“For those who criticize the militia for its weakness, I encourage you to come here and taste the situation yourself.”
Igor Girkin
Slavyansk 2014.
Alexander Zhuchkovsky’s 85 Days in Slavyansk is a fascinating peek into the ‘rebel’ side of what transpired in the city of Slavyansk through the turbulent days of 2014. There has never been a book in the English language like it. An account by a man who played a role in starting what would become a gruesome series of battles & skirmishes fought in eastern Ukraine, culminating in the Russo-Ukranian war a little under a decade later.
It tells the tale of how a group of highly motivated men, no more than a skeletal company, with AK-74s & Makarovs, kick started a siege that eventually snowballed into a full blown war in the Donbass. Of how idealism, indecisiveness & politicking created that toxic mix of ‘Stahlgewittern’ in the region that once more burns under the thunder of guns & bombs. Of how he and his companions fought, lived & died for a cause that never fully succeeded. Of hope & despair.
Unlike other books, it contains material one can cross reference in real time— videos, photos, names & reports. It simultaneously supplements these sources with personal experience & hitherto unknown snippets of information; creating, in the end, a kaleidoscopic narrative of those fateful ‘85 Days in Slavyansk’.
It is for some of these very reasons that the book is such an important read. It allows a reference point for comparison; a source to help judge how effectively Russia’s war in Ukraine is being led & fought. From tactics to personalities, it allows the reader an opportunity to learn what made Zhuchkovsky’s comrades so successful & why in 2022, a NATO peer power is unable to repeat the same magic— even as it fights against what used to be a second rate military.
While one may be inclined to account for bias with such a work, given it comes from a direct participant in the siege, it nevertheless serves as an important piece of literature in understanding what happened during those 85 days in Slavyansk. One is to expect embellishments & strategic omissions but to condemn the work as wholly irrelevant is to waste a precious opportunity to study the factors of military success.
“He is an idealist and quite gifted in the art of war, but has an even more important quality. He has the skill to convince men and inspire their confidence. He is tough and decisive, but at the same time is also naive and gullible. This contrasted with others in his circle”
Yury Yurchenko on Igor Girkin.
While the book contains plenty of action to keep even the most casual of readers engaged, it’s real value lies in the insights it offers. Given the proximity of the author to the leader of the company & his meticulous collection of first hand reports from other combatants (& non combatants), the book is a tremendous store of value for anyone looking to learn more about who said leader was & the men who fought under his command in the early days of the conflict.
So who was this leader? Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin; better known by his nom de guerre— Igor Ivanovich Strelkov or Strelkov.
The book itself has a chapter dedicated to him but for the purposes of brevity, it suffices to say that he is an ideologically driven man with a penchant for embroiling himself in military conflicts. He was involved in the Transnistrian conflict, served as a volunteer in a reconnaissance group (& as a mortar man) for the Serbians in Bosnia before taking part in the First Chechen War as an artilleryman. He became involved with the FSB during the Second Chechen War & the subsequent counterinsurgency effort in the region. He continued his affiliation with the FSB right up to his retirement. Heading to Crimea after putting in his papers, he helped the Kremlin annex the peninsula.
Strelkov is also a person who has accrued a list of serious accusations over the years— ranging from his time in Bosnia, through Chechnya & into Donbass. While not all of these accusations can be proven given the covert nature of his role in some, the effects of time & the highly circumstantial (& limited) evidence presented— it bears remembering that he was the commander of the men now stand accused of the downing of the MH17 (strong evidence for which exists).
With this as context, it becomes easier to understand why his opinions are considered with some seriousness vis a vis the current Russo-Ukrainian War. As the book itself explains, in some detail, he was a man involved in the annexation of Crimea— the person who lead the “Crimean Company” across the Ukrainian border, the man who commanded the Slavyansk garrison & ultimately the man who became the “Minister of Defence” for the breakaway Donetsk People's Republic.
