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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
General Voloshin will not lead the newly created OSHR: assault troops did not accept the commander-paratrooper
Brigadier General Dmytro Voloshin, whom President Volodymyr Zelenskyy named two months ago as a potential commander of the newly formed United Forces of Rapid Response, will not take this post. The format of the OSBR’s existence, which was to include all assault battalions, is still under discussion.
This is reported by Ukrainska Pravda, citing four interlocutors, including high-ranking ones, from various defense forces structures.
“The assault troops had no complaints about Voloshin as a person or a commander. But there was a complaint that he came to them and said: all command — by percent 80% — will consist of paratroopers. Who among the paratroopers understands the system we fight in (the assault troops — ed.)?” — said the first interlocutor.
The official reason why Voloshin never assumed the promised commander post is not known. However, journalists say that it may lie in the fact that the assault troops did not accept a paratrooper as their leader — as a person from a “different culture.”
Voloshin has already returned to the 8-th Air Assault Forces Corps, which, according to the publication, is currently stationed in Sumy region. Last weekend he held a meeting with local journalists, in which he presented himself as the commander of the 8-th corps. Thus, the publication notes, he took the same post he held before the president announced the creation of the OSHR.
Two defense sources name Voloshin’s successor as his paratrooper colleague Pavel Rozlach, the former commander of the 80-th Air Assault Brigade. In the 2024 year he led the 80-th brigade to Kursk region after his predecessor Emil Ishkullov refused to do so without additional reinforcement.
“Rozlach is indeed a candidate, but after this circus — when appointments are made and then canceled — I am no longer confident in anything,” said the second interlocutor.
Another source notes that the format of the assault battalion existence is in question. Therefore, it is not a fact that the phenomenon of the “United Forces of Rapid Response” will even be preserved. The publication writes that one of the documents mentions the possibility of a substantial change to their composition and order.
Interlocutors from among the assault troops are outraged that their units are already being “split up”: in particular, reducing staffing levels, removing engineering units from their ranks, and so on. They fear being left without their own vertical of command and becoming units to be used to “plug holes.”
“The reduction of assault subunits is split into two stages: in the first, infantry battalions are reduced, in the second — the BPS. They want to leave us in a semi-serviceable condition,” said the first interlocutor.
The publication notes that perhaps even high-ranking interlocutors do not yet fully know the head commander's plan of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Mykhailo Dmytrovych Drapato, and do not understand what ultimately awaits assault units.
Document: the nearest available PDF proof for the news item "Генерал Волошин не очолить новостворені ОСШР: штурмовики не прийняли командувача-десантника". It was preserved by the monitoring system as evidence of the publication and source: ANTIKOR.
