Анджела Стент - Putin's World - Russia Against the West and with the Rest

The stealth annexation was masterfully executed and took the world by surprise. The post–Cold War consensus on European security was at an end. The leaders of the G-8 countries were scheduled to hold their annual summit in Sochi in June. But the meeting was cancelled, and the seven other members voted to expel Russia from the group. The luxury hotel built especially for the G-8 in the picturesque Caucasus Mountains in Krasnaya Polyana above Sochi stood empty. A year later, at the annual Munich Security Conference, a stone-faced Sergei Lavrov claimed that the reunification of Crimea with Russia via a referendum was more legitimate than German reunification: “Germany’s reunification was conducted without any referendum, and we actively supported this.” 51He was greeted with boos.

Putin was now emboldened to mobilize separatist groups in the Donbas region who resented Kyiv and favored closer ties to Russia, just as Russia had done in Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia. No sooner had Crimea been annexed than new groups of little green men—a motley assortment of Soviet Afghan veterans, Russian intelligence agents, mercenaries, disgruntled pro-Russian Ukrainian citizens who felt neglected by Kyiv, Cossacks, Russians from Transnistria, and Chechens dispatched by their leader Ramzan Kadyrov—began to appear in Southeastern Ukraine, particularly Donetsk and Luhansk, and repeated the Crimean scenario, systematically taking over municipal buildings. They were called separatists because they supported secession from Ukraine, but they were in fact insurgents armed by Moscow and led by often feuding Russian and Ukrainian warlords, yet with one common ambition: to wrest Southeastern Ukraine from Kyiv’s rule and reunite it with Mother Russia. The Donbas has had a particularly difficult time coping with the aftermath of the Soviet collapse and many of its inhabitants still regard themselves as Soviet, as opposed to Russian or Ukrainian, so they were receptive to these insurgents.

In the ensuing months, Russia poured troops, funding, ammunition, heavy arms, and other aid across the border to support the separatists, all the while denying that they were there at all. The Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic were proclaimed early in April 2014. Harking back to Catherine the Great’s eighteenth-century conquests, the separatists referred to this region north of the Black Sea as Novorossiya. The first separatist leader and paramilitary organizer in these operations was a Russian, Colonel Igor Girkin, who went by the nom de guerre Strelkov (Rifleman). Apart from his previous combat experience in various wars, he enjoyed participating in historical battlefield reenactments.

Unlike in Crimea, however, the Ukrainian army fought back this time. The armed forces were weak, because much of the Western assistance given to train and strengthen the military had previously disappeared into the black hole of corruption. There were also private paramilitary groups, such as the Azov Battalion, which played a major role in recapturing territory from the separatists and was eventually incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard. In May 2014, in the midst of what was now a full-fledged war in Southeastern Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, a confectionery magnate and former prime minister known as the “chocolate king,” was elected president. One of his first acts was to go to Brussels and sign the Association Agreement that Yanukovych had spurned. As the fighting raged in the Donbas, disaster struck in the air. On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines flight took off from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport bound for Kuala Lumpur. It was shot down over the war zone in Southeastern Ukraine. Many of its 298 passengers were traveling to a major AIDS conference in Canberra and one of the world’s leading AIDS researchers was on board. Local residents described pieces of debris and body parts hurtling out of the sky onto fields covered with sunflowers. Everyone on board perished. The once bucolic landscape was now a killing field guarded by heavily armed separatists, who initially prevented any access to the crash site.

Who or what brought MH-17 down? Immediately the tragedy became part of the information war between Russia and the West. Reconnaissance photography showed that the plane was shot down by a sophisticated Buk anti-aircraft missile and the missile had been transported from Russia. 52The Ukrainian government had recordings of separatist leaders reporting to their Russian superiors that they had mistakenly shot down a plane they had believed to be a Ukrainian Antonov military transport, not a commercial airliner. 53Russia vigorously denied that it had anything to do with the tragedy and blamed the Ukrainian army. The majority of victims were from the Netherlands, and the anger of the Dutch people at constant Russian prevarications was such that Putin’s elder daughter, Maria, who was living with her Dutch partner in Amsterdam at the time, had to return to Russia after a Facebook campaign revealed her address. 54Several inquiries into the cause of the crash have been hampered by the lack of Russian cooperation. Like so many issues connected to the Ukraine crisis, the Kremlin continues to deny any involvement, a source of endless frustration to those seeking a solution to the conflict and restitution for the lives lost.

The Ukrainians continued to battle the separatists and, by August 2014, appeared to be in sight of regaining control of the Donbas. But by late August, regular units of the Russian army crossed the border, attacked the Ukrainian forces, and regained separatist territory. In September, a cease-fire agreement was signed in Minsk by Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine, but by December heavy fighting had resumed. Another cease-fire, Minsk II, was signed in February 2015 and remains the only basis for a settlement on the table. But even in the three days between its signing and implementation Russian and separatist forces launched a major assault on a key Ukrainian transport junction between Donetsk and Luhansk and captured it. By the terms of the Minsk agreement, each side was required to withdraw its heavy weapons behind the line of contact, to exchange all prisoners and hostages, and to allow OSCE officials to monitor the implementation. Foreign forces and equipment were to be withdrawn, there was to be constitutional reform in the disputed region, and Ukraine was to regain full sovereignty over its border with Russia. 55The Minsk II agreement applies only to the war in the Donbas. It does not mention Crimea. There is a tacit consensus in the West that, although the West will refuse to recognize Crimea’s annexation, it will be a very long time—if ever—before Crimea is reunited with Ukraine. Only a handful of countries—including Cuba, North Korea, and Syria—have recognized its incorporation into Russia.

Since February 2015, fighting in Ukraine has continued intermittently, and the OSCE has been constantly thwarted by the separatists in its attempts to monitor the cease-fire. The Minsk II agreement has barely begun to be implemented. Russia and Ukraine disagree on the sequencing of implementation because the agreement itself is vague on that score. Moscow says Kyiv must introduce far-reaching decentralizing reforms and special status to the Donbas—which would give the region a virtual veto over Ukraine’s foreign policy—before Ukraine can regain control over its own border. Kyiv says it will not begin to introduce constitutional reforms until the Russians have withdrawn behind the border. Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia meet regularly at various levels, and all agree that Minsk II must be fulfilled—but virtually nothing happens. The United States has had its own bilateral channel with Russia to discuss Minsk II implementation with Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s close colleague and author of the “sovereign democracy” concept, who manages the separatists. Many observers fear that the situation in the Donbas has already turned into a frozen conflict similar to those in Georgia and Moldova, where Russia supports separatists who make it impossible for the governments in the titular state to have full control over their territory. Others question how “frozen” the conflict is. In July 2017, Kurt Volker, newly appointed Trump administration special envoy for Ukraine, said after visiting Southeastern Ukraine, “This is not a frozen conflict, this is a hot war, and it’s an immediate crisis that we all need to address as quickly as possible.” 56