Former press secretary to militia leader Igor Strelkov says Moscow engineered and controlled the "civil" war in Donbas in 2014.
– From Anastasia Mikhailovskaya’s interview for Ksenia Sobchak
🟨 From Strelkov's inner circle
Anastasia Mikhailovskaya is a Russian journalist with ultranationalist imperial views. She is closely associated with Alexander Dugin and previously worked for the monarchist Tsargrad TV.
In 2014, arrived in Donbas, where she became the press secretary of Igor Girkin (Strelkov), FSB officer and the key commander of the pro-Russian militia.
Working directly within his inner circle during the early stages of the war, she is now publicly revealing details about how Moscow managed the entire process.
🟨 Who sent the first armed units?
According to Mikhailovskaya, the Russian operation in Donbas began just after the occupation of Crimea. The first armed groups were backed by Russian money and people closely connected to the Kremlin:
Do you remember where Strelkov came from? It was all part of the same story: Crimea is ours, then Strelkov... Malofeyev sends Strelkov [to Donbas].
Konstantin Malofeyev, a far-right pro-Kremlin oligarch, financed and directed key figures involved in the initial phase of the Donbas "uprising."
🟨 The Kremlin's Donbas project
The creation of the puppet "people's republics" was designed and supervised by Putin aide Vladislav Surkov:
Basically, the [People's Republics of] Donbas — the original Donbas project — was his project [...]. He put the whole thing together, but he also distorted it, because everything was built on rotten and fundamentally flawed foundations.
According to Mikhailovskaya, local commanders operated under instructions from Moscow and had little autonomy.
🟨 Moscow's order to Strelkov
When Strelkov refused an order to remain in Sloviansk and die there with his forces, he immediately fell out of favor:
He was ordered to stay in Sloviansk. He was not allowed to withdraw to Donetsk. By remaining there, he was supposed to die together with those two thousand men [...]. But he left on his own responsibility and at his own risk. If you're the commander-in-chief and you've accepted responsibility, then you're supposed to carry out the command's orders [from Moscow] to the very end.
🟨 Executions in Donbas
Mikhailovskaya also openly acknowledges that Strelkov suffered from serious psychological problems that contributed to deadly violence behind the front lines:
He executed people, literally! This is not a joke — he sentenced people to death. [...] Anyone normal would lose their mind from that, but he already had a somewhat unstable psyche.
This episode highlights the brutality and terror that accompanied the early stages of the Russian occupation of Donbas.
🟨 It was never a "civil war"
The war in Donbas was never a civil war. It was a proxy occupation, entirely engineered and controlled by Moscow.
Even the key figures in the "republics"—military commander Igor Strelkov (Girkin) and political leader Alexander Borodai—were Russian citizens and had no connection to Donbas.
Anastasia Mikhailovskaya’s testimony is just one of many pieces of evidence confirming that the Kremlin was in control of all aspects of the conflict from the very beginning.
[Source: Denys Kazansky]