Mozgovoi: The Warlord of Donbass

Part II: The Mozgovoi mutiny against Moscow

This is part II of our review of Alexander Zhuchkovski’s biography on the famous Donbass rebellion leader, Alexei Mozgovoi. It was translated and submitted by Dr. Livci and edited by Rurik Skywalker. For Part I, see here:

For those interested in these sorts of niche deep dives into Slavlands lore this next installment should be a fairly “black-pilling” (read: truthful) one, especially if you lean pro-Russian in your political sympathies.

The Inconvenient Truth About the Donbass Rebellion

The truth has a tendency to leave everyone with an egg on their face — that is why it is always so unpopular. If you are a member of the Zanon 5D Judo-Chess enthusiasts club (a naive optimist or a paid shill) you will be forced to make some painful admissions today. First, you will have to admit that actually Kiev and the SBU were correct in their characterizations of the original Donbass rebellion — the rebels really did see themselves as being Russian, not Ukrainian. Thus, they didn’t fight to stave off language reforms or for worker’s rights, but for an ethno-nationalist cause. This makes them “literal Nazis” in modern parlance, and something that the Kremlin worked hard to deny by claiming that it was just a language dispute, not a full blown ethnic civil war.

Zhuchkovski leaves us with the conclusion that both Kiev and the LDNR authorities and Moscow thought the same of the rebels; namely as a dangerous nuisance that had to be put down with extreme prejudice. It would surprise ideological partisans to learn that both Moscow and Kiev were in complete agreement that the charismatic Russian Spring rebel leaders all had to be silenced for any progress to be made in negotiations between Kiev and Moscow. These leaders were refusing to go along with the talks and the terms that were hammered out without their input.

So, if you are some Ukraine supporter of either the pseudo-right-wing or of the rarer, generic neoliberal NAFO variety, you are in for some serious cognitive dissonance today as well. Because you will be confronted with irrefutable evidence that actually Moscow did everything it could to keep LDNR from getting too carried away with all the joining Russia stuff and declaring independence from Ukraine.

At the end of the day, you can either believe Russians like Zhuchkovski who was there on the ground for round one of the Donbass War and personally met all the major Russian Spring commanders and who then wrote Mozgovoi’s biography … or you can trust ZAnon voices like Ritter, Macgregor, Johnson and the Duran.

One of this blog’s major reasons for existing is to bring you the voices of Russian Nationalists that non-Russian speakers generally never hear from at all. But it can only bring you to water, not force you to drink. Furthermore, Z-bloggers like Simplicitus will give you the latest Washington Post article that features Ukrainians complaining about not having enough bombs and shaking down Washington for more aid or whatever. Martyanov will give you the characteristics of Russias latest Khinzal upgrade that is knocking out bunkers of NATO generals every other weekend. These types of reports serve to soothe and mollify Z-fans in the West.

But no one else will share the detailed insider account of what the actual lived experience of the Russian Spring militia commanders was like. Why? Because it doesn’t jibe well with the propaganda coming out of Kiev, Washington, or Moscow.

And, for trying to bring this perspective to the discussion, people like Rurik and myself are smeared as “CIA-Anal-Satanists” by literal spooks who have worked for the intelligence agencies their whole careers and by organizations that are paid millions by the Kremlin to tell flattering lies to disgruntled and simple-minded MAGA types in the West. They prey on peoples’ natural laziness and gullibility and pre-existing ideological narratives. These have been coded into the brains of the public over a lifetime of media propaganda and has warped their view of history and politics. It is a trivial matter to set off a pavlovian pre-programmed trigger that causes someone to believe one side of the propaganda or another.

Anyway.

I left off in the last installment promising to chronicle Mozgovoi’s falling out with Moscow, so let’s jump right into that part now. Later, we will cover the conspiracy theories about the murder of Mozgovoi and some other legendary Militia Commanders. Let’s jump back in.

The Ideology of Mozgovism Revisited

Zhuchkovski:

When speaking of the political views of Mozgovoi a qualification needs to be made. All of the brigade commanders public statements, whether written or spoken, were made during wartime. These wartime conditions placed certain restrictions on what the commander could say therefore his real position in regards to the situation in Donbass and the LNR authorities was often left unspoken. On the one hand Mozgovoi didn't want his thoughts to become fodder for Ukrainian propaganda and on the other expressing direct and categorical positions on important questions was often impossible because of the militias complete dependence on the Russian authorities. Moscow always dictated its conditions in regards to the war and the internal politics of the LDNR.

Nonetheless Mozgovoi was to a fault the most open, outspoken and independent public figure in either republic. His relationship to Russia and Donbasses future underwent a concrete transformation in the course of his time as Prizrack’s commander.

At the beginning of the Russian Spring, the overwhelming majority of the Donbass population were counting on the creation of a united New Russia, albeit as part of the Russian Federation.Mozgovoi was no exception to that rule. All of his early public statements were in favor of a united New Russia (Novorossiya) that would be part of the Russian Federation.

Mozgovoi during a meeting in Donetsk in March of 2014:

We have always worked towards and will continue working towards unification with Russia. No matter who tries to scare me, no matter who asks me to shut up about that topic I won't back down. We have one path forward, to Russia! Only with Russia! Not one step back!

One can't help but utterly despise Russia’s spook ruling class after understanding that they met these sorts of sincere and earnest proclamations from better men like Mozgovoi with nothing but condescending disdain. The Kremlin’s view of people like Mozgovoi can best be described along the lines of Hillary's view of MAGA types — as a basket of deplorables. The Kremlin may not have been as comfortable in outright dumping slander on them in as open a fashion as Washington’s elite did on MAGA types in 2015-16, but the murderous sentiment is absolutely the same.

