The Russian Federation and the Republic of Ukraine seem to have passed the point of no return and are on the brink of open war this morning (March 2nd) in a conflict that began with a months-long street-politics movement that removed the elected but corrupt and authoritarian pro-Kremlin president last week and is becoming a face-to-face military struggle over Crimea, a predominantly-Russian autonomous region in Ukraine that was part of Russia until 1954.
Duma Gives Putin Green Light for Military Intervention in Ukraine
The Duma, Russia’s parliament, on March 1st resoundingly met President Vladimir Putin’s request for authorization to use military force to intervene in Ukraine, and Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, responded by ordering Ukrainian troops, including reservists, to “full combat readiness” and has called the Russian moves “a declaration of war.”
The Ukrainian and United States governments are unequivocal in describing the events in Crimea as a Russian invasion. The U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, referred to “the Russian Federation’s invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory.” Russia’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, denies that such a thing has occurred.
Putin told Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations secretary general, and the U.S. president, Barack Obama, by telephone on March 2nd that he reserved the right to protect Russian-speakers and Russian interests if things became violent in Ukraine, including Crimea. In the 90-minute-long conversation, Obama was able to threaten Russia with no more than “costs,” “risks,” and diplomatic isolation.
It is hard for the U.S. or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to offer credible warnings, however, since both stood by and did nothing in 2008 when Putin invaded the Republic of Georgia, which was and is, like Ukraine, a NATO “partner” but not one of the full members of the alliance, among whom there is a mutual-defense pact. In those events, Putin split off and established as “independent” puppet states two separatist regions of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in an often cited parallel to this week’s events. Nor can America speak to Putin with much moral authority: the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 in a naked act of aggression on even flimsier pretexts than Russia is using now. At least the Russian majority in Crimea—unlike Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”—actually exist.
An equal amount of doublethink, to be sure, operates in the Kremlin. In Russia, as per new legislation passed last year (as reported on at the time in this blog), it is illegal to advocate any kind of “separatism.” To actually enable, let alone advocate, Crimean separatism in Ukraine, one must adopt—as Putin very nearly has—the line that Crimea is not actually part of Ukraine, perhaps that Ukraine itself is actually part of Russia. (Russia formally, on paper, recognizes Crimea as part of sovereign Ukraine, but it remembers that that is only because Nikita Khrushchev, reputedly while drunk, transferred it from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine with a stroke of the pen in 1954. It has a Russian ethnic majority and is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.)
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| “Try and stop me” ... |
It is hard for the U.S. or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to offer credible warnings, however, since both stood by and did nothing in 2008 when Putin invaded the Republic of Georgia, which was and is, like Ukraine, a NATO “partner” but not one of the full members of the alliance, among whom there is a mutual-defense pact. In those events, Putin split off and established as “independent” puppet states two separatist regions of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in an often cited parallel to this week’s events. Nor can America speak to Putin with much moral authority: the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 in a naked act of aggression on even flimsier pretexts than Russia is using now. At least the Russian majority in Crimea—unlike Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”—actually exist.
An equal amount of doublethink, to be sure, operates in the Kremlin. In Russia, as per new legislation passed last year (as reported on at the time in this blog), it is illegal to advocate any kind of “separatism.” To actually enable, let alone advocate, Crimean separatism in Ukraine, one must adopt—as Putin very nearly has—the line that Crimea is not actually part of Ukraine, perhaps that Ukraine itself is actually part of Russia. (Russia formally, on paper, recognizes Crimea as part of sovereign Ukraine, but it remembers that that is only because Nikita Khrushchev, reputedly while drunk, transferred it from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine with a stroke of the pen in 1954. It has a Russian ethnic majority and is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.)
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| “I think I’ll slam back a few more of these and then swap some oblasts around just for shit and giggles." |
Meanwhile, on the ground in Crimea itself ...
Russian Military, Mercenaries Control Crimea
Late last week, unidentified armed Russian-speaking men wearing no insignia took control of the Crimean parliament building and other government offices in Simferopol and also took control of the peninsula’s two major airports, while a Russian naval ship blockaded the harbor. There was speculation as to the actual identities of these forces; they were clearly not an ad hoc mob, like ones that have been confronting protestors in Ukrainian cities for weeks now. Some observers describe the occupying force as a military contracting security organization (i.e., mercenaries) operating under the orders of the Russian ministry of the interior, but it is also clear that they are being transported in vehicles bearing the plates of the Russian military associated with the leased military base in Sevastopol where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based. The Ukrainian government says about 6,000 “additional” Russian troops are now in Crimea.
