Another expert inquiry has confirmed the guilt of Viktor Nazarov, a retired military general sentenced to prison for fatal negligence that led to the deaths of 49 Ukrainian soldiers and officers in the war zone of Donbas.
The second inquiry brings the general closer to incarceration, after a legal process that has dragged on for years.
Following the latest court hearing on Aug. 4, Vitaliy Pogosyan, the legal counsel acting on behalf of the fallen servicepersons’ relatives, asserted that the inquiry had given a “decisive answer” to whether Nazarov’s activities as commander caused “grave consequences leading to the deaths of military servicepersons… the loss of weaponry, vehicles and other military hardware.”
In the early morning hours of June 14, 2014, Nazarov, then the chief executive officer at the military headquarters for Donbas, launched an operation to reinforce the Ukrainian troops defending Luhansk airport, which was besieged by Russian-backed militants. A company of troops with the 25th Airborne Brigade was redeployed from Dnipro to Luhansk airport in three Ilyushin Il-76 transport aircraft.
Hours later, the first airplane landed successfully.
But when the second approached the airport, Russian-backed militants shot it down with a 9K38 Igla man-portable surface-to-air missile system. All 40 paratroopers and 9 crew members were killed as the burning airplane crashed close to the runway strip. The third plane requested a wave-off and safely escaped.
The incident triggered a nationwide uproar in Ukraine, with angry crowds storming the Russian embassy in Kyiv later in the day. According to Ukraine’s SBU security service, the militants who downed the aircraft served with the Wagner Group, an unofficial private mercenary army fighting for the Kremlin’s political and business interests worldwide.
At that point, this was the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ heaviest loss of life in Donbas.
A Russian-backed militant looks through the debris of the downed Ukrainian military transport aircraft downed near the Luhansk Airport on June 14, 2014. (AFP)
An inquiry into the downing eventually led to the indictment of General Nazarov, who was accused of committing criminal negligence during the operation’s planning and execution. An official evaluation prepared by a commission of military aviation and tactics experts found the general guilty, stating that he had directly violated a range of regulations by sending three transport aircraft across hostile territory stripped of any defensive capabilities.
Moreover, the evaluation concluded that he had failed to enact necessary measures to ensure the aircraft’s security upon arrival.
The evaluation also confirmed that Nazarov had been informed by several intelligence sources that the enemy near Luhansk airport had anti-aircraft weapons.
Based on the evaluation commission’s evidence, a court in the city of Pavlohrad in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast found Nazarov guilty and sentenced him to seven years in prison in 2017.
Nazarov appealed the sentence and challenged the military experts’ conclusions, demanding a brand new inquiry. He strongly denied his guilt and placed the blame on the downed aircraft’s pilots, saying that they had failed to carry out a safe landing.
Despite being indicted and released on bail, he was never suspended from his duties and later played a role in major battles at Ilovaisk and Debaltseve, which resulted in catastrophic defeats for Ukrainian forces and large death tolls.
Following his sentencing, some General Staff officers who had served under Nazarov launched a smear campaign against his perceived opponents, attacking activists and journalists who supported the court’s decision.
The unprecedented sentence against a high-ranking military officer also caused a severe backlash among Ukraine’s top generalship. Then-Chief of General Staff Viktor Muzhenko claimed the decision benefitted Russia. He said that no military commander would ever take the risk of making difficult decisions and assuming responsibility in war, knowing that he or she could be imprisoned for troop casualties.
Then-President Petro Poroshenko also decried the sentence, saying that an incompetent civilian court should not have been entitled to judge a “battlefield general.”
Members of the official military commission, as well as officers called as witnesses during the trial, also reported facing intimidation and career consequences, allegedly because of their role in the case.
Nonetheless, during conversations with the Kyiv Post in 2017, Ukrainian servicemembers who were present at Luhansk airport during the incident blamed what they saw as incompetent leadership by Nazarov for the plane’s downing. They asked not to be identified due to career concerns.
Friends and relatives let 49 heart-shaped balloons fly during the downed Il-76 aircraft commemoration ceremony in Kyiv on June 13, 2017. (Volodymyr Petrov)
After the court launched a new expert inquiry in 2017 at Nazarov’s request, the trial dragged on for the next three years.
But against many expectations, the new military commission effectively confirmed the first evaluation’s conclusions.
In the fragment from the new report published by legal counsel Pogosyan, experts assert that Nazarov, as the operation’s chief executive officer, failed to organize protection for the airborne forces on the ground during the landing on hostile territory.
According to the report, he did nothing to try and clear the landing zone of enemy forces and suppress their anti-aircraft capabilities, something that should have been carried out to ensure the operation’s success. Moreover, Nazarov had the capabilities to take appropriate measures and was obliged to do so in the situation.
The report effectively concludes that Nazarov’s negligence laid the groundwork for the downing of the aircraft and the death of 49 Ukrainian servicepersons.
According to lawyer Pogosyan, a new hearing is expected to take place on Sept. 24, during which the court will hear oral arguments of the prosecution and defense.
