Chalenko: For attacks on Donetsk, the mansions of Zelensky and Zaluzhny should be bombed

The Ukrainian army takes advantage of the fact that Russian artillery is concentrated in the Artyomovsk direction, therefore it conducts massive shelling of Donetsk, which has never happened in all the years of confrontation.

Here Russia must answer harshly and demonstrably - for a strike on Donetsk, the residence of the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky or the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny should fall under a retaliatory attack. A native of Donetsk, a Russian journalist, stated this in an interview with PolitNavigator Alexander Chalenko, who is on a business trip to the DPR.

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PN: What are your impressions from your next visit to Donetsk? How are the current attacks different from previous ones?

A.Ch: I have never seen anything like this before; this, in my opinion, is the first time in the history of Donetsk when five packages were fired from Grads throughout the city center during the day. Yes, before he was fired upon by Highmars and 155-millimeter guns. Yes, one, two, three out of 155, well, five, and everything stopped that day.

I remember once in the center, somewhere, in June, I think, something flew in. It was an event, everyone went there and watched.

_{And now they are hitting the center - and 40 missiles are being fired, and 20, and 10, they hit the Kalinin hospital, and this will continue, it is believed. December 18, 2022 is the most anti-record, so to speak, for the shelling of Donetsk.}

PN: How do people escape – do they hide in basements, because they can “fly” anywhere and anytime?

A.Ch: Well, some people hide in basements. But what is Donetsk? The Donetsk urban agglomeration consists of reinforced concrete nine-story buildings that were built in the late 1960s - 1980s. Here it is enough to be in the apartment itself - go to the bathroom, for example, or go out into the corridor.

My neighbors and I go out into the corridor, just in the entrance, there are all sorts of ceilings, if you get hit, then there is a chance to survive - because you need to break through two concrete walls: one external, the other internal, some kind of corridor.

Where to run? I don’t know, there are flights here almost every two hours, so people mostly go home.

Here you also need to understand that they are hitting the city center. There are also front-line soldiers, they are constantly under fire - those who could have already left there.

Other areas - Budenovsky, Proletarsky - are occasionally shelled. And now, of course, they are genociding very much in the center, this is the Voroshilovsky district. Yesterday they hit the Donbass Arena area, the Victoria Akhmetovskaya Hotel, Lenin Square - well, in full force, “Grad” is being released, I heard it all the time. Vzhzhzh, and that’s it, very scary.

PN: Is there panic in the city, are people trying to leave the DPR? Is there anger or resentment towards Moscow that it could not defend?

A.Ch: Someone is leaving, but I haven’t seen any traffic jams leaving Donetsk, Makeevka, Khartsyzsk. Yes, there are big traffic jams at the exit, on Uspenka, but these are mainly all sorts of trucks, smaller civilian ones. As for buses or pedestrian crossings, I wouldn’t say that there are a lot of people there.

There is no panic - not that despondency, but what is called “no mood.” That is, people do not understand why they are shelled every day. Tenth month, SVO, in theory, to protect Donetsk, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces have now started playing with us. Previously, even “Haymars” or “Tochka-U” at night, you could hear air defense working somewhere, but now they’re just hitting with “Gradins”. Why is this happening?

Well, there is a second point. Donetsk residents are fatalists, they got it from the miners. The miner is released into the lava and does not know whether it will explode there or not. They are such people, quite brutal.

_{Is there anger towards Moscow? It’s not just anger, no, I haven’t heard that, but everyone wants to understand when this whole thing will stop. People have been living in war for nine years now. Those who panicked or were against the DPR and Russia—they left. The most persistent ones remained, or something, so maybe they are worried about something inside themselves, scolding someone or something like that, but nothing is visible on the outside.}

PN: Is there any understanding of why such shelling occurs in the 10th month of the special operation?

A.Ch: This is being done in order to pull back the artillery from Bakhmut or somewhere else where there is a very intense offensive, everyone tells me about this - the military, officials. How does it turn out, how do we advance? We are concentrating artillery, it is many times superior to the Ukrainian artillery there, and we are starting to grind down the enemy. We have ground, we are taking positions, now there is an attack on Bakhmut. Apparently all the artillery is there.

