Tag: Ukraine

Leonid Ragozin explains why many Ukrainians are disillusioned with both Kiev and Moscow:

Southeast Ukraine may be the world’s most difficult and unwelcoming environment for fomenting a genuine protest—stability tops the list of local values and priorities. Many local residents admire Putin for bringing that to Russia, but what he is now peddling in Ukraine is instability, and that’s a very tough sell. 

Russia’s efforts are getting increasingly counterproductive. In fact, Putin has become the single biggest force helping to patch up the split between Ukraine’s nationalist west and Russophone east. While the West and many Ukrainian politicians continue to alienate Ukrainian Russophones by treating them as if they are an unfortunate historical error, Putin did more than all of them combined to awake many in Ukraine’s east to the fact that their country, however imperfect, is a better place for a Russian speaker than Russia proper is. A recent poll show that a majority of people in Ukraine’s Russophone regions don’t support separation.

Akos Lada and Maria Snegovaya note that the divide between supporters and opponents of the Euromaidan revolution “is becoming more generational than regional”:

Younger (and better-educated) Ukrainians across all the regions of Ukraine are Western-oriented, support democracy and pro-Western development. As to their attitudes toward Euromaidan, the pattern is such that the older a person is, the more he or she supported the Viktor Yanukovich government and opposed the protesters[.] … Strikingly, the generational change would almost entirely eliminate any existing regional divide in Ukraine in about 10 years if Russia did not intervene – according to the estimates of Evgeny Golovaha, a Professor at the Institute of Sociology of NAS of Ukraine. This is similar to the pattern of convergence described by Alesina et al. in “Goodbye Lenin or not” for Western and Eastern Germany. Overall, Ukrainians are not only turning to the West but making a different civilizational choice, where democracy comes in a package with different political values.

Christian Caryl relays what people in Odessa, another strategically important Russophone city, are saying:

There are, undoubtedly, many Odessans who might welcome rule from Moscow. One hears little Ukrainian spoken on the streets; it’s estimated that about 90 percent of the 1 million people inhabitants of the city prefer to use Russian in their daily lives. Politically, though, Odessa is sharply divided between those who applaud annexation by Russia and those who remain loyal to the goals of the Euromaidan revolution that toppled the government of President Viktor Yanukovych. …

Yet despite the differences in opinion, it’s hard to find anyone in Odessa who welcomes the possibility that Russian forces might invade. “I’m afraid of war,” says Alina Savchenko, a 25-year-old teacher, who notes that her family has members in both Russia and Ukraine. “I live here. I don’t want to see any conflicts among my relatives.” She can think of little positive to say about the revolutionary government in Kiev, but says that she would prefer to see Ukrainians solve their own problems “without interference from the outside, whether it be from Europe or Russia.” Poll figures suggest that Savchenko speaks for the mainstream. Recent surveys in eastern Ukraine have found that even there only a tiny minority — from 4 to 4.7 percent — want to break away from the country.

The latest Dish on Ukraine here and here.

Josh Rogin explains why the administration is taking so long to announce new sanctions on Russia in response to its provocations in Ukraine:

There is still some internal disagreement inside the Obama administration over whether to proceed with sanctions against broad sectors of the Russian economy or with more targeted sanctions against Russian politicians, oligarchs, and perhaps some of the institutions those politicians and oligarchs are connected to.  So far, the U.S. has sanctioned 31 Russian individuals and one Russian bank. U.S. officials believe the sanctions against Putin’s business associates have had some effect and could be expanded.

Stefan Wolff sticks up for the cautious approach:

[T]he incremental toughening-up of the West’s responses keeps the door open for diplomatic solutions and has not fallen into the trap of a tit-for-tat escalation, which is difficult to step back from and makes face-saving exits for both Russia and the West ever more difficult while being played out on the back of the people of Ukraine.

