"I am responsible for the war"; And then came the shock decision

"I was the one who pulled the trigger on this war," Strelkov said in an interview published Thursday with the pro-imperialist Russian newspaper Zavtra.

"If our unit had not crossed the border, everything would have failed - like in Kharkiv, like in Odessa," said Strelkov, whose middle name is Girkin.

"There would have been several dozen killed, burned, imprisoned. And that would have been the end. But the flywheel of the war, which continues to this day, was turned by our unit. We mixed up all the cards on the table," he said.

After Russia's annexation of Crimea this spring, clashes between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Moscow activists broke out in the cities of Kharkiv and Odessa, and more than 40 people died in a fire in Odessa in early May, the Moscow Times recalls, which carried parts of Strelkov's interview.

Since then, the two cities have remained largely peaceful, with most fighting between rebels and government forces confined to the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Strelkov's interview was released on the same day the United Nations released a report highlighting the involvement of Russian fighters in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has killed more than 4,300 people since mid-April.

"The continued presence of a large amount of sophisticated weapons, as well as foreign fighters, including soldiers from the Russian Federation, directly affects the human rights situation in eastern Ukraine," the report states.

Strelkov also told Zavtra that at the start of the 2014 conflict, Ukrainian separatists and government forces were hesitant to start fighting and that the main opposition to the rebels came from Ukrainian ultra-nationalist militants such as Right Sector.

"At first, nobody wanted to fight," he said.

"The first two weeks were spent under the auspices of the parties trying to convince each other," Strelkov said, adding that Kyiv was encouraged after seeing Russia refrain from overt interference in eastern Ukraine, as it did in Crimea or from sending large forces. He added that the lack of major Russian support was a big disappointment for the separatists, who lacked the manpower and weapons to fight against Ukrainian government forces.

"Initially, I assumed that the Crimean scenario would be repeated: Russia would enter," he told Zavtra.

"That was the best scenario. And the population wanted it. Nobody intended to fight for the Lugansk and Donetsk republics. At the beginning, everyone was for Russia," he said.

Russian participation

Strelkov also outlined the extent of Russia's involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. At the beginning of this summer, 90 percent of the rebel forces were locals, Strelkov said.

However, at the beginning of August, Russian soldiers who are supposedly on "vacation" from the army started arriving, he said.

According to Strelkov, the attack on the Black Sea city of Mariupol in September, which raised concerns in Ukraine and the West that Russia had entered a large-scale conflict, was carried out mainly by Russian soldiers "on vacation".

Rebel forces advancing on Mariupol at the time met little resistance from government troops and "could have taken everything without a fight, but there was an order not to take it," he said.

While Moscow has repeatedly denied supplying the rebels with weapons and manpower, Strelkov said the aid offered to the rebels was still significant:

"I can't say we are fully providing for them. But we are really helping them," he said, noting that half of the rebel army was equipped with winter clothing sent from Russia.

Shock decision

After Donetsk and Lugansk held "referendums" on their independence and annexation to Russia in May, separatist leaders appealed to Moscow to accept those territories as Russian regions, but Moscow responded with vague statements calling for "dialogue" between the rebels and Kyiv.

The separatist groups were not thinking about building functioning states and hoped that Russia would absorb them, Strelkov said, arguing that Moscow needed a land link with Crimea, which it annexed in March.

"And then, when I realized that Russia would not accept us, I connected with the resistance, for us that decision was a shock," said Strelkov.