Stepan Poltorak: The new Kuchma needs a new Kuzmuk

Stepan Poltorak

He plays the role of "servant to the Tsar, father to the soldiers" perfectly, as flawless and perfect as a military unit freshly painted for the arrival of the Commander-in-Chief. Many even believe that for the first time in its history, Ukraine has a true Minister of Defense, capable of ensuring the army's equipment and leading it victoriously into battle. Unfortunately, this is a dangerous misconception: the chronology of the ATO clearly demonstrates that under Stepan Poltorak's command, it is risky not only to attack but even to sit back in the trenches (which are gradually turning into "cauldrons"). The defense of the nation was entrusted to a man whose only virtue lies in his absolute loyalty to the president.

A brief combat path

Stepan Tymofiyovych Poltorak was born on February 11, 1965, in the village of Vesela Dolina, Tarutinsky District, Odessa Oblast. The birth of the future Minister of Defense was unforeseen. However, his native village is quite interesting in itself: founded in 1804 by German immigrants, it remained predominantly German and Protestant until the 40s (before the deportation of Germans), and was the birthplace of several Lutheran pastors renowned throughout Europe. The Ukrainians and Russians who subsequently settled there were not particularly fond of farming, but eagerly entered public service, especially in the military. More than fifty natives of Vesela Dolina became officers in the security forces of the USSR, Ukraine, and Russia—an impressive feat for a village with a population of just over a thousand!

Following the example of his fellow villagers, Stepan Poltorak, who graduated from Veselodolinskaya Secondary School in 1982, also decided to join the military. However, he clearly delayed his choice: it was only in August 1983 that he enrolled in the Ordzhonikidze (Vladikavkaz) Higher Command School of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (today the North Caucasus Military Institute of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation). It was also a very interesting educational institution: founded in 1938, it trained commanders for the Internal Troops (VT) of the NKVD—the very same ones that are today portrayed as the mainstay of the "Stalinist regime." In 1946, the NKVD was renamed the MVD, but the essence of the VT remained the same: unlike convoy and security units, their soldiers do not march back and forth behind barbed wire fences, but participate in riot control and combat operations within the country.

Poltorak rose to prominence already in his first year at the academy: he became a squad leader and the course's Komsomol organizer, then earned the rank of sergeant and rose to deputy platoon commander. After graduating, the young lieutenant was sent to serve in "hot spots," as his fellow villagers later described him. There were plenty of such "hot spots" in the crumbling USSR at the time: Sumgait and Nagorno-Karabakh (1988), Tbilisi, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia (1989), Baku, Nakhichevan, Gagauzia, and Transnistria (1990). Incidentally, the ribbon of the Soviet medal "For Military Merit" can be seen on Stepan Poltorak's uniform. But where exactly did this Soviet "military serviceman" earn it in the final years of the Soviet Union? Poltorak maintains a deathly silence about his past, and his official biography is the briefest of any minister in the current government. Perhaps it is an old tradition among Internal Troops servicemen not to boast about the details of their exploits (for obvious reasons), or perhaps he has personal reasons for not talking about the past.

Somewhere during this "peacekeeping activity," Lieutenant Poltorak met his future wife, Inna Gennadievna Ryazanova, and in 1989 they had a son, Igor, who has now given the Minister of Defense a grandson.

Stepan Poltorak with his son Igor and cat Semyon Semyonich

In the early 90s, Stepan Poltorak transferred to serve in Ukraine. No official information about this has survived, but it is known that the Soviet Internal Troops units stationed in Ukraine did not participate in local conflicts during the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Poltorak could only have served in hot spots with units of the Internal Troops that later ceded to the Russian Federation. His transfer to his homeland became a boost to Poltorak's career: he quickly rose to the rank of battalion commander, regiment commander, and, in 1996, brigade commander, achieving the rank of colonel. All this occurred against the backdrop of the ongoing solitaire of forming, reforming, and disbanding units of the Internal Troops and the National Guard of Ukraine from 1992 to 2000, which, along with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Security Service of Ukraine, were considered the government's main power base. And judging by the fact that throughout these years the government devoted far more attention and funding to them than to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it was certainly not external enemies that they feared.

