April 27, 2014
Paul Sonne and Philip Shishkin
Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2014
Pro-Russian militants stand guard outside the Ukraine Security Service building on Saturday in Slovyansk, Ukraine.
The elusive commander of the pro-Russia militants who have seized the east Ukrainian city of Slovyansk has revealed himself for the first time since the crisis began, saying in a taped interview that his armed crew arrived in Ukraine’s east from Crimea.
Igor Strelkov, the commander whom officials in Kiev have described as a Russian intelligence officer, gave a picture of the fighters he brought to Slovyansk, whosince early April have transformed the city into the epicenter of eastern Ukraine’s pro-Russia unrest. The new government in Kiev has described Slovyansk as the “most dangerous city in Ukraine.”
"The unit that I came to Slovyansk with was put together in Crimea. I’m not going to hide that," Mr. Strelkov told the Moscow-based Komosomolskaya Pravda tabloid in a video interview released Saturday. "It was formed by volunteers—I would say half or two-thirds of them citizens of Ukraine."
The unit includes people from western and central Ukraine, as well as local fighters from the region itself, according to the commander. “Strictly speaking, it was by their invitation that the unit arrived in Slovyansk,” he said.
Ukraine’s State Security Agency had earlier described Mr. Strelkov as an active-duty officer of Russia’s elite Main Intelligence Department. Mr. Strelkov didn’t directly address the Russian reporter’s question about possible Russian military-intelligence involvement in his mission. The commander also didn’t speak about himself or his background. Moscow has denied its involvement in the unrest in eastern Ukraine.
Most of the men in the command possess war experience, including former service in the Russian or Ukrainian militaries and tours in Chechnya, Central Asia, the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, according to Mr. Strelkov. He said some “even managed to visit” Syria.
The slim, middle-aged commander with a trimmed mustache has risen to become one of the most important figures in the rebellion in Ukraine’s east, emerging as the de facto military leader of a pro-Russia uprising that has threatened to split the country. His tight operation of highly skilled militants offers a serious challenge to the new pro-Europe authorities in Kiev, which toppled Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych in late February after months of street protests but inherited a Ukrainian military in disarray and millions of eastern Ukrainians who view their government as anathema.
A pro-Russian militant stands guard outside the Ukraine Security Service building on Saturday in Slovyansk. Getty Images
Throughout the interview, Mr. Strelkov spoke in a calm, low voice, avoiding the heated anti-Western rhetoric of the rebel group’s other leaders. He seemed most comfortable describing minute military details and tactics of his team. He couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
His interview filled in gaps about a man whom Ukrainian security officials have presented as the key force behind the unrest. Mr. Strelkov said his unit’s weapons came partly from police facilities they took over in Slovyansk. His unit also stripped arms and vehicles from Ukrainian forces it repelled when they tried to enter the area earlier this month. Mr. Strelkov said the military hardware his unit gained included about 150 automatic weapons, a few grenade launchers and six infantry combat vehicles.
"Russia so far hasn’t supplied us with a single machine gun or bullet," he said. "Everything was gifted to us by the Ukrainian military and police."
Mr. Strelkov said his militants enjoy the full support of the population in the Donetsk region, alleging that about 80% of locals would like to break off and become part of Russia.
A poll this month conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, however, found that 27.5% of respondents in the Donetsk region support breaking off and joining Russia. Though 72.1% of respondents said they believe the new Ukrainian government is illegal.
Many Ukrainians are under the incorrect impression the pro-Russian militants are savage mercenaries being paid 1,000 hryvnia ($88) a day, Mr. Strelkov said.
"Of course that is not the case," Mr. Strelkov said. "The people of Donetsk have risen up against the junta."
But the militants aren’t entirely united. Mr. Strelkov hit out at his counterparts, who have seized the main administration building in the regional capital of Donetsk, 110 kilometers (68 miles) south of Slovyansk, and declared themselves the leaders of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic.
Mr. Strelkov’s militants in Slovyansk have “many grievances with the leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic, who haven’t been able to do anything beyond seizing the administration building,” the commander said. As a result, his unit has presented demands to its counterparts in Donetsk. Despite their differences, they are both calling for a referendum on the region’s future.
"There’s a lot of anarchy, but we will all unite," Mr. Strelkov said. "It’s not a quick process."
