Ruslan Khomchak
Newly appointed Chief of the General Staff and Commander-in-Chief Ruslan Khomchak
In a major development, the newly appointed Chief of the General Staff of Ukraine and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Ruslan Khomchak, acknowledged that the Crimea actually became Russian long before 2014. Of note to readers, is that General Khomchak is widely reviled in ultra-nationalist circles that comprise the volunteer battalions that are sanctioned by the UAF. He is accused across their media and campaigns as a traitor and 'Russian agent'.

According to UNIAN, the general said that he had the impression that Crimea was already Russian when he went to there to rest in 2010, having bought a ticket to a vacation spot in Alupka. He said that he was "shocked" by what he saw in the city, and decided not to go there again to rest.

"It was a bad remnant of the Soviet Union ... I asked myself the question, am I in Ukraine? I did not understand where I was. So, the seizure of the Crimea began much earlier, " quotes the words of Khomchak UNIAN.


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At the same time, he himself recalled that during the "illegal annexation" of the peninsula he was the commander of the operational command "South". However, in his own words, in fact, commanding the Ukrainian troops in the Crimea, he could not do anything, since "he did not have all the information about the operational situation."

Thus, the words of the new Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine sound more like an attempt to justify that he did not in any way interfere with the "Russian aggression" of 2014. How can there be resistance if the Crimea was long ago captured.

Developing this topic, the general called on the Ukrainian authorities to act in the same way as the "aggressor" and to begin to conquer the minds of the inhabitants of the peninsula.

It is worth noting that the new Ukrainian commander hasn't only a complete military failure in the Crimea under his belt. He also took an active part in the attack on Ilovaysk in 2014, which as it is known ended for the Ukrainian army with a catastrophe.

His selection by Zelensky, given the view among Ukrainian ultra-nationalists that the general himself was compromised to 'stand down' by the Russians, adds another interesting dimension to this unfolding story.

A deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Nadezhda Savchenko, in an interview with a Ukrainian television channel called Khomchak a "coward" and "not a smart enough commander."