“So why is there any optimism? From our small successes? Those are purely tactical. Strategically, we are losing. Officials in the Russian Federation are outright sabotaging the prospects of supporting New Russia”
Igor Girkin
16 June 2014.
Quite curiously, he has since earned the reputation of a ‘Doomer’— an internet term given to a person who is perennially pessimistic or nihilistic on a given issue. The book even alludes to this in certain chapters where it is stated that many serving under him thought of his bleak outlook on their situation as an elaborate ruse to pull one over the Ukrainians who were always listening into his conversations & reading his statements.
When people asses Strelkov’s analysis, they often point to the the many tactical victories his under-armed & rag tag militia managed to score over the Ukrainians during the siege. Victories they believe stand in stark contrast to to his almost never ending reports of despair. After all, his enemy, a professional army was losing men & material at disproportionate rates to his significantly weaker force. The book may even deepen such a perception amongst some readers, given the attention it pays to the destruction, capture & re-purposing of Ukrainian equipment.
So. Was he a doomer?
The author provides some insight into how Strelkov was evaluating the situation unfolding over those critical days in the east. Strelkov may not be an optimist but he definitely does not seem to be the perpetual pessimist either. When one learns of his mindset leading up to the action in Slavyansk & the eventual betrayal of his hopes by the Russian Federation, it becomes all to clear why he was often in such a dour mood.
The book does not pull punches when it talks of what was expected by many of the individuals involved & Strelkov himself— a repeat of what happened in Crimea. A bloodless & swift takeover of territory by “little green men” with the possibility of direct absorption into the Federation. These men were ideologically driven after all; idealists & romantics fighting for what they considered a just & righteous cause.
This never happened. Instead the rebellious regions were left in limbo, almost defeated in the ATO operation the Ukrainians launched, had to settle into a ‘hot peace’ after the Minsk agreements & were hollowed out economically— living conditions no better, if not worse, than when they were under Ukrainian authority.
What good are minor tactical gains when the strategic initiative & goal is slipping away slowly but surely?
Victory? A bitter one maybe.
“We can destroy another hundred BTRs and kill another 500 soldiers, but the overall balance of forces would barely change. The ratio would be reduced from 1 to 15 to 1 to 14. Almost everyday we have to abandon a large settlement since there is no one and nothing to defend them with. And we can’t go on the attack since we have nothing with which to oppose the heavy weapons of the Ukrainians. We can only fight defensively.”
Igor Girkin
16 June 2014.
The experience of Slavyansk was not a pretty one for Strelkov. If the book is to be believed, most support for his troops came from interested civilian parties in Russia rather than from the government directly. The Kremlin may have turned a blind eye to the quantities of weaponry & men flowing across the border into Donbass but was reticent in getting itself mixed up in the events unfolding in Slavyansk by providing any serious support.
Strelkov was fighting under a cloud of uncertainty for most of his time in the city. He expected to be an anonymous cog in the machine, like he was in Crimea; instead he was made the public face of a siege. A siege fought by lightly armed hodgepodge of volunteers, many of whom had little military experience. Tanks, IFVs, artillery, anti tank weaponry, ammunition & even firearms were all sorely lacking as the the book points out. Under such duress, with such high stakes, it does beg the question; who would remain upbeat or positive in their outlook?
Speaking of high stakes, it bears mentioning that the actions of Strelkov & his ‘Originals’ were in the grey area of the law in the eyes of the Kremlin— at least if the author is to be believed. An entire chapter is devoted to exploring the sponsors of Strelkov & possible explanations for the sponsorship.
Whatever be the case, one thing was amply clear— capture involved certain torture & death. Greater still, it would seem for Strelkov, was the possibility of their actions fizzing away to waste as the Federation stood by & negotiated with the Ukrainians as the siege of Slavyansk continued. This sentiment is often repeated throughout the book, interspersed between paragraphs.
When such a macro perspective is considered it is a little easier to buy the argument being implicitly made here; that Strelkov is a realist, given to cynicism at times perhaps but certainly not the personification of senseless nihilism he has been made out to be in some circles.
“The rhetoric of Russian Federation officials was toned down after the New Russia project was shut down. In those circles, the promotion of “Russianness” disappeared, the “Russian Spring” was renamed the “Crimean Spring”, and state media refused to mention Strelkov’s role in the Crimean operation (he was one of the first men to occupy the Supreme Council of Crimea).”
