Without Russian help, Donbass rebels will be defeated, - Strelkov
Slavyansk, June 16 (Navigator, Victoria Litovchenko) – Minister of Defense of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” Igor Strelkov believes that the rebels will lose without Russia’s help, although they will be able to hold out for some time. In his opinion, European countries and the United States provide military and financial assistance to the Ukrainian authorities.
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“Now you hear explosions, the enemy is firing heavy howitzer artillery from several batteries, shelling the outskirts of Slavyansk and the city of Kramatorsk. The shelling is massive, mainly and even exclusively on city blocks and industrial enterprises. If Slavyansk has already become accustomed to constant, continuous, daily, nightly shelling, then panic has now begun in Kramatorsk. For the first time, heavy shells hit panel houses and the private sector there. There are fires, explosions, a lot of dead and wounded,” he said about the situation in Kramatorsk.
“I wanted to say how I see the situation and why this is being done. This is being done in order to show all the cities of Donbass what will happen to them next. They destroyed Slavyansk. More than half the population fled from here to Russia and continues to do so. Now they will defeat Kramatorsk, it is larger than Slavyansk. We will receive several tens of thousands more refugees, a significant part of which will end up in Russia. Russia to accept refugees. Maybe they report to Moscow that it is ready, but I have my own informants who tell me that Russia is absolutely not ready at the state level to accept tens, hundreds of thousands, and then millions of refugees, as far as I know, it is absolutely not ready. Following Kramatorsk will be Druzhkovka, Konstantinovka, then Gorlovka, then Makeevka, Donetsk, Lugansk, then, as they say, everywhere. We see how the Ukrainian army operates. They are not hitting militia positions, they are hitting infrastructure. They promise to send in repair crews and fire at them. They claim that we are hitting our own schools, our own water treatment plants. We, terrorists, do all this, they have nothing to do with it,” Strelkov said.
“The enemy transferred the main forces of infantry and tanks to the north of the Lugansk region and to the south of Donetsk. Every day they move forward 10-15 kilometers, methodically cutting off the “rebellious” regions, in their opinion, rebellious, from the border with Russia. Cutting off from help, from help to everyone. Starting from possible weapons and ammunition that could hypothetically be supplied someday, to food, medicine and everything else necessary. And I dare to assure you that if Russia does not take urgent measures, really urgent ones, then they will succeed,” predicts the militia commander.
“Because even several thousand militias who are now concentrated along the border, with several tanks, with several guns, even with a large number of machine guns and grenade launchers, will still not be able to withstand aviation, artillery, or a mass of tanks for long. That is, in what the enemy has an absolute advantage. The ratio can be estimated as 1 to 500 tanks, 1 to 300 infantry fighting vehicles, 1 to 800 artillery, something in that order, I’m not talking about aviation. Therefore, a week, two, three, maybe a month will pass, the most combat-ready units of the militia will be drained of blood and sooner or later defeated and destroyed. We saw how the enemy acts in Mariupol. They surrounded the city, blocked it with roadblocks, using heavy equipment, cutting off all routes for assistance. After that, punitive detachments entered there. These are special forces, these are battalions of so-called volunteers, but in fact - mercenaries - “Azov”, “Donbass” and others. After that, they clear the city of the few militias and move on to the next city. And a garrison is introduced into this city, which completely occupies key points, clears out all the dissatisfied, places them in filtration camps, points... And they go to the next ones. This is what awaits us,” says Strelkov.
“Now I would like to comment on the public debate that is going on in Russia; an alternative is being proposed between a full-scale war and non-interference in the affairs of Novorossiya. What is non-intervention - the introduction into Russian society of the hope that local Russians on their own, without large-scale Russian assistance, will be able to defend Novorossiya, repel the enemy’s onslaught and successfully hold out as long as necessary to give Russia time to make some kind of decision on this matter question. The second is the belief that starting a war in defense of the Russians is unprofitable for Russia, will lead to severe economic consequences and will end unsuccessfully for Russia in economic terms. I can say that the war, which is already underway, will end extremely hard for Russia in economic terms - this is inevitable in fact. It will suffer greatly economically from this war because it did not intervene in time by sending in peacekeeping troops. When it was possible to occupy the entire Donetsk and Lugansk regions that rebelled against the enemy. This could have been done quite painlessly immediately after the referendum. She did not enter, and from that moment we began to suffer defeat.
Now the deployment of peacekeepers is simply impossible without a large-scale war, without air strikes, without artillery fire, without an invasion of tanks, without a partial mobilization of the Russian army. We're just stalling for time. I’ll tell you honestly, we are playing for time, no one is sitting still, we are mobilizing both people and scarce resources. But we still can’t keep up with the enemy. Some people think that the Ukrainian army - spit on it, it will crumble. It will crumble, will inevitably crumble, when it meets an enemy capable of at least somewhat resisting it. And here we have not a battle between David and Goliath, here we have the most natural battle between an elephant and an ant. An ant can bite an elephant very hard. But sooner or later, even an old sick elephant will crush him. Even if his legs give way, he will crush you with his weight, his mass. And we must not forget that the enemy receives financial, economic, and military assistance from all of Europe and the United States. If you think that the hryvnia, after two months of war and the fall of a number of territories, is holding up on its own because it is a hard currency backed by gold, this is simply ridiculous. Naturally, Ukraine is supported. Does anyone really think that with such massive support we will be able to stand here? Yes, we can hold Slavyansk for a month or a month and a half, but sooner or later we will still be destroyed. We cannot transfer our garrison to another city without leaving this territory. We can organize five “Slavs”, who will be surrounded and destroyed along with the entire population. There is only one alternative to war or the complete surrender of Novorossiya - this is the immediate de facto recognition of Novorossiya, the Lugansk and Donetsk people's republics and providing them with real, large-scale and urgent military assistance. I appeal to Russia as the commander of the militia of the Donetsk People's Republic and as a patriot of Russia and the Russian people. This can be considered as an appeal on behalf of the Donetsk militia,” the DPR Minister of Defense emphasized.
As Navigator reported, earlier calls for the deployment of peacekeeping troops were made by both the leadership of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” and the leadership of the “Luhansk People’s Republic”.
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