The scandal around the batallion “Tornado” can grow into armed confrontation between staff of unit and regional militia leadership. Nearly one hundred of soldiers of coy are in full alert on their base in Privolie near Lisichansk. “Tornado” in fact is not a batallion, it is the coy of special-purpose in a structure of Luhansk MIA, reports the correspondent of informator.lg.ua Constantin Reutsky.

The deputy of commander of coy Nickolay Tsukur, taken the commanding of unit except the captured on Wednesday commander Ruslan Onischenko didn’t allow the employees of Prosecutor in the emplacement to make court-approved search there. Till the current time there weren’t any attempts to block or attack the base, however, soldiers of “Tornado” didn’t exclude such script development and affirm that they are ready to repel atttacks.

The charges were filed only to 8 “tornaders” from the 12 of disappeared fighters. Two were released, but their whereabouts is still unknown. Some people in “batallion” claim about illegal detention of a number of their fighters and about tortures used to them.

We communicated with Ilya Kholod, the soldier of “batallion”, which according to his words was called for interrogation on Thuursday as a witness in a case about disappearing of the weapon. Kholod affirms that four people in uniform and masks broke into the cabinet of investigator of  Severodonetsk city police in time of interrogation and beat the “tornader” without any explanations. Then they removed him into Kharkiv, where he was questioned by the military prosecutor as a witness in the case against the commander of their coy. Bruises on the hands and face, traces of handcuffs on wrists are seen on Kholod.

The biggest part of soldiers are sure that the true reason of the conflict is the impending of “tornaders” to traffic of counterfeit goods through the demarcation line — on Wednesday they detained the train with cast iron followed from occupied Alchevsk in Dnepropetrovsk. They’re blaming general Naumenko, the head of Luhansk militia, in the trade with insurgents. Especially this man “covers” the “contraband” according to words of soldiers of “Tornado”.

The deputy of head of Luhansk police Sergei Hubanov, came to hand to command of the unit to the court judgment and order on conducting a search of the location part, has not been admitted to the territory. Tsukur hasn’t come to to Hubanov to accept the documents. Policemen were forced to read the documents by loudspeaker and went out. The rumours about surrounding the “Tornado” base spreaded for a few times a day, but every time the leadership of unit disproved this information. The snipers were noticed in the suburbs of the base, drone-scouts flew under the base, but there weren’t any serious preparing for attack.

Frontline station Svetlanovo, become the catalyst of the scandal, continues to accept the freight trains moving through the line of frontin a both sides. The head of Luhansk police affirms that this freight turnover is legal and sanctioned by Cabinet of Ministers. According to his words the trains with coal, without which the work of Ukrainian thermal power plants is impossible, move on this branch.

The little station is hard to find, it’s only possible to get there on the broken ground road. There is still a dozen of wagons, loaded with wood and oil tankers.

General Naumenko, we communicated with him in Severodonetsk, absolutely denials all blamings in “covering” of illegal trade with insurgents and sounds the another version. He calls the commander of coy Ruslan Onischenko “the beast”, he blames him in pathological cruelty and in committing a number of grave crimes. Among them are kidnapping of people, tortures of captured, rapings and murders. Naumenko affirms that he knew about criminal past of Onischenko on the stage of forming the coy, but he decided to give him a chance. According to his words there is a real patriots among “tornaders”, but generally coy not only did combat missions, it is more made looting and terrorized the locals. The words of Naumenko is confirmed by commanders of police batallions “Lvov” and  “Chernigov”.

By the way “Chernigov” is featuring in one more scandal with illegal turnover of goods with occupied territories. The commander of “Chernigov” didn’t commented the blamings of fighters of volunteer squad “Chernaya Sotnya” (Black Hundred).

The general Naumenko hopes for “diplomatic” resolution of the conflict with “Tornado”, but he says that in case of refusing of the volunteers to obey orders and not to disarm, the base will be attacked. According to his words the soldiers of the “Tornado” are out of staff and they will be all fired. If they didn’t put down all weapon, they formally become not police unit, they will become “illegal armed group”. That will give the formal occasion for top-brassers for power scenario.

We will continue to watch for development of the events around “batallion” “Tornado”…

Constantin Reutsky for informator.lg.ua