Zhuchkovski:

Mozgovoi’s reference to being asked to "shut up about that topic" suggests that even at the very beginning of the Russian Spring there were people from Moscow who insisted that the rebels’ only demand should be for Ukrainian Federalization [of Donbass] and not re-unification with Russia.

Mozgovoi found himself at odds in regards to Donbass’ future status with handlers sent by Moscow right from the beginning, but it took a few months for him to realize just how alone the pro-Russians of Donbass really were. If during the spring and summer of 2014, Mozgovoi’s rhetoric was uncompromisingly in favor of unification with Russia, by autumn such sentiment was gone.

Zhuchkovski:

The first reason in this turning away from pro Russian rhetoric was because such rhetoric was absolutely not wanted by Russia itself.

Note that “Russia” in that passage there is obviously synonymous with Moscow, or “the Kremlin” specifically, not normal Russian people.

Zhuchkovski:

From the spring of 2014, Mozgovoi started closely coordinating with Russian politicians and military personal, holding regular meetings with them in either Moscow or the LNR. Before long it became clear that many of these people did not sympathize with the pro-Russian aspirations of Russian Donbass and Mozgovoi’s ideas received a cold reception. From the start, they tried to convince Mozgovoi to forget about a Crimean scenario in Donbass and instead to focus on a united “Antifa Ukraine”.

Those of who have read part I will remember how Mozgovoi felt about Fascism and the so-called Antifa cause.

Initially, he did in fact portray himself as an “antifascist”, but by early autumn of 2014, he was already saying that antifascism was an AstroTurfed psy-op done by the same people who were also AstroTurfing the flip-side of SS-style Nazism in Ukraine. Furthermore, Mozgovoi came up with a definition of fascism that is probably the best that I have seen to date. Here it is:

“Fascism is nothing more than what you are told by powerful people that you are morally bound to oppose and to take up arms against.”

Also, once Mozgovoi wised up to the “Antifa” nature of the Kremlin, he almost totally cut ties with them. Contrast this with the behavior of Ukrainian Neo-Nazi groups who are cooperating with their ZOG handlers and have never delivered on any of their promises to effect an “NS Revolution” in Ukraine despite being at war for ten years now. Each year they ask their supporters to trust the plan and to wait for the NS rebellion a little longer. It almost sounds like they have their own “QAnon” operation running. We can call it BanderAnon, if you like.

Zhuchkovski:

Then the Moscow handlers started to chastise him over his criticisms of the Minsk accords and his opposition to the plan to separate the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics. When they couldn't shut him up, the Russian handlers decided to stop supporting and to abolish Prizrak Brigade.

Doubtless by the autumn of 2014 Mozgovoi was already deeply disappointed in the Russian military/political representatives, agitatedly telling his brigade staff: "Russia absolutely doesn't need us".

If, in the spring of 2014, he still held illusions about the patriotic qualities of the Russian political elite and sincerely believed that Russia desired to return Donbass, then after coming face to face with representatives of this Moscow elite he became convinced that Russia’s opposition to repeating the Crimean scenario in Donbass was due to the Oligarchy’s fear of further sanctions from and rejection by the West.

Thus, the almost decade of waiting and vacillating that Moscow did between the start of the hostilities in Donbass and the SMO was not part of some clever geopolitical plan. It was simply another example of Putin and his people kicking the can down the road to try and eke a little bit more profit and time for their regime before things started to begin pulling apart at the seams. However, to justify doing nothing, Putin had to roll out a sophisticated media narrative that justified his inaction and outright betrayal of Russians in Ukraine.

Putin and Operation Trust 3.0 (ZAnon)

The UAF was a demotivated, de-organized mob back in the first years of the rebellion. One that had already been thoroughly smashed by the rebels in the field to boot. In fact, the road to Kiev was wide open following several UAF retreats and mass desertions.

Certainly, there weren’t pre-prepared strongholds bristling with weapons and ammo stores all along the way from Donetsk to the Dnepr like there are now.

Russia has struggled to make any headway for 2+ years. In fact, not one actual stronghold in Eastern Ukraine has fallen to Russian forces yet. Victories are measured in the lengths of football fields over which hundreds are sacrificed on both sides. And it has cost more than a hundred thousand Russian lives to take just a few suburbs or blown out small towns like Bakhmut, Mariinka, Ugledar and so on. To say nothing of the dead Slavs on the other side as well — most of them dirt-poor conscripts in a war that Putin assured the world would be quick and humanitarian.

Instead, we got the worst fraternal Slavic bloodletting in history, to my knowledge.

Now, between the battle of Debaltsev in the winter of 2014 when Ukraine’s Army was comprehensively shattered and the winter of 2022 when the SMO began, the Ukrainian Army had grown much stronger relative to Russia’s rag-tag force of mall cops, Chechens and feudal mercenaries. The idea that Russia wasn't ready to take on Ukraine in 2014 and that they were in a better position relative strength-wise in 2022 isn't a serious position to take for several reasons.

Russia’s army only degraded in this time as a result of continued reforms led by Shoigu at the MoD that were designed around reducing Russia’s Soviet military inheritance and reforming it into a small, mercenary force to save money. As it turns out, Shoigu (half-globalist) and his ethnic globalist deputy were also stealing trillions of roubles from the military budget for many years just when Russia needed to be modernizing and preparing the most. Also, the NATO gear starting raining down generously on Ukraine only after Russia’s “good will gestures” in April of 2022 to Kiev, whereby they abandoned the entire northern front and lifted the siege of the capitol, while dumping entire convey’s worth of equipment behind as they retreated.

