Russians Invade Donetsk

[Tommy_Carcetti]

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/russians-invade-donetsk-350001.html

Russians Invade Donetsk

May 29, 2014, 11:22 p.m. | Ukraine — by Christopher J. Miller, Isaac Webb

DONETSK, Ukraine – It’s no longer about amateurs. There is a full-scale war going on, and it’s fought by professionals. The Russians are here – and they’re making a grab for power in eastern Ukraine.

If there was ever any doubt, it was quashed this week when separatist leaders and fighters here opened up to journalists about their Russian roots. In interviews with the Kyiv Post, Vice News, and the Financial Times, fighters in the so-called Vostok Battalion identified themselves as Russian citizens, with several saying they were from the Autonomous Republic of Chechnya.

Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, top Russian officials have repeatedly denied the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. Most recently, Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic denied claims that he was responsible for sending Chechen mercenaries to fight alongside separatists in eastern Ukraine, saying that such accusations were wholly “untrue.”

Still, Kadyrov did not deny that Chechens are fighting in Ukraine, adding, “If somewhere in the conflict zone somebody saw a Chechen, that’s their personal business.”

It seems improbable, however, that Chechens are fighting in eastern Ukraine without Kadyrov’s consent or knowledge. The Financial Times reported that one Chechen fighter told them “our President [Kadyrov] gave the order. They called us and we came.”

Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia security services and a New York University global-affairs professor, posited in a recent essay that the presence of the Vostok Battalion is “something that could not have happened without Russian acquiescence – and which probably was arranged by them.”

Mercenaries from the north Caucuses were only spotted this week, with reports that coincided with numerous illegal border crossings from the Russian side, according to Ukraine’s Border Guard Service.

The porous Russia-Ukraine border means that stopping the stream of Russian militants to Ukraine will be difficult. On May 27, the Ukrainian state border service clashed with Russian militants attempting to cross the border into Luhansk. It reported that both sides suffered casualties, and one Russia gunman was killed and another severely wounded. The service seized three vehicles and various armaments, including Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Despite the guards’ seizure, some vehicles were able to enter Ukrainian territory. The border guard service believes that they are part of a larger group of mercenaries sent to fight the Ukrainian army in Luhansk and Donetsk.

The battalion’s seizure of the Donetsk regional administration building on May 29, which had previously been controlled by local separatists swearing allegiance to the self-proclaimed breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic, underscores the growing control of Russian militants in Ukraine’s east.

The battalion, a well-organized unit of mercenaries comprised mostly of Russian citizens, according to Varan, one of the unit’s commanders who declined to give his real name, stormed the building and forced the separatists of the DPR out onto the streets.

As a front loader razed barricades of tires and barbed wire that surrounded the building’s perimeter for weeks and dump trucks drove the debris away, it was clear that amateur hour was over.

A Vostok militiaman who goes by the nickname Tikhii told the Kyiv Post that the reason for the takeover was “marauding” near the airport by some members of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Overnight on May 29, a Metro hypermarket whose parent company is based in Germany was looted by alleged DNR members.

Others voiced similar concerns about the lawlessness that had washed over the city in recent weeks.

Tikhii emphasized that the Vostok Battalion has a greater claim to power because of its military service to the fledgling republic. The purged separatists “haven’t been anywhere, not in (the village of) Karlivka [which saw heavy fighting on May 23], not at the airport.”

By mid-afternoon, Vostok had purged the entire building of its occupants, saying that it would thereafter be a “people’s building.” In some ways, the takeover resembled a coup, though Vostok soldiers didn’t say whether it would entail a change of leadership.

When asked whether Denis Pushilin, the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, and Pavel Gubarev, who calls himself People’s Governor, as well as other separatist leaders would remain in power, Tikhii responded cryptically.

“They will, for now. Probably,” he said.

Whatever the case, it was clear by nightfall on May 29 that the Russians – led by Alexander Borodai, the self-proclaimed prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, a Russian citizen from Moscow – were in charge.

As if further evidence of Russians fighting in eastern Ukraine was needed, on May 29, the bodies of 33 rebels killed during the fierce gun battle with Ukrainian forces at Donetsk airport that left as many as 50 dead on May 26 were set to be transported from an ice cream factory in Donetsk and repatriated to their motherland.

