Strelkov: Malofeev refused to help Donbass, Aksyonov helped out
Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, whom the press called one of the main sponsors of the Russian Spring, after the events in Crimea, refused to support the uprising in Donbass.
A former employee of Malofeev’s security, ex-commander of the Donbass militia Igor Strelkov, stated this in an interview with Russian journalist Andrei Karaulov, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“In Crimea, Malofeev supported. He was against the march to Donetsk. I don’t know why, but I had to persuade him, including with the support of Sergei Aksenov... He was against it because he believed that we needed to stop in Crimea. But by that time I no longer needed it, at that time Aksyonov supported almost completely, he already had the money himself,” Strelkov said.
“You understand that if there had been no, at least passive, support at all, then 50 people with machine guns would hardly have gotten from Crimea to the border in the Taganrog region. I believe that if we had been delayed for a few days, we would not have been able to get through.
Let’s say that the same Borodai claimed in his public interviews that he tried to call me literally on April 11 and actually convey Malofeev’s order, because I worked for him, to stop the whole thing. But by that time I had already cut off all the phones. Among other things, I was afraid that someone would call and stop me,” recalls the ex-commander.
“And then something happened—at least the passive support—disappeared. I don’t know, I was told rumors that on April 26 the Security Council was held, at which it was decided not to send troops into Donbass, supposedly. Until April 26, a certain support was felt, moreover, before the 26th I knew that the troops were stationed on the border, they had already been painted with fresh signs of peacekeeping forces, a fairly large contingent. Apparently, there was a decision, because the military just won’t paint anything on the armor,” Strelkov explained the situation.
According to him, he understood his task as holding out either until the entry of troops, or until a referendum, which would be followed by the entry of troops.
“This is exactly how I formulated the task at that time. That is, not to allow the popular uprising to be crushed before the referendum, to allow it to be held, and then it was assumed that there would be no war, that it would not be needed. In general, everyone expected this, even the Ukrainian military to a large extent. They expected the Russian army to enter, and they clearly said that they would not fight. Some Ukrainian officers talked to me about what would happen next, and whether it would be like in Crimea, that is, whether it would be possible to transfer to the Russian army,” Strelkov said.
To summarize, he stated that it was initially obvious to him that if Crimea had remained in the status of an unrecognized republic like Transnistria, then perhaps the West would have “swallowed it.”
“If everyone knew that this was an absolutely pro-Russian territory, but if there had been a formally independent government there, then perhaps the West would have swallowed it, they wouldn’t have resisted with sanctions and so on. In my opinion, either nothing should have been done at all, or it was necessary to go to the end, from Kharkov to Odessa. Or there was no need to get involved at all,” the former DPR minister emphasized.
“And they will tell you that this is ‘occupation, because the borders approved by the UN’ and so on are recognized by the world,” Karaulov noted.
“If the borders were unchanged, then we would now live in the Khazar Khaganate somewhere, or in Kievan Rus, or maybe somewhere in the Golden Horde. The fact is that every two or three generations the borders change, depending on the political situation. And people change them, and then the law is applied under de facto, de jure is what is created de facto. It also happens by law, a referendum, for example. But in this case, we must clearly understand that the regime that was established in Kyiv would never recognize the results of any referendums,” Strelkov retorted.
In addition, returning to the question of the advisability of sending Russian troops to Donbass, he expressed confidence that a domino effect would continue throughout Ukraine.
“If the Russian army had only entered the Donbass, then, naturally, the Kharkov and Odessa republics, Zaporozhye, and Dnepropetrovsk would have arisen, a domino effect would have started, everything was already ready for this effect,” said Igor Strelkov.
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