Donetsk: Eastern Ukraine descends into chaos, lawlessness

[Tommy_Carcetti]

Source: Kyiv Post

DONETSK, Ukraine – Ukrainian military forces have gained ground in the flashpoint cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in Donetsk Oblast over the past week, but government authorities in general have largely lost their grip in the tough industrial oblast, home to 10 percent of Ukraine’s population of 45 million.

Pro-Russian separatists have captured strategically important buildings and claimed to have installed their own “people’s governments,” whose representatives are preparing to hold a referendum on independence from Ukraine on May 11 contravention of Ukraine’s constitution.

Amid the lawlessness stoked by the Kremlin, police here have vanished, replaced by pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic’s law enforcers. A hotline residents can call to report incidents has been set up.

Several hundred armed - and jumpy - rebels patrol the city in search of dissenters ahead of the impending illegal referendum. They roam the streets with itchy trigger fingers and a sense of impunity, nabbing drunks and anyone deemed a threat or a spy, dragging them into buildings barricaded with sandbags, discarded objects and razor wire.


Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/donetsk-eastern-ukraine-descends-into-chaos-lawlessness-346816.html

[DFW]

1. I was on a train with some Russian guy just this evening

I was on the way back from Paris to Germany this evening, and he was having trouble understanding the conductor's information, so I translated for him. We got to talking, as he didn't expect a French-speaking passenger to know Russian as well (he heard me talking to the train staff as they seated me), and he certainly didn't expect me to be from Texas.

He was an artist who helped design and construct theater sets around the world for plays by Russian playwrights. He said the situation back home these days was just a total mess, a real disaster--and he was referring to Russia, not the Ukraine. I think maybe Vladimir Vladimirovitch might have bitten off more than he intended on chewing, maybe even more so than with Chechnya

[uhnope]

5. Every educated Russian or Ethnic Russian I know is anti-Putin

and don't forget that huge anti-Putin rally in the middle of the Crimea invasion

[Igel]

6. That's generally the case.

Then again, most of the Russian's I've known in the last 15 years have been outside of Russia for a year or two.

The Russian press is fairly toxic. Kahnemann used the phrase "what you know is all there is" to describe how we quickly make decisions. You assume there's no additional information or additional information isn't very useful. If it were important, somebody would have told you. (We also assume that information we don't want to agree with is also not very useful. Both of these are at play here.)

Take RT. It's not atypical. So 46 people, ultimately, died in Odessa as a result of 5/2. 40 in the union building or outside of it. 2 were pro-Russians at the march. 4 were pro-unity folk at the march.

Today's RT said that the building fire (etc.) killed 46 people. The march just saw "a fight" with "shots" fired. All specific shots were fired at pro-Russian folk. The result, the clear inference, has to be that all the shots fired were at pro-Russian "protesters" and only they died.

It reported on a person who said that the Maidan folk were strangling people. It doesn't say it's true but since it's reported it's taken to be true.

Like I said, the result is a fairly toxic limiting of views. There's not a counterview present. Ekho used to be okay. There were other sources. Bloggers tend to be more independent, but they'll have to be licensed as "media."

There's a law saying that media, but not individuals, have to abide by laws that make "deviant thinking" (inakomyslie) a crime. This is vague, it's ambiguous, and it results in a lot of disruption, abuse, and problems for media that get too close to the line. (Not that anybody's clear as to where the line is.)

That, and popular media, make it difficult for those not actively seeking a different point of view to find out dissenting information. "Dissenting" doesn't have to be anti-Russian, not by any normal definition of the term.

[bemildred]

13. Khaneman, yes. Heuristics are fast, for real time reactions you need fast.

The trick is knowing when that's wrong, and that comes from experience and context. That's why salesmen want to keep things moving along. They know if you think about it, you are more likely to change your mind.

With broadcast media you never need fast, it's never just for you, but a lot of it is infotainment, so you get the fast shallow version anyway. A lot of people just want the "executive summary", and that is what they get.

And executives become dependent on their minions, so Kahneman comes into play there, too, when the minions have their own agenda.

I was reading a RIA Novosti piece (English) yesterday that just cracked me up it was such a perfect unintentional parody of a lot of the news and analysis I see here.

Kiev's problem is that it needs to unify Ukraine, which is hard to do with violence, we are still dealing with the after-effects of our civil war here.

[jakeXT]

2. no police or criminal police

Odessa Tragedy Planned by Authorities’ Representatives – Kiev Official

KIEV, May 7 (RIA Novosti) – Last Friday’s massacre in Ukraine’s Odessa that left more than 40 people dead was a well-coordinated and planned operation with the participation of representatives of the authorities in Kiev, Ukraine’s acting Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky said Wednesday.

