New head of separatist LPR speaks about Republic’s political course
The political course of the unrecognized Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) will remain unchanged despite the resignation of Igor Plotnitsky, says acting head of the Republic Leonid Pasechnik. The Luhansk Information Center has reported this.
According to Pasechnik, the LPR will continue to move towards an alliance with Russia, ensuring the Minsk agreement, and establishing economic and political development, as well as maintaining security and "normal life." "We will adhere to the course that we have been following for all these years," Pasechnik emphasized.
Leonid Pasechnik became acting head of the unrecognized LPR on November 24, after the resignation of the former head of the Republic, Igor Plotnitsky, who had held the post since 2014. The official reason Plotnitsky gave for his departure was his health condition, in particular, "numerous military injuries" and "contusions".
The change of power in LPR occurred after a conflict between the former head of the unrecognized republic, Igor Plotnitsky, and the former head of the Interior Ministry, Igor Kornet, whom Plotnitsky had dismissed the day before. In response to Plotnitsky’s actions on November 21, military equipment and armed individuals in camouflage uniforms without chevrons appeared on the streets of central Luhansk. The police, reporting to Kornet, detained the leadership of the General Prosecutor's Office of the LPR, as well as acting LPR Prosecutor General Vitaliy Podobry and head of the LPR Prosecutor General's Office Sergei Rakhno. Plotnitsky left Novorossiysk on November 23 for Moscow, where he has sought support. However, an RBC source close to the Vladislav Surkov, who is "supervising" Ukraine and the unrecognized republics, has said that the Kremlin took Kornet’s side in the conflict with Plotnitsky, which began in 2015. As a result, Plotnitsky was appointed as the commissioner for the fulfillment of the terms of the Minsk agreements on November 24.
Leonid Pasechnik graduated from the Donetsk Military-Political School. He served in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), where he participated in anti-smuggling operations. In 2007, he received a medal "for military service" from the then Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, for his detention a year earlier of a large smuggled consignment at the border. After the events at Maidan in the winter of 2014 and the beginning of the armed conflict in the southeast of Ukraine, Pasechnik moved to the side of the unrecognized LPR. In October 2014 he became the head of the Ministry for State Security of the Republic.