Denys Bihunov still recalls it as if it were yesterday: On the morning of April 12, 2014, a group of masked, heavily armed men – commanded by the Russian national Igor Girkin (nom de guerre Strelkov) – seized a police headquarters and several administrative buildings in Slowjansk. Almost immediately, roadblocks were erected. The following day, Ukrainian special forces en route to the city were ambushed; an officer of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was killed, and several others were wounded.
“At that time, Ukraine’s system was still deeply infiltrated by pro-Russian structures,” Bihunov remembers. “My colleague and I were sitting in the city hall, witnessing a total collapse: nothing worked anymore. It was clear to us that what was unfolding before our eyes was wrong and unjust.”
In Kyiv, in the aftermath of the ousting of the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, the political situation was one of acute emergency. Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov declared an “anti-terrorist operation” in response to the events. Consequently, the occupation of Slowjansk became the opening chapter of the war in eastern Ukraine.
Slowjansk became the first stronghold of Russian officers and their separatist auxiliaries in the Donetsk region. From there, Girkin proclaimed the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” and openly demanded secession. Yet the events were by no means a spontaneous “popular uprising,” as Russian propaganda sought to portray them. Although pro-Russian demonstrations had taken place since March 2014 in parts of eastern and southeastern Ukraine – fueled by massive disinformation from Russian media – their impact remained limited. Only the emergence of professionally organized, Russia-controlled combat units decisively altered the situation.
Girkin, a Russian war veteran with combat experience in Transnistria, Chechnya, and the Balkans, and with close ties to the Russian security apparatus, had already participated in the annexation of Crimea. Until 2013, he had served in the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). His presence in Slowjansk – and the financial backing from Kremlin-affiliated circles – made Russia’s direct orchestration of events in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions unmistakable.
For the population of Slowjansk, the 85 days of occupation meant a regime of arbitrariness, fear, and terror. The SBU building in the city center was turned into a site of systematic illegal detention and torture. Civilians were abducted – often merely on suspicion of cooperating with the Ukrainian army or harboring pro-Ukrainian sympathies. Within weeks, more than twenty fortified positions were established in schools, hospitals, and churches. Checkpoints armed with machine guns, anti-aircraft systems, and rocket-propelled grenades blocked roads and even hindered medical services.
By early May, the dynamics of warfare had intensified dramatically. Both the occupiers and the Ukrainian army increasingly resorted to heavy artillery. The city administration documented more than 240 damaged or destroyed apartment blocks – affecting nearly 5,700 individual flats. Water, electricity, and gas supplies collapsed; many families fled, while others survived in emergency shelters.
Eyewitness Lidia Khaustova describes June 2014 as unbearable: “The shelling kept growing stronger. I couldn’t sleep anymore; the walls trembled. My father decided we had to flee. We didn’t know where to go, because there was no mobile reception left.”
Kateryna Pasikova likewise remembers: “There was hardly any food left in the stores, no water, no electricity, no gas. Phones only worked on a single hill outside the city—but getting there was extremely dangerous.”
All over the city, illegal detention sites emerged – including in the municipal building where Bihunov had worked until 2014. In his account for The City Where the War Began, he recounts how he re-entered his former office in June 2014: “I found a towel tied with duct tape in the shape of a face, two filthy mattresses, and windows barricaded with furniture – clear signs that hostages had been held there.”
On July 5, 2014, the Ukrainian army succeeded in expelling the occupiers. Girkin and his fighters withdrew to Donetsk, which remains under Russian control to this day. The very next day, Ukrainian emergency crews began clearing the city of mines, shells, and booby traps. Many administrative buildings, basements, and schools were so heavily mined that they had to be demolished rather than demined.
Today, it is evident that the significance of these events extends far beyond Slowjansk. Here emerged the prototype of the hybrid warfare that continues to shape Ukraine’s reality: covert military intervention combined with massive disinformation campaigns and terror against civilians and civil society. In the ensuing years, considerable national and international resources were devoted to rebuilding and democratically stabilizing the Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk – an effort that Russia systematically sought to undermine.
It was precisely this visible democratic progress in Slowjansk and other cities of Donetsk and Luhansk after 2014 that posed a threat to Russia’s authoritarian, neo-Stalinist model – a model intended to consolidate power both within occupied territories and inside Russia itself.
On February 24, 2022, this aggression escalated into a full-scale invasion of Ukraine –following a pattern first rehearsed in Slowjansk in the spring of 2014.