An officer who set up soldiers to be hit by a Russian missile has been appointed head of the Transcarpathian Territorial Center for Civil Protection

Colonel Dmytro Lysyuk, former commander of the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade, has been appointed the new head of the Transcarpathian Regional Territorial Defense Command and Joint Staff. 

The colonel is known for having ordered his troops to line up in an open area in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in November 2023; he arrived late for the event, and after half an hour of waiting, the troops were struck by an “Iskander-M” ballistic missile. Nineteen soldiers were killed and 53 were wounded. Following an investigation by the Ministry of Defense and Lysyuk’s suspension, the investigation attributed the strike to a hack of the Signal messaging app, and the command did not face any real accountability.

In addition, in 2019, while serving in the ATO/JFO zone as commander of the 10th Special Forces Brigade, Lysyuk received a criminal conviction for smuggling more than 219,000 packs of cigarettes from the occupied part of the Luhansk region. At that time, he avoided imprisonment by paying a fine of 119,000 hryvnias and undergoing a procedure to be released on his own recognizance, after which he received a promotion in rank and was appointed brigade commander.

Source: Oleg Symoroz on Facebook.

On November 3, 2023, tragic news shook Ukraine—soldiers from the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade were killed in the Zaporizhzhia region, near the front line. However, this did not happen during active combat operations, but due to sheer negligence: the soldiers were lined up in the courtyard of a building, where they stood for about half an hour.

On November 6, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine officially announced that the commander of the 128th Brigade had been suspended by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine pending an internal investigation.