‘We have a lot of snipers – terrorists should be eliminated without mercy’
Euroradio has asked Ukrainian experts when it was possible to shoot at ‘live shields’ and how to overcome separatists’ mobile groups.
Separatists in East Ukraine do not want to play by the rules. They may capture peaceful citizens in Sloviansk and use them as a live shield, try to seize a passenger train or create mobile groups for visiting other cities where they attempt to seize buildings or organize some provocation.
Ukrainian military experts refuse to discuss the ways of overcoming such mobile groups of separatists and conducting the anti-terrorist operation without victims among peaceful citizens. “We will not comment on anything until the operation is over,” head of the Military and Political Research Centre Dmitri Tymchuk told Euroradio.
MP and member of Svoboda party Yuri Sirotyuk is sure that militants should be liquidated by snipers.
Yuri Sirotyuk: “We have a lot of professional snipers. We need targeted fire to overcome terrorists – there are not many of them. But terrorists should be killed without mercy!”
“I think that we need fast targeted blows,” associate professor of political science of Kiev University Roman Korshuk supported the politician.
Roman Korshuk: “We need to use their own tactics to some extent: separatists have mobile groups and we also need such groups. They should be more mobile than separatists’ groups.”
Members of such mobile groups are military professionals from Russia and they need to be eliminated without mercy, the professor told Euroradio.
Peaceful citizens from live shields should be warned about the inadmissibility of entering ‘battle areas’ and should be urged to leave, MP Yuri Sirotyuk thinks. Otherwise…
Yuri Sirotyuk: “We should not think about victims anymore – there are already a lot of victims. Russia is conducting an anti-terrorist operation in Khasavyurt now, some women have been killed there. Nobody is accusing Russia of having killed peaceful women. People entering battle areas controlled by terrorists should understand that they may die there.”
The associate professor of political science shares the same opinion.
Roman Korshuk: “Peaceful citizens need to know: they should flee from battle areas, stay indoors if they can and avoid travelling. ‘Peaceful citizens do not usually interfere in such events. And I do not think that separatists will be able to force many people to join them.”
Those ‘peaceful citizens’ who stand in front of separatists as a live shield will be considered their accomplices, Yuri Sirotyuk warned. Furthermore, separatists often present ‘special guests’ or ‘anti-Ukraine groups of Ukrainian citizens’ as ‘peaceful local residents’.
The main thing is not to stop the anti-terrorist operation, both Eurordaio’s interlocutors said. “The faster we finish it, the fewer victims there will be,” Yuri Sirotyuk thinks. However, neither the politician nor the political scientist could explain why snipers were not being mobilized, mobile groups were not being created and why peaceful citizens were not being warned about the consequences of joining live shields.