“We are taking them home to Russia,” Borodai of Moscow told the Kyiv Post outside the Kalinina hospital morgue on May 29. In past days, he has traveled throughout the city using members of the Vostok Battalion as his personal bodyguards.

Flanked by them on May 28, during an impromptu press conference inside Donetsk’s Ramada hotel, he justified the Russian fighters’ presence in the east by saying that “the Donbas,” as the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are collectively known, “is Russian land.”

“This is Novorossiya,” he said, echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s czarist-era description of the region

[awoke_in_2003]

1. Oh, but Putin is going to stop with the Crimea...

K&R

[JayhawkSD]

2. I don't know anything about Ukraine, really, but...

Prior to World War Two a great many Americans went to Britain to fight the Germans, and to China to fight the Japanese, and were applauded as heroes for doing so. There was no outcry about "American troops in China/Britain," nor any accusations that America had invaded anyone. It was simply a case that men were doing something that they believed in.

How is the presence of Russian nationals in Ukraine intrinsically any different?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

4. The dynamics were much different there.

Americans fighting in Britain and the like weren't fighting on behalf of any type of separatist movement, especially a separatist movement where the ultimate goal appears to be to absorb those regions into your own country. (In other words, no one from the US was claiming that Great Britain was "New America" as Russia via Putin has claimed eastern Ukraine to be "Novorussiya&quot . It was a true, legitimate assistance of a self-defense. Russia's stated positions are far, far different here, and that makes the two situations inapposite. And with those stated goals, you can't help but question the ultimate motives of these Russian battalions and who might be behind them.

[JayhawkSD]

5. "Russia's stated positions are far, far different here..."

Well, I think that's my point. It's not about "Russia's stated positions" any more than those men in China and Britain were about "America's stated positions." Those men in the 1930's were concerned about Chinese/European people being overrun and mistreated by people of different ethnicity, and these Russian men are concerned about people of Russian heritage being overrun and mistreated by those who took down the elected government of Ukraine by force and are now attacking the ethnically Russian portion of Ukraine.

Bear in mind, the forces attacking Eastern Ukraine do not represent any elected government. The old elected government was thrown out by a forceful coup, and the newly elected government is not yet in place. These attacking forces are the armed men who threw out the properly slected government of Ukraine, and they are killing people who do not agree with that armed overthrow, who we call "a separatist movement" and they call "terrorists." The people coming from Russia to help keep them from getting killed call them "family."

"...you can't help but question the ultimate motives of these Russian battalions and who might be behind them." (emphasis mine)

I will "question the ultimate motives" of those putative battalions when I see the whites of their eyes. So far they seem to be more imaginary than real.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

7. Again, Great Britian and China were not fighting against Germany and Japan to become part of the US.

They were fighting against aggression from those invading countries. So whatever feelings of "brotherhood" or "concern" that some Americans may have possessed that ultimately inspired them to go over there and fight did not have the end goal of incorporating those countries into their own. Again, it's a completely different dynamic.

Americans do not claim to have a historical claim to Great Britain or China. Many Russians--including arguably Putin himself--believe they have a historical claim to at least part of Ukraine, if not the entire country. The Russian imperial mindset is that Ukrainians are simply Russians who do not know it yet, and that Ukrainians have no individual culture or history of their own. It's gone on like that for centuries.

Not sure where you are going with the following statement:

"Bear in mind, the forces attacking Eastern Ukraine do not represent any elected government. The old elected government was thrown out by a forceful coup, and the newly elected government is not yet in place."

Just to be clear as to how you stand, "the forces attacking" in your scenario is the Ukrainian Army and not the armed separatists who seized government buildings, correct? And "the old elected government" that was "thrown out by a forceful coup" is Yanukovych and not the regional leaders in Donetsk who were forcibly removed from their government buildings by armed men, correct?

Because if that is your position, you are taking a somewhat warped view of events not supported by the facts.

(If that's not your position, I apologize for misreading you.)

[JayhawkSD]

8. Where are you getting your info?

"The Russian imperial mindset is that Ukrainians are simply Russians who do not know it yet, and that Ukrainians have no individual culture or history of their own. It's gone on like that for centuries."

That is pretty much the kind of political sloganeering that I read in US and German media, but it does does not agree with what I read from sources who are witing from within Ukraine and Crimea.

