Kryvbas Battalion Curator Mykola Kolesnyk on Ilovaisk: If the State Does Not Answer for a Mass Killing, It Is Not a State

He also believes a trial in the Ilovaisk case should begin, that Russians should be charged in absentia, and that the case should be dissected in minute detail.

The new episode of the program “Antipody” on the Island TV channel is devoted to the “buried crime” of the Ilovaisk tragedy. In an interview, Kryvbas battalion curator Mykola Kolesnyk spoke about the course of the operation, the negotiations and those responsible. 

Russian troops enter. How does the cauldron form? 

How the cauldron formed, we will get to in the chronology as we go along, what our senior leadership did. We have a criminal case in progress now, where they acknowledge that the Russians entered on the 25th or 26th. That is how it is defined in the criminal case, roughly so. What a day means.

That cannot be. By August 24 everyone already knew everything. The parade was still going on and everyone already knew.

By the way, there were two parades. The first was in Kyiv, and Petro Oleksiyovych flew to the other parade, they drank and celebrated already in Odesa.

I mean the Kyiv parade. And they already knew about Ilovaisk. 

At that time, intelligence, the sector, everyone was reporting a direct invasion. What a day it was when they allowed all the actions to be carried out. Dig in and all that. And what is happening. Tactically and strategically, in the military direction nothing is happening, they are waiting.

And on August 26, Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko, and this is very important, you will appreciate this professionally, we will evaluate it now, I will consult with you as with a lawyer, meets with Vladimir Putin in Minsk. Directly on this situation. And they issue orders to their chiefs of general staff to coordinate the exit route.

Ours call it the “green corridor,” while all Russian pages use the phrase “humanitarian corridor.” And when the Prosecutor General’s Office says it is the same thing, it is not. There is no definition of “green,” “orange,” or “pink.” The definition in international law is “humanitarian,” for the evacuation of refugees. In natural disasters, in military operations. It is strictly a humanitarian phenomenon.

Without weapons, without equipment.

Demilitarized to zero. At first, all the Russian messages were about a humanitarian corridor. 

Is it known for certain what they agreed on? A green one or a humanitarian one? 

Let us move on. About the fact that the leaders, this is direct speech, this is what I am saying, it is in the public domain: a computer, the internet, Google, Putin’s speech, Poroshenko’s speech. The general staff chiefs received it, okay. On the morning of August 27, Muzhenko’s direct statement in an interview with Radio Liberty: he received a political order, an order from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, to hold negotiations with the General Staff of the Russian Federation.

About coordinating the routes and geo-points, marking everything on the maps, how our columns would exit. This is his direct statement. You watch him and your hair stands on end. The guy calls Gerasimov, who is the chief of the Russian General Staff. Then Gerasimov flew to China, and his first deputy, General Bogdanovsky, stayed in his place. And they discuss it with him. Locally, at the tactical level, everyone received everything.

The routes of the column movements were agreed upon. Two versions were considered. This is also Muzhenko’s direct statement. In small groups to the south toward Mariupol and, if memory serves, Khomchak proposed a single strike toward Debaltseve, a counterstrike, no one expected it there. But this is Muzhenko’s direct statement. He says Poroshenko said we would do as agreed, as agreed in Minsk, so we do.

It gets even more interesting, I would like people to know. Our chief of the General Staff called the Russians 12 times over an intergovernmental line, this is his direct statement, and coordinated everything. And on August 28 at 22:30, again this is his direct statement, Bogdanovsky, deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, calls him and says that no one with weapons and military equipment will be let out. This is Muzhenko’s direct statement.

But on the morning of August 29, our troops were sent along the routes agreed with the Russians. Where they let them in, and then shot them point-blank. They simply shot them. With everything that was available. 

That is, Muzhenko, knowing that our troops would not be let out with equipment and weapons…

Khomchak made the agreement himself. He is simply distancing himself from this situation. The chief of the General Staff knows that your people, if they go along the routes in the morning, will be shot, and he, well, the “B” sector, some Guatemala, not Ukrainian troops, he simply disowns them, because if you know the consequences, you are the chief of the General Staff. 