The Russian ‘Realism vs Idealism’ quandary is also something that features prominently in the pages of this book. The passion & drive of the ‘true believers’ among Strelkov’s band contrasting with the cold, often dithering but pragmatic bureaucratic juggling of the Kremlin hands. One cannot help but feel the underlying bitterness & dislike towards the latter while reading of how Russia sought to manage the outburst of violence in the Donbass, post Crimea.
The information offered proves useful in examining how the execution of the Kremlin’s territorial ambitions often contradicts or betrays the expectation of the ideologically motivated it uses as tools, sometimes expendable, for it’s own ends. When needed, it sings a song of ethnocentrism & when it becomes undesirable, it is discarded. Almost as if they & it never even existed; the people & cause, used & supported, often left out in the cold.
Cold Realpolitik?
Even though the Kremlin would choose to intervene militarily in Ukraine a little while after the events described in this book occur, it’s decisions would transmute the unwanted aborted breakaway regions into economically impotent States— one that over the years only drew in the larger powers of NATO into funding their enemies.
While it is easy to argue that such actions point to the Kremlin trying be responsible by reining in unruly characters from plunging the region into chaos, it proves an insufficient answer to why the Kremlin allowed such characters to base & launch their operation from Russian territory in the first place. A strategic miscalculation? How much of this is a result of bureaucratic management & how much of it strategic genius remains a question asked, excused away & re-asked.
In the context of Kremlin’s second invasion of Ukraine, these very themes once again find themselves being explored. From talking of ‘Denazification’ & ‘Disarmament’ of the entire country to having to draw down it’s military aims; Kremlin’s aims & objectives are once more up for debate. Given the vague nature of some of the rhetoric & the many arrests & purges, one does wonder if this is ‘all according to plan’ or dysfunction being presented as some kind of esoteric strategic practice.
Indeed, much of this confusion can also be seen in how Russia’s 2022 “Special Military Operation” has unfolded. From attempting ‘glubokaya operatsiya’ to having to retreat in the face of ever increasing logistical strain to switching to attrition based battle plans— Kremlin appointed Suvorovs appear to be little more than Baldricks with funny accents.
The book does a wonderful job in showing how Russia papered over it’s shortcomings by having to deal with a Ukraine that had seen it’s military hollowed out, it’s political establishment in turmoil & a power vacuum that only added more fuel to the fire. Convincing many of their ‘might’ & ‘abilities’ was possibly the greatest success the Kremlin had in this post Crimean Ukraine; a PR victory that inflated the Russian Security Establishment just enough to be seen as a NATO peer in conventional conflicts.
It is striking to observe how many of the ‘true believers’, at least those who survived, ended up being largely forgotten (or assassinated) by the Kremlin as Strelkov’s little putsch spiralled into a deadly waltz for control & influence in the region. Strelkov himself was later ‘removed’ due to his no-nonsense attitude & friction with some Kremlin appointed Ukraine hands. Though not meeting the same fate as Pavlov or Zakharchenko, he had his wings clipped.
He now watches from his Moscow residence as the fire he lit claims thousands of lives; unable to play the role he desires, relegated to putting out videos & long Telegram posts on the state of the war. Perhaps the finest example of state of Russian ‘Realpolitik’— an opportunity squandered?
This behaviour is made all the more biting when one gets into the victories Strelkov’s men were able to score during the siege. From using their limited indirect fires to savage Ukrainian positions to the numerous ambushes to the downing of helicopters & capture of Ukrainian equipment. Outnumbered & outgunned but still consistently getting one over their enemies, the “militia” became quite the thorn in the side of the new government.
The descriptions of these actions cover a significant chunk of the book. It is no wonder that so many think Strelkov was a little too pessimistic, considering how spectacular some of their victories were.
It goes to show how motivated & skilled men with a bit of confidence & aid can punch far above their weight— a lesson seemingly lost on the Russian Army dragging itself across the Donbass in the 2022. After all, Strelkov’s little company was a little more than a few AKs & Makarovs strong when they stormed their first building in Slavyansk.
