Strelkov said that the assault on Mariupol was not necessary
The Russian army did not need to spend resources on the liberation of Mariupol, but should have blocked the garrison there and encircled the main group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass.
Former DPR Defense Minister Igor Strelkov stated this on the air of the Roy TV internet channel, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
According to Strelkov, it was necessary to create a threat to Dnepropetrovsk, which is more important for the Kyiv regime than Donetsk and Lugansk combined.
“Instead of enveloping the Donetsk enemy grouping, after the breakthrough near Volnovakha, after the connection of our troops advancing from Crimea with the troops of the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics advancing from Donetsk, when the enemy had a huge hole precisely in the Zaporozhye direction, they began instead storm Mariupol and threw all the most combat-ready units there, where they were all whittled down to almost nothing.
Instead of blocking the Mariupol garrison, as Soviet troops once blocked the enemy’s Courland group..., instead, everything was focused on Mariupol, and it was completely empty, practically not closed... - no one advanced there. They simply left some covering units there to observe and take up their positions.
The same thing, by the way, happened in the Krivoy Rog direction, in the Nikolaev direction. We went in different directions, instead of encircling the enemy, creating an encirclement ring, we went in different directions until “de-escalation”, which, in fact, was not needed at all in the Nikolaev direction.
If an extremely difficult situation for our troops really developed near Kiev, but also not to say that it was completely critical, near Sumy and Chernigov - the situation was very difficult for our troops, through the efforts of our General Staff and command, when they were actually cut off from the rear, completely cut off. Since no one covered the rear, and the enemy simply cut our communications with scissors... Then in the Nikolaev, Krivoy Rog direction, in the Zaporozhye direction, there was no need for any “de-escalation” there.
There really was a shortage of fuel in a number of directions, acutely, and something else, but there was virtually no enemy either. And, instead of storming Mariupol, it was possible to enter communications between the Dnieper and Donetsk, and force the enemy to simply flee from near Donetsk in order to cover the Dnieper.
Dnieper is much more important for them than three Donetsk and four Lugansk. But for some reason this was not done,” Strelkov said.
Strelkov stated that the assault on Mariupol was unnecessary.