That moment of weakness and cravenness on the part of Putin really was the turning point.

The NATO military floodgates were only opened after Moscow blinked and showed cravenness and no stomach for the fight. The story of Mozgovoi reveals just how oligarchic and anti-Russian Putin’s government was back then and how little it has changed since. It was these oligarchic interests that foiled the Russian Spring and therefore it is not much of a leap to point out that it is the same oligarchic interests that are dooming the current SMO now.

I haven't the slightest doubt though that someone in the comments will take the following line: "nah, Mozgovoi didn’t understand Russia and neither does Dr. Rurik Slavsquat if that's even his real name. Check out Moon of Alabama sometime if you want to learn the secret patriot plan to checkmate Washington!".

Well, about that …

Zhuchkovski:

Other militia commanders came to the same conclusion. As an ex-FSB officer, Igor Strelkov couldn't have not known about the real nature of the Russian elite, but when the Russian Spring started, he gambled that the elite would undergo a kind of rebirth. It was only after being forced to abandon Slavyansk and a month and a half later having to abandon Donbass altogether that he concluded that absolutely no rebirth whatsoever had taken place.

The first Peoples Governor of Donetsk Oblast Pavel Gubarev at the beginning of events was likewise full of illusions [about Moscow] but after conversations with the handlers and the economist, Glazyev, he reached the same sad conclusions.

This is to say that many people had to go through a rude awakening the true nature of Putin’s Kremlin.

As an aside, Rurik went through a similar political awakening as Strelkov and Gubarov (mentioned above), only eight years later. After the first half a year of SMO’ing, he was forced to conclude that the same ethnic globalist gangsters were running Moscow’s foreign policy and that Putin had no intention of clearing them out, despite his initial optimism. He concluded that he had been tricked by the Kremlin PR team and the bloggers that the had hired like Saker, the Duran, Maryanov, and others.

As for the aforementioned economist Glazyev, he has been sounding the alarm for years now that “BRICS multipolarity” is a Potemkin house charade.

Moscow has spent all the money supposedly allocated for setting up alternative systems and import substitution on digitization and integrating Russia into globalist networks instead. For more on that whole scam my previous book translation and summary of the tell-all account of a high-level spook is also worth checking out.

But let’s stay on topic for now.

Gubarev, the aforementioned then-governor of Donetsk Oblast’ said this at the time:

The thieving, colonial ways of the Ukrainian Oligarchy are perfectly familiar to me. But imagine my surprise when Sergei Glazev described the same behavioral traits amongst the Russian elite. In general, the RF is managed by the same compradors as Ukraine".

On another personal note, I permanently moved to the Slavlands about 5 years ago and while Russians don't talk about or obsess over politics as much as Westerners do, Russians sure do love to complain about their political overlords. Whether the complaints are justified or not usually depends on the age of the person complaining. Mature adults for example will sound like Gubarev, more or less, and lament that their country is being looted. It goes something along the lines of this:

"Our overlords are just like those in the West and that’s why we have 21% percent interest rates and churkas running around everywhere, taking over!”

But a younger Liberal Netflix consumer, especially in Belarus, will instead sound something like this:

"Lukashenko and Putin are brutal dictators who hate the values that make democracies what they are and that’s why I'm not making more money as a barista unlike Westerners who have tons of money because of Liberalism Freedom Democracy Values!"

But the love for complaining is universal amongst the Slavs.

When I was fresh off the boat/plane in Russia I would often feel the need to push back against family members complaining about what was going on in Russia at the time. I am a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I felt that my Russian family was wrong about Putin because I read The Vineyard of the Saker and Russia Insider and they didn’t! I share this brief anecdote because it was one of my family members that first implied to me that it was actually the FSB that killed all of these Russian Spring heroes that I looked up to at the time, and not the “NATOkranians”. The context to this talk is that I had to answer some routine questions to the local KGB spooks about where I was living and what I was up to and my family member became upset and suspicious about this intrusion.

I told her that she had nothing to worry about:

"Don't worry about it they aren't all bad …".

My fiancee, knowing that I was a strong supporter of the Donbass cause, said in reply:

"Well who do you think killed all those people fighting over there that you love so much?”.

That was the first time I had heard this accusation and at the time I brushed it off as coming from the mind of a silly woman. In my defense, I rejected her rumor-mongering because I had literally never seen the claim made in the English language pro-Russian media. Like never. See, this was the power of ZAnon propaganda at work. And at the time, my Russian language skills were very limited so reading what Russians were saying required constant copy-pasting and hunting for subtitles.

But it is kind of a paradox really.

See, normal Russians relate to men like Mozgovoi and Strelkov with respect and even love in some cases. But normal Russians also would have never harbored any illusions or hopes like those men did about bringing Moscow onboard to support the Novorussian cause or about the Kremlin reforming itself into a more patriotic organization.

I actually don't know what to make of it all really.

I look back now and recognize that I was simultaneously pro-Donbass even though I had no ‘effing clue what the actual leadership of the Russian Spring were even saying about the conflict and the political situation the time. Imagine that. It was simply the image and the narrative around the struggle that I fell for — not the real thing. And even the subtitled videos from spring and summer of 2014 where militia leaders were still unambiguously pro-Russian were presented to me on English-language pre-Z sites devoid of context. Naive non-Russian speaking Westerners like me, at the time, were watching these subtitled early Russian Spring videos and taking them as proof that Moscow was fighting against globalism and reuniting the Slavic peoples. But as it turns out, the people Mozogovoi once wanted to help him actually wanted to kill him! What makes the situation even more kafkaesque is that Moscow did not like these videos and Moscow’s handlers were threatening Mozgovoi and the others to stop making them at the time!

