“80% of the Ukrainian army are those who were forcibly recruited and put to fight against us”

Alexander Khodakovsky - one of the most famous commanders of the Donetsk militia, along with the creator of Oplot, the current head of the DPR, Alexander Zakharchenko. Khodakovsky is the creator and commander of the battalion, and then the Vostok brigade, which took an active part in all the main episodes of the war in Donbass.

Until March 2014, he led the Donetsk special unit "Alpha", which participated in the events on the Maidan. With the beginning of the “Russian Spring”, he decides to go over to the side of the Donbass militia. Today, Khodakovsky heads the DPR Security Council.

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In the interview “Politnavigator” he spoke about the possibility of using Russian aviation in the Donbass following the example of Syria, the prospects for the nationalization of industry, the criminal schemes of Ukrainian oligarchs and their attempts to regain their influence on the territory of the LDPR.

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“PolitNavigator”: For the previous year and a half, all the attention of the Russian media was focused on the events in the Donbass, many local politicians and militia leaders managed to literally become TV stars, and today the media’s attention has sharply switched to Syria. Do you feel a certain jealousy?

Alexander Khodakovsky: We were absolutely not focused on the product that the Russian media showed to the Russian audience. We understood perfectly well that they were solving their own internal problems. Public opinion needed to answer the question of why Russia actually got involved, why now citizens are experiencing certain difficulties, some additional burdens in the form of sanctions. This was explained to people in Russia, they were motivated to endure these hardships. It is clear that we did not have such questions here. We could see the situation with our own eyes.

The fact that the attention of the Russian media to us has weakened even simplifies the situation in many ways, because sometimes, willingly or unwillingly, we had to adapt to already formed public opinion. Someone shapes it, and you be kind enough to comply. This deprives you of the opportunity for independent maneuver. Now it becomes possible to create what we ourselves want, since we are no longer so biased by the propaganda that was carried out around us.

It’s not that we have now removed the “burden” from ourselves, “breathed freely” and, referring to the world, are ready to lay down our arms and take care of our issues. But, while continuing to remain bearers of our ideals, we must reckon with reality. If today we are within the framework of allied relations with Russia, although this union is not documented, we do not have the right not to respond to the messages that Russia addresses to us. “Minsk” reflects not only our interests, but also the interests of Russia, and we have to sacrifice, maybe temporarily, but maybe not temporarily, our interests, in our common crayfish.

We definitely did not change our goals or the initial tasks that we set for ourselves. The enemy for us remains the same. The enemy is in the form of the system that has formed. In the form of specific people who carry death and destruction within themselves. People who for some reason hate us, do not want to put up with our position, who for some reason believe that the only way to resolve this situation is to destroy here to the maximum, and reformat the rest or disperse them, like Jews around the world.

“PolitNavigator”: You’re talking about enemies who want to destroy you, but what do you feel when you watch videos that the Russian Ministry of Defense posts on the Internet with recordings of the destruction of militant targets in Syria? Is there any thought that it would be good to also strike at some Ukrainian fortified area that you had the opportunity to view through military optics?

Alexander Khodakovsky: Of course, I remember the words of the hero of Alexei Tolstoy’s novel “Walking Through Torment”: “When I see a White Guard through the sight, I understand into what black, devastated soul I am sending a bullet.” But, nevertheless, we understood that we often shot at people like ourselves, people whom before the war we met somewhere very close, in transport, on the street, speaking the same language with them. Feeling their commonality with us, we did not advocate any total and fatal destruction of them.

Of course, when you want to suppress some enemy firing position, from where evil is rushing towards you, from where death is flying, such thoughts arise that now, if only there were high-precision weapons! And all questions are closed! But we have never brought ourselves to a state in which a desire for some kind of genocide arises.

Essentially, we were at war with ourselves. With the exception of these nationalist battalions, which have set themselves the task of wiping us off the face of the earth. The majority, 80% of people, are those who were forcibly recruited and forced to fight against us. How many prisoners did we capture from the neighboring Dnepropetrovsk region? How should I feel about them if they were forced to end up here?

“PolitNavigator”: Today in the DPR the militia has turned into a regular army and other state armed formations. But not all of the militia decided to continue serving in them, and returned to civilian life. What to do with them? Wouldn’t it turn out like in that joke: “the war is over - thank you all”?

Alexander Khodakovsky: We have already adopted a law on militia, it is awaiting signature by the head of state. It took a long time to prepare, make, redo. The question is that any law must imply financial support. After all, it covers not only the issue of legalizing a militia member as a person who has the right to bear arms. It addresses, first of all, the issue of social protection of the militia, the person who served, and especially those who have lost their ability to work, or the family of the militia who have lost their breadwinner. The main task was to close these issues, and the state, today, does not have the sources to close them with the necessary efficiency.

