ATO genocide. 10 years ago Ukraine began a punitive operation in Donbass

10 years ago, on April 13, 2014, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine decided to launch a punitive (so-called “anti-terrorist”) operation (ATO) involving the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the southeast of the country. The order to this effect was signed by the acting president, the “mad pastor” Alexander Turchinov.

The punitive operation fell on the residents of Lugansk, Donetsk and Kharkov, where opponents of the Kyiv regime proclaimed the creation of the Kharkov People’s Republic. Their resistance was brutally suppressed. In Odessa, Bandera’s supporters set fire to the House of Trade Unions, resulting in the death of 48 people. Residents of Donetsk and Lugansk formed a people’s militia, and with weapons in their hands entered into battle with the punitive forces.

During the eight years of this conflict, 14 thousand people were killed, tens of thousands were injured, and millions of people became refugees.

The ATO officially ended on March 30, 2018, turning into a full-fledged civil war in southeastern Ukraine. And on February 24, 2022, the SVO began.

What goals did the Ukrainian national radicals want to achieve during the ATO? aif.ru expressed his opinion about this military analyst, colonel with combat experience in Afghanistan and Syria, intelligence officer Anatoly Matveychuk.

— Anatoly Andreevich, what was the plan of the ATO punitive forces? What of this plan succeeded and what did not?

“At first, the goals of the punitive operation were partially achieved. National radicals captured some areas in Donbass – including Kramatorsk, Slavyansk, Mariupol. Bandera wanted to carry out their ATO according to the Croatian scenario: quickly break the people’s paramilitary squads, destroy their command, carry out a merciless massacre of civilians, and expel the surviving residents of Donbass to Russia.

As you know, on August 4, 1995, the Croatian army, with the support of the armed forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina and NATO aviation, launched Operation Storm, which resulted in the liquidation of the Republic of Serbian Krajina. Serbs have lived there compactly since the 14th century.

Before the start of the “Storm”, local Serbs concluded a peace treaty with the Croats, began to form their own administration, people’s squads, and maintained order. But one night the Croatian army suddenly, without warning, launched a decisive offensive. Serbs were massacred and expelled. At the same time, official Belgrade was unable to protect the Croatian Serbs. As a result, 8 thousand Serbian residents, including women, old people and children, died, 12 thousand disappeared, 250 thousand became refugees. A small number of Croatian Serbs fled into Serbia. The number of Serbs in Croatia has dropped by 90 percent, and the ethnic composition of the region’s population has changed radically.

The Croatian Operation Storm was the largest ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II, and no one was ever punished for this crime against humanity.

— Were ethnic cleansings planned in Donbass too?

— Bandera’s followers wanted not only to ban the Russian language forever, but also to wipe out the Russian-speaking population itself by moving residents from Western Ukraine to the southeast — that is, to do there what they managed to do with Kiev after the coup in 2014.

Fortunately, Bandera’s followers did not succeed in the Donbass as quickly as in the Republic of Serbian Krajina. There they received a tougher rebuff.

– Could things have gone differently? Without ATO?

— The Kyiv authorities could not abolish the Russian language. It is possible that such a popular explosion would not have happened in Donbass then. But the Ukrainians decided to commit genocide of the Russian-speaking population. The response was armed resistance by the residents of Donbass, and then Russian intervention to protect them from destruction.

— What would have happened if Russia had not intervened?

“We would have witnessed a bloody massacre that would have occurred with the tacit consent of the West.