How sick is that?

Zhuchkovski:

Coming to grips with the fact that Russia didn't want any reunification with Donbass and that Russian aid came with many requirements in regards to running the republics, Mozgovoi became wary of such aid. In regards to aid from Moscow, the brigade commander on a few occasions repeated the expression "one can't take from every hand, so it's better not to take and become dependent on those who give.".

The expression sounds better in Russian, but I think we all get the idea — don’t end up owing dubious people something that you’re not willing to give.

Mozgovoi had arrived at the hilarious in a gallows humor fashion. He concluded that Moscow’s aid to Donbass was dependent on Donbass rejoining Ukraine and getting some concessions for the Donbass mafia clans from Kiev in the process. Concessions that would in no way really help the actual Russians of Donbass. Mozgovoi had launched his rebellion to overthrow these oligarch as much as he wanted to break free from Kiev as well. Thus, to maintain the struggle he needed Moscow’s support, but the support was contingent on him ending the struggle.

Between a rock and a hard place.

Between Kiev and Moscow.

Zhuchkovski:

From that moment the Brigade Commander stopped speaking of reunification with Russia as the main goal of the militia and instead only publicly spoke of building a united “New Russia” instead of separate LNR/DNR republics.

Mozgovoi as well as other militia commanders saw New Russia as not just the totality of Donestk and Luhansk Oblasts but also the other 6 Oblasts of South East Ukraine: Kharkov, Kherson, Odessa, Zaporozhye, Dnipropetrovsk, Nikaloev.

Prizrack Brigade didn't consider themselves a part of the Lugansk Peoples Militia but part of the Armed Forces of New Russia. Such a structure didn't exist officially but on the shoulders of Prizrack members was sown ВСН (armed forces of New Russia) instead of ЛНР (Lugansk Peoples Republic).

In his public addresses the Brigade Commander never addressed the citizens of the Lugansk Peoples Republic, but the Citizens of New Russia.

Mozgovoi wrote in April of 2014:

Countrymen! Don't waste your time with these petty city-republics. We have already started the process of cleaning out all those who are against the will of the people and we won't stop. If a Republic is created than it should unite all the South East and not just a few blocks of one city. I have always been an opponent of chopping up the South East. Only unification via general referendum on all our territory, thats my position.

Mozgovoi in August 2014:

I’m not fighting for the LNR, Im fighting for New Russia, the makeup of which should include not just two Oblasts but the entire South East. From the start I wasn’t happy with two Oblasts being created as two separate Republics.

In the West, right-winger Americans used to talk about secession from Washington once upon a time.

And this is what Mozgovoi is talking about right here; the strategy that he settled on for dealing with a captive globalist controlled political system that occupied his people. In America though, such talk has been clamped down on by providing the people with false heroes and hope for political solutions. Like with Trump and Elon supposedly planning to arrest all the globalists and save the American people with mass deportations, for example. All that these false political hopes do is get people to buy back into the whole political system. Putin, while far less popular than Trump domestically, adopted a similar PR strategy with modest success. Most of his success has been abroad, with the same gullible types that really believed in Trump, actually. And whenever something goes wrong and these champions of anti-globalism do something that seems like a betrayal of the people or the patriotic promises that they made, their cheerleaders turn right around and blame the victims for simply not believing in the plan hard enough.

They justify each twist of the knife as another move in a grand clever patriotic plan.

For many years, the ZAnon refrain vis a vis Mozgovoi went something like this:

“Well it’s Mozgovoi’s fault for not trusting Putin’s 5D chess plan of attrition war in Donbass, and so even though Putin had nothing to do with it, it is a good thing that Mozgovoi is now gone. Now the BRICS Antifa Patriots’ plan can be effected without interference from Nazis like Mozgovoi!".

Very few people are interested in actually learning something about a modern secessionist movement that took place in a war zone and that defied two world powers.

You’d think that this story would pique the interest of political radicals of all stripes.

But because the LDNR militia leaders aren’t easy to put into one ideological box or the other … well, the ideologoyim take no interest. They can’t figure out who they are supposed to cheer for! What side was Mozgovoi on in the Culture Wars™ ? Was he pro tranny-toilet-story-hour in the Donbass kindergartens? No? Then he must be a Fascist! Did he fly the Red Army flag? Yes? Then he must be a Communist! Yes, the ideologoyim would rather waste their time debating the finer points of their hoax religion or dead political ideology on Reddit instead of learning about real power processes.

For English speaking right-wingers the narrative is controlled on both ends; it’s either Zanon, which we’ve covered before, or the SS/Azov narrative.

If the mark is a typical hard right-winger, they can be convinced to disown Donbass because people there identify strongly with the memory of the Red Army and the many battles fought there against the German army.

For liberal-leaning folks, you have the NAFO narrative about spreading LGBTQMAP rights in “Keeeev”.

Some of the old-school Leftists in the West supported the proletariat of Donbass simply because of all the coal mines and old factories there.

Other right-leaning types supported Russia because they believed that Putin was a Christian autocrat … even though Ukrainians are on average almost twice as religious as Donbassians, who are mostly atheists and Communists.

Point being: all of this ideologizing is a hoax though and a smokescreen to disguise true power processes.