An honorary citizen of Kharkiv on Kyiv's Maidan

After graduating from the Academy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Stepan Poltorak served from 1997 to 2002 as the head of the Combat and Special Training Directorate of the Internal Troops. He was recommended for this position by Oleksandr Kuzmuk, who commanded the National Guard in 1995-96 and then became Ukraine's Minister of Defense (1996-2001). For Leonid Kuchma, Kuzmuk was the ideal head of the Ministry of Defense, as Kuzmuk never hatched any conspiracies, nor was he capable of doing so, instead whiled away his time inspecting soldiers' barracks and mess halls. These same qualities of the ideal "servant to the Tsar, father to the soldiers" would manifest themselves in Stepan Poltorak.

Largely due to this, in 2002 Poltorak was appointed head of the Kharkiv Academy of Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, where he served for 12 years. In 2003, he became a major general, and in 2007, a lieutenant general of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Kuchma was replaced by Yushchenko, who was replaced by Yanukovych, but Poltorak remained in his post and demonstrated loyalty to each new president, as well as each new Kharkiv mayor. For this, in 2013, he was awarded the title of "Honorary Citizen of Kharkiv," bestowed upon him by Gennady Kernes. Incidentally, he also got his wife, Inna, a job at the Academy, helping her achieve the rank of captain in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Stepan Poltorak received his first public criticism from the people he was vowing to protect in December 2013, when he and his cadets arrived in Kyiv to help cordon off the Euromaidan. For future Internal Troops officers, this also served as practical experience in "unrest control," so Poltorak took this "mission" quite seriously. Participants later noted that at Poltorak's station (near European Square), the cordon prevented anyone from reaching the protesters, not even the paramedics needed to treat the wounded after another attempt to disperse the Euromaidan on the night of December 12.

However, equally high-profile events involving cadets of the Academy of Internal Troops subsequently occurred in Kharkiv. After the cadets began being transported to Kyiv in "shifts" (a process personally supervised by Poltorak), activists of the Kharkiv Euromaidan protests staged a protest picket outside the Academy, followed by an indefinite rally, attempting to block the departing buses of the next "shift." On February 19, 2014, the standoff culminated in a clash between protesters, titushki (illegal criminals), police, and Academy cadets. Several people were seriously injured, and journalists' cameras were smashed. Later, in December 2014, a criminal investigation was opened into this incident, but all charges brought by the Prosecutor General's Office were reduced to an officer of the Kharkiv Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The role of Stepan Poltorak and his deputies in those events was simply ignored.

And just a week after the massacre at the walls of the Academy of Internal Troops, its head Stepan Poltorak on February 28, 2014 by decree No. 171/2014 of the acting President and Speaker of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov (Read more about it in the article Oleksandr Turchynov: Skeletons in the Closet of Ukraine's "Bloody Pastor") was appointed commander of the Internal Troops of Ukraine. Thus, Poltorak stepped over the smoking barricades of the Euromaidan and entered the new government over the heads of those who, just a few days earlier, had been considered "participants in the riots" by him. This unexpected personnel decision provoked the indignation of some Euromaidan supporters, but it fell on deaf ears. And the decision of the Verkhovna Rada on March 13, 2014, could be regarded as absurd: the Internal Troops and the "Maidan hundreds" (retrained as volunteer battalions) were to merge into a single National Guard, recreated by deputies in a fit of revolutionary patriotism, and subordinated to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov (Read more about it in the article Arsen Avakov: The criminal past of the Minister of Internal Affairs) However, Turchynov's attempt to appoint Poltorak to the post of head of the National Guard initially ended in failure: at the vote on April 1, 2014, the Rada deputies did not support the candidacy of the former "strangler of the Maidan."

But Poltorak, who was quick to navigate the political landscape, was quick to demonstrate his loyalty to the new government and took an active part in preparing the operation to liberate the Kharkiv Regional State Administration building from the separatists who had occupied it—on April 7, 2014, they proclaimed a "Kharkiv Republic." The very next day, Poltorak's chosen "Jaguar" unit of the Internal Troops and a volunteer detachment of members of the Kharkiv Patriot of Ukraine, with whom Avakov had long-standing ties (they would later form the "Azov" battalion), eliminated the Kharkiv hotbed of separatism. And on April 15, after several days of behind-the-scenes consultations, deputies of the Verkhovna Rada, by Resolution No. 4485, confirmed Stepan Poltorak as Commander of the National Guard of Ukraine.

In fact, the political and personnel leadership of the National Guard remained in the hands of Avakov, while military command, training, and support were entrusted to Poltorak, who thus also became the “father” of the first volunteer battalions subordinated to the National Guard.

