they did, ukraine army rekt them, but the idea of putin at the time was that now that girkins "rebellion" has started, all the local ziggers will run to girkin and "we" the rf won't have to send in the army, it will look like a civil war/rebellion and not a foreign invasion, so when ziggers didn't come to girkin and rf didn't send the army, ukraine just smashed girkins puny forces, there was nothing he could've done, the little rebellion in slovyansk was at that point a suicide mission cuz nobody was coming to help him. afterwards did rf start sending in troops, like the donetsk airport battles when rf broke the ceasefire twice
Nazi