Russian “War Tourists” Stirring Trouble In East Ukraine

[MNBrewer]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikegiglio/russian-war-tourists-stirring-trouble-in-east-ukraine

OLEXEYEVKA, Ukraine — As pro-Russia crowds stormed government buildings across eastern Ukraine last Sunday, two men approached a makeshift military base in the small town of Olexeyevka, less than half a mile from the Ukraine-Russia border, and began to menace the soldiers inside. “We will kill you if you don’t leave this place,” they said.

The base belonged to a contingent of Ukrainian border guards who had built it only the previous month, hauling Soviet-era tents out of storage and cleaning out old debris from what had been a storage lot. With Russian forces massed across the border and fears of intervention high, the men at the base had come to reinforce Ukraine’s first line of defense against the growing threat from its neighbor — and the mysterious men that night showed how murky it could be.

When they slipped back into the night, the border guards were left wondering just who exactly the two men were — locals angry at the sudden influx of troops? Separatist agitators on orders from Moscow? Or maybe even Russian spies? The men had said they were from a nearby Ukrainian town, but locals later said that no one matching their description lived there.
Border guards like Lt. Col. Vasiliy Polevoy, an 11-year veteran of the guards and senior officer at the base, have spent most of their time dealing with this issue since unrest first gripped eastern Ukraine in March following a bloody revolution in Kiev that ousted the country’s president. Tens of thousands of Russian troops have since massed just a few dozen miles away at the border, prompting Ukraine’s government and Western powers to voice fears of an impending invasion. Guards like Polevoy, however, say they are more concerned about infiltration: “provocateurs” sent across the border from Russia to stir the kind of unrest that had been gripping eastern Ukraine since March.

[msongs]

1. putin has been reading mein kampf again nt

[Igel]

2. Nah. He just went to last week's ONF meeting.

Can't find adequate info on the "People's Front for Russia" in English (another one of those pre-spun organization title translations that adherents like). The English wiki page is ridiculous. Perhaps if you look at the Russian version of the page through Google Translate it'll make a bit of sense.

Nice organization behind "One Russia" that most would describe as revanchistic and fascist, given the revised meaning of the word "fascist" as used here in the last few months. There's a domestic version, pushing for Russian importance, which involves keeping all the non-Russians' territory and keeping Russians in charge of them. Putin had it founded. Putin is the head. The ONF is useful because when he says that it does a survey, or makes a call for something, it's his organization pressuring him to do something that he wants the organization to pressure him to do. Except that the incestuous relationship isn't noticed by most, even if Russia. Low-information folk abound.

There's an international version, pushing for unifying Russians and creating "One Russia" in an ethnic sense. There's a Euroasian branch, as well, spinning the "Russians must restore their history" and expanding on it.

In many of the crowds in Lugansk, Khar'kov, Donetsk, you see signs calling for unification with Russia. You also see signs saying that they're "one people" with Russia. And, eerily, that they're "one people" with all of Ukraine. Meaning, in other words, that Ukrainians are Russians that haven't realized their true ethnicity yet. Marxist false-consciousness a la Goebbels.