Strelkov explained why he allowed militias to encircle him
At the first stages of the war in Donbass, in April-May 2014, the militia could not shoot at the Ukrainian military, and partisan detachments did not use classical methods for such cases. The former commander of the Donetsk militia, Igor Strelkov, stated this at a press conference in Samara, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Strelkov emphasized that the east of Ukraine was not enemy territory, so it was impossible to commit large-scale sabotage, even behind enemy lines.
“I could not use my real skills to defeat the enemy. This was due to the fact that we fought on foreign territory, where we could burn, destroy, blow up, and commit any sabotage. We fought on friendly territory, so we could not blow up power lines in order to stop Ukrainian television broadcasting to our zone. This would leave the population that largely supported us without power. We, especially at the beginning, could not shoot at the Ukrainian military, even when they were setting up checkpoints on our territory, actually preparing to strangle us, for the reason that they were the first to not shoot at us then, and the population would have accepted this if we started shooting, like: “You are killing our boys, why are you doing this?”...
If they were fighting in hostile territory, and I was commanding a classic partisan detachment, I would use harsher methods. And so in the first days we couldn’t shoot at all,” Strelkov said.
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