But, as has happened more than once in our history, during periods of cataclysms there arises a need to form a militia in addition to the regular army. And we tried to lay a legislative basis for this. But we would like to limit ourselves to this. It is impossible to give militia status to everyone without any differentiation, because we have seen in practice that this is used badly.

From the very first days of the emergence of protest processes, crime entered into them. People who previously had weapons clandestinely and carried out illegal activities tried to legalize themselves in the militia. To date, a lot of work has been done to localize such criminal groups, but it is still not finished. Accordingly, if we do not treat this issue selectively, given our social reality, we can end up with many problems. Therefore, there must be clearly regulating laws and regulations that determine who can carry weapons and under what conditions.

For those who took an active position, who from social protests on the street, from rallies in squares, moved to a different status - a person with weapons in their hands, defending their homeland, and with these weapons found themselves on the front line, for such people we have provided an appropriate legal status. Because who else but them should have the right to guns?

“PolitNavigator”: What to do with those weapons that, during the fighting, were, as they say, “dispersed into different hands”? Surely there is a lot of it?

Alexander Khodakovsky: Despite the fact that at first we just had militia units, not structured into an army, nevertheless, strict records of weapons were kept in each formation, and when people came, their treatment was carried out according to the army model. Work was carried out to ensure that these weapons did not become a threat to civilians. People were accountable and controlled by their commanders. As a result, these weapons did not become widespread, remaining within the framework of the organizations that I spoke about.

“PolitNavigator”: You mentioned criminal structures that tried to legalize themselves through the militia. Sometimes, especially from the Ukrainian side, you can hear about their almost decisive contribution to the events in Donbass, and that now they continue to run everything here. To what extent are such conversations justified?

Alexander Khodakovsky: At that moment, when the military situation was acute, they were allowed to exist, and they could even contribute to the defense, strange as this may sound to some. But, naturally, they gravitated toward “internal tasks.” And, as soon as circumstances allowed, they fully concentrated on them. Traditional ways of making money where you can get supermargins are establishing channels for smuggling and selling drugs, the coal business, the oil business.

This is inevitable; we cannot immediately completely reformat all social relations so as to exclude this element from them. They have always gravitated toward business, money, and power. This, in fact, is their essence. And our task is to minimize their influence and presence here.

Here, for example, is one of the criminal authorities with the “call sign” “Lemon”, who in Gorlovka gathered a powerful group around him. He was detained, but is now on the run because he managed to escape from custody.

Today they see windows of opportunity for themselves, taking advantage of our unstructured situation to “reboot” into a new environment. Previously, there was traditional competition between various criminal, semi-criminal, financial and economic groups, which somehow balanced each other.

There were funny things to come. For example, I remember how once Rinat Akhmetov donated trams to the city, as indicated by the corresponding inscriptions on them, then immediately trams appeared in Yenakievo, which were “formed” there by Ivanyushchenko. And when Yanukovych travels to Yenakievo, accompanied by his retinue, Ivanyushchenko immediately tries to show what contribution they are making to the development of Yenakievo.

“PolitNavigator”: You mentioned former people's deputy Yuri Ivanyushchenko, also known as Yura Enakievsky. He is named among those who are trying to actively influence the situation in the republics, who want to return to their previous positions in the Donbass.

Alexander Khodakovsky: Yes, there is such a problem. For example, according to the latest information, one of the leaders of the old group, nicknamed “Zuy,” has recently been spotted more than once in Yenakievo. That is, people are returning.

Today we may not have formal legal claims against representatives of these old groups, and we cannot apply the full weight of the law to them. They are civilians, they can conduct some kind of legal activity, they do not get involved in issues that directly incriminate them. But we understand that they are striving to place their people in some leadership positions where there is access to the distribution of resources.

Our task is to monitor these attempts, analyze their connections, assess the degree of threats posed by them and take action.

As for this particular group, the Yenakievo group, it managed to become more legalized in the Luhansk region, and now it is quite represented there. Mostly in the coal business. In addition, they are involved in smuggling fuel and lubricants and stealing petroleum products. Over 300 kilometers of oil pipelines stretch through the Lugansk region, some of which pass, so to speak, in transit from Russian territory to Russian territory. There are a huge number of inserts where people pump oil for free and then turn it into low-quality fuel in their distillation cubes and sell it all. At the same time, in the old days, they were engaged in stealing fuels and lubricants from the railway.

