Kiev has been deploying anti-personnel mines in Donbass in breach of Ukraine’s own laws as well as international treaties, claims a former high-ranking Ukrainian officer and chief of the engineering service, who refused to obey the “illegal” and “inhumane” order.
In February 2014 Vadim Yatsulyak served as chief of the engineering service of the Interior Ministry of Ukraine, before being appointed as a commander of the Army Corps of Engineers of the National Guard. According to him, one of the first orders he was given in his new role was to receive a supply of anti-personnel mines from military warehouses, that would be later deployed throughout the territory of the so-called “anti-terrorist operation” to reinforce Ukrainian army positions.
“I was given, to put it mildly, inhumane or in legal terms unlawful orders by my superiors,” Yatsulyak told Russian tabloid Komsomolskya Pravda (KP) daily. “The deployment of anti-personnel mines in particular.”
Yatsulyak explained he was basically told by phone to accept the delivery of OZM-72 and MON-50 munitions and sign for it, while superiors would “stay aside assuming no responsibility.”
Refusing to implement the order, he notified his superiors, going as far as sending letters to the Minister of Defence, Ukraine’s parliament, and even the president, but “never received a single reply” to more than 85 complaints which he had sent to various ministries and officials. Eventually Yatsulyak was sacked as “unfit” for the position, and later left the country.
Even though he was never ordered to actually install anti-personnel mines, Yatsulyak speculates that Kiev eventually circumvented the law to deploy them, given the number of reports of deadly mine explosions in Donbass.
An order for the transition of “engineering munitions” such as mines between the Ministry of Defense and the National Guard would be coming “very high level,” and if properly documented would leave a trail of paperwork, Yatsulyak says. But he does not rule out that the papers could have been destroyed to cover the tracks of the perpetrators.