Rough people

The recently appeared evidence of the participation (and death) of Russian troops in hostilities in Ukraine covered for Russians a long -existing order of things. The project of education on the territory of the Donbass of the separatist "republics" is non -viable without a constant influx of new forces, fresh blood from Russia. The only news is that the “real violent” in Russia ended and the line reached the personnel military, directed to fight without any ideological and material stimulation - on the direct order of the command.

In order to understand how the Russian soldiers were drawn into the war and became its victims, we will return for a short time to the past.

The armed conflict in the Donbass managed to go through several stages, during which completely different forces were involved from the separatists.

At the stage of the armed seizure of power in some cities of the region, from April 12 to 20, the separatists depicted several groups. The main striking forces were small criminal groups (and the gopniks attracted by them as a mass), who hoped to get rid of not only the Ukrainian authorities, but also from the old mafia grandios, including the most commonly mentioned billionaire Rinat Akhmetov. The local political and economic elite, which is the nuclear of the Party of Regions, clearly did not want the Donbass to join Russia, fraught with a antenature of property and other troubles. The criminal and semi -criminal authorities of the lower level, such radical political transformations, on the contrary, gave great hopes. If the small criminal authority Sergei Aksenov, nicknamed Goblin, was able to become the prime minister of Crimea, then why would Valery Bolotov, " looking at the diggers " (illegal mines) surrounded by the head of the regionals' faction in the Verkhovna Rada Alexander Efremov, become the prime minister of the "Luhansk People's Republic"? Igor Bezler, nicknamed Bes, a small official of the city hall, who oversees the funeral business, not become the owner of Gorlovka? And Sergey Zdrilyuk, nicknamed Abwehr, a classmate and friend of Aksenov, do not try to become a "military" mayor of Kramatorsk?

The second large combat group in the "Donbass Revolution" was the special forces units and the GRU officers and the FSB, who either themselves participated in the assaults of administrative buildings or covered the storming. It is on their conscience that the first Ukrainian helicopters shot down under Slavic from Russian MANPADS.

The third group were "ideological" Russian nationalists - veterans of various wars that were mobilized during the Crimean annexation campaign. Their most striking representative was Igor Girkin nicknamed Strelkov, who was accompanied by Cossacks from the Belorechenskaya "wolf hundreds." The most numerous in this group were the Cossacks, acting mainly under the command of the chieftain Nikolai Kozitsyn and played a key role in the capture of cities on the border of the Lugansk and Rostov regions.

And finally, the local pro -Russian activists from numerous but small organizations in the military, but important group in the military, but important group. Their presence made it possible to pretend that the attacks of the attack aircraft enjoy "folk support" and that what is happening is like the Donbass "Maidan", and not inspired by external forces.

The second stage of military operations began about a month later - from mid -May. By this moment, the Ukrainian army left the collapse and has already tightly overlaid the territory of future hostilities, marking the boundaries of the real influence of the separatists.

At this moment, the level of their actual support in the region became apparent for the Kremlin dreamers. It was no longer about the speculative project "Novorossia", drawn by the hands of the "experts" of the Zatulinsky Institute of the CIS countries, - he was clearly failing by the end of April, and the collapse of the anti -Ukrainian putsch in Odessa put the final point in it. However, in the Donbass, the influence of hastily created the DPR and LPR spread only to part of the territories that they considered "their own". In fact, they controlled only the extensive agglomeration of cities and mining villages, stretching from Donetsk to Krasnodon, and three industrial cities that were not part of it - Mariupol, Slavyansk and Kramatorsk. The northern half of the Luhansk region and some areas in its southeast, as well as the western and southern (up to the suburbs of Donetsk), units of the Donetsk region did not support the campaign to seize administrative buildings and were under the control of the central government.

