A video of women holding fur coats was shared on social media and then in the media on February 8. “Today we received such help. Thank you very much. Families of fallen servicemen gathered here today. Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart… Probably not everyone thought that there would be such an opportunity, ”said one of the women. After that, the operator says that this is help from "the Russian asset of our capital." “It’s at moments like this that we feel like we are one family,” says the voice-over.
She was one of the women in the video who told The Insider that she was not a widow, she was simply asked to film and promised to give a fur coat in return. The entire process was led by Igor Strelkov's associate Yevgeny Skripnik, Strelkov's wife Miroslava Reginskaya, and also a certain Olga Vasilyeva. Skripnik is called the main organizer. He is also known as the author of the action with the distribution of 10 thousand rubles to widows, for which women have to act in a kind of photo report.
“They <volunteers from Skrypnik’s organization> often collect money from ordinary citizens and give it to widows and mothers of soldiers and all that, but in fact they don’t give everything to the intended destination. I know that ammunition was handed over to the fighters, and then they were taken back, but then they said that they were not fighters at all, but like actors. I am ashamed to say this, but in this case I was also involved, because I am not a widow, I was simply asked to act in film and they will give me a fur coat for this. But when the fur coat was taken away, and the video was posted on the Internet, I was shocked. It’s something else for me, but there were real widows there, I personally know two, the husbands died in the war, you give fur coats and after the video you take them away, well, not humanly, right? God punished me for my misconduct, you understand how I look my husband in the eye, ”said one of the participants in the filming.
Another woman said that she received a call from a certain salon that gave fur coats and apologized for the incident, as "they had no idea that Miroslava could do this."
“If I knew that everything would be like this for nothing in my life, I would have starred in that video,” said the second interlocutor. “These bastards, they don’t care, it’s very offensive to me for women. And I'm still not sure. but Strelkov, it seems, is personally involved in this, since we were told to thank him too, but one woman began to resent – they say her husband died through Strelkov. I don’t know, this is a suspicion, but it’s still strange why they asked to thank Strelkov as well.”
Ukrainian media replicate the version that the fur coats were stolen from a store in Kherson
On February 12, publications appeared in the Ukrainian media and Telegram channels stating that the fur coats “donated” in the video were stolen from a salon in Kherson. All materials refer to the publication of one girl in Facebook. However, there is no such post on the social network anymore. Also, in the screenshot published by the media, it can be seen that the distance between the text and the image does not correspond to the Facebook format. Therefore, it is impossible to say whether this statement is fake, or whether the screenshot of the publication was “photoshopped” to the image after the fact.
