Ukraine's President-elect is vowing to crush Pro-Moscow separatists after they used a Russian-made anti-aircraft system to target and shoot down a military helicopter near Sloviansk.  The attack killed twelve people including an army general who was in charge of combat training for Ukraine’s army.

The Russian Interfax news agency confirms that General Serhiy Kulchytskiy had served in the Soviet Military as a young man.  He’s described as a hands-on commander who personally flew to checkpoints to bring his troops food and water.  The other people killed on the Mi-8 chopper were members of his Special Forces and National Guard troops.

Ukraine President-elect Petro Poroshenko will be sworn in on 7 June.  He has already promised to bring the fight to the pro-Russian violent rebels in the east, whom he called “terrorists”, and to finish them in “hours, not days”.

"These criminal acts of the enemies of the Ukrainian people will not go unpunished," Proshenko said.

But that’s easier said than done.  The separatists are more and more employing guerilla tactics, successfully used against larger and better armed forces for years.

“It is extremely difficult to fight against guerrillas.  You just cannot destroy them.  They are not regular troops,” said Igor Sutyagin, a research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute.  “It’s the classic problem which Russia had in Chechnya and the United States had in Vietnam.”