"It is not so far left for Crimea." Interview with Oleg Sentsov - about the release of occupied territories and a blow to Putin
In an interview with Radio NV, he spoke about his service in the Armed Forces near Bakhmut, the rescue of the Ukrainian soldiers, who are in Russian captivity and why he would never forgive the war on "any Russian". Video Day - Where did you come from? I understand that you were somewhere under Bakhmut. Can you tell you what's going on there? -I spent the last four months in the direction of Bakhmut-Lysychansk. Defense continues.
The enemy is still very active, does not leave attempts to capture the Bakhmut-Siversk defense line. From Siverskaya they stand [at a distance] of several settlements, 10-12 kilometers. In Bakhmut, they have already partially seized the detour and try to break into the city, but cannot [reach] to the industrial zone, they are still kept in forest strips. There is 93 brigade. I think they won't go there.
Especially against the background of our success in other areas, I think that they will not have enough forces. - five people were killed as a result of Russian shelling in Bakhmut. Who stays there among the residents of the city? - It is not always the appearance of locals, because the vast majority of people who had money - average abundance or higher, left.
There are people who cannot do it because of lack of money or are unable to go to someone, or old people, or people we call the "zhduns" who are waiting. It was very funny and not funny when we went into one house. The owners came, we do not behave as invaders, we are home, so everything is very clean and as it should. They said somehow and the mistress says, "Oh, when will it end? When will Bakhmut release? ” We are like this: "So in Bakhmut," ours "! (Laughs - ed. ) In fact, it hurts.
There are less people, but they are still. I was in different cities - in the Kyiv region, in the south: there is no such thing. In the Donbass, and especially in cities that are close to hostilities, this still remains. They beat them with rockets, aviation, and they say, "No, it's because of you or you are. " And, unfortunately, there are such conversations, and you can no longer do anything.
- Why don't they learn anything? - Now part of the territories in the Donbass is part of Ukraine - both administratively, politically and controlled by our troops, but mentally they live in Russia, you know? And they look at all these events through the eyes of the Russian viewer and the Russian media. - It is not clear why they won't go to Russia? There are so easy to give passports! Tell me refugees, you will live somewhere in the Far East. - This is a very difficult question.
If from afar, it's all black and white. If you get closer, everything is different. And in fact it is a very harm to children. Sometimes we go somewhere for tasks prepared, in dresses, in helmets, we realize that the red zone, dangers. And there is a woman with two children, communicating with a neighbor, although there is already a shelling. Not only artillery, there are mortars in the 120s, you know? That is very close to the enemy. They live quietly. They are told, "Go.
" They answer: "Where will we go"? The neighboring house is destroyed by artillery fire, they are frightened, we say, "Go. " "We have nowhere to go. " You find them phones, volunteers, we say: "We will bring you to that point, you will take you a car, bring you to this city, there will be given home for the first time, everything is agreed, call this room. " "Well, well, let's do. " We come in three days, and they are in the same place, nothing has changed.
- How do you feel about the news that the Russians have a new deadline - do they have to capture the Donetsk region by September 15? -They can put any deadline. Their leadership lives in their fictional world. You see, this is a country that is based on lies, on propaganda, that it deceives all its citizens and itself. Therefore, this system cannot give a normal feedback from what is happening. No one [in the Kremlin] knows what really happens. Above them all is well.
They do not understand why Russians lose some territories or cannot come if they have so well. And so they have such dissonance. They break, set new tasks, everyone says, "Yes, we will do. " And they come to the end, some last detachment pushes, "Dnivtsi" under our art, they die there somewhere. And everything ends. - Putin's devil's plan. He finally achieved the fact that Ukrainians were shooting at Ukrainians. Because we understand that "Dnivtsi", "Lnivka" are citizens of Ukraine.
They were mobilized, and now they shoot in us. - You can always give up on it. There is no need to make victims and justify them. I don't justify them. They live in this territory, received passports in the territory. They consider themselves citizens of this quasi-state or Russia. They take their weapons, make them kill. And they do not want to go because they do not want to kill Ukrainians, but because they are afraid that they will kill them. This is the only reason.
