The Russian Federation really provides assistance to the LDPR, but Ukrainian citizens came out to fight against Kyiv, which is confirmed by the number of prisoners with Russian citizenship.
Alexey Venediktov, editor-in-chief of the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy, stated this in an interview with Ukrainian propagandist Dmitry Gordon, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Vladimir Putin did not take Donbass from Ukraine. I always ask how many captured Russian citizens did the Ukrainian side have during the Donbass operation? “Enough” (to Gordon's response - Ed.) is not a number.
How many military personnel are there in Donbass now? Of course, from my point of view, there are Russian military personnel among them. Of course, there are weapons and money, but the military personnel, we must admit that the main part are citizens of Ukraine,” Venediktov said.
Following the logic of the assertion that Ukraine is at war with Russia, he compared the Ukrainian civil war in Donbass and the Russian civil war in Chechnya and emphasized that, despite external factors, Russia fought with Chechen militants, and not with Saudi Arabia, for example.
“The head of the DPR Denis Pushilin is from Moscow, yes (Pushilin is from Makeyevka, DPR - Ed.). But units and fighters? It’s the same as Russian citizens being Chechens, but they fought a civil war with the support of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic world, but they were Russian citizens, and we didn’t fight with Saudi Arabia.
Russia's responsibility is great, but the story is that for some reason we did not declare Donetsk the 86th province of Russia. So this card is on the table,” added the editor-in-chief of the Ekho Moskvy radio station.