Moreover, even in districts controlled by separators, local residents did not behave at all as they would like. According to sociologists , about a third of the population in this territory supported the idea of ​​joining Russia, another third was ready to be satisfied with the autonomy of Donbass and only a third was to maintain the status quo - however, very few were ready to fight for their beliefs.

The intimidation of local residents with myths about the "rightrships", who supposedly go to kill them for the Russian language, and the subclasses about their male viability encouraged people to take up weapons only in some cities and villages on the line of contact of separatists and government forces. But even in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, the initial euphoria from the fact that "Donbass will say its word" quickly passed, and by the end of May the leader of the militants Igor Girkin began to complain about the acute shortage of fighters.

By this moment, the channels were already debugged in Russia to identify, recruit and transfer potential fighters for the "Russian world". The main way to attract them was the search through the military registration and enlistment offices of veterans of the Chechen, Georgian and Afghan wars, which are in a difficult material and serious moral state. An ideal object was a former military specialist who now lives as a guard, builder or driver who gained loans or having family problems - or a young man who had just served urgent and has not yet managed to navigate in a civilian. It was these people who began to serve heavy weapons, which Russia began to supply to the militants from the beginning of June, when it became clear that Girkin’s people, even armed in April from Russia, were unable to effectively resist Ukrainian tanks and artillery.

The second large group, involved in the conflict, was the politicized "volunteers", who attracted the lights of the stubborn resistance of Slavyansk and victorious reports on social networks about how "our ukrov" ukrov "almost without loss. All the inconsistency political network organizations - Limonovites, the Kurginyan sect, Kvachkovtsy, Barkashovtsy, Eurasians, the reconstructions of the White movement and, of course, the Cossacks - actively encouraged their members to take part in the war and recruit sympathetic. The list of idealists who died in the Donbass includes the Perm Communist-Kurginyan, Alexander Stefanovsky, Togliatti National Basic, Ilya Guryev, the elderly Barnaul Ntsovts, Konstantin Rusakov, St. Petersburg nationalists, Kuban and Don Cossacks.

The stream of recruited by the military enlistment offices and volunteers was strong in May-July, but with the beginning of August, apparently, he was greatly reduced. The reason for this was both obvious military failures of the separatists and the "drain of the project" by the leadership of Russia and other significant circumstances.

On July 5, Girkin and his group left Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, and at the same time passed without a fight to the enemy almost half of the territory, hitherto controlled by separatists in the Donetsk region. This gave rise to a crisis of confidence in Girkin as a military leader and leader of the "Russian resistance".

Meanwhile, many of those who wanted to fight were going to carry out this intention in the deadlines of summer vacations. However, by the end of July, they learned that by order of the same Girkin, the reverse departure from the region would be closed to them. And it was clear. The promised "frantic money" recruited by the military registration and enlistment office paid at best for the first month, then they were forced to fight for free, and in conditions of constant risk for life, many of them sharply wanted to go back - but they stopped letting them go back. Why was it necessary to make an exception for naive volunteers?

As a result, by mid-August, about 20-25 thousand people fought on the side of the separatists, according to the Ukrainian side, of which only 40-45% were “local”, including forcibly recruited, and the number of the latter was steadily reduced. The bulk of the male population of draft age escaped from cities controlled by separatists, which caused a lot of accusatory speeches by the disappointed leaders of Novorossia.

The presence of Russian veterans of armed conflicts in the ranks of the Russian veterans (as, of course, the constant support of the rebels from Russia with weapons and ammunition) explains why the Ukrainian army moved forward so slowly. Never fought reservists who came to a regular, but collapsed army fought with experienced, fired fighters, commanded by people with real combat experience - the same Girkin, Bezler, Ponomarev, Arseny Pavlov (known as Motorola) and Russian military advisers who provided combat planning and logistics behind them.

