Chalenko: For attacks on Donetsk, the mansions of Zelensky and Zaluzhny should be bombed
The Ukrainian army takes advantage of the fact that Russian artillery is concentrated in the Artyomovsk direction, therefore it conducts massive shelling of Donetsk, which has never happened in all the years of confrontation.
Russia must respond harshly and demonstrably here – for the attack on Donetsk, the residence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valeriy Zaluzhny, must be subject to retaliatory attacks. Donetsk-born Russian journalist Alexander Chalenko , who is currently on assignment in the DPR, stated this in an interview with PolitNavigator .
PN: What are your impressions from your next visit to Donetsk? How are the current attacks different from previous ones?
A.Ch.: I've never seen anything like it. I think this is the first time in Donetsk's history that five Grad rockets were fired into the city center in one day. Yes, it had been shelled with Haimars and 155mm rockets before. Yes, one or two or three 155mm rockets hit there, maybe five, and then it all stopped within a day.
I remember once in the center, somewhere, in June, I think, something flew in. It was an event, everyone went there and watched.
And now they are hitting the center - and 40 missiles are being fired, and 20, and 10, they hit the Kalinin hospital, and this will continue, it is believed. December 18, 2022 is the most anti-record, so to speak, for the shelling of Donetsk.
PN: How do people escape – do they hide in basements, because they can “fly” anywhere and anytime?
A.Ch.: Well, some people hide in basements. But what is Donetsk? The Donetsk metropolitan area consists of nine-story reinforced concrete buildings built in the late 1960s and 1980s. Here, it's enough to be in the apartment itself—go to the bathroom, say, or go out into the hallway.
My neighbors and I go out into the corridor, just in the entrance, there are all sorts of ceilings, if you get hit, then there is a chance to survive - because you need to break through two concrete walls: one external, the other internal, some kind of corridor.
Where to run? I don’t know, there are flights here almost every two hours, so people mostly go home.
Here you also need to understand that they are hitting the city center. There are also front-line soldiers, they are constantly under fire - those who could have already left there.
Other areas - Budenovsky, Proletarsky - are occasionally shelled. And now, of course, they are genociding very much in the center, this is the Voroshilovsky district. Yesterday they hit the Donbass Arena area, the Victoria Akhmetovskaya Hotel, Lenin Square - well, in full force, “Grad” is being released, I heard it all the time. Vzhzhzh, and that’s it, very scary.
PN: Is there panic in the city, are people trying to leave the DPR? Is there anger or resentment towards Moscow that it could not defend?
A.Ch.: Some people are leaving, but I haven't seen any traffic jams on the way out of Donetsk, Makeyevka, or Khartsyzk. Yes, there are big traffic jams on the way out, on Uspenka, but they're mostly trucks and trucks, with fewer civilians. As for buses or pedestrian crossings, I wouldn't say there are a lot of people there.
There is no panic - not that despondency, but what is called “no mood.” That is, people do not understand why they are shelled every day. Tenth month, SVO, in theory, to protect Donetsk, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces have now started playing with us. Previously, even “Haymars” or “Tochka-U” at night, you could hear air defense working somewhere, but now they’re just hitting with “Gradins”. Why is this happening?
Well, there is a second point. Donetsk residents are fatalists, they got it from the miners. The miner is released into the lava and does not know whether it will explode there or not. They are such people, quite brutal.
Is there anger towards Moscow? It’s not just anger, no, I haven’t heard that, but everyone wants to understand when this whole thing will stop. People have been living in war for nine years now. Those who panicked or were against the DPR and Russia—they left. The most persistent ones remained, or something, so maybe they are worried about something inside themselves, scolding someone or something like that, but nothing is visible on the outside.
PN: Is there any understanding of why such shelling occurs in the 10th month of the special operation?
A.Ch.: This is being done to draw artillery away from Bakhmut or somewhere else, where there's a very intense offensive underway. Everyone—the military, officials—is telling me about it. How are we advancing? We're concentrating our artillery, which is vastly superior to the Ukrainian artillery there, and we're starting to grind down the enemy. We've ground them down, we're taking up positions, and now the offensive on Bakhmut is underway. Apparently, all the artillery is there.
