Putin beordrar styrkor att gå in i Ukraina - INVASION NU (2022-02-24)

Girkin said that the head of the newly-installed Russian government in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, asked him to deal with the Donbas provinces of eastern Ukraine.[53]

On 12 April 2014, Girkin led a fifty-strong unit of heavily-armed pro-Russian militants who captured the strategic town of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine.[54] They attacked and occupied the town's administration building, police station, and Security Service building, and set up roadblocks.[49][54][55][56][57] The unit were mostly Russian Armed Forces 'volunteers' from Russian-occupied Crimea and wore no insignia.[54][58] Girkin admitted that this action sparked the Donbas War. He said "I'm the one who pulled the trigger of war. If our unit hadn't crossed the border, everything would have fizzled out, like in [the Ukrainian city of] Kharkiv, like in Odessa".[57][5] He said his unit was formed in Crimea and consisted of volunteers from Russia, Crimea, and other regions of Ukraine.

Zelenskyj: 200 befann sig i bombade varuhuset
Över 200 personer kan ha befunnit sig inne i en byggvaruaffär i staden Charkiv som totalförstörts i en rysk attack, skriver Ukrainas president Volodymyr Zelenskyj på X.

Enligt regionen Charkivs borgmästare Oleg Synegubov har två personer bekräftats döda, men dödssiffran väntas stiga.