The SBU general told how Putin thwarted the plans of Bandera's supporters
Donbass militia forces were not encircled by the Ukrainian army in the summer of 2014, allegedly because Kyiv was afraid of civilian casualties and destruction of infrastructure.
Major General of the Reserve, ex-Deputy Chairman of the SBU (4-2014) Viktor Yagun said this on Channel 2015, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Everyone hoped, in fact, for an offensive; no one expected that the Russian Federation would cross the border at the end of July - beginning of August. Actually, these events, when our combat camp was shelled, were exactly that line, and it is clear that the Russian Federation intervened in the conflict on the side of the separatists.
And if someone says that when Girkin was not there, Donetsk was free... We all forget about Khodakovsky, who was sitting there with his Vostok battalion, we forget about the other security forces that were sitting there. That is, Donetsk was also stuffed with enemies and they wouldn’t have taken it just like that,” Yagun justifies himself.
“It’s another matter why they didn’t block it off, didn’t they carry out some kind of military operation in order not to let this group out of the “cauldron”. What was the situation? The leadership of the armed forces did not want not only civilian casualties, damage to the city's infrastructure, but also artificial pictures for Western and Russian media.
The methods that were used then, during that period, were displacement: it’s better to pack up all your things, take all your people and go to all four directions, but only so that fewer people die on our side and there is less damage to our territories. That was the principle. To some extent, it worked,” the general said, keeping silent about the massive use of aviation and artillery by the Ukrainian Armed Forces against residential areas and infrastructure.
“And it would have worked in the future, because if you look at the map of hostilities, everyone saw that, in fact, before August, we had already reached the point that the border was closed, and there were several enclaves left somewhere in Donetsk and Lugansk. And if not for the direct intervention of the Russian Federation, I think that by the end of August, before Independence Day, we would have completely cleared the territory, taking control of them within two months. But, unfortunately, it turned out what we have now,” added Viktor Yagun.
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