- Ukraine’s Defense Ministry claimed Russian security forces arrested a pro-Russian separatist leader in the eastern region.
- The Ukrainian government announced that the Russian Federal Security Service had arrested Igor Alexandrovich Kornet.
- The arrest was part of a “purge” of the leadership of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic.
Loading Something is loading.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry claimed on Wednesday that Russia’s internal security forces had detained a pro-Russian separatist leader in Ukraine’s eastern region in connection with the failed invasion of the eastern European country.
Ukraine’s intelligence service said in a statement that Russia’s Federal Security Service had detained “Interior Minister, Major General” Igor Alexandrovich Kornet of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic [LPR] in Ukraine’s pro-Moscow Donbass region, citing information they had received.
Kornet, 49, was allegedly being held in a pre-trial detention center in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, on Ukraine’s eastern border, according to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.
Ukrainian intelligence said the arrest was part of a “purge” of the LPR’s leadership, which “serves as evidence of Moscow’s inability to implement the goals set by the current ‘LPR’ leaders in relation to the warfare against Ukraine. “
Insiders could not independently confirm that Kornet was taken into custody.
The arrest, according to Ukraine’s defense ministry, was associated with “negative backlash” from the “power structure and political leadership” of the breakaway state of the Luhansk People’s Republic of Luhansk, who see it as the beginning of a change in the organization of power within the quasi-state.”
The government agency added that Russia is trying to mobilize more troops to eastern Ukraine.
“The mobilization of personnel is intended to quickly replace the losses suffered by subdivisions of the Second Army Corps of the Russian Federation of the occupying forces and continue hostilities against Ukraine,” the Ukrainian government said.
Russia recently shifted the focus of its invasion of Ukraine to the eastern region after Russian forces failed to take the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv after weeks of shelling.
“Another phase of this operation [in eastern Ukraine] begins and I am sure that this will be a very important moment of this whole special operation,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with India Today, according to the state-run TASS news agency on Tuesday.
Translations by Nikita Angarski and Oleksandr Vynogradov.