The talk of new sanctions gives at least a limited hope to the four-party talks in Geneva scheduled for Thursday, and were apparently the focus of a phone call between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Putin on Tuesday night. The mere consideration of additional sanctions does not compel Russia to a response, and in fact may offer Moscow an incentive to participate. In turn, it leaves the US and EU with options, depending on the outcome of the talks, which could be as little as an agreement to meet again in the same format.

Insisting on the possibility of a diplomatic way forward, as the West and Russia both continue to do, may not be much at this stage, but it is better than the alternative of walking straight into a military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine.

But John Hudson and Shane Harris suspect that John Brennan’s surprise visit to Kiev points to something more:

The administration’s reluctance to militarize the conflict and impose harsher sanctions on Russia has angered hawks in Congress who are demanding more intelligence-sharing between Washington and Kiev as well as weapons transfers. “We ought to at least, for God’s sake, give them some light weapons with which to defend themselves,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told Face the Nation on Sunday. “They won’t even share some intelligence with the Ukrainian government.”

Brennan’s visit appeared to raise the level of American involvement, even if not in the form of military aid. In the past few weeks, Ukraine has boasted of its success in rounding up Russian agents and provocateurs, particularly in the south of the country, where Russian forces are in control of Crimea, and in the east, where protesters believed to be working in coordination with Russian security forces have stormed Ukrainian government buildings. Former U.S. intelligence officials said that Ukraine has a generally credible and sophisticated domestic security service. But the sudden surge in arrests of suspected Russian agents signals a greater level of information-sharing from the Americans, former officials said.

Larison dumps on the idea of sending weapons to Ukraine:

I suppose it would make some Western interventionists happy that the U.S. was “doing something,” but I’m not sure who else would be encouraged by a decision that would be simultaneously provocative and useless. It would be provocative because it would deepen U.S. involvement in the conflict, and that would only encourage Russia to continue its agitation and incursions. It would be useless because the Ukrainian military is in no condition to fight. Even some of the advocates for sending arms to Ukraine have acknowledged the Ukrainian military’s lack of readiness and training. If U.S. shipments of arms encouraged Ukraine to try to fight a war that it couldn’t win, it would make things even worse and help give Russia a pretext for a larger military intervention.

Lastly, Ryan Avent fears that a more forceful response would carry the unacceptable risk of starting a major war:

There are a couple of actions that might alter Mr Putin’s payoff structure. One would be to make threats that are both credible and a real deterrent to Russia. If America promised to counter any further aggression by locking Russia out of the global financial system (as it did to Iran) that might work, given that the policy would mean relatively minor economic costs for NATO and enormous and immediate economic pain for Russia. Another option would be to put American soldiers in harm’s way, so that Russia could not invade NATO territory without directly harming American military personnel. Given that America could not help but respond forcefully to an attack on its own people, such a move might render the NATO guarantee toothy. Not toothless. So, basically, man the NATO-Russian border with American troops.

The problem in both of these cases is that—given that we’re not exactly clear on Mr Putin’s utility function and political constraints—there is some not-insignificant risk that either would make war more likely, and possibly much more likely.

(Photo: Armed pro-Russian men wearing military fatigues gather by Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC) as they stand guard outside the regional state building seized by pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk on April 16, 2014. Ukraine’s Western-backed prime minister on April 16 accused Russia of erecting a new ‘Berlin Wall’ that threatened European security. ‘Today’s events… are starting to endanger Europe and the European Union. It is now clear that our Russian neighbours have decided to build a new Berlin Wall and return to the Cold War era,’ Arseniy Yatsenyuk told a government meeting. By Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images)

Well: it doesn’t take a genius to observe the ballet now being orchestrated by the Kremlin to justify an invasion in Eastern Ukraine, does it? The parallels with Crimea are almost perfect. Along with the cynicism behind them. Bershidsky observes the brazenness with which the Russian government is now openly meddling in the region, with sinister masked men strutting around with impunity. In this war of nerves, Putin is obviously winning, and Kiev is badly behind the ball:

The anti-Kiev forces include heavily armed paramilitaries. Their unmarked uniforms are different from those worn by Russian occupying troops in Crimea last month, but the forces appear well-organized, and in numerous videos of the attacks they do not sound Ukrainian. In fact, they often freely admit that they are Russian. In one video, the man assuming command of local policemen in Gorlovka says he is a lieutenant colonel in the Russian army, and in Slavyansk, the commander of the group that seized the mayor’s office told a reporter for Echo Moskvy radio that he was an entrepreneur from a Moscow suburb.

