to "Khortytsia". Enough has been written about Sodol without me. I remember him from the summer of '14, when I arrived in Debaltseve and tried to organise the interaction of our separate battalion with the 25th Airborne Brigade, which was then commanded by Sodol. To my shame, Sodol had graduated from an artillery school, but the impression of his brigade's command was that it was commanded by some prison guard, not an artilleryman. I've never seen a more "delayed" military formation before or since. It seems that out of the entire artillery school course, Sodol learned only the drill, discipline and regulations for garrison and guard service. In general, we started to interact with our neighbours only when Sodol's 25th Brigade was replaced by Shaptala's 128th Brigade.
After the scandalous dismissal of Sodol, General Hnatov was appointed to the OSGT "Khortytsia". My 24th Brigade fully experienced the ineptitude of this young "talent" during the Kherson offensive. Hnatov was then in command of the OTG "Kherson". In addition to our brigade, several other brigades were thrown blindly head-on into the well-prepared defence of the Russian paratroopers. It was General Hnatov who was responsible for the unjustifiably huge losses of our troops in this offensive. Hnatov owes the rise of his career to Sodol. Thus, the odious Sodol was replaced by his own nominee and favourite.
But let's get back to Tarnavskyi. As the commander of the OSGT "Tavria", he bears the lion's share of responsibility for the loss of Avdiivka. I remember Tarnavskyi from '14-15, when he commanded the 17th Tank Brigade. The brigade was on the left flank of Debaltseve and remained there even after the battle ended. I had to move around a lot then and set up my artillery reconnaissance posts in their line, I talked to the brigade officers a lot, and in the summer of 15th my battalion took over most of the line from the brigade. In general, I had enough opportunities to form my own opinion about the 17th Tank Brigade's command and about the brigade commander personally. I saw Tarnavskyi's disgruntled face only once through the open window of his jeep, which finally formed my impression of him - a stupid puffed-up turkey. Now he has been appointed to replace Lutsenko as the commanding officer of the OTG "Donetsk" ... To me, it's like if during a fire you're waiting for the firemen on a fire truck and instead a petrol truck arrives with a full tanker full of petrol.
When will this endless rotation of incompetents at the operational level end? When will this endless shuffling of simply incompetent and frankly stupid generals, whose boorish attitude towards soldiers is expressed not only in their manners but also in their contempt for the lives of Ukraine's defenders, end? The answer is quite obvious. Only if, Zelenskyy appoints a real military leader instead of the current Commander-in-Chief, General Syrskyi, whose authority in the troops does not need PR support from full-time propagandists. Someone whose authority was born on the battlefield, who is known by thousands of our soldiers and whose appointment will be welcomed by the troops. This war has revealed dozens of such leaders. And it is they, not Syrskyi, Sodol, Tarnavskyi, Hnatov, Zubanych, Moskalev, Lutsenko and their ilk, who should become the strategic and operational link in the command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
There is a very bad feeling that the current political leadership is not capable of such a replacement. They need personal loyalty and willingness to follow ANY orders from generals, not the ability to effectively manage troops. For example, on 15 February 2015, Syrskyi personally organised the surrender of the Debaltseve defence area to the encirclement. It was he who was at the control point of the 1st Battalion of the 30th Brigade when the 3rd Company of this battalion received the command to leave (surrender to the enemy) the village of Lohvyne on the night of 9 February 2015, thus completing the encirclement of the Debaltseve group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. And in the autumn of 22nd, a large grouping of Russian "court" troops, which was essentially doomed, was let out of the bag across the Oskil River. For me personally, it is absolutely clear that the surrender of the Debaltseve group was part of the "Minsk-2" agreement between the then "supreme" leaders of the Russian Federation and Ukraine. As for the "miracle at Oskil", we will have to make a final determination after the war.
These are the sad thoughts that came to my mind in connection with the replacement of the commander of the OTG "Donetsk".
