How do Zakharchenko and Plotnitskiy want to use Savchenko? Why do they need the extension of Minsk discussions? The "DPR" "pushes" Russian volunteers back to Russia. The hard times for Plotnitskiy’s "ministers". These and other issues in Sergiy Garmash’s authorial radio program "Occupation".
"Sensible minds of Ukraine"
Perhaps the most resonant event of the past week for the occupied territories of Donbass, and for the rest of Ukraine, was the secret meeting of MP Nadiya Savchenko with the "DPR" and "LPR" leaders Zakharchenko and Plotnitskiy in Minsk.
I'm talking about a secret meeting, because at first Minsk conspirators wanted to keep it in secret. For example, on December 11 the administration of the “DPR” leader denied the fact of such negotiations. But after the information appeared in the Ukrainian media, it was pointless to hide it. On December 12, Igor Plotnitskiy explained the purpose of this meeting. It turns out, Savchenko is seen as the "voice" of the separatists in the Verkhovna Rada.
Audio: Most recently, Oleksandr Zakharchenko and I met with the People's Deputy of Ukraine Nadiya Savchenko in Minsk. It should be perceived correctly. You should understand that this whole process is held in the framework of the Minsk negotiations. This is the time when sensible minds of Ukraine, who understand that the issue should not be resolved by a war, but by peace, must be united and must find the way. The main topics of our conversation were the exchange of prisoners according to the “all for all” formula, the search for the missing and the other associated issues. In this case, we think that such meetings are useful. This problem should not be dealt just from one side within the Verkhovna Rada, but they have to hear our voice too.
Also, Igor Plotnitskiy said that the meeting with Savchenko was intended to put pressure on Ukraine in the framework of Minsk negotiations. In particular, using the soldiers' mothers.
Audio: We believe that such meetings can be productive, but they should not be limited to one deputy, it should be a group of people. I believe there are positive minds among deputies. This can be done at the level of the mothers who lost their children, or whose children are imprisoned. The format may be different, but today we need to spur Ukraine to the solving of the Minsk issues.
Nadiya Savchenko had been refusing to comment anything for a long time, but in the evening of December 12, said: "I promised Ukrainians that would fight, that I would speak even with the devil himself. Yes, I talked to the people with whom we were shooting each other. But I have not seen the devil in them because if I talked to the devil, we would never reach an agreement. I talked with people," - she said, hinting that the parties had agreed upon something.
However, later her hints were refuted by the leader of the "DPR" Olexandr Zakharchenko. "No agreement has been reached," - he said.
Audio: We talked. During the meeting, the main question was raised - the implementation of the Minsk agreements in the context of the exchange of prisoners “all for all”. Savchenko has offered several options of her vision of the process. Plotnitskiy and I have also offered our options... But no specific agreement was reached.
It is interesting that the very possibility of the effectiveness of such meeting had been denied by Olga Kobtseva, the Minsk representative of the "LPR". At the same press conference, where Plotnitskiy announced the fact of the meeting, half an hour later Kobtseva said that Viktor Medvedchuk was the only person to whom the President of Ukraine gave the authority to decide the war prisoner issues.
Audio: Last year there were certain requirements that there were too many people wishing to participate in the exchange. In September and October, at the group meeting there was a hard-put question and it was recorded in the presence of the Security Service of Ukraine representatives, that Mr. Medvedchuk is the only person which was appointed by Mr. Poroshenko. Only he has an authority to make agreements on the exchange of prisoners. Everything else is speculation and desires...
- Okay, I understand, thank you.
Did you notice how Plotnitskiy interrupted the speaker when he heard that initially this meeting could not be effective? Savchenko simply doesn’t have such authority. Now tell me, does anyone believe that Savchenko is able to influence the war prisoners exchange process more than the godfather of Putin’s children - Victor Medvedchuk? And who except Moscow could even organize a such small party for Savchenko, Zakharchenko and Plotnitskiy? Why does Moscow need to create Savchenko’s image as a person able to solve the issues of life and freedom of the people? And if it is necessary to Moscow, is it necessary to Ukraine? ...
Let us leave these questions open-ended. But if I were Nadiya Savchenko, an MP from Batkivshchyna Party, I would be careful with who and what for I meet. Moreover, just a week before the meeting, her companion Zakharchenko has once again clearly stated his hostility towards the country that pays Savchenko her deputy salary.
Audio: It is dangerous even to have such a neighbor. That is, this root should be pulled out. Otherwise, we’ll get more than one generation with pathological hatred towards Russia. Frankly speaking, it was Russia’s big mistake. Russia didn’t pay enough attention to these things after the independency of Ukraine.
Another interesting fact is that the Luhansk kinglet Plotnitskiy, as we have heard, said that the meeting with Savchenko was held within the framework of the Minsk agreements. Without doubt, this is not true, because Savchenko does not represent Ukraine at the negotiations. However, after the meeting, Zakharchenko has dramatically changed his attitude of the Minsk process and offered to continue it for another year.