Although Moscow has not openly admitted that Russians are taking part in inciting the eastern Ukraine protests, they clearly are, whether in an official capacity or as volunteers. And they haven’t been ordered to keep their mouths shut, or have been lax about following their orders.

Putin is huffing his own chauvinism, and you don’t unleash that force in Russia and maintain control over it for long. David Patrikarakos is on the scene in Sloviansk:

These people were entirely different to those I had met in Donetsk and Luhansk, the other Ukranian cities that have recently become sites of pro-Russian violence.

The armed men that form the “self-defense” units here are not just militia carrying bats; they are undoubtedly professionally trained, and though they wear no military insignias, they are clearly soldiers. They carry automatic weapons and wear full army fatigues. They are professional, organized, and ready to fight. …

We are now in a new, and dangerous, phase in this crisis. The previous trouble spots of Luhansk and Donetesk are major cities in Eastern Ukraine, with more organized pro-Russia factions. That the conflict is spreading to small, unimportant towns like Sloviansk is indicative that pro-Russia activism has taken root in the heartlands of the region.

Maria Snegovaya looks at polling contradicting the claim that these uprisings enjoy significant popular support:

According to a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, a majority of Ukrainians—in all regions—condemn the deployment of Russian troops in Ukraine (93 percent of people in the west and center held this opinion, 73 percent in the South, and 68 percent in the East). A study by the International Republican Institute (IRI) found that Russian-speaking Ukrainians in all regions do not experience significant infringement of their rights and actively oppose Russia sending troops to Ukraine to protect them (67 percent in the south and 61 percent in east of Ukraine). Similarly, the majority of respondents in all regions believe the Crimean referendum was a threat to Ukraine’s integrity, support Ukraine’s independence, and the autonomous status of Crimea within Ukrainian borders; 64 percent of Ukrainians support a unitary Ukrainian state, and only 14 percent prefer federalization—a plan to give greater authority to the regions of Ukraine. (Russian media presents a very different picture.) …

Moreover, Putin has fostered pro-European sentiment across all of Ukraine. As a result of Russian aggression, the support for European integration rose by 10 percent to 52 percent from February to March 2014. (It remained constant at 40 percent throughout all of 2013.) Likewise, the number of people supporting participation in Russia’s Custom Union dramatically decreased.

Finally, Motyl points out that Russia’s meddling in Ukraine makes it a state sponsor of terrorism according to US law:

There is overwhelming evidence of Russia’s direct and indirect involvement in the violence that rocked several eastern Ukrainian cities on April 12–13. Russian intelligence agents and spetsnaz special forces are directly involved; the weapons and uniforms worn by the terrorists are of Russian origin (a point made by the US ambassador to Kyiv, Geoffrey Pyatt); and the assaults on government buildings in Slavyansk, Mariupol, Makiivka, Kharkiv, Yenakievo, Druzhkivka, Horlivka, Krasny Lyman, and Kramatorsk were clearly coordinated by Russian intelligence. …

Does the behavior of the pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine involve “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets”? Obviously. Does this violence involve “citizens or the territory of more than one country”? Yes, it does. The violence therefore qualifies as international terrorism, and its perpetrators are obviously “terrorist groups.” QED.

The latest Dish on eastern Ukraine here.

With one prominent journalist fretting that Germany has become “a country of Russia apologists,” Christiane Hoffmann considers why so many of her countrymen feel drawn to the east:

There are some obvious explanations for the bond between Germans and Russians: economic interests, a deeply rooted anti-Americanism in both countries on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. But those are only superficial answers – dig a little deeper, and you’ll find two other explanations: Romanticism and the war.