“This action was not prepared at some internal level, it was a well-planned and coordinated action in which some authorities’ representatives have taken part,” Makhnitsky said.

Makhnitsky promised to reveal the names of those who took part in the tragedy that occurred in Odessa.

http://en.ria.ru/world/20140507/189645366/Odessa-Tragedy-Planned-by-Authorities-Representatives--Kiev.html

[karynnj]

4. How do you plan something where the OTHER side starts the violence?

From all accounts I read, the first thing that happened was that the Pro Russians attacked a large rally. Nothing is explained in this Russian article.

[Igel]

7. By having members of the other side on your side.

That's the claim. That squad commanders of the police sided with the pro-Russians.

There was a nifty videotape from the day when the antiMaidan "raided" the police HQ and released something like 67 protesters. One commander ordered his men to lay down their shields and withdraw. Another commander gave no such order and his men didn't. It just took one squad to provide a gap that couldn't be filled and caused the entire "defense" of the building to fail.

The police chief in Odessa was fired. Reports are that he fled. One report said he left via Kharkiv, another that he headed to Transdnistria. I forget his name--it wasn't Slavic. He's alledged to have colluded with the antiMaidan folk.

Part of the problem is "corruption." This is an extension. The police are holding the jobs because they consider the positions and pay theirs. Part of the job description is to follow orders but they don't. It's not always (but often is) the street-level officers that play this game. Instead higher-ranking officers figure they can play it safe: Collect their paycheck, and if it all blows over they have a job; if it doesn't, they have a job. Their loyalty is to their paycheck, their oath is pro forma. In other instances their loyalty isn't to their job, but to being safe. Like firemen who are afraid of fire.


Then there's some local rep who went with the antiMaidan people. Oleksyi something or other. Ukrainian surname.

[The Magistrate]

9. Excellent Commentary, Sir

Your efforts here are much appreciated.

[karynnj]

12. Got it -- planned in Kiev sounded like they were blaming the other side

[bemildred]

3. Police prove to be another weak link in Ukraine’s efforts to keep the peace

KIEV, Ukraine — The scene has been repeated again and again across Ukraine in recent weeks: Protesters storm a building or an opposing group, and police, often decked out in full riot gear, stand and watch.

For many seeing the scenes on video, they verge on the unfathomable. Time and again, police watch as one group attacks another, or takes off with government property (including, sometimes, weapons). Often, as they leave the scene, rioters will note that “the police are with us,” and the police will do nothing to dispel that notion.

In eastern Ukraine Monday, Ukrainian forces continued a battle against pro-Russian separatists in Slovyansk, a town of about 125,000 residents that is now home to an insurgent force estimated at 800. Pro-Russian forces are said to have downed a third Ukrainian helicopter, and Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, said pro-Russia forces were using large-caliber weapons and mortars.

But the talk in the capital Monday was about what had gone wrong in Odessa, where police in body armor, helmets and shields refused even to attempt to quell a riot Friday that resulted in more than 40 deaths, mostly pro-Russian protesters who died in a fire in a building they’d broken into to escape Ukrainian nationalists described as soccer hooligans.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/05/05/226576/police-prove-to-be-another-weak.html

[newthinking]

8. It couldn't be that the police and army are unreliable because Kyiv does not have the people's

support....? Naw.

Now Kiev is having to create new units using "activists" who they can count on... as in half right sector/svoboda because the general population doesn't want to fight each other, but the neo-nazi's are dependable, they hat the ethic russions and will gladly enforce order.

Kind of makes sense since the head and assistant head of Military and Security are Svoboda and Right Sector leaders..... hmmmm

[The Magistrate]

11. That, Sir, is The Least Likely Explanation.

Police as a class of human tend to break towards the authoritarian side of the personality spectrum, and towards the rightist side of the political spectrum. Overt fascist leadership is something police would be expected more to support than to rebel against....

[The Magistrate]

10. Indeed, Sir, The Unreliability Of The Police Is A Striking Feature Of All This

One is reminded of the unreliability, in the early days of the Spanish Civil War, of police units in areas the government managed to hold against the Nationalist rising.

I would suggest several factors which may be at work.

One is that, at bottom, the Kiev regime is in place because police were defeated, and so among police ranks in general there may be some resentment. To some officers, it may just be a bit too much to swallow to be expected to defend the success of something they were happy to work to suppress just weeks before.

Another is that certainly portions of the police, and in some places disproportionate portions, are of Russian ethnicity, and have some sympathy with the separatist tendencies loose among their fellows, and so are disinclined to defend facilities in the name of the Kiev government.

Also something which likely is operating to induce quiescence among police is that in most cases they are local, and have families in reach of the masked 'militias' they are expected to square off against.