Interrogation of Semyon Semenchenko
I talked on the phone with Semyon Semenchenko for more than an hour. I interviewed. There is only one impression: instead of clear and unambiguous answers, he begins to spew out cubic meters of various kinds of propaganda clichés to questions that are slippery for him.
If something testifies not in his favor, then it is declared an invention and the machinations of either the FSB, or some nameless Ukrainian oligarchs. They say they are waging an information war against me.
Semenchenko is also cunning in relation to Bandera. He calls him a hero of the Ukrainian people, but he doesn’t really want to answer the question I repeatedly repeated about whether there should be a monument to him in “Donetsk, liberated from vatniks and Colorados.” He simply understands that if he said: “Yes, a monument to Bandera should stand in Donetsk,” all this would not look in his favor, because for Donbass Bandera is a fascist.
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-You yourself are Russian, you grew up in a Russian family and in the Russian city of Sevastopol, you even studied a little at a naval school. You probably once had what is commonly called pro-Russian views. Tell me, why did you side with Ukraine then?
-I saw the lies of propaganda on the central channels of the Russian Federation during the Maidan. I was right in the thick of things. There they showed about some crimes, about Bandera’s followers, about nationalists, about the fact that everything would be bad for everyone. There is such a thing as “cognitive dissonance.” It started to attack me even then.
The second time I saw a lie was when the so-called Russian Spring began in Donbass. What I saw was sharply at odds with the propaganda product that was shown on central Russian channels. In particular, people were collected for money. Or through the use of an admin resource. The Party of Regions brought people, directors of enterprises, directors of large factories or bosses of the Party of Regions. The local criminal-oligarchic system took part in all this. I saw exactly the same process as at the Anti-Maidan in Kyiv, when the so-called titushki were taken away. Later they became thugs.
Then I saw how this flywheel of violence and murders was spinning up precisely on the part of people calling themselves pro-Russian protesters.
At first I didn’t think that we were talking about Russian aggression. In April and May, I was sure that this was the same process as in 2007-2009, when the Local Party of Regions tried to come to an agreement with the center and bargain for privileges, whipping up anti-Ukrainian hysteria.
I did not see any problems with the Russian language in Donetsk. I didn’t see any problems with Russian culture in Donetsk. And by the time we began to fight murderers, robbers and people who committed crimes under the guise of the Russian Spring, the authorities did not react at all.
We began to create self-defense. By that time, it became clear that Russia got involved here. Well, then Russian aggression began, and we began to fight the enemy, no matter what his language and culture.
-Have you noticed violence from the Right Sector against Berkut fighters at Euromaidan? And if they noticed, did they publicly approve of it or not?
-You understand perfectly well that the forces were absolutely unequal. People on the one hand are unarmed. Only at the end did some weapons appear, and they were very primitive, and on the other hand, armed riot police. We called it “Berkut”. And snipers and machine gunners.
I don’t think it was some kind of systemic violence on the part of the Right Sector. It was an act of desperation. And what I saw absolutely did not correspond to what was shown on Russian channels. The chances of a Right Sector fighter even with a bottle... even throwing it 50 meters to a Berkut soldier armed with modern weapons... talking about his advantage would be quite ridiculous.
Moreover, acts of violence on the part of the Maidanists began only after the first deaths of Nigoyan and Zhiznevsky. Desperate people fought against the system. The forces were unequal.
-Semyon, well, you must agree, Yanukovych turned out to be a coward, because he categorically refused to give the order to disperse the Maidan. If Berkut had been given the order to disperse the Maidan, he would have dispersed it. But there was no such order, so “Berkut” simply stood, and his comrades from the “Right Sector” and numerous hundreds of Euromaidan self-defense calmly burned with Molotov cocktails. Only a couple of times did Berkut attack Right Sector, but only when it was attacked first. Negoyan was killed only when Maidan radicals went beyond the perimeters of the Maidan and organized a massacre using Molotov cocktails on Grushevsky Street, which led to the Cabinet of Ministers. Back then, the Right Sector burned a bus to the Crimean Berkut soldiers with Molotov cocktails. Even then Klitschko tried to calm them down. It was only after these events began that Nigoyan and Zhiznevsky were shot. But whether they were shot by Berkut officers has not been established. Don't remember?