Ukrainian command for it’s part was anything but competent in 2014. They had to rely heavily on paramilitary forces for their manpower needs while fighting defections in an atmosphere of uncertainty. If the book is to be believed, many of the men who fought the Slavyansk insurrectionists did so unwillingly & often the only thing that kept them loyal to Ukraine was “unit ethics”.
Of particular note is how numerous informal peace agreements existed between Strelkov’s men & the Ukrainians sent to put an end to their actions. Among Ukrainian units there was a general sentiment of avoiding bloodshed as much as possible till they were rotated out— if the book is taken at face value. This would also help explain why the Ukrainian reaction in the Donbass was so tepid at the outset.
Another interesting titbit in the book is the decision by the Ukrainians to lay siege to the city rather than show initiative, absorb the required losses & put an end to a potentially fatal problem— a point made by Strelkov. The 85 days of dithering would eventually cost them a significant chunk of their land in the Donbass as the Russians intervened just as the Ukrainians seemed to be getting the situation back under control.
As one would expect, the Ukrainians later paid a heavy price in their bid to re-take the breakaway Donbass regions. While they managed to overcome the materially weaker insurgents at the outset, things began to take a darker turn once Russia became increasingly involved in the region culminating in events such as the Ilovaisk massacre & the loss of Debaltseve.
“Armaments arriving in the Donbass were not distributed as they were needed. Each militia commander had their own supply chain. Deliveries went to Slavyansk, Gorlovka, and Donetsk separately. By mid-June, Bezler already had two Grad rocket artillery pieces, Stronghold and East each had five, and Slavyansk had no Grads despite two months of heavy fighting. Slavyansk had a mere two tanks at that time.”
While Strelkov’s band did pull off some pretty incredible victories, they were just as beset by problems. From logistics, ego clashes, infighting & having to deal with less than savoury elements on their own side of the fence; it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Strelkov.
The book does a remarkable job in showing how their garrison saw supplies dwindle & their positions weaken as other regional commanders defending fronts largely at peace appropriated many of the weapons, IFVs & vehicles that would have sustained & strengthened Strelkov’s control over his area of operations.
There are several references to how they often had issues arming all of their men as required. Most of their losses described in the latter half of the book is possibly a direct consequence of this issue. The concentration of Ukrainian armour & manpower would force over matches eventually causing the defence to break or be literally blown away by tanks & artillery.
This issue is only made more obvious by the fact that even though Strelkov began receiving motivated veterans with invaluable experience, they could do little other than watch as their positions were ground down by tanks against which they had little to no reply.
Much like the Volkssturm, many of the battle saw incredible courage meet grisly ends at the end of HE shells. The book documents more than one instance of how in certain instances, all the men had were anti tank rifles of second world war vintage to stop T-64s barrelling down towards their positions. A lack of heavy weapons ultimately meant a battle fought on the terms of their enemies— one that became increasingly costly as the artillery worked itself on the cities, trench lines & fortified positions.
An interesting episode of miscommunication or possible over confidence is the armoured group ordered to launch a demonstration to distract a Ukrainian checkpoint as their comrades made a break for Kramatorsk. Eight armoured vehicles engaged the checkpoint but instead of firing & pulling back, charged headlong into the position. What followed was the near total destruction of the group, with only two vehicles managing to make it back to friendly lines.
“By 1 July, the situation in Nikolayevka changed dramatically after Sapper left the city with his company. Strelkov publicly called Sapper and his men deserters and accused them of leaving a weak point in the militia’s defenses. This weak point gave the Ukrainians the opportunity to capture Nikolayevka on 3 July and allowed for the Ukrainians to fully encircle Slavyansk.”
The most striking example of toxicity borne from personality clashes proving fatal is Igor “Sapper” Ukrainyets abandonment of his position at the behest of another commander— Igor “Demon” Bezler. Of Sapper’s company sized element that comprised of 124 fighters, only 5 would be able to make it back into the city upon discovering they were duped. Though his position would be filled by a smaller contingent & the position held for some time, the fact that he took the anti tank weapons & so many men with him caused the flank to eventually collapse & the city to fall; allowing Slavyansk to be completely encircled.