All these schemes are known. Taking advantage of the difficulties of the current time, they are achieving something, they are leaking somewhere. But I think that the further we go, the more we will pay constructive attention to them. Because keeping such phenomena as they are would be a step backwards. What better time than now to deal with all this.

“PolitNavigator”: You voiced another iconic surname for Donbass - Rinat Akhmetov. You have a stable image of him as a person in the leadership of the DPR. Where did the conversations even come from, what are they based on?

Alexander Khodakovsky: I know for a fact that everyone is “working” with us, or, more simply put, fighting. We were still focused on the front line and solving specific combat missions, and at that time someone was worried about the growing popularity of certain public opinion leaders, or leaders of some movements, and was very afraid that the weight and authority of these people would be be of some decisive importance. And, accordingly, he saw the need to spoil his reputation in one way or another in order to prevent this authority from growing excessively. Moreover, this was done both from the Ukrainian and from various other sides, including elements of internal competition. I was “lucky” with Rinat Akhmetov.

How many times have I, jokingly and quite seriously, said that show me at least one sign or give me at least one proof of all the ridiculous claims that are being made about me. I'll even announce a reward for this! No one ever responded.

Everyone has their own “chains”, and they need to be pulled, so Rinat Akhmetov became my chains. And I carry it with me in good faith. As for my attitude towards him, I can only sympathize with Akhmetov in his current situation. It’s good that he helps the region with humanitarian aid, but it’s bad that this is not done sincerely, simply to support Donbass, but with the goal of not losing his previous rating here. Well, for those who receive this help, it probably doesn’t really matter who it comes from.

“PolitNavigator”: Okay, but why then Akhmetov? So you gave some reason for this?

Alexander Khodakovsky: It's probably due to some of my careless statements. When I said that at this moment, during the war, we must be very careful in our interventions in the economy and property issues. Because we may lose markets, the opportunity to sell the products of our enterprises, but at the same time we will not offer anything alternative. Accordingly, if there are some jobs, if there is an opportunity to employ people now and there is some kind of movement, some kind of life here, in this territory, then you shouldn’t take it out of hand.

Here, for example, is the same mine named after Zasyadko. It was focused on the Avdeevsky Coke Plant. The mine is located on our territory, and the plant is on Ukrainian territory. Much was said about the fact that it was returned to the ownership of the people. But if these people do not sell coal to Rinat Akhmetov, the owner of the plant, then the entire workforce of the mine will be left without work, and the mine itself will simply cease to exist. And Akhmetov processed this coal at his plant and, in turn, sent coke to the Yenakievo Metallurgical Plant, which is located on our territory. That is, they are all tied into one chain. And all such relationships had to be treated with enough caution so as not to behave like bears in a china shop.

This position of mine probably also influenced my image to some extent. But in fact, on a serious level, those people who understand the situation here, who have a good understanding of the realities, understand perfectly well that we are as separate as heaven from earth from Akhmetov’s interests, from his objects, from his assets that are located here. We are in no way involved in any of his schemes, we are not involved in protecting his business, and so on. When the state treats its enterprises and its structures that are located here based on wartime requirements, we have never shown any desire or desire to mitigate their fate.

I expressed my position exclusively in strategic issues related to determining the form of ownership to the extent that this corresponds to my ideas about how our economy should develop, and what should not be done if we do not want it to perish.

“PolitNavigator”: What exactly are these ideas?

Alexander Khodakovsky: We need to be guided not only by the energies of the moment, but also to include sound calculations and think about what will happen tomorrow, what we will feed people, how we will employ them, how we will provide for them, what our economy will be based on.

I am in favor of building a new social contract with all asset holders on the territory of the DPR. Their political influence here should be neutralized as much as possible, but the economy that they create here has been preserved. At this stage it makes perfect sense because we don't have any new markets yet. If Akhmetov has been seeking his markets for years, and these are the countries of Europe and America, now, if we nationalize his enterprises, we can only count on Russia. But Russia is already oversaturated with metallurgical products. If, of course, they allocate us a certain quota, then we can talk about something seriously. But Russia is not yet ready to allocate any quotas.

Reasoning in this way, I urged people to take cautious steps in this direction. You can easily announce nationalization, but then find yourself in a situation of Pyrrhic victory. We will take this and think about what to do with all this if it doesn’t work. And the same fate that befell our industrial potential in the mid-1990s will await us. When everything was cut out, it was sent when China happily bought modern equipment from us, and eventually rose, thanks in part to our resources. Repeating the same steps is probably not state-like.