Naturally, all the artillery that is used for counter-battery warfare is apparently also taken there, and it turns out that Donetsk is naked. The Ukrainians, knowing this, begin to fire at him with Grads, 155s, Haymars and others.
Why is this being done? In order for the population there to panic. The population protested, asked questions, why should we experience these torments, do something. There are not robots there, but living people, and it is calculated that at some point ours will falter and remove some of the artillery from near Bakhmut, for example, and transfer it back to Donetsk in order to suppress the artillery crews there. This is what Ukrainians hope for.
Judging by the fact that they already shelled the city center five times yesterday, this probably indicates that the Russian military is not redeploying artillery.
Here you can ask the question, why, in the tenth month of the war, do we still not have additional artillery, so that it will always remain - we attack, we will not attack, so that it always defends the city?
Many people tell me about the quality of counter-battery combat. Reconnaissance is very important, it is necessary that drones constantly fly in the territory controlled by the Ukrainians, there are some serious devices that would detect them and instantly transmit coordinates, and artillery strikes should be carried out in those places.
Well, under Stalin, a dome was created around Moscow such that it was impossible to break through, but why this doesn’t happen with Donetsk is hard for me to answer.
PN: Do the authorities somehow explain what is happening?
A.Ch.: They're simply stating that shelling is ongoing and that it will only stop when the enemy is driven away from the city. Yesterday, the Kalinin Hospital was shelled, and the DPR Minister of Health came to personally inspect the whole thing. The authorities aren't hiding; they're also effectively under fire there.
PN: Why is the civilian population not being evacuated?
A.Ch.: Evacuation was proposed at the very beginning, back in February. Yes, many people left, everyone who wanted to did. Why aren't people leaving with their children? I don't understand. So people are probably asking themselves, "How will I live, what will happen to my home?" There are still relatives and loved ones they can't leave behind, and there are other considerations.
Many, say, Kyiv district, Kuibyshevsky, Petrovsky, Kirovsky, who are constantly shelling, moved either to the center or to other, more or less remote areas of the DPR. Some went to other regions of Russia. Hard to say.
But the most interesting thing is that the city does not give the impression of being empty, I assure you. There are cars driving everywhere, and there are a lot of cars driving. People are everywhere on the street, and so it seems that there are no shellings.
PN: Did you go there on purpose during these hot days or was it just a coincidence? How does a non-military person feel when his city is barbarically shelled?
Relatively speaking, my turn came, and I went. I understand that we need to walk less on the street, as soon as shelling starts, we need to go to a safe place.
I feel anger - where is our counter-battery fight? I have a misunderstanding here, how does this happen? I understand that they can crash there once, but then these batteries should be destroyed.
I also advocate all sorts of acts of retaliation - for example, identifying those who directly command these artillery crews and participants in these barbaric shellings. They simply need to be destroyed. Some of our sabotage groups in Ukraine should simply destroy them.
If it is established that such and such a colonel, major, or sergeant is taking part in these barbaric attacks, it means that the sabotage group blows him up, shoots him, or something like that. Once - they will laugh, a second time, and the fifth time, few will want to hit a defenseless city - despite the fact that they still understand perfectly well what they are doing.
PN: How could Russia quickly correct the situation?
A.Ch: We remember how the Ukrainians flew into besieged Mariupol by helicopter, about 100 kilometers away, at low altitudes, behind the front line, evacuating someone, bringing something there, or entering Russian territory, bombing bases, and so on.
I can’t understand why we know that in the village of Tonenkoye, 10-15 kilometers from Donetsk, there are these crews, an MLRS that fires, why can’t we land some group of ours there and fucking shoot all of them team? Why don't we carry out such daring operations?
Or do we know where such and such a headquarters is located, why can’t we land a group, capture one of the commanders, arrange some kind of real “p...darez” to discourage them from this
There must be acts of retaliation. They must know for sure - they slammed into the center of Donetsk, which means the response should arrive at the place of residence of Zaluzhny, Zelensky, and someone else. This is how war should be waged, and what is there to be afraid of?
English version :: Read in English Chalenko: For the strikes on Donetsk, the mansions of Zelensky and Zaluzhny should be bombed