Is there any document about what was reported? We must find out the key point. If Muzhenko knew that our military personnel would not be let out with equipment and weapons, and that if they went with equipment and weapons they would be destroyed, what was he supposed to do? Is there any report, was he supposed to inform someone, and so on?

I can only say one thing: when I heard it, his interview, that he knew, and in the morning these consequences, the guys up there are passing Ilovaisk around like a hot potato.

No one wants to take responsibility. 

Is Khomchak guilty, or is someone else guilty too, someone who negotiated. There are the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Who specifically was responsible for them, for all the armed forces that were there?

The chief of the General Staff, the commander-in-chief. 

Muzhenko?

Muzhenko. But he was carrying out the order on negotiations from Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko. 

No, well, that is clear. There is the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. 

It is very convenient to drag in Korban, Kolomoisky, Semen, the volunteer battalions. And to say that they made some decision on their own there. 

But they were there too. Who gave them the order to go in? Who were they subordinate to? General Nazarov?

What I saw in the case file: a certain number of police officers, militiamen back then, and National Guard representatives. The ATO headquarters directly ordered their presence, control and participation in the operation from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Colonel General Yarovyi, deputy minister of internal affairs, was there with them, directly on site. 

The Donbas battalion was in the National Guard of Ukraine. That is, someone had to give them the order to go in there. Who did they receive the order from?

I am telling you, the deputy minister was there.

Who personally coordinated the actions of all the subordinates.

There on site. I saw him, I spoke with him, and he was there. 

And from whom could he have received it? Was he subordinate to Muzhenko? 

All the units that took part in the anti-terrorist operation were subordinate to the person in charge, that is Muzhenko and Nazarov, the chief of the General Staff. It is convenient to say they were spontaneous, no. But this is easy to verify. I do not even want to argue there, when they say the operation was invented by the regional state administration. Please, interrogation, investigators. 

Well, our task now is to establish how it happened. Because these versions concern whether Semenchenko decided on his own to go in, or whether Korban decided on his own to go in, or whether there was that secret meeting. We are now trying, with you, to investigate at the directive level what happened. 

Look, judging by the signs, when aviation, large-caliber artillery and tanks are brought in, this is not the regional administration. 

For me this is not a question at all. I remember how in May and June 2014, when they did not even want to issue weapons, and I understand all of this perfectly well. How hard it was even to resolve the issue with the regional police back then, let alone with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. No, well, it was resolved, that is a different matter.

So that we do not scatter our thoughts all over the place, we are investigating strictly in chronological order what happened, and drawing conclusions at each of these stages. Good.

Could the troops at the level of battalion commanders, at the level of the heads of our military units, have independently decided to leave this border area? As far as I know this topic, I know they were told there would be a corridor, come out. Who said this?

The operation on site was directly commanded by General Khomchak. 

General Khomchak was subordinate to General Muzhenko. Is it known whether Muzhenko gave Khomchak an order? 

And here is the next series. Venediktova and the SBU petitioned in my presence, two meetings with the families of the dead, others were invited too, I was invited. In the program “Right to Power” it was loudly said that 40 of 70 volumes had the “classified” stamp removed.

And on the website of the Prosecutor General’s Office there is an “Ilovaisk” section, but there is nothing there, these 40 declassified volumes have not appeared. Because there is still no third expert examination, which the Prosecutor General already announced, and the “classified” stamp has still not been removed from a single document that she announced. 

That is, we are not being told who specifically gave the order, knowing for certain that the military could or would be destroyed. 

I apologize, we have a General Staff, negotiations with the General Staff of the Russian Federation, and based on the results of those negotiations, the chief of the General Staff tells the head of the sector orders and instructions. We do not have a common pot there, not a meeting sitting at a table.

I understand. But the state, including law enforcement agencies, has so far failed in eight years to deliver a final public conclusion. 

Do you know what happened? 

What? 

