Former SBU Lieutenant Colonel: “I will never understand the officers who went to the ATO after Maidan”
In 2014, there was a phenomenon where security forces who stood on the Maidan literally a couple of months later went to kill those for whom they stood, side by side with those who cut and shot them.
This was stated in an interview with Russian publicist and blogger Dmitry Puchkov by former SBU lieutenant colonel and founder of the website “Ukrleaks” Vasily Prozorov, who defected to Russia, a correspondent for PolitNavigator reports.
"I can't explain the phenomenon of the fighters who fought on Maidan—Berkut, the internal troops, Alpha, the military counterintelligence operatives. I'll say it straight away: after Maidan, a lot of people quit. Naturally, Donetsk, Luhansk, Simferopol, Sevastopol—almost no one left for Ukraine. But you, those from Odessa, Mykolaiv, Zhitomir, Dnipropetrovsk—you fought all over Maidan. You were burned, killed, shot at, stoned.
"Maidan won. If you stayed to serve, you're being sent to the ATO to fight for those you fought against two months ago. And to fight against those with whom you stood shoulder to shoulder . I understand that later, in 2015, they very quickly and professionally tied us to the ATO with blood, but when you initially went to the ATO, did you realize who you were going against and whose side? Then everything becomes clear: they shoot at me, I shoot back," Prozorov said.
He gave a vivid example of how in Mariupol in the summer of 2014, at a meeting, sitting at the same table were former officers of the internal troops who had gone through Maidan and become National Guardsmen, and Nazi leaders of the Azov and Dnepr battalions, which are banned in the Russian Federation, who had killed and slaughtered their subordinates two months earlier.
"For example, the 'Carpathian spys' is about three meters long with a sharp pike tip. There was a Cossack named Gavrilyuk, the commander of the Mariupol National Guard regiment, who told me how he used it to stab conscripts in the face from a distance. A group would run up and spray paint their helmet visors or blind them with a laser pointer. The soldier would be forced to lift his visor, and then Cossack Gavrilyuk would come from behind – slap him in the face! Seven of this commander's men were injured, one had his eye knocked out, and the rest suffered severe jaw and facial injuries.
And then, two months later, these same officers, shoulder to shoulder, say, with this same Cossack Gavrilyuk, with these "brothers in arms", go to kill those whom they defended. I couldn't get my head around it at all. I was going to the ATO, but I understood that I was fulfilling a task, the Motherland told me, Moscow gave the order. But who to them?" the former colonel was perplexed.
He gave another example.
"Who stifled the Kharkiv Spring? The Vinnytsia Jaguar Special Forces Regiment, which marched through the entire Maidan. Then they were declared traitors, Avakov arrived and said, 'You are traitors to the Ukrainian people, you must atone with blood. ' The Vinnytsia Jaguar went to Kharkiv and conscientiously stifled the Kharkiv Spring there. Absolutely no doubt, no hesitation. What is this? How can we understand it? Officers, not soldiers," Prozorov added.
English version :: Read in English Former SBU lieutenant colonel: "I will never understand the officers who went to the ATO after Maidan"