The commander accused the Ukrainian forces of unleashing provocateurs from the radical Right Sector nationalist group and the Ukrainian National Guard against the militants. “We don’t want to shoot our brothers, but if this situation continues going forward, we will act differently,” Mr. Strelkov said.
He suggested his militants had been kind so far. They had the opportunity to blow up Ukrainian helicopters carrying soldiers at the nearby Kramatorsk airport, but instead targeted just one helicopter Friday filled with ammunition and manned only by a skeleton crew, he said. No one appears to have died in the attack.
Many Ukrainian officials have said they believe the militants in the southeast could be operating in conjunction with Mr. Yanukovych’s exiled inner circle, a group of top officials from the Donetsk area who for years tightly controlled the southeast industrial region. Since fleeing to Russia, those officials have pledged to defy the new government in Kiev and return to the country. Ukrainian officials haven’t presented any firm evidence of the clan’s involvement in the unrest in the east.
Mr. Strelkov, however, presented his fellow fighters not as paid mercenaries but as volunteers and veterans acting on their own volition. Asked about the goal of his group, Mr. Strelkov described a divide between the locals and the non-locals. He said the locals want to make sure the Donetsk region doesn’t depend on the new “junta” in Kiev. But he said the other fighters arrived with broader, more lofty aims.
"The motivation of those who arrived with me [from Crimea] and joined up is broader," Mr. Strelkov said. "They say: ‘We don’t want to stop with that accomplishment. We want to go further and free Ukraine from the fascists.’"
Hotspots Along the Ukraine-Russia Border
The know-how and loyalty of the loose network of military veterans, including those who served during Moscow’s war in Afghanistan, has become an important part of the operation in Slovyansk.
"They formed the center from which ripples spread in all directions," said Evgeny Gubrik, one of the commanders of the militia that seized the city who now occupy the redbrick headquarters of Ukrainian State Security Service downtown.
An ethnic Russian who lives in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Gubrik had fought in Moldova in the early 1990s when the breakup of the Soviet Union prompted Russia to intervene militarily on behalf of a breakaway state called Transnistria, where Russian troops remain stationed.
Then Mr. Gubrik retired from active duty and returned home, where he ran a small construction firm profitable enough to allow him to buy his wife a new car every time she had a baby, he says. They now have four children. Though a Ukrainian citizen, he is loyal to Russia and nostalgic for the Soviet Union, and said he has no qualms about leaving his business behind, putting on a camouflage uniform and joining the rebellion in Slovyansk.
Mr. Gubrik and others in Slovyansk said the core of the forces is formed by many fighters with similar military backgrounds. Another prominent veteran is Vyacheslav Ponomaryav, Slovyansk’s self-proclaimed mayor who says he served in unspecified Russian “special operations.”
"This is a community of people nostalgic for the Soviet past, a patriotic community," Mr. Gubrik said. He spoke to The Wall Street Journal in front of the occupied state-security building which the pro-Russia militants have turned into a makeshift jail for those they deem to be spies, unfriendly journalists or pro-Kiev activists. "We now stand at the beginning of a Russian millennial renaissance."
Exactly who runs this network of Russian military veterans is a matter of dispute. The veterans themselves say they are volunteers fired up by Russian loyalty in eastern Ukraine. But Ukrainian intelligence says their ranks include active-duty Russian military-intelligence officers who have organized and coordinated parts of the rebellion.
The department, known as GRU by its Russian acronym, has a long history of covert military action in Soviet and Russian wars. It is perhaps most famous for the 1979 overthrow and assassination of an Afghan president that paved the way for the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Moscow deemed the then-Afghan leader unfriendly to Soviet interests and too intent on closer ties with the West.
"From the geopolitical standpoint, it’s very important for our country, which borders Afghanistan, to have a friendly and loyal government there, which wouldn’t allow our neighboring state to fall into the sphere of influence of one of the NATO countries," said Vasily Kolesnik, a former GRU commander, about the Afghan assignment in his memoirs.
Russia has denied the unit’s involvement in Ukraine’s eastern unrest. “We do not interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs; it contradicts our interests,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week. “We don’t have agents there, no GRU and no FSB.”
A man also named Igor Strelkov, working with an elite intelligence regiment of Russian paratroopers, had been involved in a 2001 “kidnapping” of a Chechen man during the Russian war in the breakaway republic, according to Chechnya’s human rights ombudsman’s website, which said the incident occurred near the village of Khattuni. It couldn’t be determined if it was the same Mr. Strelkov.
