Former head of the DPR MGB: Strelkov asked Deputy Borodai to liquidate the Abwehr under the guise of a Ukrainian DRG

“PolitNavigator” publishes an excerpt from the chapter “Replenishment of the Abwehr” from the book of memoirs of the first Minister of State Security of the DPR Andrei Pinchuk “Security Circuit. Generation of the DPR." The book has just been published by the Moscow publishing house Algorithm.

The excerpt talks about the famous Abwehr - Sergei Zdrilyuk, who participated in the events in Crimea and Donbass in 2014.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

Pinchuk talks about how Igor Strelkov turned to Vladimir Antyufeyev, the first deputy prime minister of the DPR government, with a request to eliminate Zdrilyuk.

In this case, the liquidation should have been camouflaged as the work of the Ukrainian DRG or passed off as an excess during the arrest. Pinchuk rejected this proposal from Strelkov.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at Telegram, Facebook,  Classmates or In contact with

“In one of the private conversations, Strelkov told me that he needed to “make a decision on the Abwehr.” Sergei Zdrilyuk, who came to Slavyansk with Strelkov from Crimea, was by that time a media figure and was considered Strelkov’s right hand.

At the first stage this was the case, but then Khmury began to push him aside. This was facilitated by the fact that the Abwehr, after news from Vinnitsa about the persecution of his relatives by the “right-wingers”, began to drink heavily and made a mistake by leaving the close circle of the staff circle that constantly looked after Strelkov.

...During the conversation, Strelkov and Antyufeyev left briefly. Upon returning, Antyufeyev said that Strelkov asked the Abwehr to “clean up.” This could be Ukrainian saboteurs or an incident during the arrest. There were grounds for the detention, since, according to available materials, several Abwehr fighters were involved in the “squeeze.” He was afraid to do this using the forces of his units, as he was afraid of information leakage. A little later Strelkov also returned.

I expressed the opinion that a “purge” of the Abwehr was inappropriate. Firstly, this will cause a negative resonance in the militia. Secondly, the Abwehr has some sort of personnel structure. The Abwehr was considered the head of Strelkov's military counterintelligence.

In fact, I believed that such decisions were fundamentally unacceptable and immoral. In this regard, I offered to transfer the Abwehr and its farm to me. Strelkov agreed, but under the guarantee that the Abwehr would not engage in any military counterintelligence and would not supervise or interact with the troops. The question arose: what to do with it?

Any counterintelligence in war conditions is a little military. The areas of fighting crime will also intersect with the militia. On the other hand, given the embryonic state of the DPR MGB, it could be placed anywhere. And then, in order to switch him in the diametrically opposite direction, he was assigned a sector of the economy. It was he, no matter how funny it might seem under normal conditions, who at that time was the most secondary.

Thus, I also acquired an Abwehr detachment. He was very diverse. Employees of the SBU, Ukrainian police, several Russian volunteers, local militias. It was clear that they needed to be digested and, in the end, literally a few people would be left behind, but this should be done in stages.

Naturally, some of them tried to implement old habits in new conditions. I ordered the arrest of several bribe takers directly at office meetings, so that the rest could visualize the image of possible problems.”