Ideology, whether it’s the anti-Communism SS-Israeli Brotherhood of the “nationalists” in Ukraine or the Antifa-Values Multipolarity Abrahamic-Alliance of Moscow to effect Traditional Duginism or whatever — all of it is a spook-constructed cattle pen for the masses. Because it doesn’t matter what these supposed dissidents believe in so long as they don’t know or understand what actually happened in Donbass and how a rebellion was launched there or in any other conflict zone around the world in the last century. The “how” is the power knowledge that is concealed with the ideological veneer which explains less than nothing and only serves to confuse and divide the masses into teams cheering for the Reds against the Blues, the MAGAs vs the GoodHuwhytes, the Coca-Colas vs the Pepsis and so on.

Look: these Donbass militia leaders were fighting for a new country against the forces of the global oligarchy and the powers that be were scared enough to have to organize a coordinated campaign to systematically kill them off one by one.

The men who actually carved out mini-states in wartime conditions crushed organized minority crime, shook down ethnic globalist oligarchs for money and they provided basic services to their people with little to no help from a ZOG node in the area.

Isn't this the kind of real stuff that political dissidents should supposedly be interested in?

Apparently not!

Instead of looking into what these men of action did, how they organized and operated, how they reached out and motivated their own people, how they managed fledgling statelets wedged between two hostile powers … the average dissident anti-globalist simply can’t be bothered to pay attention. They feel more comfortable debating who can pee and poo in which bathroom on Twitter instead.

This makes them feel genteel and refined and very high IQ indeed!

They don’t want to think about “hard” politics, which is essentially just the logistics of rebellion and winning wars and defending against foreign powers. That wouldn’t be ideological enough, and therefore beneath them, intellectually speaking. Also, it might get them into trouble with the federal authorities, so best to rationalize the topic away as something simply too uninteresting.

Sure, The Duran and Scott Ritter are allowed to talk about the Anglo-Satanist-Sorosites (ASS) who have been killing the Donbassites since 2014 … but again this narrative is all provided with no context and with no useful lessons to be drawn for dissidents of any political stripe to glean from it. These propagandists are rewarded handsomely to the tune of millions of dollars for repeating whatever the Kremlin tells them to repeat and for downplaying the calls for help and the inside stories coming actual Russians reporting from the front or blowing the whistle from within the army or the government!

Consider the absurdity of the situation!

Literal US Deep State employees like Larry Johnson, Andrei Raevsky, Scott Ritter, Col. Douglass Macgregor telling Russian voices to pipe down and to shut up! And their largely Western audiences eat it all up! The sheer chutzpah of these people!

The So-Called “Language War” For East Ukraine

Mozgovoi developed doubts on whether New Russia should be part of the RF:

I see New Russia as part of the Russian world.

How it will look at the level of State borders isn't really that important.

Thats a polite way of saying “no, it won't be part of Putin’s Russia,” without causing too much scandal. On another occasion he said:

Of course it is necessary for us to be with Russia, we are of one blood. But right now we have a chance to create something new, a real free way of life.

Another polite way of saying “we are Russians, but Moscow isn’t”.

We can see that Mozgovoi wanted a New Russia that was part of the Russian world via blood and cultural ties, but a country that was actually free ... implying that New Russia wouldn't be free as part of the RF. At least not free as Mozgovoi understood the term freedom. If Mozgovoi supported an independent free New Russia that was part of the Russian world then it can be inferred that Mozgovoi thought that the Kremlin was part of an occupation government hence not free.

And the Minsk deals would go on to confirm his suspicions.

Zhuchkovski:

The essence of the Donbass uprising, its Russian content was almost never spoken of on official levels in either the RF or LDNR. Ideological summersaults were conducted by Russian propagandist explaining how actually Ukrainians were fighting with Ukrainians.

Many Donbass militias wanted Russia to support them specifically as Russians and not as Ukrainians and for Moscow to consider Russian not only those living in officially in the RF but those who ended up in Russia’s near abroad [after the break-up of the USSR].

This is revealing stuff.

It is also another blow to the whole “Revanchist Imperial Russia Putin Tsar” narrative spun by anti-Russians of all ideological persuasions. It also contradicts strains of ZAnon 5D cultist narratives; that Putin is supposedly dedicated to defending Russian communities marooned abroad. If the Donbass Militia commanders fighting on the ground near Russia’s borders noticed that Moscow wanted them to disown their Russianness, then obviously the implication is that the RF’s foreign policy has nothing to do with defending ethnic Russians in the near abroad who were marooned by the collapse of the USSR.

It begs the question: so whose interests is the RF government defending?

Furthermore, full-blooded Russians in Ukraine are “Ukrainians” according to the Kremlin, while a Tajik or an African with a Russian passport is actually as Russian as any Russian, bigot! And you better not utter a peep about it, unless you want to have a talk with the FSB’s Chechens in a special gulag facility! No, seriously, that is the status quo on the ethnic question in Russia in the current year! And it was far worse when Putin was busy arresting hundreds of nationalists back when Mozgovoi’s rebellion was still simmering!

I also want to emphasis that Zhuchkovski in the passage above is using the Russian term that denotes ethnic Russians, that is, Russians by blood. This term is “Russkiy” … or “Russki-ye” in Cold War era American. But the term for an RF passport holder is “Rossiyan” and it does not denote ethnicity. In fact, it was invented by Boris Yeltsin as a brand new, Orwellian-tier state-approved identity following the collapse of the USSR. It is a myth that Yeltsin was a “Russian” nationalist. No, he was a “Rossiyan” nationalist i.e., no nationalist at all and a diehard anti-Russian. That is also to say that the militias wanted Moscow to consider them Russians (Russki-ye) not just in the passport sense (Rossiyani).

