Together with the beard, Igor Kornet almost lost his head

In Luhansk, an attempt was made on the life of the acting head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the LPR, Igor Kornet. A major general of the police was blown up during a haircut in a barbershop with a radio-controlled bomb specially installed for him. The victim received a severe concussion and damage to internal organs, but his condition, according to doctors, was stabilized. According to investigators, Ukrainian special services could be behind the attack on the general.

Undermining a beauty salon with a barbershop equipped in it, located on the first floor of a house on Demekhina Street, occurred at 13:50 on Monday. The home-made bomb planted in the room, most likely, was not stuffed with striking elements and had a low power, however, the blast wave in the closed room was enough to take out all the double-glazed windows and severely injure the people inside. According to the acting head of the LPR, Leonid Pasechnik, seven people were injured in the explosion. All of them were taken to Luhansk hospitals. The wounds of the four victims were classified as severe. Among them, according to Mr. Pasechnik, were a 17-year-old teenager and Igor Kornet, acting head of the LPR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The major general received a severe concussion with a concussion of the brain, damage to internal organs, accompanied by internal bleeding, and lacerations of the hands of both hands.

However, according to Luhansk doctors, after the operation and connecting the patient to a ventilator, his condition was stabilized.

The first department of the Investigation Department of the TFR for the LPR took up the investigation of the incident. What happened there was qualified as attempted murder, encroachment on the life of a law enforcement officer and illegal trafficking in explosives, a criminal case was opened under the relevant Art. 105, 317 and 222.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. However, later the case may be reclassified as a terrorist act (Article 205 of the Criminal Code).

The ICR has not yet given official comments on the circumstances of the crimes committed, however, according to Kommersant sources close to the investigation, the target of the so far unknown criminals was precisely the police Cornet, who regularly visited the barbershop on Demekhina. Having tracked the approximate daily routine and schedule of movements of the major general, the criminals probably planted a remote-controlled bomb in the barbershop in advance and secretly, and then, waiting for the appearance of a policeman, blew it up with a signal from a mobile phone.

Who exactly was the perpetrator of the crime is not yet clear. But, according to the authorities of the LPR, the assassination attempt on Igor Kornet is most likely caused by members of the Ukrainian special services, whom he has opposed since 2014.

It was then that the former investigator of the Ukrainian police Kornet went over to the side of the Lugansk militia and began to act as the chief police officer of the unrecognized republic. In Ukraine, he is considered one of the organizers of the seizure of power in the LPR, being searched for under the relevant Art. 109.

At the same time, not everything went smoothly in the career of a major general. Almost immediately after his appointment, he began to clash with the then head of the LPR, Igor Plotnitsky. The family of Igor Kornet then occupied an empty, but formally alien house in Lugansk, in connection with which the local investigation accused him of abuse of office, and the head of the LPR, Plotnitsky, taking advantage of the situation, immediately signed a decree to remove his opponent from office. The policeman did not comply with the order, promising to start detaining key employees of the administration of Mr. Plotnitsky on charges of attempting a coup d’état. As a result, the head of the LPR himself had to leave his post and leave for Russia, and the ex-head of the Ministry of State Security of the republic, Leonid Pasechnik, who replaced him, reinstated General Kornet in his post. After the LPR became part of Russia last fall, the head of the LPR Ministry of Internal Affairs again became acting.

It is worth noting that on September 16 last year, two heads of the republican prosecutor’s office were killed at once in a similar scheme – LPR Prosecutor General Sergei Gorenko and his deputy Yekaterina Steglenko. The criminals then, according to a Kommersant source, managed to pass through Mrs. Steglenko, who was not aware of their intentions, a gift for her leader, in which a bomb was hidden. During the investigation of the terrorist attack, the ICR, according to some reports, managed to establish an approximate circle of suspects who acted in the interests of the Ukrainian security forces, but so far they have not been detained. The TFR and the prosecutor’s office refused to officially comment on this investigation.