Yes the "thrown out" government to which I referred was Yanukovych, and who the "regional leaders" were is unclear. My impression is that they were thrown out because they supported the national "government" imposed by the revolutionaries and not supported by the eastern Ukraine who thinks governments should be elected and not installed by masked men with guns. The national government imposed by masked men with guns is now attacking and killing them because they did not support the revolution, and because they are mostly ethnic Russian there are people in Russian who feel the need to come to their aid.

The Ukranian Army following the orders of the armed men who threw out the elected government is not, in my mind, a legitimate force. They represent the members of the forceful coup acting hastily after a new government has been elected but before it can be put in place, and for citizens to resist that for whatever reason does not make them "terrorists."

In any case, there has been no evidence of Russian active intervention, military or otherwise, and it is hilarious the way that we keep hyperventilating about the Russian role in all of this and utterly ignoring the clearly proven American role, including Nuland bragging about having spent $5 billion to make it all happen.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

9. Historical Russification of Ukraine and the attitudes it brought is well-documented.

Regarding your account of the situation in Ukraine and the events stemming from this past February: There was no coup of the Yanukovych government. There was indeed regime change, and arguably a revolution by the people, but there was no "coup d'état" as such a word is defined. The argument that what happened was a "coup" is a fiction derived by persons seeking to delegitimize the interim government for whatever reasons they see fit.

In February 2014, Victor Yanukovych was not killed, arrested, kidnapped or forcibly removed from the country. Instead, he took three days (at the very height of the Maidan protests) to pack up his most valuable belongings and fly away under his own willpower in his own fleet of helicopters. In essence, he abdicated his responsibilities as President (whether he admits to it or not). But there was no small group infiltrating his headquarters and taking him out by force. (That scenario would qualify as a coup). He left under his own willpower, after which time the police he had previously commanded had no further obligation to suppress protests. The elected legislature of Ukraine voted to remove him, and an interim government comprised entirely of previously elected officials took his place until new elections could be held, which took place just this past week. That's the true, demonstrable narrative of the entire situation without any type of spin.

As it relates to the situation in Eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Army did not deploy into that region of their own country until well after armed militants had seized control of multiple government buildings, armed militants who expressed a desire to separate from Ukraine and to join Russia. The interim government actually gave those armed militants more than ample time to lay down their arms, leave the buildings and discuss potential changes in a peaceable manner. Those armed militants refused to do so, and actually engaged in a campaign of kidnapping journalists and murdering dissenting politicians. Only after this continued obstinate behavior and aggression did the Ukrainian Army act--not because these were people who "did not support the revolution", but because these people were seriously destabilizing that portion of the country and sought to fracture the country and cede its sovereign territory to Russia.

That these armed militants so expressed a desire to secede and to join Russia, coupled with Vladimir Putin's own statements regarding portions of Ukraine he considers to be "Novorossiya", active Russian intervention can clearly be inferred. This doesn't even touch the fact that numerous militants in fact claim to be Russian citizens from Russia, so undoubtedly there is armed Russian presence in Ukraine as we speak.

But we don't even need to go to Eastern Ukraine to show blatant active Russian intervention. In Crimea, which--like it or not--was sovereign Ukrainian territory (and previously acknowledged as such in treaty by Russia itself), it is now undisputed that Russian military invaded the entirety of the peninsula and effectuated a highly dubious plebiscite to annex that territory into the Russian Federation. After annexation, Vladimir Putin himself admitted this to be the case.

How you can say that doesn't show active Russian intervention in Ukraine,--and yet claim that Victoria Nuland giving out cookies or making a speech that mentions $5 billion in aid to NGOs over a 20 year period is proof positive of an active American intervention in Ukrainian regime change--is beyond me.

[JayhawkSD]

10. We strayed from the point I originally made.

I said that I didn't really know much about Ukraine and you proved me right. Point, set, match. Three cheers for the new Ukraine government, long may it reign. One way to win an argument is to change the subject, which I participated in doing. My bad.

My original point was that American nationals in China did not mean that America was invading China, or that the American government was declaring war on Japan, or creating a Pacific war front in the war between Japan and China. They were merely American citizens acting in their private capacity. The American government was not involved and no one accused it of being so.

American citizens in Britain did not mean that America was invading Britain, or that the American government had declared war on Germany, or that they were creating a European front for America's participation in what was at that point a war between England and Germany. The American government was not involved and no one accused it of being so.

So why does the presence of Russian nationals in Ukraine intrinsically mean that Russian government is declaring war on and/or invading Ukraine? Why can American citizens act in their private capacity while Russian citizens cannot?