Paul Sonne and Philip Shishkin
Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2014
Pro-Russian militants stand guard outside the Ukraine Security Service building on Saturday in Slovyansk, Ukraine.
The elusive commander of the pro-Russia militants who have seized the east Ukrainian city of Slovyansk has revealed himself for the first time since the crisis began, saying in a taped interview that his armed crew arrived in Ukraine’s east from Crimea.
Igor Strelkov, the commander whom officials in Kiev have described as a Russian intelligence officer, gave a picture of the fighters he brought to Slovyansk, whosince early April have transformed the city into the epicenter of eastern Ukraine’s pro-Russia unrest. The new government in Kiev has described Slovyansk as the “most dangerous city in Ukraine.”
"The unit that I came to Slovyansk with was put together in Crimea. I’m not going to hide that," Mr. Strelkov told the Moscow-based Komosomolskaya Pravda tabloid in a video interview released Saturday. "It was formed by volunteers—I would say half or two-thirds of them citizens of Ukraine."
The unit includes people from western and central Ukraine, as well as local fighters from the region itself, according to the commander. “Strictly speaking, it was by their invitation that the unit arrived in Slovyansk,” he said.
Ukraine’s State Security Agency had earlier described Mr. Strelkov as an active-duty officer of Russia’s elite Main Intelligence Department. Mr. Strelkov didn’t directly address the Russian reporter’s question about possible Russian military-intelligence involvement in his mission. The commander also didn’t speak about himself or his background. Moscow has denied its involvement in the unrest in eastern Ukraine.
Most of the men in the command possess war experience, including former service in the Russian or Ukrainian militaries and tours in Chechnya, Central Asia, the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, according to Mr. Strelkov. He said some “even managed to visit” Syria.
The slim, middle-aged commander with a trimmed mustache has risen to become one of the most important figures in the rebellion in Ukraine’s east, emerging as the de facto military leader of a pro-Russia uprising that has threatened to split the country. His tight operation of highly skilled militants offers a serious challenge to the new pro-Europe authorities in Kiev, which toppled Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych in late February after months of street protests but inherited a Ukrainian military in disarray and millions of eastern Ukrainians who view their government as anathema.
A pro-Russian militant stands guard outside the Ukraine Security Service building on Saturday in Slovyansk. Getty Images
Throughout the interview, Mr. Strelkov spoke in a calm, low voice, avoiding the heated anti-Western rhetoric of the rebel group’s other leaders. He seemed most comfortable describing minute military details and tactics of his team. He couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
His interview filled in gaps about a man whom Ukrainian security officials have presented as the key force behind the unrest. Mr. Strelkov said his unit’s weapons came partly from police facilities they took over in Slovyansk. His unit also stripped arms and vehicles from Ukrainian forces it repelled when they tried to enter the area earlier this month. Mr. Strelkov said the military hardware his unit gained included about 150 automatic weapons, a few grenade launchers and six infantry combat vehicles.
"Russia so far hasn’t supplied us with a single machine gun or bullet," he said. "Everything was gifted to us by the Ukrainian military and police."
Mr. Strelkov said his militants enjoy the full support of the population in the Donetsk region, alleging that about 80% of locals would like to break off and become part of Russia.
A poll this month conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, however, found that 27.5% of respondents in the Donetsk region support breaking off and joining Russia. Though 72.1% of respondents said they believe the new Ukrainian government is illegal.
Many Ukrainians are under the incorrect impression the pro-Russian militants are savage mercenaries being paid 1,000 hryvnia ($88) a day, Mr. Strelkov said.
"Of course that is not the case," Mr. Strelkov said. "The people of Donetsk have risen up against the junta."
But the militants aren’t entirely united. Mr. Strelkov hit out at his counterparts, who have seized the main administration building in the regional capital of Donetsk, 110 kilometers (68 miles) south of Slovyansk, and declared themselves the leaders of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic.
Mr. Strelkov’s militants in Slovyansk have “many grievances with the leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic, who haven’t been able to do anything beyond seizing the administration building,” the commander said. As a result, his unit has presented demands to its counterparts in Donetsk. Despite their differences, they are both calling for a referendum on the region’s future.
"There’s a lot of anarchy, but we will all unite," Mr. Strelkov said. "It’s not a quick process."