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| Russian irregulars patrol Crimea’s airports. |
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| The dreaded Berkut |
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| Sergei Aksyonov says he is now in charge of Crimea. |
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| The Crimean parliament building under Russian occupation |
And just within the past hour or so, it has been reported that the new admiral in charge of Ukraine’s navy, Denis Berezovsky, who was appointed mere days ago, has pledged his allegiance not to Kiev but to the new pro-Russian regime in Crimea. In a videotaped statement, he said, “I, Denis Berezovsky Denis, swear allegiance to the Crimean people and pledge to protect them, as required by military regulations. I swear to take orders of Crimea and Sevastopol’s Supreme Commander” (i.e., Sergei Aksyonov).
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| Admiral Berezovsky has switched sides. |
Role of Far-Rightists in New Ukrainian Government Unclear
The constant description of the new Ukrainian regime in Russian media and in most of the media available in the predominantly-Russian-speaking east and south of Ukraine is as “ultranationalists,” “Nazis,” “fascists,” and “Banderists.” This last term refers to Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian ultranationalist who tried to form an independent Ukrainian state in opposition to Moscow as the Second World War was winding down. Though he did accept help from Nazi Germany at times, Bandera was ultimately as despised by Adolf Hitler as he was by Josef Stalin, and many of his fellow ultranationalists died in Nazi concentration camps. When Yanukovych was elected in 2010, the outgoing, anti-Moscow government declared Bandera a “hero of Ukraine,” an official designation that was rescinded after loud international condemnation, including by the European Parliament. Russian national identity is fiercely bound up with what is considered its greatest moment, Stalin’s defeat of Hitler in what Russians refer to only as “the Great Patriotic War.” Thus, it is easy to brand those who defy Moscow with anything like the anti-Stalin imagery or iconography of that era as “Nazis.”
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| Stepan Bandera is still a hero to many Ukrainians. |
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| Dmitry Yarosh (left) of the Rightist Sector |
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| Doku Umarov (center)—an ally of Ukraine’s far right? |
Other active far-right groups include Patriots of Ukraine, the Social-National Assembly, “Kyiv Organization’s ‘White Hummer,’” and the Ukrainian National Assembly–Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO), a right-wing Ukrainian paramilitary founded by veterans of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan.
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| The Ukrainian far right. The torches add a nice Transylvanian touch, don’t they? |
Pro-Russian rallies were held March 1st, and are ongoing, in various cities across Ukraine, especially ethnic-Russian-dominated ones such as Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, and especially Kharkov and Donetsk. Donetsk is the capital of Yanukovych’s home oblast (province), where ethnic Ukrainians have only a tiny majority; Yanukovych is of mixed Polish, Belarussian, and Russian parentage. Kharkov was the capital of the nascent Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during the Russian Civil War in the late 1910s, when it allied itself against anti-Moscow republics formed in Kiev and other areas in western Ukraine. It is the proposed capital of the separate republic of Malorossiya (“Little Russia”) that some Russian nationalists would like to establish in eastern and southern Ukraine (as discussed recently in this blog). Kharkov was also Yanukovych’s first stop when he fled Kiev after his impeachment.
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| The scene in Donetsk this weekend |
Ukrainian founder of Femen seeks asylum in Switzerland
Anna Hutsol, the leader of the Ukrainian feminist guerilla-politics collective Femen, confirmed on March 1st that she was seeking political asylum in Switzerland. The group, which has aligned itself with the dissident Russian punk band Pussy Riot and takes an aggressive anti-clerical, anti-puritanical, anti-patriarchal, and anti-Moscow stand. Femen has also made some enemies among the opposition by siding resolutely against the until-recently-imprisoned opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who was a hero of Ukraine’s pro-Western “Orange Revolution” of 2004 but who is regarded as corrupt as well. During the Euro-Maidan movement, Femen has been based in Paris, but has run afoul of France’s laws against blasphemy and causing “offense,” which are nearly as harsh and arbitrary as Russia’s, though they tend not to be enforced by Cossacks with whips. Hutsol has a sister who lives in Winterthur, in the canton of Zurich, but due to the fact that her visa is for France she may have to seek asylum there instead. Hutsol said that it is too risky for her and her fellow activists to return to Ukraine.
[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas. Look for it some time in 2014. I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]
Related articles from this blog:
“Putin and Ukraine’s Ultranationalist Russians Light the Fuse: Second Crimean War Begins” (Feb. 2014)
“Minuscule Gagauzia Votes 99% to Declare Independence If Moldova Attempts Romanian Reunification” (Feb. 2014)
“Partition Lines in Ukraine Sharpen as Crimean Russians Call for Separate ‘Malorossiya’” (Jan. 2014)
“Will Ukraine Crisis Become Second Crimean War? Tatars and Russian Nationalists Take Sides” (Jan. 2014)
“10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2014” (Dec. 2013)
“Transnistria’s Limbo to Continue Indefinitely” (Nov. 2011)
