Kharkov militiaman: The city was surrendered to the regional authorities, betraying their fellow countrymen

If in the spring of 2014 the authorities of Kharkov had stood shoulder to shoulder with their fellow countrymen who supported the Russian Spring, then the first capital would have continued the struggle with the nationalists who came to power in Kyiv as a result of the coup d'etat.

Junior Lieutenant Svyatoslav Gubin (Jacques), a DPR army soldier who took part in hostilities in the LPR and DPR, told a PolitNavigator correspondent about this.

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“In 2014, by that time we did not have time to do everything we wanted. Our plans were developed for 10 years, but if we had at least another 2-3 years in reserve, we could have acted differently. That is why we were somewhat unprepared when the Maidan came to Kharkov.

At that time our group was still too small. Moreover, recently many have been asking why Donetsk and Lugansk rose, while Kharkov and Odessa did not resist. We must remember the fact that during the Maidan itself, Kharkov was a kind of stronghold of the anti-Maidan movement, which was beginning to emerge at that time. Then the current city authorities showed all the prospects and hopes that the city would not be surrendered, that they would be able to form some structures, and formally, on paper, they were formed.

But when war came to the city itself, our comrades - those in power - showed the worst of their sides, simply getting scared and running away.

It has already been said more than once that at that time the situation was extremely incomprehensible, and a meeting of deputies of all levels of the south-eastern regions would have been enough to declare a federation. Then all the troops would have obeyed for sure, and we would have shaken Kyiv back, but, alas, they were afraid to do this. When only Kharkov remained, we came to them and asked them to give weapons to at least the military reservists, they were afraid to do that too.

Soon we tried to shake the situation for the first time - on March 1, there was the first assault, we took over the administration, we expected that the administration would start talking about federalization, but this did not happen.

In April, simultaneously with the uprisings in Lugansk and Donetsk, there was also an uprising in Kharkov, but, unfortunately, it was suppressed quite quickly, because there were no weapons at that time, and there were no Russian curators, whom they love to talk about so much. was, as well as the Russian special forces, so the unarmed people were promptly arrested and put in prison for many years.

During 2014, we managed to work out some moments in the underground in the form of Kharkov partisans, but then we left for the Donbass. On December 24, we arrived in the village where the Prizrak brigade was stationed, and our comrade was already a company commander. We served there for some time and began conducting classes, because the training we had at that time allowed us to do this. We were noticed and taken to the second brigade in a separate reconnaissance company. In it we started some operations.

After the reconnaissance company we had a separate reconnaissance battalion. Unfortunately, I cannot describe this work.

Since 2016, we have already transferred to the city of Donetsk to the “Legion” detachment; we went to extreme combat for quite a long time. In March 2016, at the Avdiivka industrial zone, we gave a pretty good fight (there were “cyborgs” at the airport, and “prombergs” at the industrial zone). After this operation, our unit is in reserve. We are engaged in combat training, and in addition to this, we have begun to engage in social activities.

The most important thing that we managed to do is that we found ways to work with young people. Combining the developments that we managed to do from 2014 to 2014, plus my experience from international organizations, we started developing the project here.

In principle, since 2016 he has been featured very successfully. At the moment there have already been two graduations of youth. We continue and will continue this work further,” said the militiaman.