Zhuchkovski:

Not long before the death of Mozgovoi the Brigade Commander along with Pavel Dremov appealed to the authorities of the RF with an offer to create an institutional structure for defending the interest of Russians regardless of their citizenship and a request for supporting a "Russian project" then stuck in the State Duma.

Let us emphasis this part again.

The idea that Russians can be Russian by blood regardless of whether or not they have an RF passport is an idea that the Kremlin wants nothing to do with. They are on record condemning it as “Fascism”, even. Before the SMO kicked off, we even had top Kremlin officials like Lavrov declaring that if the Russian Federation acted in the interests of ethnic Russians abroad, that it would be either “terrorism” or “against the rules-based world order” or even “nationalism”, which is a word with the same kind of negative connotation in Russian media as the other “N-word” has in Western society. TWo weeks later, Putin invaded Ukraine and Lavrov had to sputter out a qualification which focused on emphasizing that an “SMO” is not an invasion i.e., word games to hold onto his job which he had unwittingly endangered.

Anyway.

A letter sent by Dremov and Mozgovoi stressed the need to create a National Project overseen at Federal Level that would be meant to protect ethnic Russians and head off anti-Russian threats on FSU territories like what had just arisen in Ukraine.

Some excepts from the letter:

We that are conducting armed resistance to the genocide of the Russian People of ex-Ukraine feel like no others the complete absence of any legal norms for protecting the most artificially divided people in the world. Despite the difference in tone between "cursed Moskal" and "Russian speaking population" the intent is the same, the dehumanisation and disintegration of the Russian People. Such an approach is mistaken and in some cases criminal.

As an aside, Pavel Dremov was also one of the original rebels who kicked off the Donbass uprising.

He participated in the storm of the Lugansk SBU headquarters in April of 2014 along with Bolotov, the man who hired Mozogovoi as a populist firebrand to rally support for the secessionist cause.

As with Mozgovoi, Pavel Dremov was a big Cossack enthusiast who participated in local Cossack organisations doing reenactments and cultural renewal activism. This is a big thing in the Slavlands that has been going on since the late 80s where nationalists try to get people interested in their own history again by LARPing, essentially in uniforms from that time period.

Also like Mozgovoi, during the active phase of the fighting, Dremov subordinated himself to Igor Strelkov who was in charge of the DNR Armed Forces despite Dremov’s Cossack Brigade being from Lugansk.

So what approach were Dremov and Mozgovoi referring to?

That would be Moscow’s approach of framing the conflict as being between "Ukrainian-speakers" on one side against "Russian-speakers" on the other. According to Moscow, the conflict was between Ukrainians and one side just happened to speak Russian instead of Ukrainian. Moscow wanted to pose as defending Ukrainians from Ukrainians over language discrimination laws and not to frame their case as one of ethnic Russians being discriminated against based on their ethnos or culture or origins.

This approach was ineffective and it led to more Donbass Russians being killed than if someone would have just come out and specifically defended Russians as Russians like, say, how America defended Bosnians from Serbs as opposed to framing the conflict as between Bosnian-speaking Serbians and Serbian-speaking Serbians. Because Washington was serious in their support for the secessionists in that conflict, they made sure to highlight the identity difference and not play it down.

Simply compare and contrast this with Moscow’s approach.

The opening sentence of the letter read:

In the course of this armed conflict provoked by an attempt to de-Russify the former territory of ex Ukraine we are paying in blood for the mistakes of the politicians.

Needless to say, the Kremlin narrative that the whole civil war was over language only made the Kremlin look especially duplicitous to any neutral observers. Nobody believed that claim because it was self-evidently not true. Even today, if most Telegram channels and Facebook posts by Ukrainian soldiers are now in Ukrainian the actual language spoken on the ground and on the battlefield is still Russian. If you watch videos of Ukrainian troops under pressure, they still speak Russian amongst themselves and in fact a sizable minority of Telegram channels run by Ukrainian troops today are still in Russian. But back in 2014 ... well back then almost no one in the UAF spoke Ukrainian at all because the Russian language was the operating language of the military and all government institutions.

The Kremlin’s insistence on framing the war as being about language made it difficult for foreign observers to understand what the Donbass population was even fighting for. After all, the language restrictions were soon dropped by Kiev anyway as they realized what a politically costly miscalculation it was. Since Moscow’s explanation for the conflict was so flimsy and Moscow spoke for the LDNR on the international level that made people relate to the uprising with suspicion because it became tainted with Kremlin scheming and untrustworthiness. Imagine if you will, if during the troubles in Northern Ireland, the IRA claimed that they were just fighting for the right to speak Irish/Gaelic in Northern Ireland. It would have seemed utterly ridiculous and the IRA’s cause would have been damaged by such a stupid and dishonest claim.

This isn't to imply that Kiev’s immediate restrictions on the Russian language didn't enrage the population of Donbass, because they certainly did. But those restrictions were part of a larger and systematic campaign to de-Russify Ukraine in its entirety and the language angle was the least relevant element of it in 2014. Again: the entirety of the Ukrainian armed forces in 2014 spoke Russian as their first language and for the most part still do. What the Donbass rebels actually wanted was to rejoin their historic Fatherland and a kind of “Russia First” policy from Moscow as regards its near abroad and the fate of the millions of marooned Russians in FSU territories who are savagely repressed by the governments of these new countries.

Yes, the international neoliberal institutions would have reacted to this with outrage and moral condemnation, but it is not like such people would ever support Russia anyway. Framing it as a language conflict didn’t prevent anyone from accusing these rebels of being Fascists and Moscow-supported terrorists. Furthermore, if Moscow had framed the conflict the way the militia leaders wanted then more actual Russians observing the conflict would have supported it. But seeing as the Kremlin is absolutely NOT in the business of protecting Russians, so it is a moot point.

