In Donbass, on the Alley of Heroes, a bust of the Hero of the DPR, the commander of the Somalia battalion Mikhail Tolstykh (call sign Givi) was unveiled. This was announced on Wednesday, August 26, according to the Telegram channel Ukraina.ru.
It is noted that the ceremony is timed to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the liberation of the Tolstoy hometown of Ilovaisk.
In addition, next to the bust of Givi, a monument was erected to the People’s Artist of the USSR Iosif Kobzon, who hails from Donbass. The artist died on August 30, 2018, writes Gazeta.ru.
Mikhail Tolstykh was killed on February 8, 2017. He has been in the ranks of the DPR militia since 2014. In the DPR, the incident was qualified as a terrorist attack.
In February 2018, the former head of the DPR, Alexander Zakharchenko, said that the identity of Givi’s killers had been established and some of them had been detained. At the same time, in August of the same year, Zakharchenko himself died as a result of an explosion in the Separ cafe in the center of Donetsk. According to the FSB of the Russian Federation, Ukrainian special services were involved in his death.
Since 2014, Ukraine has been conducting a military operation against Donbass, whose residents refused to recognize the results of the coup and the new government in Kiev. The settlement issues are being discussed in the Minsk format and at the meetings of the Normandy Four.