Chief of General Staff: no one gave command to Ukrainian military in Donbass not to shoot back

The AFU Chief of General Staff Ruslan Khomchak has stated that Ukrainian servicemen in Donbass did not receive any orders concerning the ban for responsive shooting. He said this in an interview for BBC News Ukraine.

Khomchak responded this way on the information appeared on the results of the Minsk talks on June 5 about the alleged ban on the Ukrainian military to shoot back. The media wrote on such an initiative with reference to representative of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma.

"There is a war there, and all the commanders are in their places. The squad leader controls the department, the commander of the platoon - the platoon, the commander of the company - the company. They do not have any orders not to respond", - Ruslan Khomchak said.

According to him, "not a single person who understands at least something in war will give such a command".

"There were no such orders, I did not receive them from our military and political authorities, and I did not give such commands. I know for sure that the commanders in the JFO did not give such commands and will not do that", - the Chief of the General Staff assured.

According to him, the dissemination of such information is one of the elements of the information-psychological war.

The report recalls that on June 5, Leonid Kuchma stated after the negotiations in Minsk: "Today we should show to the whole world that we want this "ceasefire". It should be recorded so as not to shoot back, and a ban should be imposed on the shelling of civilian objects - schools, kindergartens".

The media interpreted this as a new regime of quiet according to the principle "not to shoot back". The Presidential Administration then stated that this was an erroneous interpretation of Leonid Kuchma's words. They explained that it was about mutual obligations in Minsk.