The commander accused the Ukrainian forces of unleashing provocateurs from the radical Right Sector nationalist group and the Ukrainian National Guard against the militants. “We don’t want to shoot our brothers, but if this situation continues going forward, we will act differently,” Mr. Strelkov said.
He suggested his militants had been kind so far. They had the opportunity to blow up Ukrainian helicopters carrying soldiers at the nearby Kramatorsk airport, but instead targeted just one helicopter Friday filled with ammunition and manned only by a skeleton crew, he said. No one appears to have died in the attack.
Many Ukrainian officials have said they believe the militants in the southeast could be operating in conjunction with Mr. Yanukovych’s exiled inner circle, a group of top officials from the Donetsk area who for years tightly controlled the southeast industrial region. Since fleeing to Russia, those officials have pledged to defy the new government in Kiev and return to the country. Ukrainian officials haven’t presented any firm evidence of the clan’s involvement in the unrest in the east.
Mr. Strelkov, however, presented his fellow fighters not as paid mercenaries but as volunteers and veterans acting on their own volition. Asked about the goal of his group, Mr. Strelkov described a divide between the locals and the non-locals. He said the locals want to make sure the Donetsk region doesn’t depend on the new “junta” in Kiev. But he said the other fighters arrived with broader, more lofty aims.
"The motivation of those who arrived with me [from Crimea] and joined up is broader," Mr. Strelkov said. "They say: ‘We don’t want to stop with that accomplishment. We want to go further and free Ukraine from the fascists.’"
Hotspots Along the Ukraine-Russia Border
The know-how and loyalty of the loose network of military veterans, including those who served during Moscow’s war in Afghanistan, has become an important part of the operation in Slovyansk.
"They formed the center from which ripples spread in all directions," said Evgeny Gubrik, one of the commanders of the militia that seized the city who now occupy the redbrick headquarters of Ukrainian State Security Service downtown.
An ethnic Russian who lives in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Gubrik had fought in Moldova in the early 1990s when the breakup of the Soviet Union prompted Russia to intervene militarily on behalf of a breakaway state called Transnistria, where Russian troops remain stationed.
Then Mr. Gubrik retired from active duty and returned home, where he ran a small construction firm profitable enough to allow him to buy his wife a new car every time she had a baby, he says. They now have four children. Though a Ukrainian citizen, he is loyal to Russia and nostalgic for the Soviet Union, and said he has no qualms about leaving his business behind, putting on a camouflage uniform and joining the rebellion in Slovyansk.
Mr. Gubrik and others in Slovyansk said the core of the forces is formed by many fighters with similar military backgrounds. Another prominent veteran is Vyacheslav Ponomaryav, Slovyansk’s self-proclaimed mayor who says he served in unspecified Russian “special operations.”
"This is a community of people nostalgic for the Soviet past, a patriotic community," Mr. Gubrik said. He spoke to The Wall Street Journal in front of the occupied state-security building which the pro-Russia militants have turned into a makeshift jail for those they deem to be spies, unfriendly journalists or pro-Kiev activists. "We now stand at the beginning of a Russian millennial renaissance."
Exactly who runs this network of Russian military veterans is a matter of dispute. The veterans themselves say they are volunteers fired up by Russian loyalty in eastern Ukraine. But Ukrainian intelligence says their ranks include active-duty Russian military-intelligence officers who have organized and coordinated parts of the rebellion.
The department, known as GRU by its Russian acronym, has a long history of covert military action in Soviet and Russian wars. It is perhaps most famous for the 1979 overthrow and assassination of an Afghan president that paved the way for the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Moscow deemed the then-Afghan leader unfriendly to Soviet interests and too intent on closer ties with the West.
"From the geopolitical standpoint, it’s very important for our country, which borders Afghanistan, to have a friendly and loyal government there, which wouldn’t allow our neighboring state to fall into the sphere of influence of one of the NATO countries," said Vasily Kolesnik, a former GRU commander, about the Afghan assignment in his memoirs.
Russia has denied the unit’s involvement in Ukraine’s eastern unrest. “We do not interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs; it contradicts our interests,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week. “We don’t have agents there, no GRU and no FSB.”
A man also named Igor Strelkov, working with an elite intelligence regiment of Russian paratroopers, had been involved in a 2001 “kidnapping” of a Chechen man during the Russian war in the breakaway republic, according to Chechnya’s human rights ombudsman’s website, which said the incident occurred near the village of Khattuni. It couldn’t be determined if it was the same Mr. Strelkov.
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