Three years ago, in the early hours of June 14, Russian thugs shot down near Luhansk a Ukrainian plane carrying 40 paratroopers and 9 crew members. The IL-76 military transport aircraft, which belonged to the 25th Military Transport Aviation Brigade of the Ukrainian Air Force, was shot down with an SA-18 MANPADS. For some time before that, users of social networks could watch terrorists repeatedly making public the data on aircraft arrivals at the airport. After the tragedy, the first question to be asked was, why had the military command ignored the obvious threat factors when sending troops to a war zone? At that time, the Luhansk Airport was under the control of Ukrainian soldiers, but the thugs had set up a large number of firing positions around it. On March 27, 2017, Major General Viktor Nazarov, formerly of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, was sentenced to 7 years in prison by a Pavlohrad court on charges of professional negligence in the case of the downed IL-76.