However, two full -fledged divisions to separatists (which, however, since the summer should have been called the Russians) clearly was not enough. The Ukrainian army took possession of a strategic initiative and in June-July began to quite successfully use the tactics of deep coverage of separatist groups, locking them in cities and blocking the supply lines. Cossack units left relatively numerous, but fraught in moral terms, left positions at the first shelling and erupted into Russia. From the inside, the "DPR and LPR troops" gnawed at the hostility between the field commanders and individual detachments. In addition, many of them preferred not to fight, but to engage in robbery and violence, which causes indignation even among associates.

Already in early August, the real threat of capture hung over the half -dried Donetsk and Lugansk. The Ukrainian military, under the fire of grades and artillery from the Russian territory, understood the futility of hopes to cut off all opponents with a skill from the border with Russia and set their goal to take control of the main ways to supply militants with heavy equipment and ammunition within the Donbass itself. Despite the serious losses of the Ukrainian side, this task was practically solved.

The FSB agents abandoned at the Donbass were in which panic state at that moment was the FSB agent’s interpretation and published SBU nicknamed Trifon (part of Girkin-Znrilyuk, who was formed in Crimea) with his curator.

However, from August 7, the situation has changed significantly. The political leadership of the DPR and the LPR was simultaneously changed. Muscovites Borodai and Girkin, Luhansk Bolotov and a number of smaller figures resigned one day. They were replaced by "authoritative field commanders" from among the citizens of Ukraine. During the week, the Russians managed to reject Ukrainian troops from the conquered positions and resume the movement along the strategic highway on Donetsk.

The explanation of this unexpected activity was given on August 16 by the new "DPR Prime Minister" Alexander Zakharchenko (former Kharkov policeman, the leader of the semi-criminal-dolumilician organization "Oplot"), who openly announced at the official meeting that assistance was received consisting of one and a half hundred armored vehicles and thousands of two hundred persons who took place for four months, training in the territory of the Russian Federation ". Then he announced plans for this reserve in the direction of Novoazovsk, which was implemented on August 25. The reserve, as it is now possible to say with confidence, were the paratroopers from Kostroma, a small part of which the Ukrainian military managed to take prisoner. The Pskov paratroopers with a whole company (on their BMD and with full documentation) died on August 19 in battles for another strategic goal - control over the road leading to Lugansk.

Thus, the participation of the Russian military in the Donbass conflict is as both specialists in heavy weapons and ordinary infantry - now the only key to continuing the war and preservation for the DPR and LPR at least some territory in the short term. Russia at the cost of thousands of lives of its citizens (the account of the dead has already been going on hundreds) can even defeat this war - having won both areas in its entirety or occupying other pieces of Novorossiya it they liked. However, this will cause such a wave of international sanctions that by the middle of next year the Russian economy will crash. In addition, a Russian enclave such as the Kaliningrad region, where separatist sentiments, can be under the threat of transport isolation.

It is possible, however, that Russian troops are now fulfilling another task. Many commentators believe that their actions "strengthen Putin's position in negotiations with Poroshenko." It seems to me that the fate of the DPR and the LPR was so much hanging in the balance that the Russian military acts as a resuscitation brigade, striving to bring the patient to the hospital. In practical terms, this means Putin’s attempt to preserve his face and extend the existence of these “republics” at least until the end of negotiations, as well as solve a number of tactical problems - for example, to take Ukrainian industrial equipment so loved by the Russian military -industrial complex from the region on the “humanitarian” trucks of the Ministry of Defense.

One of the indicators that the projects of the DPR and the LPR are already closed is seemed to be a quiet disappearance from the Donbass of the last media person of "the times of Ochakovsky and the submissions of the Crimea", a person who personifies the first generation of separatists, the "national governor of the Donbass" and the head of the "DPR Ministry of Defense", the former neo -Nazi Pavel Gubarev. He followed his associates, who have settled down in Moscow for a couple of weeks. The Donbass finally turned into the next landfill of the Ministry of Defense. So, in any case, military officials, responding to soldiers' mothers, call the place where their sons disappear without a trace.