Soldiers Close To Assassinated Ukraine Separatist Leader Believe It Was Internal

Soldiers in the Mosgovoi battalion don't believe that a Ukrainian battalion killed him. They believe it's an internal matter

“He was always very outspoken and always identified himself in opposition to what he described as the corrupt bureaucrats in Luhansk,” Oliver Carroll correspondent for The Independent said of recently assassinated Luhansk separatist leader Alexei Mozgovoi.

According to Carroll, Mozgovoi was one of the key figures in the Luhansk separatist movement and was instrumental in radicalizing the comparatively peaceful separatist demonstrations in Luhansk in spring 2014. Since July Mozgovoi has reportedly been one of the main field commanders for the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic.

He survived two assassination attempts but was killed by unknown assalants in Luhansk on 23 May, 2015. According to Defence Ministry of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, a car carrying Mozgovoy was hit by a bomb and then by machine-gun fire in the town of Alchevsk, 40 kilometres from Luhansk city.

Though a Ukrainian nationalist group has claimed responsibility, the soldiers who served under him believe that it was ordered internally, said Carroll. Carroll further observed that the self-declared republic previously had multiple power bases competing with the central command, most of which had now been pacified or removed.

Hromadske International's Nataliya Gumenyuk and Ian Bateson spoke with Oliver Carroll via Skype on May 24, 2015.