War without victories

Poltorak and Avakov failed to replicate their Kharkiv success in Donbas: the ATO had already stalled in Sloviansk, where a relatively small detachment of Igor Girkin's militants managed not only to halt but also partially disarm the vanguard of Ukrainian security forces, forcing them into a three-month trench war. However, no official investigation was subsequently conducted into this failure, which led to the failure of the established deadlines and the prolongation of the ATO into an endless war, allowing the enemy to gradually build up its forces and extend the front along an arc from Luhansk to Mariupol. Everything was blamed on confusion, the "predecessors" who had destroyed the army, the treachery of the separatists and Putin, and the lack of morale among the Ukrainian security forces.

This wasn't the only, and certainly not the last, "blunder" of the National Guard commander. Stepan Poltorak's talent as a combat commander and his many years of leadership experience suddenly vanished. It was simply astonishing that a man who had spent 17 years overseeing the training of elite and command personnel for the Internal Troops could commit such miscalculations and blunders—just like his former students. For example, on May 22, 2014, near the Rubizhne railway station, National Guard units engaged a small group of poorly armed militants and retreated without any clear orders from above, allowing the separatists to gain a foothold in the Rubizhne-Lisichansk-Severodonetsk region for two months. The subsequent operation to liberate these cities resulted in numerous casualties and destruction, including the death of Colonel Alexander Radievsky, commander of the 21st National Guard Brigade.

On the night of May 29, 2014, in Luhansk (which separatists had taken control of in late April), militants captured Military Unit No. 3035 of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine after a lengthy siege. They seized not only small arms and ammunition but also armored vehicles, which were later used by separatists in battles against Ukrainian forces near the Schastya district of Luhansk Airport. Why did this combat-ready military unit remain inactive all this time, or fail to break through to the west, ultimately allowing the enemy to capture serviceable armored vehicles? These questions were never addressed to either the commander of the National Guard or the Minister of Internal Affairs.

The next setbacks for military commander Stepan Poltorak were not long in coming. During the tragic events at Izvarino (July) and Ilovaisk (August 2014), due to poorly thought-out command plans and a lack of clear discipline, individual units of the National Guard were trapped in "cauldrons." They were in such a hurry to clear the liberated territory that they literally marched in the rear, and even then next to units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as a result of which they were caught in fire ambushes. And once again, Stepan Tymofiyovych was incredibly lucky: not only was he not held accountable for anything (until now), but he was showered with stars. In time for the lavish Independence Day celebrations held in Kyiv on August 23, 2014, he was promoted to Colonel General. And when the capital, realizing the scale of the military catastrophe, grabbed their heads and hastened to dismiss Valeriy Heletey (Read more about it in the article Valery Geletey. I'm not happy to serve, but I must be subservient.) then Poroshenko decided to make Stepan Poltorak the next Minister of Defense.

Pro-presidential analysts sang his praises, citing Poltorak's extensive combat experience and his wisdom as a strategist and teacher. And as the main argument in favor of his image as a "father to soldiers," they cited the equipment of the Internal Troops, which was far superior to that of the desperately underserved Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, they simply forgot (or turned a blind eye) that Poltorak had nothing to do with this. Firstly, he had commanded the Internal Troops and the National Guard only since March 2014; secondly, the Internal Troops of Ukraine had been better funded and equipped than the Armed Forces of Ukraine since Kuchma's time. Poroshenko's choice was simply explained: with tensions between the emerging presidential team and the "People's Front" escalating, Petro Oleksiyovych decided to entrust an important security post to a potentially loyal individual unaffiliated with any political or oligarchic groups. Poltorak became under Poroshenko what Kuzmuk was under Kuchma.

Nevertheless, the legend of the caring General Poltorak, who ensured his soldiers were always well-fed, clothed, and well-armed, permeated Ukrainian society and remains alive to this day. The hardest part was convincing the Verkhovna Rada deputies, even though Poroshenko himself had presented and campaigned for his candidacy: only 245 deputies voted for his appointment on October 14, 2014. As a bonus, the president, on the same day, issued a decree promoting Stepan Poltorak to the rank of army general.

