Interview with Igor Strelkov by Alexander Kots and Dmitry Steshin:
“Immediate and Large-scale Assistance from Russia is Needed”
Komosomolskaya Pravda (Russian)
Gleb Bazov (English)
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The Commander in Chief of the DPR militia believes that, if Moscow does not intervene, the self-defence units will be unable to withstand the Ukrainian army. The Commander in Chief of the Donetsk People’s Republic’s militia told us about the massive artillery shelling of the residential neighbourhoods of Kramatorsk and offered an unpromising prognosis
Right now, you can hear explosions. The enemy is shelling the outskirts of Slavyansk and the city of Kramatorsk with several batteries of heavy howitzer artillery. The massive strikes are directed exclusively at the residential neighbourhoods and industrial complexes. While Slavyansk has, by now, become accustomed to constant, unending, daily and nightly artillery strikes, in Kramatorsk there is now a state of panic. For the first time, apartment buildings and private houses there have been hit with heavy ammunition. There are fires, explosions, a multitude of dead and wounded. This is being done to show all the cities of Donbass exactly what will happen to them in the future. They have obliterated Slavyansk. Almost half the city’s population has fled to Russia. Now they will obliterate Kramatorsk, and Kramatorsk is larger than Slavyansk. We will end up with tens of thousands more refugees, most of whom will end up in Russia. As far as I am aware, Russia is entirely unready to receive tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and then millions of refugees. After Kramatorsk will follow Druzhkovka, Konstantinovka, Gorlovka, Makeevka, Donetsk, Lugansk, and then everywhere else. We can see how the Ukrainian army acts. They do not strike at the positions of the militia, but at the infrastructure. They promise to grant passage to the repair brigades, and then they shoot at them. Them they claim that we hit our own schools and water-purification facilities, that we do it all ourselves, like terrorists, and they have nothing to do with it.
A brief prognosis. The enemy has transferred its main infantry and tank forces to the north of the Lugansk oblast and to the south of the Donetsk oblast. Each day they advance by 10-15 kilometres, methodically cutting off the “rebellious” regions from the border with Russia, from any and all help, from any arms and ammunition which could hypothetically be supplied someday, and from food and medicines. I can assure you that if Russia does not take immediate steps, they will achieve success. We have several thousand militia concentrated along the border, armed with several tanks and artillery pieces and a fair number of machine guns and grenade launchers, but they will be unable to withstand the enemy’s air, artillery, and massed tank power for very long. The ratio of tanks can be estimated at 1 to 500, of APCs ay 1 to 300, and of artillery at 1 to 800. There is no point in even mentioning aviation. One, two, three or even four weeks will pass, and the most battle-ready detachments of the militia will be bled dry. Sooner or later, they will be will be routed and eliminated. We have observed the enemy tactics in Mariupol. They surround the city, blockade it with checkpoints using heavy equipment, and cut it off from any possibility of help. Then their punitive units enter. These special units, Azov, Donbass, and so on, are composed of so-called volunteers who are in reality mercenaries. These units clear the city of any militia. Then they move out and a garrison moves in, takes up key positions, rounds up all the malcontents and places them in filtration camps. That is what awaits us.
Now let’s talk about the social debate, where two alternatives are offered: either full-scale war, or non-interference in the affairs of Novorossiya. ‘Non-interference’ means that Russian society is inculcated with the belief that the local Russians, by themselves and without Russia’s help, will be able to defend Novorossiya, repel the enemy’s onslaught and hold for as long as is necessary for Russia to come to some kind of decision; and also, with the belief that the commencement of war is not in Russia’s interest, that it will lead to serious economic consequences. I can say this: the war that is alread going on, right now, will end disastrously for Russia, in the economic sense. Russia will suffer economically from this war because it did not intervene in time, did not introduce peacekeeping forces. She could have occupied the whole of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions when they first rose up against the adversary. It could have been done painlessly right after the referenda. But Russia did not do it, and from that moment on we started to lose ground. As it now stands, a peacekeeping intervention is impossible without engaging in a large-scale war, without airstrikes, artillery barrages, a tank incursion and a partial mobilization of the Russian army.
I will tell you honestly: we are biding our time, we are mobilizing our paltry resources and people, but we cannot match the enemy. Some think that the Ukrainian army will fall apart if you only spit at it. It’s true it will fall apart as soon as it meets a counterpart which is able to match it at least part-way, but what we have here is not even a fight between David and Goliath, it’s between an elephant and an ant. An ant can cause lots of pain biting an elephant. But even an old and sick elephant will crush an ant. Even if its legs buckle, the elephant will crush it with its sheer mass. It should not be forgotten that the enemy receives economic, financial and military aid from all of Euia and Usaia. The hryvnia still floats, after two months of war, not because it’s a stable currency. This is just ridiculous. How could anyone think that we can stand our ground against such massive support? Yes, we can hold Slavyansk a month, maybe a month and a half, but sooner or later they will still eliminate us. We cannot transfer our garrison to another city without abandoning this territory. We can organize five Slavyansks, but they will be encircled and eliminated, together with their populations. There is a third alternative besides war or complete abandonment of Novorossiya: immediate de facto recognition of Novorossiya and of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and the provision of urgent, large-scale military assistance to them. I am addressing Russia as a Commander in Chief of the Donetsk People’s Republic’s militia, and as a patriot of Russia and the Russian people. You can take it that I speak for the Donetsk militia.
Now, as for the tactical situation report. At this time, there are five howitzer batteries of the enemy near Slavyansk. They are comprised of twenty full-fledged heavy artillery pieces, with calibers ranging from 122 mm and larger. There are four or five mortar batteries, with calibers 120 mm and 80 mm. The enemy has fortified its positions well, and its infantry numbers exceed ours. Furthermore, the enemy forces at each of its checkpoints are equal to our garrisons in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk combined. And I mean our entire garrisons. I can’t compare their equipment’s functional state with ours. We have not even one tank. The enemy has them at each checkpoint. There are six tanks at their checkpoint near the turn onto Krasniy Liman. If I were to send the militia to assault this checkpoint, they would be hit with mortar fire in the open field before even getting there. And then, the aviation would bomb them from on high, then howitzer barrages and tanks would crush them. It would be like what happened to us at Donetsk airport, but with even higher casualties. Then, when the militia was bled dry and it retreated to its starting positions, it would no longer be able even to defend itself, let alone to attempt another assault. And this breakdown is the same on every front.
We can bite the enemy, we can attack from the flanks, we can operate in sabotage-intelligence groups and destroy one or two armoured elements a day. This is all made possible solely by the heroism of the fighters, who can penetrate deep into the enemy’s rear and hit him point-blank. But heroism alone, armed with light arms, grenade launchers and a few mortars, cannot change the balance of the battle. We can only defend. Unfortunately, the enemy has superiority over us on every section of the battlefield. There are rumours that we have armoured vehicles, tanks. Never are there more lies than during war and fishing. I know that Alexander Mozgovoi conducted a good operation, seized some trophies, destroyed a few others. But all this is peanuts. The enemy can replace any amount of destroyed or seized equipment from the endless Soviet-era reserves. We don’t even have a secure rear for repairing armoured elements. We have no spare parts or supplies. One APC cannot stand against 20 or 30. And even the three aged tanks which were restored with great difficulty in Gorlovka, even these three tanks cannot match thirty, or rather, sixty or ninety tanks. Ukrainian tanks can be counted in the hundreds. We won’t even speak about the Su-2s flying overhead. We do shoot them down from time to time, but they maintain full superiority in the air.