Naturally, Moscow did not respond to these requests.

If the whole idea is to shove Donbass kicking and screaming back into Ukraine then it would have been counter productive to reframe the conflict along those lines. Thus, despite the narrative that this war was about language differences being obviously untrue it was the best that Moscow could do because any other narrative would run counter to the oligarch’s actual objective of returning Donbass to Kiev and carving out political concessions to the Jewish mafia clans who control it.

The Dremov letter shows that dissatisfaction with Moscow wasn't limited to Mozgovoi and Mozgovoi wasn't just on some personal ego trip or afraid of losing his brigade and authority. He and the other commanders genuinely wanted Moscow to change their approach to supporting the Donbass militias. It also begs the question of why Mozgovoi and Dremov even bothered with such a letter. It is unlikely that they expected any positive result to come from it. If they had received a positive answer nobody would have been more shocked than them, probably. However, as leaders of a movement, making such symbolic gestures is important for showing not only their soldiers but also the citizens who look up to them that they are doing everything they can to change circumstances for the better.

Zhuchkovski points out that the Kremlins main curator over Donbass was a creature that should be familiar to readers of the blog. The infamous grey cardinal of the Kremlin himself, Vladisov Surkov.

Zhuchkovski:

Surkov managed to convince some commanders that he was on the side of New Russia but not all believed him. For example after his forced retirement and return to Moscow Igor Strelkov subjected Surkov to crushing criticism as the main culprit for all negative processes in Donbass.

It is remarkable that any commanders at all trusted him really.

Zhuchkovski:

Alexei Mozgovoi never publicly commented on the role of Surkov but since he always supported Strelkov he was automatically considered to be on the side of those opposed to Surkov. Due to this perception, Surkov personally tried to convince Mozgovoi that he wasn't a foe of New Russia.

That Surkov found it necessary to try and win over Mozgovoi speaks of Mozgovoi’s importance. The meeting between Surkov and Mozgovoi was not open to the public but a journalist named Alexander Chalenko was present and recounted the following:

Surkov to Mozgovoi:

Alexi look, tell me exactly how I am selling out New Russia. What I have done exactly? Tell me.

According to the journalist Mozgovoi only laughed in response and then Surkov asked Mozgovoi why he retreated from Lichansk to which Mozgovoi responded that his Brigade would have been surrounded and killed. Surkov answered with:

Then why did you go to war? After all in war you can be killed.

That is all that the journalist recounted about the meeting unfortunately but it's enough to establish that Surkov wanted the militias eliminated. In fact, the same propaganda line was used against Strelkov and his retreat from Sloviansk. He was called a traitor by Kremlin PR mouthpieces like Vladimir Shapiro/Soloviev for not letting him and his men get surrounded and annihilated. So, when the militia leaders retreated, it was a betrayal of Russia, but when Surkov or Gerasmov and Shoigu retreat or let Russia get invaded, it is a clever strategy.

Funny how that works.

The Militia Mutiny Over the Minsk Agreements

More than anything else, the Minsk agreements constituted a huge source of dissatisfaction amongst the militia commanders.

Zhuchkovski:

At the end of August 2014 when the greater part of the Ukrainian Army had been destroyed Moscow started to push the Militia towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict. This caused serious dissatisfaction amongst the Militia Leadership, they couldn't comprehend why they should negotiate with an enemy they had all but defeated already instead of just liberating all of Donbass.

Mozgovoi stated in August of 2014:

Despite the fact that Vladimir Vladimirovich is letting us down with thoughts of negotiations we have our own plans and view of how the situation should develop. Nobody is ever going to negotiate with Kiev. To the normal man who has been forced to defend his home I’ll always be grateful, but with a government that kills women and children it is outright criminal to negotiate.

Mozgovoi clearly implied Putin was negotiating with a government who kills Russian women and children when he was in a position to easily defeat them instead. However, to this day, making negative implications about Putin personally is not allowed among the larger, more normie-oriented patriot scene in Russia.

In 2014, it was even more difficult to do so.

It is comparable to pointing out that Donald Trump is not actually America First in his policies and that he serves the same globalists that he claims to be rebelling against. Say so and you will be mobbed by his delusional Q-believing cult followers and relentlessly smeared as a traitor to MAGA. Now, Putin is nowhere near as popular in Russia as Trump is in America, and the more openly Russian nationalist crowd has been calling Putin a traitor for years now. But even so, Putin enjoyed a surge of support at the time for his perceived defiance via Crimea and the Syrian intervention. This made it much more difficult to criticize him openly at the time.

Even Strelkov, who was widely read and taken seriously by pretty much all Russian nationalists, didn't start making direct attacks against Putin until the start of the SMO — that is, relatively recently. The fury of the militia leaders in regards to the Minsk agreements betrayal is illustrated by the fact that some were angry enough to criticise Putin directly, which is a very risky move indeed.

Zhuchkovski:

At that moment (August 2014), a final break in the favour of the Donbass Militias had occurred but more than half of the territory of the LDNR was still under Ukrainian occupation. The Militia rightfully expected further advances forward, especially since serious resistance was unlikely and the Ukrainian armed forces had been pretty thoroughly battered and demoralised. But it wasn't to be. Further offensive action was suddenly stopped and Moscow initiated peace negotiations with Kiev. At the time most of the famous field commanders were still alive and freely expressed their position.