The war explanation is inextricably linked to German guilt. As a country that committed monstrous crimes against the Russians, we sometimes feel the need to be especially generous, even in dealing with Russia’s human rights violations. As a result, many Germans feel that Berlin should temper its criticism of Russia and take a moderate position in the Ukraine crisis. It was Germany, after all, that invaded the Soviet Union, killing 25 million people with its racist war of extermination. Hans-Henning Schröder, a Russia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs describes this as Russophilia and says it is a way of compensating for Germany’s Nazi past. …

Then, of course, there are Germans’ romantic ideas about Russia. … “The east is a place of longing for the Germans,” says [political theorist Herfried] Münkler. The expanse and seeming infinity of Russian space has always been the subject of a German obsession for a simpler life, closer to nature and liberated from the constraints of civilization. The millions of Germans that were expelled from Eastern Europe and forced to move to the West after 1945 fostered that feeling. To them, it represented unspoiled nature and their lost homeland.

Update from a reader:

Oh my god this is such terrible horseshit. This article is full of distortions and prejudiced cliches about Germans. The fact it’s written by a German doesn’t mean anything. We are masters of self flagellation.

I am a German who’s lived in the UK for many years, but I still follow politics in my home country religiously. What has happened with regards to Ukraine and German media coverage and the reaction of the general population has been deeply divided. The neoconservative transatlantic aligned media (mostly Springer) created a Term “Putinversteher” (a person that understands Putin) to discredit everybody with a nuanced view on the subject matter.

Do you know when was the last time that happened? The same media elements in Germany did the same thing during the run up to the Iraq War. They accused every opponent (and the vast majority of Germans was opposed to that disastrous adventure for very good reasons) of being deeply anti-American, if not anti-Semitic, and deeply troubled by WWII defeat, which is why they all secretly wanted to stick it to the Yanks out of spite yadda yadda yadda.

Yes, that is exactly how Germans were maligned back then. The same people who did the smearing back then are unapologetically doing the smearing now. But luckily the German majority again doesn’t buy into the bullshit explanations that are being offered. What those Germans I talked to think can be summarized in few bullet points, and none of them are anywhere near of being pro-Putin:

– They want Germany to do politics purely based in Germany’s and not in John McCain’s or Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland’s (and all the other Western clowns handing out cookies on Maidan square).

– They don’t understand what on earth the Ukraine has to do with the EU at a time that the EU is in deep crisis. Who are these incompetent politicians engaging in these terribly shortsighted idealistic adventures and who authorized them to act in such way in our name?

– They see the hypocrisy of the West when for example John Kerry says “in the 21st Century you cannot simply invade another country on trumped up charges.” Hello?

Actually the sentiment is best described by this phenomenal analysis of Western foreign policy bluster by Stephen Walt.

I quarrel with my countrymen and -women over many issues all the time. But we can’t be reduced to this simplistic explaining of the “romantic German mind longing for the east” “stockholm syndrome” and similar crap that Spiegel Online seems to offer to interested foreigners.

Things are getting pretty hairy over there:

Protesters seized another police station in eastern Ukraine Monday, as the government’s latest deadline for pro-Russian militia to leave the government offices they have occupied for the past week passed without signs of withdrawal or crackdown. In a televised Sunday address, acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchinov set a deadline of 9 a.m. for protesters to pull out. CNN reports that there was no sign of movement from occupied buildings in the regional capital, Donetsk, or the flashpoint city of Slovyansk. And at least 100 armed protesters stormed the police headquarters in Horlivka, a small city about 20 miles northeast of Donetsk, in a clash that apparently injured several people, Reuters reports.

Linda Kinstler recaps the developments over the weekend:

[A] Ukrainian Berkut officer was killed Sunday night after a shootout broke out in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, in the already unstable Donetsk region. Five others were injured in the first reported gun fight in eastern Ukraine, which started after armed men seized the town’s state security office and police station, AP reports. Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov also reported “an unclear number of casualties among the militia.” …

Ukrainian Berkut police forces in Donetsk sided with pro-Russian protesters occupying government buildings in the city. “We will not submit to Kiev, because we do not think that anyone [in the government] is legitimate,” one officer said according to RIA Novosti. Police in Lugansk also said they are no longer taking orders from the Ukrainian government, Gazeta.ru reports.