Audio: The question of the extension of the Minsk agreements for 2017 has not been raised yet. But after his trip to Minsk, Pushilin reported me about the meetings that have been planned for 2017. I think that issue will be raised at the next meeting. Proceeding from the current process, it is logical to continue the meetings in 2017. I think we will support such an offer. If it does not come from Ukraine, we will offer it.
An interesting change, because only three months ago Zakharchenko said just the opposite:
Audio: I can say the following: we’ll wait until the end of the year, because according to Ukraine, the Minsk process ends in 2016, and reserve the right to solve all these problems in 2017. We have given the promise to wait till the end of 2016 and we’ll keep it, in contrast to Ukraine. I remind Poroshenko that from January 1, 2017 we are freed from many things that we had to comply in accordance with the Minsk agreements. And we reserve the right to decide our own destiny, without the involvement of any contact groups and negotiators. Including the OSCE.
Audio: I'm all so awkward, wholly controversial...
Zakharchenko is like a contradictory and absurd damsel. At first he was against Minsk negotiations, then he absolutely agrees to them. Has "Major-General", albeit self-appointed, finally understood that the Minsk process is the only possibility for "DPR" and "LPR" quasi-states to buy the time of their existence? For example, Olexandr Khodakovskiy, the "Vostok" battalion leader, the former officer of Security Service of Ukraine (or Russia, who knows) understood this long ago.
Audio: Minsk negotiations were created in order to become a dead end, this was the original plan. Minsk could become an effective platform that addresses some issues, but no negotiating group is able to interrupt those trends that have developed on our side, the situation in Donbass and Ukraine, even with the utmost good political will. Naturally, they become hostages of geopolitics or just politics. Everything with regard to Minsk is just stagnant. Tit is right to continue this stalemate in 2017 and even in 2018.
Either… or
Playing for time is the only choice for the puppet republics. Khodakovskiy, unlike Zakharchenko, has received real higher education, so he understands that in order not to stagnate from within, they have only two options: either to join Russia or to attack Ukraine.
Audio: You need to understand the status of these territories. They have prospects for further development only in the case if there is a breakthrough in either direction. Either we become a part of Russia, - why we try so hard to reach that - or we begin to move further to the west. If territories remain in a stuffy, closed and isolated space, we'll all just suffocate... Our main goal is motion and action. If we don’t move, we’ll die.Slowly and steadily. This is what is now experiencing Donbass. We die slowly and steadily. We urgently need to move.
Here I absolutely agree with Khodakovsky. The "DPR-LPR" by themselves is absolutely hopeless project. Both on the economic and geopolitical factors. These territories have two ways: either in Ukraine or in Russia. But Russia does not need them. Otherwise, it would pick them up a long time ago. There remains the attack of Ukraine. But by what forces? Khodakovsky himself has repeatedly said that pro-Russian separatists do not have such resources.
Audio: There will not be a massive offensive on Donetsk now. It is not in the plans of the political situation. It does not fit into it… We are talking that the Ukrainian army is ready not for moral reasons, but technically, all the time. There is no need to reduce the degree of threat and no need to underestimate the Ukrainians. I am ready to put my name to the fact that it is the wrong political moment now… On the other hand, maybe I even would like, secretly, the Ukrainians to become more active. Perhaps Russia eventually will come here with its heavy military heel and we will already put an end to this problem once and for all.
Ingratitude of the "Russian world"
So, as we have heard, Khodakovsky expects to attack Ukraine by the Russian troops. But is it in the interests of the Russians? If yes, then why did not they do it yet? They were waiting until they would be drawn into the war in Syria to fight on two fronts?... Moreover, is this in the interests of the current so-called "elites", the "DPR", the "LPR"? Let us listen to a fragment of one of the online conferences of Khodakovsky.
Audio: migration service of the DPR refuses in registration and residence permit, even temporary, to volunteers, internationalists and citizens of the Russian Federation, who have arrived to help the residents of Donbass. They motivate it by the absence of any regulation governing their stay in the territory of republic and offer them to go home. Have we already fought, - Stanislav Lisichkin asks.
– How many we have buried, how many wounded, lames, cripples, we have sent to Russia! By echelons! By cavalcades, by cars. On a one single checkpoint, yet in 2014, through Lugansk, where Rostov Donetsky is. How many of these guys we have taken. Lame, maimed for the whole life. How many dead we have taken there. Does not the conscience really force those who make these obstacles, just to act humanly? We have guys that have come back, because the passions died down, they have to go to the Motherland to the family and children – they return but there is often nowhere to return.
As we have heard, "russianworldly" Donbass proved to be ungrateful towards the Russians who came to kill those who do not want to live on orders from Moscow. And time is lost… So it is unlikely for the "DPR-LPR" to be able to spread to the free Ukrainian territory and to become economically self-sufficient. Neither in Russia nor in Ukraine is not really to come on a tank. So what are the prospects? There remains the one - in Ukraine. When and under what conditions this will happen - it is a separate question. But the motion vector of the occupied Donbass is predetermined by itself: by Russia, Ukraine and geopolitics. Otherwise, the decay and… the same again - Ukraine. It is a pity only for those people who will have to "decay" on the backyards of the "Russian world". And even under the direction of such leaders as Alexander Zakharchenko. Look, even Khodakovsky states that neither Zakharchenko nor his team is not able to develop "the republic".