-Absolutely correct. The first victims appeared from the protesters. And against the entire state machine... one should not think that the millionth Maidan or the five hundred thousandth was all in motion. Only 100, 200-300 people fought there. Especially when there were storms on the Maidan. This is the first.
Secondly, it now turns out that Yanukovych gave orders to clean up the Maidan. Unfortunately, after the Maidan, power remained in the hands of the same industrial oligarchic groups. Therefore, unfortunately, all these investigations were carried out extremely poorly. Now, as a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, we want to know the truth. But what I saw with my own eyes absolutely did not correspond to the image of the terrible Banderaites and the strong “Right Sector”.
I saw the use of disproportionate violence on the part of the “Berkut”, and precisely the retaliatory acts of violence on the part of the protesters.
Berkut and other security forces of Ukraine were rotten and decayed. That is why, and not because they were not given orders, they could not perform their functions or carry out a clean-up.
-Why, in your opinion, did Euromaidan lose in Donetsk? Why did you lose and Anti-Maidan won?
-Because, unfortunately, we were not ready for an information war. What events are we talking about? After February, when Maidan won in Kyiv?
-Yes, sure.
-The special services of the Russian Federation, through their agents of influence in criminal-oligarchic circles, in the Party of Regions, in particular, carried out an information war. As soon as we were able to gather self-defense forces, a blow was struck not only physically, but also through the media. They began to spread information that we had stolen something there and escaped from somewhere, that is, there was a standard information war going on. We were not ready for an information war, since the state and the structures of financial and industrial groups were against us. We just had individual representatives of the people. Secondly, finances were on the side of the Anti-Maidan. Third, the security forces were on the side of the Anti-Maidan. Fourthly, when the special services of the Russian Federation were on the side of the Anti-Maidan, our government, unfortunately, chewed snot.
-How do you assess the role of Rinat Akhmetov during the confrontation in Donetsk? Whose side was he on? Whom did he help – Maidan or Anti-Maidan?
-He definitely didn’t help the pro-Ukrainian side. And the question of what kind of assistance he provided to the Anti-Maidan should be decided by the investigation or the investigative commission of the Verkhovna Rada. Based on the fact that Rinat Akhmetov was the creator of the entire system of the Party of Regions, he was clearly not on the side of the forces that were trying to defend Ukraine. The resource was sufficient to sink it all at the first stage. But this is a theory, it is not confirmed by facts. We are now looking for evidence that initially it was a bargaining, flirting with the central government, using hired thugs.
Then, in the end, all these rockers could not control the situation, because the local criminals, supported by the special services of the Russian Federation, felt their strength and threw these comrades out of the region. Now, in these conditions, he is trying to save his business with financial assistance. I mean all these battalions “Vostok” of Khodakovsky, “Oplot” and other figures. They turned the situation on themselves, and the masters of life in Donbass fled.
-Were you familiar with the leaders of Anti-Maidan in Donetsk - Pavel Gubarev, Denis Pushilin, Andrei Purgin? Did you run into them and talk to them then?
-I haven’t personally seen Pushilin. I think that they are all tools in the hands of the Russian military, and initially they were tools in the hands of the Party of Regions. These are our enemies.
-When did you decide to leave Donetsk? Where did you initially go – to Dnepropetrovsk or Kyiv? How did the history of the Donbass battalion begin?
-You have a propaganda story in Russia that these are all terrible agents of Kolomoisky. Why then move away from the “temniki”? All this has been written down with a red thread since last April. If we are talking about real events, then we realized that the formation of a volunteer battalion inside Donetsk is not possible due to the fact that the people put in charge of all this could not cope and do not enjoy authority.