Oleg Shynkarenko claims that Russians are being actively recruited to stir up trouble across the border:

One of the Kremlin’s key tactics is to obscure the origins of those forces spearheading its operation in east Ukraine, and one of the ways it’s doing that is to promote what might be called insurrectional tourism.

“Russian Spring,” as it turns out, is not only a revanchist motto out of Moscow, which we started hearing before the Crimea annexation, it’s a website, too. Adventure seekers who dream about reviving the U.S.S.R. can go online to share information about how to travel to Ukraine and, well, make a terrible mess there. Before their departure soldiers of fortune are advised to familiarize themselves with the slogan, “Leave for the front! Glory to Russia!” along with rules of behavior for a Russian tourist who wishes to get to “the territory of brotherly Ukraine”[.]

Jamie Dettmer suspects that Putin’s long game is to re-assert control over Ukraine without going to war:

“Putin’s objective remains to regain control of Ukraine, but I suspect he now thinks he can do this without ordering in the tanks,” says Andrei Illarionov, a former Putin economic policy advisor and now an unstinting critic of the Russian leader.

Illarionov tells The Daily Beast he expects Putin to maintain an intimidating offensive build-up of Russian forces along the Ukraine border, nonetheless, and that there will be no let-up in the fomenting of separatist agitation in the eastern Ukraine towns of Donetsk, Kharkiv, Lugansk and now Sloviansk. The aim is to destabilize Ukrainian politics, weaken Ukrainian state institutions and help Putin’s political allies reassert their power in Kiev.

Previous Dish on eastern Ukraine here, here, and here.

Keith Johnson outlines how Russia has used energy as a weapon in its conflict with Ukraine:

Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the prospect Wednesday of making Ukraine pay in advance for the natural gas that it buys from Russia, a potentially ruinous move for the credit-challenged Ukrainian government. Ukraine’s total gas debt to Russia now totals more than $16 billion, Russian officials said. … Moscow has jacked up the price it charges Ukraine twice in recent days by a total of more than 80 percent, making gas sold to Ukraine among the priciest in Europe.

In a brazen display of chutzpah, Moscow justified the second price hike after abrogating a 2010 treaty between the two countries. Under the terms of that so-called Kharkiv accord, Moscow offered price discounts to Ukraine as a lease payment for the Russian naval base in Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula. Now that Russia has forcibly annexed Crimea and taken over the naval base, it argues that discount no longer applies.

Putin is also threatening European countries with gas shortages if Ukraine doesn’t pay its bill:

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a letter to 18 European leaders Thursday saying that a dispute over Ukraine’s gas debt to Russia could impact gas distribution throughout the continent, urging them to offer financial assistance to the indebted country. … Although the International Monetary Fund has already agreed to provide Ukraine with between $14 and $18 billion to avoid a default,that figure is far smaller than what Putin claims the country owes. In his letter, Putin says that Ukraine owes Russia $17 billion in gas discounts on top of a potential $18.4 billion debt due to a 2009 fine. He said that this debt grows by billions every day.

Meanwhile, as Matt Ford explains, losing Crimea has dealt a severe blow to Ukraine’s goal of energy independence:

The loss of Crimea only further weakened Ukraine’s already-tenuous energy security. Almost all of the fuel for Ukraine’s 15 state-owned nuclear reactors, which accounts for almost half of the electricity the country generates, comes from Russia. Ukraine’s domestic reserves of uranium are paltry, and it lacks the enrichment capacity to turn what it does have into usable fuel. Russia, by comparison, is a net uranium exporter to Europe and owns nearly half of the world’s enrichment capacity.