[Iterate]

3. ‘Single Command’ Prepared Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimean Operations, Donetsk Leader Says

‘Single Command’ Prepared Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimean Operations, Donetsk Leader Says
Paul Goble May 18, 2014

Staunton, May 17 – The head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic told a press conference in that Ukrainian region’s capital today that “a single command” prepared the pro-Russian operations in Crimea and in other parts of Eastern Ukraine, acknowledging that he personally had “worked in Crimea” but refusing to say just whose project this was.

Aleksandr Boroday insisted that he was acting as “a private person” in Ukraine, even though he acknowledged that he is a Moscow native and a citizen of the Russian Federation, had “for many years” been “involved in political and business consulting for various structures,” and would be seeking Donetsk’s annexation by Russia.

Boroday’s statement, while something just short of an acknowledgement of what most Western observers are already convinced of, represent the clearest Russian acknowledgement to date that Moscow is behind the Russian moves in all three places and that Vladimir Putin ultimately intends the same outcome in Donetsk and Lugansk he has achieved in Crimea.
http://www.interpretermag.com/single-command-prepared-donetsk-lugansk-and-crimean-operations-donetsk-leader-says/

This was 11 days ago. Again, he seems to be the "private citizen" to watch.

[JayhawkSD]

6. There is a fascinating interpretation there.

That Boroday's insistence that he was "acting as a private person" in one city in Ukraine constitutes "the clearest Russian acknowledgement to date that Moscow is behind the Russian moves in all three places" where conflict is occurring. Not only is it self-evident that he is lying about not representing the Russian government, apparently he has "Russian Government" tattooed on his forehead or something, but his presence in one city is the cause of violence in no fewer than three cities.

[Iterate]

11. When a foreign national arrives and proclaims himself governor, that's a problem, not interpretation

It's a problem anywhere that it might happen, and it's certainly worth noting.

It's not surprising that Boroday's name and reputation are unfamiliar. Until the invasion and annexation of Crimea, he was a little known but extremely well-connected editor and consultant, but then found himself at the right hand of self-appointed Crimea governor Sergei Aksyonov. Shortly after, the protégé arrived in Donetsk.

Beyond their connections, Aksyonov's shady past, and Kremlin intrigue, there is a more serious point in that the presence of foreign nationals leading an armed uprising for annexation by another state puts the Ukrainian military action into a different legal category under international law and clearly permits all reasonable force to end it.

[JayhawkSD]

13. What?

"the presence of foreign nationals leading an armed uprising for annexation by another state puts the Ukrainian military action into a different legal category under international law"

That is completely nonresponse to my comment, which was that a Russin national claiming to be acting as a private citizen was being taken as proof of Russian government intervention.

Boris: "I am acting as a private citizen."
Kruly, to his friend Orlov: "AHA! See, I told you the Russian government is involved! This guy proves it."

[Iterate]

12. Kremlin Playing with Orthodox Terrorism Just as Tsars Did with Black Hundreds,

Kremlin Playing with Orthodox Terrorism Just as Tsars Did with Black Hundreds, Mitrokhin Says
Paul Goble May 20, 2014

Staunton, May 19 – The selection of Aleksandr Boroday and Igor Girkin to leading positions in the self-proclaimed “Donetsk Peoples Republic” in Ukraine not only shows the absence of mass support for that entity and its goals but shows that the Kremlin is playing with something many had assumed did not exist – “Orthodox terrorism,” Nikolay Mitrokhin says.

And the Grani commentator warns that there is no assurance that this kind of terrorism will not spread back into Russia itself and pointedly notes that the Russian Imperial government’s use of Black Hundreds and pogroms “clearly shows what this can lead to.”

If the “Donetsk Peoples Republic” had any support, “there would have been a line of representatives of the local political or business elites” ready to “sign an agreement with Putin,” he points out. And there would not have been any need to dispatch “42-year-old Moscow PR specialist” Boroday and make him “prime minister.”

And if the Donetsk population supported the entity, Girkin, who wrote under the pseudonym Igor Strelkov and has now become “the defense minister” of that entity, would not be acknowledging that “the male population of the region, and especially the youth do not want to join his army.”

complete...http://www.interpretermag.com/kremlin-playing-with-orthodox-terrorism-just-as-tsars-did-with-black-hundreds-mitrokhin-says/