Therefore, I have a different attitude to these people. -It is said that in general, Russia has been preparing to capture Ukraine for 30 years. How do you think we didn't see it? Why didn't we notice that? Even in 2014, many had a great surprise that it happened in the Crimea and the Donbass. - We are very focused on ourselves and think that the whole world has grown around Ukraine. If you go a little around the world . . . I think you went, communicated with different people from other countries.
If you start living a little in their information field, it is quite different. Now the outbreak of attention to us, because the Great War is coming, a strong war, active. And so to us again, as after 2014, [chained] maximum attention. But the world lives with its problems. And not in one and only Ukraine the world came together [wedge]. Putin built a new empire. He built the Soviet Union from the very beginning 2. 0. The Soviet Union 2.
0 is not only Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Baltic countries, perhaps Poland, Finland, perhaps. If the empire does not expand, it dies. This is built the whole process of capture and enslavement of new lands. That is, Ukraine is one of the goals of this strategy, it is one of the main ones. Why? Because, first, big. Secondly, when there is Ukraine with Russia, it is almost the Soviet Union. Belarus already has.
And so it was one of the key goals within the framework of this concept in general - this is one thing. Other. Ukraine began its movement towards the EU and European values in 2014. It was a very bad example for Putin Russia. If Ukraine, which does not have such stocks, will be successful and Russia will continue to live in these chicken houses where there is no hot water and toilets in the house, it is a shabby their power. They wanted to destroy Ukraine as a project as anti -Russian.
- Crimea stopped being a taboo topic. Honestly: after 2014, few believed that we would return the Crimea to the military. They talked about different things - Putin will die, the regime may change, maybe a diplomatic way we can do something, the Crimean platform. Now the Commander -in -Chief of the Armed Forces Valery Zaluzhnya officially acknowledged that Ukrainian missiles, for example, were hit by Novofedorovka, where BC has broken several aircraft.
Do you know how it changes the picture of their worldview and what may not be in Crimea? - I am from Crimea. Someone stayed there - some relatives or acquaintances, but almost all of them have a pro -Russian position, I do not communicate with them. So I do not know what is happening in their head. All my friends who had a pro -Ukrainian position left. Someone still remained there because of certain family circumstances. They feel in occupation.
They really wait and write carefully, sometimes they ask something. But for all our pro -Ukrainian people who feel in occupation, this is a holiday. They understand that Putin Russia has a blow. They see that the Armed Forces works and can go. I do not know how this war will go, whether there will be a military operation of the liberation of Crimea. It may not come to this.
If we release the whole territory of continental Ukraine in the military means, roughly speaking, we will release all new occupied territories and Donetsk, Putin will be very difficult to stay in power. Then we will simply be able to cover the Crimea in the point where we want, all the military objects, without going there by physically infantry. Fighting for Crimea have always been very heavy, bloody. This is historically like that. And maybe it will not come. And maybe it will come.
The Putin regime may cease to exist in the form in which it is, because of its losses of territories, both military and political defeats. Crimea will go to us because Russia will begin to break up. Or will have to [carry out] a military operation. But we do not know it. But in the fact that we will go there, we will hang both Ukrainian flags and our enemies, no one doubts.
- Do you believe in the possible Crimean resistance? Do you believe that when we go to Crimea in different ways, that we will see quite a few people who want to be with Ukraine? - The war does not really change people, the revolution does not change people. Social patterns remain the same in people. There is part of [population] active that does something. There is a part of the passive that supports where the weights levers shake, or simply watches.
When the admiration of Russia [Crimea] began, everyone fluctuated. There was a pro -Russian minority, there were not many, there was a pro -Ukrainian [part of the inhabitants of the peninsula]. Many people came out, many were against it. Then, when the military defeated Russia, the levers went there, and the pro -Ukrainian [people] remained in the minority.
But when the lever goes the other way, where the Ukrainian flags will appear, this majority will say again: "We have been waiting for you all our life, thank you. " That is, the mentality of any people, not only Ukrainians, not only Crimeans or people of Donbass. I always said that the territory should be liberated [Peninsula]. When we release the territory, those who were for us will say that they are for us. Those people who will resolve with this will be reconciled.
And which will not be resigned, or they will leave, or we will catch them. - When I saw these news about the Novofedorivka, I am in a good way. Kremlin dwarf Dmitry Medvedev stated that "if something falls, some rocket will hit the peninsula, the apocalypse will begin. " What did you feel when you saw this news? I know that you have a personal story related to Novofedorivka in 2014. - Yes, I helped to evacuate the military, in particular in Novofedorivka. We killed our military, we took out his body.