The incident, as previously mentioned, is only one manifestation of broader ego & personality clashes that the book hints at or mentions. It is made obvious that while Strelkov was respected by those who served under him, he had his fair share of detractors who continued to question & reproach him for his actions in Slavyansk.
“As a result, large masses of men become big targets. This was demonstrated near Slavyansk and Donetsk. The Ukrainian army, though vastly superior in numbers and technical equipment, couldn’t really do anything to us and suffered heavy losses. They suffered such losses due to their tendency to crowd together. Their vehicles and equipment would be moved together in large numbers, and we took advantage of this. Our platoons used small unit tactics to attack them. We probed the enemy, pinned him down, and fired our artillery and mortars at him. Because of this, the enemy would suffer heavy losses from small numbers of our men.”
Igor Strelkov
In a seemingly odd plot twist, the 2022 invasion makes it appear as if the Russians & L/DNR forces have become what the Ukrainian Armed Forces were in 2014. The lack of initiative, poor morale, reliance on siege tactics, inflexibility at the tactical level, poor leadership & vague strategic end goals has led to what can only be described as a slaughter. Things are certainly not helped by the fact that elite units have been largely spent or are worn down to the point of warranting being pulled off the line.
The Hostomel landings, attempted blitz of Kharkiv, positional battles around Kiev & the grind to take Mariupol all eventually cost significant time, resources & initiative on the part of the Russians. More worryingly, many of these units had their reconnaissance units absorb a lot of punishment, severely degrading the ability of the unit to get a feel of their position & probe for potential weak points.
Much of this is eerily similar to what happened in 2014 when Ukraine fought in much the same way Russia is today.
Much of the planning & execution of the Kremlin’s strategy seems to have been copied straight from a slapstick comedy. A multi axis attempt to seize key cities & cripple the government petered out in a matter of weeks. Units that pushed too far were ambushed & destroyed, logistical lines were left unprotected causing them to be regularly targeted by territorial defence forces & unsecured communications usually spelt doom for the command of the unit.
On the other hand the humiliation suffered at the hands of Russia & it’s proxies seems to have spurred change amongst the Ukrainians. While the process of shifting to a NATO standard force is still ongoing, some of the changes seem to have borne fruit. Powers being devolved has meant younger officers at a tactical level are able to make better decisions faster.
The decision to be more flexible has allowed units to deal damage the kind Strelkov’s men were doling out during their time in Ukraine. An interest in small unit tactics coinciding with the imports of western arms & use of drones has meant a drastic improvement in the ability of a well trained squad to cause mayhem as witnessed in the opening stages of the recent war.
“The defense of Slavyansk was important in the initial period of the Donbass Uprising. But according to the well-known words of Engels “defense is the death of every armed uprising”.”
Offensive operations in 2014 could have achieved many of the limited aims the Kremlin is spending itself to achieve in 2022. With Strelkov at the helm of affairs, veterans & charismatic commanders leading departments & companies & with the rot that had set in near completely in the Ukrainian security apparatus, the possible ‘What If?’ of a push from Slavyansk to secure more territory is a tantalizing scenario to consider.
As the book points out, the decision to invade & seize Crimea was swift & carried out like clockwork. When it comes to the Donbass however, there was reticence; a giant question mark over what to do next. The lull allowed for volunteers, humanitarian aid & some arms to travel across the border but it was too little too late in the case of Slavyansk.
Indeed, it is not much of a stretch to argue that the Kremlin is responsible for the bloody hot peace that followed the Minsk agreements. By not decisively engaging at the right moment where the odds were largely in their favour, conflict was only delayed.
The losses Russians & their L/DNR proxies have suffered in the second invasion are monstrous. Never in the post USSR world have so many Russians been killed so quickly. Much of the killing & dying is done over the same fields, cities & agglomeration of small towns that surround Slavyansk— some of them occupied by his garrison during the events of 2014. What makes this more macabre is the fact that as of the writing of this piece, the war is yet to conclude; it rages on in the east & south of the country, claiming, without fail, a healthy mix of man & material every single day.
The can was kicked down the road; the can came back to haunt the Kremlin.