And the local police, which was supposed to form all this, was corrupt and found itself under Russian influence. Therefore, a basic miscalculation of the situation showed that there simply would not be time to gather these volunteers. They will simply begin to be destroyed.
Therefore, I personally decided to form a volunteer battalion on the territory of another region - at the intersection of the Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye regions. We received no help either from the oligarchs or from the states, simply due to the fact that the people provided assistance. This was all collected via the Internet. We bought body armor, we bought models of machine guns. At first we had nothing else except mock-ups.
-What was the initial strength of the Donbass battalion?
-90 people.
-And how exactly did you become his commander? You were the initiator of its creation?
-Yes, just an initiator. I wanted us to first create self-defense for Donetsk. Then we wanted a territorial defense battalion for the Donetsk region to be formed, which was to be formed on the basis of a directive from the General Staff. This battalion was to be formed from local residents, which would guard administrative buildings and unblock military units.
Then it was already clear that all the blocking of military units by the population (we ourselves tried several times to unblock military units) was an absolutely planned, paid event. Representatives of local police and criminals took part in them.
Therefore, it was necessary to form battalions from local residents, because there was no hope for the police. But all this was frozen both at the level of the General Staff (at the level of Donetsk) and at the level of local authorities, who did not even want to lift a finger to do anything.
And I announced to those who want to help that we ourselves are creating a local battalion. And immediately on the first day, over 600 people from different parts of the Donetsk region applied to join the battalion. We had no weapons, nothing at all. That's how it all started.
-What kind of people were they?
-Programmers, economists, students, military personnel, miners, pensioners. Residents of Donetsk and a little later residents of Lugansk regions.
-There is such a Russian pranker Alexey Lexus Stolyarov. His Skype conversations with Kolomoisky, when he pretended to be Pavel Gubarev, went viral on the Internet. In one of the conversations, the prankster asked the Dnepropetrovsk oligarch about you: who is Semyon Semenchenko? To this Kolomoisky replied that you are some kind of swindler. Do you remember this?
-No, I don’t listen to recordings of pranksters.
-What kind of relationship do you have with Kolomoisky? Did he finance your battalion?
-Did not finance. I think that we can regard such statements from representatives of oligarchic circles (about the swindler Semenchenko - author's note) as a compliment. When these people begin to praise us, we will begin to think.
-Have you not personally met him?
-I met you a couple of times. I met when he was still the governor of Dnepropetrovsk.
-And what impression did he make on you?
- Quite a smart person with a sense of humor. I knew him only superficially. There was no funding for the battalion. The Dnepropetrovsk administration first provided us with an abandoned camp and several mattresses at the intersection of the Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk regions. As for the future, we were further supplied by the local population and farmers. We were already collecting money and feeding ourselves. As far as I understand, the Dnepropetrovsk administration financed the Dnepr battalion, and the Donbass battalion was a purely popular project.
As for the scams, you know, at that time to oppose all this with complete inaction of the state - it really was a scam. Thanks to the fact that we agreed to this scam, many areas of the Donetsk region are free from separatism. If we had not agreed to this then, the border would have passed I don’t even know where.
-Many people say that you ended up on the Samoposhch list only because you, Semyon Semenchenko, are Kolomoisky’s man, and Kolomoisky financed Samoposhch. Is there any basis in reality for this statement?
"As far as I know, these allegations are completely unfounded, because Samopomich was financed directly by deputies on our list. We have representatives from the agricultural sector and IT companies there. So we didn't require funding from any oligarchs."
If you look at sociological polls, up to 40% of people who voted for Samopoch voted for us to systematically address issues of national security and defense. This is the level of trust in the volunteer battalions of which we were representatives.
-You say that everything that happened in the Donbass took place only thanks to the inaction of the local authorities, the machinations of the oligarchy, and what, in your opinion, did the people of Donbass want to be with Ukraine?