A protracted trench war—that's how Poltorak's strategy as commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces could be characterized. However, this could be explained by the constraints of his actions imposed by the Minsk Peace Treaty. However, even in defense, Stepan Poltorak managed to suffer another catastrophic collapse. First, after protracted fighting, in January 2015, the Ukrainian Armed Forces abandoned Donetsk Airport—a symbol of the Ukrainian soldiers' resilience.

The Battle of Debaltseve (February 2015) could have become Ukraine's Kursk Bulge, but instead it became practically a new Ilovaisk. Even a schoolchild, with just a glance at an ATO map, realized several months before the battle that the enemy would try to close the encirclement. But no one prepared for a serious defense, did not build up reserves, or deploy long-range artillery. This latest miscalculation by a "combat general" led to the loss of a strategic settlement, hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers killed, wounded, and captured, and, most importantly, to the loss of credibility for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which now began to lose to the separatists even in defense.

Without forgetting about yourself

Since Stepan Poltorak's appointment as Minister of Defense, his wealth has skyrocketed. While in 2013 he declared 140,637 hryvnias in personal income and 46,032 hryvnias in family income, in 2015 his income increased to 357,000 hryvnias, and his wife's to 499,000 hryvnias! How does a captain manage to earn more than an army general?

Well, although Stepan Poltorak isn't a multimillionaire like his capital-hungry predecessor, and hasn't even been caught running any public businesses, he doesn't neglect himself and his family, becoming the subject of several minor scandals. The first concerned his housing and transportation. Initially, the new Defense Minister modestly claimed that he lived with his family (five people) in an ordinary three-room apartment, didn't own a car, and used a company one. However, inquisitive journalists discovered that Stepan Poltorak now lives in an elite residential complex located on the grounds of a special military unit. "I moved there for security reasons!" Poltorak declared. Moreover, this strange military unit is so classified that the Ministry of Defense refused to provide any information about it. One wonders what state secret the Defense Ministry's public expenditure on mansions for its leadership could represent?

However, the Minister of Defense failed to explain why the Lexus he regularly drives out of this special residential complex is registered to a certain Vera Mochaylo—who happens to be the mother of the wife of his assistant, Ivan Brik, who had connections with him from his time at the Kharkiv Academy. Yet, not long ago, Poltora insisted that this car belonged to the Ministry of Defense! As if he didn't understand that repeated lies from the Minister of Defense are far worse than squandering the budget on his own needs. The money can be recovered, but the lost trust in a man who sends thousands of soldiers into battle—never.

Well, the current Minister of Defense simply has no luck with aides and old friends. Back in January 2015, Svyatoslav Manzhura, head of the National Guard's logistics and logistics department—another of Poltorak's Academy associates, who had recently received his position at the Defense Minister's personal request—was caught red-handed accepting a 232,000 hryvnia bribe from officials of Visit LLC. The bribe was a kickback from a tender deal handled by the department. Poltorak "overlooked" the scandal, fortunately, it wasn't directly related to him.

Stepan Timofeevich doesn't even forget his classmates. For example, one of them, Oleksandr Fedorovich Kuruch, now a simple physical education teacher, received a GLOCK-17 combat pistol and 200 rounds of ammunition as a gift from a school friend! On what basis, and under what law, Ukrainian physical education teachers were granted the right to own handguns, Poltorak never explained. And no one was surprised when, in another decree, Poltorak awarded Arseniy Yatsenyuk a "gangster" Thompson submachine gun, Arsen Avakov a Colt-1911 pistol, and Oleksandr Turchynov a legendary Mauser-96. Poltorak also remembered himself, awarding himself a GLOCK-19 "for courage and valor."

In November 2015, a group of MPs approached the Minister of Defense with information about the existence of an entire system of military enlistment office mobilization buyouts, citing examples of rates and kickbacks. Poltorak promised to look into the matter, but apparently shelved the information. He also ignored the complaint that during mobilization, to fulfill the plan, the army "raked in" anyone who couldn't afford the buyouts, including alcoholics and drug addicts, tuberculosis sufferers, even cancer patients, and men over 55. But Stepan Tymofiyovych enjoys occasionally staging a spectacle of inspecting the soldiers' mess hall or organizing a change of uniform for the army. Incidentally, since he became Minister of Defense, the number of competitions and tenders for updating the Ukrainian Armed Forces' uniforms has increased exponentially, and the costs associated with them have correspondingly increased. True, the troops at the front have never even seen the new design uniform, and are happy to at least receive the old-style uniform on time...

Sergey Varis, for SKELET-info

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