Due to uncoordinated actions between the Ukrainian Armed Forces and volunteer battalions, in the first months of the war in Donbass, the Ukrainian side suffered more losses than at the hands of the enemy.
Ex-militant of the DUK “Right Sector”, former Marine Corps officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and commander of a self-propelled gun platoon, Elena Belozerskaya, spoke about this on Channel 4, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I had this A4 blue-yellow flag, which I wore as protection against “friendly fire.” Because in 2014, unfortunately, more people were killed and injured by “friendly fire” than by the enemy.
“Friendly fire” is when friends shoot at their own by mistake, because due to uncoordinated actions, they mistake their own for the enemy and shoot. At the beginning of the war, this happened very often, and more people died from “friendly fire”, more realistically, than at the hands of the enemy in 2014,” Belozerskaya said.
“When the front line is aligned, it is virtually impossible, but when it changes all the time, and you don’t know who it is or what it is. To protect myself from “friendly fire,” I carried a small blue and yellow flag in my pocket, which you can raise on a stick, on anything, above your head, like your own,” added the ex-ATO soldier.