-Yes, I wanted to be with Ukraine.
-What are the reasons for the defeat of the Ukrainian security forces from the militias in Ilovaisk?
-Not from the militias, we drove them away, but from the Russian army. I agree with the conclusions of the parliamentary commission of the Verkhovna Rada of the previous convocation that the reasons for this were systemic errors in the organization of the country’s defense made by the General Staff, the Ministry of Defense and the leadership of Ukraine. This is the first.
Secondly, some officials committed not only mistakes, but also crimes. This is now the subject of consideration by the military prosecutor's office.
The situation near Debaltsevo was similar. The fact is that I participated in both the first and second operations. It was absolutely not the mythical commitment of the local residents of Russia that caused the defeat, but rather systemic errors in organizing the country’s defense, betrayal and crimes committed by individual officials, but I am not going to discuss this with you, representatives of the aggressor country.
I really feel sorry for most of the people on the other side. When we organized the exchange of people who died near Debaltseve, we communicated with those who are in the so-called militia. Most people are there for the money and to feed their families. If you do not show up for mobilization, you are first sent to the shock battalion in Donetsk, and the second time you are shot. Many people in Donbass have never even been outside of Donbass. They have never been to Kyiv, much less they have never been to Western Ukraine. They very easily become objects of manipulation.
-Tell me, do you think that hostilities between Ukraine and the DPR/LPR will resume?
-There are no hostilities on the part of the DPR/LPR. There is aggression on the part of the Russian Federation, which uses, among other things, these units, which have little combat capability and are used as an auxiliary military force.
This explains the story that the Russian and partly Ukrainian media raise about me and the Donbass battalion, because almost all the Donbass fighters were Russian-speaking and were residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. And they simply broke the propaganda cliché for you.
In the near future, your country plans to end its aggression through political means, counting on the role of the Opposition Bloc. The bloc expects to come to power in local elections and possibly in early parliamentary elections. The hope is that the people of Ukraine will become tired, depressed and despairing. The opposition bloc wants Ukraine to have a quasi-state again. So that it would be like in Russia, when oligarchs rob national property and people are zombified by propaganda. And we will fight to the end to prevent this.
-So you say that people who serve in the militia are forcibly conscripted under pain of execution. Why then didn’t they run over to your side?
-We ran across.
-And how many of them ran across then?
-People are all different. I can't say that's all. There are people who went to serve for money, there are people who went to serve under the threat of death. There are people who went to serve out of conviction, and there are others, naturally. Why didn't they run across? Because there is a system of detachments. It's all the same as in 1941-42.
We captured people who surrendered. Unlike Russian mercenaries, prisoners were treated quite correctly. It’s very sad for me to see how non-humans who talk about the Russian Spring harass, torture people, and record them on video. Russian troops did approximately the same thing in Chechnya.
-But a few months ago, Donetsk airport was liberated from cyborgs by militia units led by Givi and Motorola. Are they also Russian officers? Motorola is a citizen of the Russian Federation, but Givi is local. So who then took the Donetsk airport - Russian troops or local militias?
-I only talk about events that I witnessed. I was not at the Donetsk airport. Of all these campaigns, I participated in Debaltsevo and the summer campaign.
-Were there Russian troops in Debaltsevo? Did Russian troops take Debaltsevo?
-Yes. Took part. If the so-called militias and Russian troops had not been allowed to gather forces from various directions near Debaltsevo, and if they had not hit the weakened areas, then nothing would have happened.
This is not a consequence of some kind of super readiness.
-You say that a campaign is being waged against you in the Russian and Ukrainian media. Fine. It’s clear with the Russians, but who is waging a campaign against you in the Ukrainian media? Who is behind all this?
-Look, you, as a specialist working in Russian propaganda agencies, must understand perfectly well what an information war is. I read several textbooks on information warfare published in Moscow. There were examples of how the information struggle was carried out against the ideological commanders of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, as well as against the United States in Vietnam. The methods have not changed to this day.
