As Moscow continues to deny its involvement in eastern Ukraine, a high-ranking Russian security officer who led an armed uprising last spring in Donetsk Oblast said the region was visited by Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin aide who has been dubbed “Putin’s puppet master” for his role in shaping foreign policy.
The Kremlin-backed separatist press service refused to comment on Surkov’s alleged visit by phone. No information on Surkov’s visit could be found on the Kremlin’s website, and an emailed request for comment on June 2 to Russia’s presidential office went unanswered.
Igor Girkin, who told Reuters he was a colonel in Russia’s FSB security service until quitting in March 2014, announced the visit on his Vkontakte page on June 2, saying Surkov arrived the previous day to “hold a meeting with the republic’s leadership.”
Also known as Strelkov, Girkin implied that the meeting may signal an impending realignment in the occupied region’s Moscow-backed leadership.
He said Surkov had “yelled and swore a lot” while meeting with separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko. A native of Donetsk who worked as a mine electrician, Zakharchenko had led the local militant group Oplot branch that helped the former Ukrainian government led by Viktor Yanukovych clamp down on the EuroMaidan protests in Kyiv.
“About the fact that Zakharchenko refuses to ‘merge’ Donetsk with the same readiness and speed with which (Igor) Plotnitsky is doing it in Luhansk. At this point, I don’t know the results of Surkov’s yelling,” Strelkov wrote. “They can’t remove Zakharchenko. He is the living embodiment of the Minsk (peace) agreements.”
U.S. intelligence officials and NATO say that Russia has strengthened command and control over the separatist forces in Donbas comprised of Russian regular soldiers and mercenaries, as well as locals.
After taking part in the annexation of Crimea and setting up a separatist stronghold in Sloviansk in Donetsk Oblast, Girkin moved back to his native Moscow last fall to “protect President Vladimir Putin” from traitors. He continues to monitor the situation in Ukraine’s east despite his resignation from the separatist ranks last summer.
According to a report by the Atlantic Council, a policy center in Washington, D.C., published on May 27, Girkin grew frustrated and voiced disappointment with locals for not rising to the task of breaking away from Kyiv.
“Buying into its own propaganda, the Kremlin believed that providing leadership, money, and weapons would be enough to spark a local rebellion against Kyiv in the Donbas,” the Atlantic Council said in the report. “But the locals did not rise to the task: numerous intercepts from Girkin-Strelkov made clear that he asked Moscow to send more and more ‘volunteers’ to sustain the rebellion.”
After Ukraine liberated Sloviansk in early July, Strelkov fled to Donetsk and returned to Russia under mysterious circumstances in the fall.
Last July, immediately after the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, it was Girkin’s social media account that provided what many considered the smoking gun of separatist involvement: He had boasted on his page that separatists shot down a plane near the area where MH17 crashed.
When it became clear that a passenger plane carrying 298 innocent civilians had been shot down, the post was removed.
While Surkov has been responsible for liaising with separatist leaders as part of the ongoing peace process, he has also been accused of instigating the war.
In February, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko claimed to have evidence that Surkov coordinated the shooting of peaceful protesters in Kyiv during the demonstrations that led to the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych.