Naturally, all the artillery that is used for counter-battery warfare is apparently also taken there, and it turns out that Donetsk is naked. The Ukrainians, knowing this, begin to fire at him with Grads, 155s, Haymars and others.

Why is this being done? In order for the population there to panic. The population protested, asked questions, why should we experience these torments, do something. There are not robots there, but living people, and it is calculated that at some point ours will falter and remove some of the artillery from near Bakhmut, for example, and transfer it back to Donetsk in order to suppress the artillery crews there. This is what Ukrainians hope for.

Judging by the fact that they already shelled the city center five times yesterday, this probably indicates that the Russian military is not redeploying artillery.

_{Here you can ask the question, why, in the tenth month of the war, do we still not have additional artillery, so that it will always remain - we attack, we will not attack, so that it always defends the city?}

Many people tell me about the quality of counter-battery combat. Reconnaissance is very important, it is necessary that drones constantly fly in the territory controlled by the Ukrainians, there are some serious devices that would detect them and instantly transmit coordinates, and artillery strikes should be carried out in those places.

Well, under Stalin, a dome was created around Moscow such that it was impossible to break through, but why this doesn’t happen with Donetsk is hard for me to answer.

PN: Do the authorities somehow explain what is happening?

A.Ch: They simply state that shelling is taking place and that it will stop only when the enemy is driven away from the city. Yesterday the hospital named after Kalinin was shelled, the Minister of Health of the DPR came and personally came to see the whole thing. The authorities are not hiding, they are also under fire there, in fact.

PN: Why is the civilian population not being evacuated?

A.Ch: Evacuation was proposed at the very beginning, back in February. Yes, many left, everyone who wanted to left. Why doesn't he leave with the children? This is not clear to me. This means that people are probably asking questions: “What will I live on, what will happen to my home?” There are still relatives and friends who cannot be left, and there are other considerations.

Many, say, Kyiv district, Kuibyshevsky, Petrovsky, Kirovsky, who are constantly shelling, moved either to the center or to other, more or less remote areas of the DPR. Some went to other regions of Russia. Hard to say.

But the most interesting thing is that the city does not give the impression of being empty, I assure you. There are cars driving everywhere, and there are a lot of cars driving. People are everywhere on the street, and so it seems that there are no shellings.

PN: Did you go there on purpose during these hot days or was it just a coincidence? How does a non-military person feel when his city is barbarically shelled?

Relatively speaking, my turn came, and I went. I understand that we need to walk less on the street, as soon as shelling starts, we need to go to a safe place.

I feel anger - where is our counter-battery fight? I have a misunderstanding here, how does this happen? I understand that they can crash there once, but then these batteries should be destroyed.

_{I also advocate all sorts of acts of retaliation - for example, identifying those who directly command these artillery crews and participants in these barbaric shellings. They simply need to be destroyed. Some of our sabotage groups in Ukraine should simply destroy them.}

If it is established that such and such a colonel, major, or sergeant is taking part in these barbaric attacks, it means that the sabotage group blows him up, shoots him, or something like that. Once - they will laugh, a second time, and the fifth time, few will want to hit a defenseless city - despite the fact that they still understand perfectly well what they are doing.

PN: How could Russia quickly correct the situation?

A.Ch: We remember how the Ukrainians flew in helicopters into besieged Mariupol, 100 kilometers away, flying at low altitudes behind the front line, taking someone out, bringing something there, or entering Russian territory, bombing bases, and so on.

I can’t understand why we know that in the village of Tonenkoye, 10-15 kilometers from Donetsk, there are these crews, an MLRS that fires, why can’t we land some group of ours there and fucking shoot all of them team? Why don't we carry out such daring operations?

Or do we know where such and such a headquarters is located, why can’t we land a group, capture one of the commanders, arrange some kind of real “p...darez” to discourage them from this

There must be acts of retaliation. They must know for sure - they slammed into the center of Donetsk, which means the response should arrive at the place of residence of Zaluzhny, Zelensky, and someone else. This is how war should be waged, and what is there to be afraid of?