Here, “look through” Russian sites. There, more than 100 crimes were attributed to the Donbass battalion and, in particular, to me. Do you remember the fairy tales from last summer, when they said that we are punitive, that we sell human organs? And all the negativity from the Donbass battalion transferred to me. And what is being published now is a rehash of this nonsense taken from last summer.
Who does all this? This is done by special agents of the special services of the Russian Federation, who act either in secret or directly through agents of influence in Ukraine, who are employees of various Ukrainian financial and industrial groups. I don’t consider those who are involved in all this to be my compatriots, and I don’t consider those who publish this to be Ukrainian media.
Now there is a war going on inside Ukraine, and this does not mean that if a person wears a “Ukraine” badge, that he is on the side of Ukraine. Everyone understands that Ukrainian oligarchs want to maintain their influence in Ukraine. So, with the help of your puppets, you can pour any amount of dirt on us. We are not afraid of you. Ukraine will defeat both internal and external enemies.
-Sorry, but, as you put it, the famous Ukrainian journalist Vladimir Boyko is “pouring dirt” on you (by his convictions, he is a Ukrainian nationalist and an opponent of Russia; he wrote several articles in which he exposed Semenchenko as a swindler and a man who was imprisoned for fraud - author's note)…
-... I don’t want to discuss different people with you. The activities of the FSB and the oligarchy, with the help of their puppets, can take any form. I'm not interested in all this. And you can release any number of fakes there. This doesn’t interest me and it doesn’t affect me, just like normal people in our country.
-You changed your Russian surname Grishin to the Ukrainian one Semenchenko, and why haven’t you started speaking Ukrainian then? Bandera wouldn't understand you. By the way, what is your attitude towards Bandera and Shukhevych?
-I think Bandera would understand me, because Bandera had a lot of associates who were of Russian, Jewish, and Georgian origin. As for the Ukrainian language, I don’t consider it something supernatural that I still speak Russian. I am learning Ukrainian, I understand it well, I read it, I try to speak it, but I have the language that I was raised in and that I spoke in childhood. I don't see any problems in this. I speak Russian in Lvov too.
-I don’t see a problem in this either, but I think the same Lviv resident Irina Farion or another representative of the Svoboda party, Igor Miroshnichenko, sees this as a problem. By the way, do you consider Bandera and Shukhevych heroes?
-Undoubtedly. I understand the history of these people very well. They have been subjected to so much lies, propaganda, manipulation and disinformation... I understand this, seeing how it is done now. I believe that the Verkhovna Rada did the right thing in recognizing these people as symbols of the liberation war. People wanted to build their own state on their own land. They were slandered by Russian propaganda...
-As I understand it, the Volyn massacre, perpetrated by Bandera’s followers on the Poles in 1943, is also Russian propaganda?
-The Volyn massacre, first of all, was carried out by people, and both sides have something to blame each other for. Crimes were committed both by Polish citizens and by residents of Ukraine. If we now look for all crimes, it will not be in favor of Russia. Let us remember the same Tambov uprising...
-Listen, I don’t remember anyone in Russia justifying Tukhachy’s use of gas against Tambov peasants... And the last question, as a person who lived in Donetsk. I understand that you believe that Donetsk will soon be liberated. In this case, should there be monuments to these heroes of the Ukrainian people, Bandera and Shukhevych?
- This should be decided by local residents.
-But you say that all local residents want to be with Ukraine. When you release them, will you personally initiate the installation of such monuments instead of the monument to Lenin? Bandera and Shukhevych are heroes of the Ukrainian people.
-I repeat once again: all these issues should be resolved by local residents.
-Once again: are you personally ready to take the initiative to erect monuments to Bandera and Shukhevych in Donetsk?
- I repeat to you once again...
English version :: Read in English: The Interrogation of Semyon Semenchenko