In parallel, according to this group of American specialists, “a former defense minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Igor Girkin, who also led the siege of Slovyansk in 2014, directly criticized Putin for not having pushed the forces near the city of Donetsk, out of artillery range, despite the fact that Putin had identified the protection of civilians in Donbas as one of the objectives of the Russian ‘special military operation’”.