Their general thinking was the following: most of Donetsk and Lugansk were under the control of Ukraine and the homes and families of thousands of militia men were under Ukrainian occupation and the Ukrainians were broken and retreating. Negotiations would only be profitable for the enemy to win time, conduct mobilization and re-arm. But Moscow was unswayed by this military reasoning. The LDNR was forced to sign onto a deleterious peace deal since they were totally dependent on Russian help. The opinions of Mozgovoi and other commanders meant absolutely nothing to the Kremlin.

The conclusion is inescapable: in autumn of 2014, Minsk was needed much more by Ukraine than the LDNR, the Ukrainian military received the opportunity to re-arm, re-build, re-train, mobilize and prepare for another attack on Donbass. Within 3 months that's exactly what happened and hostilities were renewed.

History showed that the militia commanders were right. Putin and his officials have since commented on Minsk and claimed that, actually, they were tricked by Kiev because of how moral and pure-hearted they were. No, really. Even among ZAnon propagandists, only the most tone-deaf still claim that Minsk was all part of a clever Putin strategy. Most will admit that it was a hoax, but that Putin was simply too Christian and moral to suspect treachery on the part of the “Anal-Saxon-Nazi-Satanists” for some reason. Prior to the SMO, Putin and his government referred to the aforementioned evil-doers as their “esteemed Western colleagues,” remember? Yes, despite Putin being locked into battle with the forces of Evil, he keeps naively trusting them for some reason and helping them out … purely by accident, of course. This is comparable to how Jesus believed Satan several times in the New Testament and entered into negotiations with him in good faith. I’m no theologian, but Putin is simply following the example of Jesus here, right? I mean, that is what we are told by Zanonners like a constant refrain. Putin is the last Christian in a world of Satanists fighting for CHrist. And every Christian knows that moral Christians are supposed to made deals with Satan to demonstrate their moral superiority, correct?

No, but seriously, the masses really eat up these kinds of morality-based excuses because of their previous religious conditioning. Worse, they do not remember how the goal posts of the initial arguments and explanations were changed as time and circumstance shifted. All they care about at the end of the day is feeling like their side is more moral than their opponents because they believe that God will reward them for this in some way. It is the same narrative that was used with Trump, if you haven’t noticed. Trump was apparently too good and naive and moral to understand that he was appointing Deep State swamp creatures during his first term and doing their bidding on a whole range of issues. And even now, he is simply too moral and good to realize that he is appointing neocon warhawks to his new cabinet who will probably start a war with Iran once he takes office.

In this way, a blatant betrayal is cleverly portrayed as a great moral victory and used to reaffirm the faith of the cultists.

But back to Mozgovoi’s mutiny over Minsk.

Zhuchkovski shares some more Mozgovoi’s thoughts about the Minsk agreements:

In my view and that of most commanders in the Army of New Russia, a ceasefire at the height of a successful offensive is nothing short of betrayal. Our overlords have stirred and sped up the creation of a reservation for dissidents. You can’t call a territory with "special status" anything else. What they are offering us isn't peace. It is slavery knocking at the door again, it is a reservation. Of course you can live peacefully on a reservation but does that suit us? Personally for me it doesn't. Personally, I don't see any good perspectives with this next ceasefire. It is only going to lead to stretching out the conflict for an undetermined amount of time.

In general, everything going on in Donbass upset Mozgovoi at the time.

He viewed the satrapy republics as being organised for the benefit of Moscow’s preferred oligarchs, an oligarchy that was international, as far as he and pretty much all the other field commanders were concerned. And so, the Minsk agreements were a betrayal of the people of Donbass on behalf of this oligarchy. Mozgovoi, unlike the other commanders, acted more decisively on his dissatisfaction and refused to cooperate with the Lugansk authorities and this led to his brigade being cut off from all aid from Russia.

As we read in part I, Mozgovoi did remarkably well without any aid, and the people of Alchesk where Prizrack was based lived better than anyone in Donbass simply because he sent the criminals and mafias packing by doing the unthinkable in the tolerant and humanitarian modern world: enforcing the law against criminal minorities. However, Mozgovoi’s men didn't receive any pay at all and after Minsk II about half the brigade left. Those from Russia went home and many Donbass locals simply couldn't fight for free because they had families to feed. Nonetheless, Mozgovoi still had over 700 men under his command who were fiercely loyal to him and Moscow/Lugansk had to work hard to disband them.

This was yet another point of tension between Mozgovoi and Lugansk/Moscow.

It is not necessary to go over the details of this fight but eventually a compromise was reached where Mozgovoi was forced to give up command of the brigade and the brigade remained intact with Mozgovois #2 man taking over. If anything, this arrangement was something of a small victory for Mozgovoi because his greatest concern wasn't staying in command — it was keeping the brigade together as a cohesive unit and preventing Moscow from disbanding it. By stepping down from command he also got Moscow/Lugansk to start paying his men and providing supplies. His obstinance had seemingly payed off … for awhile. From there, he intended on pivoting to focus on his political role in Novorussia which he had actually already been doing for some time anyway.

That is when the beginning of the end came for Mozgovoi as he stepped onto unfamiliar ground and was sucked in, ground up and spat out by the far more savvy spook and political operators that he began dealing with. Mozgovoi had achieved great success on the battlefield and won the hearts and mind of the simple people of his fiefdom, the East of Ukraine as a whole, Russia, and even the world. But once he stepped onto the political battlefield, he found himself immediately on the backfoot.

More on that though in Part III.

Thanks for reading and, as always, stay frosty out there fellow Abrahamic-Antifa-Multipolar-Morality-Values warriors!