Audio: May God give health to Sasha. I think he will certainly sit until the end of his term. Unless we do not start some other movement before. Then, of course, his role and significance will be offset. Because he is too weak even for this territory. Because they are not good enough even for the development. Because they have set themselves other goals, other tasks, they have deactivated themselves on their own.
Why do I need a beggar-minister?
Let us shift from Donetsk to the occupied by Russian mercenaries Lugansk.
On Thursday the local users of social networks have spread information about the arrest of the so-called "minister of education" of the "LPR" Valentina Tkachenko. She is allegedly guilty in the theft of 114 550 USD. However, the official resources of "banana republic" – remember, as it was once called by Plotnitsky himself, - have no information about the arrest of the "minister". But if it is true, then Valentina Tkachenko will get 10 years of "freedom" in terms of the "Russian world".
It should be said that the tension between Tkachenko and Plotnitsky was already felt in the operational meeting at the leader of the "LPR" on Monday. Thus Plotnitsky has practically dismissed the minister of education from the impact on the work of the agricultural institute. Let us listen to the conversation of Plotnitsky and the so-called "ministers": of agriculture and education.
Audio: – I have one question. As far as I know, there will be the rector's election in agricultural institute. I would like to get acquainted with the candidates. We have a commission that deals with these issues.
- I do not know, I hear about the election of the rector in agricultural institute for the first time. I was not informed…
- You should not be informed. You are the minister, that is you who have to inform, not you to be informed. Change the situation.
- I am trying to change the situation now. Presented candidates cannot be appointed to the position of the rector according to the education law.
- Then remove these candidacies.
- Igor Venediktovich, can I? - Nobody set any rector's election there for today. To perform the duties. The university cannot be without a leader not a single day. Therefore, a temporary person will perform the duties. Instead the rector's election.
- Let the minister of agriculture deals with it.
Such an attitude is even to the ministers in a "people's republic", there is nothing to say about simple people. "Whom do you ask!" – the puppet "head" resents, criticizing his "minister" of transport for the fact that he builds relationships with carriers not voluntaristically, but on the basis of previously concluded contracts.
Audio: Do not we give the possibility to earn on normal routes? Then we do need to take everything in the state hands. To redistribute the routes. And then private traders will find and come running to beg. Do you think they will be standing at home? They will stand for a month, and then they will come and beg. But it will be a normal approach. You go and beg. Beg from the cradle to the grave. Whom do you beg!? You have to lead, not to beg to come. Why do I need a beggar-minister? - Igor Venediktovich, the first during the formation of the claim on the humanitarian aid… - I want to see how many…
An interesting detail – they include in the claim on the humanitarian aid from Russia even the details for buses.
Three versions of one "bus"
One person was killed, one - wounded, and another one - died later after a heart attack as a result of the fire of Majorsk control point on December 14. All of them are civilians, who have crossed the line of demarcation. The Ukrainian side accused the militants. Official tools for propaganda of the "DPR" naturally accused Ukraine. Moreover, it is interesting that first they stated that the bus was fired. However, later the "bus" has disappeared from the reports of separatists. But even a day later, on December 15, the leader of the DPR Zakharchenko, who announced this tragic incident "a terrible crime", did not know that there was no bus in Majorsk control point.
Audio: Concerning the investigation. As for the Ministry of internal affairs of the DPR - it will be done. I have been keeping an eye on this since yesterday. But unfortunately, all witnesses of this case were arrested on the same day when it all had happened, it is unknown where are now located and whether they are actually located in the territory occupied by the Ukrainian army. Therefore, the investigation will be harder. If Ukraine will give us all the people who were in the bus, the investigation by itself will be conducted as soon as possible.
In general – "the bus", and all "witnesses arrested by Ukraine". - Alexander Zakharchenko lies like a trooper. He was belied by the head of his own administration in Gorlovka Ivan Prikhodko. He had been on the scene literally within half an hour after the incident, and his version of events, although not in favor of the Ukrainian military forces, but is fundamentally differs both from the lies of Zakharchenko and the official interpretation of the tragedy by separatist media.
Audio: It was reported about half an hour ago that there was an incident on the Ukrainian side. We arrived almost at Ukrainian checkpoint, talked with the witnesses of these events directly. What do they say? – There was a very large queue from the Ukrainian side, they do not let the cars to pass for more than three hours. People began to resent. And the Ukrainian authorities did not find anything smarter than to fire a warning shot into the air. The Ukrainian army soldier climbed on the dug-out for this purpose, removed the submachine gun from the safety and pulled the trigger earlier – at the moment of raising the submachine gun. It happened that he had stricken a crowd of people. According to the information we have from the eyewitnesses now, one man was fatally shot in the head at once, the other got a light wound in the arm, and a woman who had a heart attack because of the fright, died in the ambulance car.
So nobody had arrested the bus and eyewitnesses. In this way we have three versions of the tragedy from the DPR. One is from the Ukrainian military forces. And the OSCE, until December 16, could not identify the direction of the fire on civilians…
OstroV, Donbass public radio