Ukraine still has some domestic-energy alternatives in the long term, but these require significant investment. The country possesses the third-largest shale gas reserves in Europe, estimated to hold nearly 1.2 trillion cubic meters, but commercial extraction isn’t slated to begin until 2020 at the earliest. That timeline might have been overly optimistic even before the revolution, considering the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and the public resistance that comes with it. Another complicating factor is location: one of the two large fields, the Yuzivska field, falls almost entirely within the Donetsk and Kharkiv oblasts, two of the eastern regions in which Ukraine has accused Russia of fomenting revolts.

The Economist expects that, over time, Europe will decrease its dependence on Russian gas:

The shock of the Crimean annexation should speed up sluggish European decision-making on storage, interconnection, diversification, liberalisation, shale gas and efficiency. And though the decision-makers may detest Mr Putin, in private they will admit that he may thus have done them a favour. They already knew what to do. They just didn’t want to do it.

(Graphic from The Economist)

Adam Taylor uses these maps to explain why Donetsk won’t be such an easy grab for Russia as Crimea was:

That first map is one good reason to doubt the popular support of the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” but the other shows you something else: why Ukraine would care so much about it. The oblast, and in particular its namesake city, are renowned as the economic backbone of Ukraine for their coal mines and steel production (even if the truth about Donetsk’s economic strength may not be so rosy).

Combined, these two maps paint a good picture of why the Ukrainian government seems willing to take a stricter line on Donetsk than it did with Crimea. But they also paint a picture of why Russia’s tactic could be different, too: Less a simple act of annexation, and more an act of provocation.

Ambinder credits Moscow for stirring up resistance in Ukraine’s eastern provinces:

The “resistance” is artificial, of course.

People power in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been generated more often than not by foreign governments that have their own agendas, and not by indigenous forces. The U.S. national security establishment understands this, because they designed the template the Russians are using. From the first CIA officers who toppled Mohammed Mossagdeh in 1953, to clandestine efforts to prop up and then discredit Asian governments during the Kennedy administration, to the Cuban exiles trained by the CIA to overthrow Fidel Castro, to efforts to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan after the September 11th terrorist attacks, to the “indigenous” American-backed Iraqis who took control after the war — the playbook is very familiar. …

The hallmarks of non-linear warfare are operational confusion, mistaken identity, and a sense of brittleness and crisis. Eventually, the combination of agents provocateurs and real protesters blend together. In Ukraine, Putin has already won that war.

Ioffe marvels at Putin’s ability to make his meddling appear local in origin:

One strange by-product of Russia’s tactics is the Kremlin’s deftness in completely reappropriating certain terms, of inverting and perverting them. Just look at the images of the protests in Luhansk and Kharkiv, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were looking at images of Kiev’s EuroMaidan. Yet the former were whipped up [by] Russia, whereas the latter was a largely grassroots movement. As a result, because the hand of Moscow is so obvious in east Ukraine’s protests, the independence of the protesters in Kiev comes under suspicion: were they too organized externally, perhaps in the West? More simply, it gives the two movements equal moral weight, which Russian journalist Oleg Kashin called a “mocking parody of the Maidan.”

Bershidsky thinks Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov might be the best hope for averting a crisis:

The Russian-speaking industrialist, who many Ukrainians think is unofficially behind the pro-Russian protests in Donetsk, has actually played a complex role. In the wee hours of Tuesday, the usually reclusive Akhmetov came out to speak with protesters in Donetsk, cursing in Russian and explaining to protesters that he felt for them but that “Donbass is Ukraine.” Akhmetov promised government forces would not storm the administration building and took some activists for talks with a deputy prime minister sent from Kiev. …

The billionaire, who is still a member of the Regions Party, until recently headed by deposed President Viktor Yanukovych, wants broader autonomy for his home region, something in which Russia supports him and something the Ukrainian government is loath to grant. “Federalization” is a curse word in Kiev, because it would allow Moscow to keep the political situation unstable by making separate deals with corrupt local elites. Making concessions to people like Akhmetov, however, might be the only way to avoid the much less desirable outcome of outright war.

Recent Dish on the developments in Eastern Ukraine here and here.