His wife, people went out, left. Friends say goodbye. One remained in Ukrainian and the other - in pixel, went to the Russian side. It was very sad for me. Such sad memories of Novofedorivka. Stroke [by Novofedorovka] is a very loud return. And for me it was really a balm for a shower, wounded in these injuries in 2014.
- We know about the concentration camp in Olenivka, the Ukrainian soldiers can be held captive in the territory of the so -called "DNR", that is, on the occupied parts of the Donbass, or export to Russia. You were in Russian captivity for five years. It seems to me that people simply do not understand what Russian captivity is because they were not there. What do we not understand this? - I still had a little different situation. I became Celebreti, known. Not immediately, but after a certain time.
And my publicity protects me. And so always, when I talk about captives, I say that the maximum publicity is needed. I had controversy with human rights activists against some prisoners. They told me that I needed silence. If there was silence, I would still be in prison. And this person will sit until you are silent. [Publicity] protects it from torture, from bad conditions. They can make your life unbearable. They are very well able to do it. Therefore, I will not envy our captive.
In fact, both boys and many girls are there, some are pregnant. These are much worse to them now than it was in 2014, because [Russia] was still playing in some kind of tolerance, but legitimacy. And now nothing. The camp in Olenivka is a colony. They almost released it from simple zets, brought it to the industry. There is never a living space on the industry. This is an industrial zone.
There are never a nonesens live there! They bring them to a separate barrack, burned in a few hours with shmels or something else. It's just an act of destroying our captives. Perhaps they were tortured and lost their bodies, perhaps alive. We dont know. But it was the execution of our captives. And this is definitely a crime against humanity. - When the defenders of Mariupol came out of the azovstal, we remember that they said - silence is needed.
Representatives of the Red Cross were only at the beginning. When the soldiers were loaded into these buses, autozaks, and they were rewritten, they said that in three months you would be released. And we see what the situation is. They were able to exchange only seriously wounded. - I was told the same in 2014: I need silence. And these fsbshniki: “Why do you start? Now you are exchanged. " And our lawyers also whispered. I did not listen to anyone, did what I needed.
I know that you have to fight, otherwise you will be eaten. - Are there good Russian? Are they not? Do we have to cooperate with Russian oppositionists? They may continue to fight Putin's mode? - Personally, after Bucha and Mariupol, good Russians ended. - There is a Russian movie community that supported you when you were in prison.
Did anyone try to contact you? - I am grateful to them all for the support when I was in prison, but I do not forgive them that they have brought their country to the fact that Putin prevails, and they destroy our citizens. I never forgive any Russian. Everything that was before - it was before. No, no one went out [in connection]. One person, in my opinion, wrote, and I did not answer anything. There is nothing to talk about.
- Did you communicate with the prisoners of Russian? At first they "did not see where they came", and now they are fighting for money. - I do not believe in all these fables they tell. I saw captives. There is no desire to communicate with them and do something for them. - There are two large categories of people. Some who say they have lost their goal in life through the war. There are other people who have found a goal in life.
We are saying that we have to liberate Ukraine, to do everything we can for our part, in order to free it from the Russians. What is your option? - I do not know. While I was in prison for five years, I was constantly standing [before my eyes], as I am in camouflage with a machine gun to the APC on the Crimea with the Ukrainian flag to liberate Crimea and my native village, my home. For me, this may have been a psychological shelter to perceive this dream that could never come true.
And now I am at freedom, I am in camouflage and with weapons, and there is not so far to Crimea. - That is, you are approaching your dream? - So. - We communicated earlier in completely different circumstances - there could be some film festival. And now we see that, for example, your actor, a leading role in the movie rhino Sergey Filimonov, publishes good news from Kharkiv region. That is, everything has changed.
- In fact, a lot of people who worked in a riose - both actors and technical workers are fighting. They are just less known, but also fight. I am grateful to them all. I am grateful to any warrior who took the weapon and destroys the enemy, and to everyone who helps. The Armed Forces is a large structure, not everyone stands on the front line. Many do things [in the rear], it is also difficult for them to be psychologically.