In Bizarre Accident, Five Ukrainian Policemen Shot To Death By Other Policemen

A very strange tragedy has led to the death of five police officers in the Kiev region of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Interior Ministry reports that while a special operations unit, similar to a SWAT unit in the United States, was attempting to raid a house, a home alarm system was tripped in the neighborhood causing other police officers to arrive on the scene. As a result, one group fired on the other, leading to the deaths. Unian.info reports:

Police officers who were engaged in surveillance were deployed in a private house under construction on a street in Kniazhychi. Their task was to monitor the situation and give a command to detain the criminals.

“They planned a typical operation to catch a gang of robbers red-handed. However, a tragic chain of events prevented this from happening. An anti-burglar alarm was automatically activated in a house next door. A group of the state guard service arrived at the scene, they spotted and detained two surveillance officers. Meanwhile, the SWAT team decided that the surveillance officers were in trouble, being captured by the criminals who might have uncovered them, and drove their van to the street where the state guard service members had detained the surveillance officers. Further, there was a shooting between the state guard service and the SWAT officers, which lasted for some moments and claimed the lives of five,” [adviser to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, Anton Gerashchenko] wrote.

Two members of the state guard service, two police surveillance officers and one SWAT team member were shot to death, he wrote.

Unian also reports that the suspects who were under surveillance fled. Ukraine Today adds that the suspects were eventually arrested, and the Prosecutor’s Office is conducting an official investigation into the incident. 

Fighting continues in eastern Ukraine, but at a slightly lower level

According to Unian, at the briefing on the morning of December 4 the Ukrainian military reported fewer ceasefire violations than the previous 24 hour period. Unian reports that according to the press service of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) headquarters the Russian-backed militants breached the ceasefire agreement 26 times on December 3, down from 44 the day before. 

In particular, they used mortars, grenade launchers of various systems, infantry fighting vehicles, small arms to shell the villages of Novo-Oleksandrivka, Krymske, Stanytsia Luhanska, and Novozvanivka in the Luhansk sector.

Mortars were also used in the Mariupol sector, near Shirokino and near Maryinka, and in the Donetsk, near Krasnohorivka and Avdeyivka. An infantry fighting vehicle was reportedly used near Zaitseve.