They came out on themselves. And the hell with anyone declassifying anything. There is state treason written on the forehead like a brand. You have a thousand a day, two days, three days, terrible losses. They knew the Russians would shoot, and still the troops went into the corridor. Seven years the prosecutor’s office and the SBU have been supposedly investigating with great fuss. I will explain why I have doubts. In general this is a buried crime. Everything is being done so that it becomes a buried crime.

Thank you for not letting us bury this crime. When the main witness has not been questioned, the one who conducted the negotiations about this corridor, Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko. I do not want to provoke violent emotions, as before, I want to speak with a relatively cool head.

If you were deceived by the Russians, so bloodily deceived, where are our criminal cases directly against the Russians? Not ephemeral ones against Shoigu or someone, but against battalion commanders, tactical group commanders, commanders of artillery units who shot our people. We have this data. 

Is there any data that any Russians were served with suspicions and convicted in a special procedure? 

No one, really. 

Are these individuals known? 

Of course. First, those who were taken prisoner are identified directly, they have commanders and so on. We have everything recorded. 

Good. We will proceed with you chronologically. Next. Our people begin to exit and they immediately open fire on them. Open fire from what? 

From everything that was available. 

So our people exited in one column or two, right? About how many people were in these columns? 

Honestly, I will not say how many, maybe one was bigger and one smaller. But more than five hundred, if all the calculations were counted, there were 1,200 to 1,400, so divide by two. Then, how many guys got out through the sunflower fields as well.

If we had access to the case materials, if the state were investigating this, then we would not have to operate in orders of magnitude now, and we would be speaking in specific figures.

So I just ask that you not take this as some kind of arrogance or inattention to detail. We simply do not have all the details, unfortunately, in the eighth year of this tragedy. 

The dead on the battlefield are one thing, but how many maimed. How many wounded, how many later from wounds, illnesses, disabilities, how many people gave their lives. In our battalion there are already more than 20 guys: cancer, heart attacks, strokes. After Ilovaisk, after Debaltseve. Are these not losses? They are the same losses. Ilovaisk is catching up. What I am saying is that the number of losses itself, I would also count who, when, and as a result of what.

Do you believe that anyone will ever be punished for this at all? 

That is the hardest question lately. I believe, because I can do something for it. But those who remind people of it can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The 29th, showy events, no normal people will walk. Only their own will walk. There is a Facebook group “Ilovaisk Brotherhood”, 1,200 to 1,300 people, I do not remember exactly now. And almost all of them are connected to one another.

Among themselves they can quarrel, swear, say “you did not fight right” and so on. But it exists. And these are people who remember, it hurts them. There are also hundreds of families and relatives of those servicemen who were burned in the corridor. They began burning them there in Zelenopillia. There are families of the missing. If we stop believing, you and I… You do not have to sit and answer in order to know the truth.

For this, you need to go to court, you need to charge the Russians in absentia. Everyone who touched our fighter, officer, whether captured or not, whoever shot, must be made a suspect. It needs to be dissected in minute detail. If the state does not answer for such a crime, a mass killing, then I do not believe in the state. It is not a state.

Let us imagine this had happened in a developed country of our partners. And how do our partners look when this happened to us, and they look at the state’s reaction. We say NATO, bloc, standards, dry rations there. Why do people still not know the truth, why is the case still not in court. I can accuse someone, I can be hated for anything, but I am providing this information.

Do not look at me, listen to what I am saying. Maybe I am not the best person in this world, that is true. But where are you so righteous and patriotic, if your tongues are up your asses and you forget about Ilovaisk, you forget en masse. You simply forget about it. People are watching us, and we have a thousand a day. And the state gives no reaction at all. None.

You can hate anyone you want: Khomchak, Muzhenko, the commanders, Semen, Bereza, go to court, get the true facts. Let the country see through the court, through an open trial, what actually happened in the end. Not Biryukov-style legends to shield Petya, but the truth. In court. So that there are witnesses. Let it take a year, two, three, but an answer must be given. Then Debaltseve to court. Why the hell was Logvinove given up, and the whole grouping was encircled. Kryvbas also bled out over this.