Russian Forces in Donbas Now ‘Liquidating’ Their Own Fighters Lest They Threaten Putin, Oktisyuk Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 2 – Russian forces in the Donbass are now killing Russians who have gone to fight for the DNR and LNR lest they become threats to Vladimir Putin in the future and Ukrainian militants in order to sow hatred among Ukrainians, according to Anatoly Oktisyuk, a senior analyst at Kyiv’s International Center for Predictions.

            Recent events in the Donbass show that Russian commanders are sending both Russians who have gone to fight for the DNR and LNR and Ukrainians who have joined them into battles without adequate forces and where they are then destroyed by Ukrainian defenders, the analyst says (apostrophe.com.ua/article/society/2016-07-02/voyna-na-donbasse-rossiyane-ubivayut-ukrainskih-boevikov-i-sobstvennyih-naemnikov/5922).

            “The destruction of its own citizens is useful for Vladimir Putin’s regime in order to eliminate opponents inside Russia, and the murder of local militants has the goal of sowing hatred to Ukraine, as a result of which this region always will be a source of instability, even in the case of the successful ‘reintegration’ of the Donbass.”

            Ukrainian officers have frequently noted that Moscow commanders are sending to their certain death both Russians who have come to fight there and Ukrainians who have joined them even as Russian officers avoid getting involved in such firefights and  battles lest they too lose their lives.

            The most infamous of these cases was the Russian organized attack on Marinka in June 2015, but there have been many others as well, Oktisyuk says.  One Ukrainian commander told him that “frequently local ‘militias’ storm our positions without artillery preparation … literally in the manner of World War I.”

            As a result, he continued, they have been destroyed by Ukrainian fire. It is obvious that their commanders are either incompetent or are interested in the destruction of certain parts of the forces under their own command, so that they do not eventually return home to Russia and pose a threat to Putin or so that they can become a permanent problem for Ukraine.