The Babes of the New Russian Empire: Putin Serves Up Neo-Soviet Imperialism with a Slathering of Cheesecake

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, presents his newly muscular nationalism as an answer to Western decadence (very much taking a page from Germany’s 1930s propaganda playbook).  Wholesome Russian pop music, we are told, is being drowned out to be suggestive lyrics sung by bearded women from Austria.  Catalogues of Russian brides are slavered over by sexually frustrated Americans eager to abduct Russia’s young women into the Gomorrah of a cesspool that is the United States.  The West has embraced the shameless, sacrilegious, unpatriotic, ungrateful harlots of Pussy Riot as though they were some sort of brave dissident heroines.  The Russian Orthodox Church is laboring to give the Russian people a moral grounding of which decades of Soviet communism had robbed them.  On the other hand, of course, Putin tells us that the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s was a catastrophe for Russia.  He aims to fix all of this.

Putin contemplates some further modifications.

How embarrassing, then, when the newly appointed Minister of Culture for one of the newly established but still diplomatically unrecognized ethnic-Russian, pro-Kremlin puppet states, the Lugansk People’s Republic, turns out to have a semi-pornographic past.  No sooner was Irina Filatova (Ирина Филатова) appointed by the junta that has taken over Ukraine’s eastern border oblast of Luhansk than sultry photos of her were discovered the social-networking site VK (VKontakte) (which, with a quarter-billion users, is the Russian version of Facebook but, predictably, also shades a bit into being the Russian equivalent of AdultFriendFinder).  The photos were supposedly hurriedly removed, but can still be found anyway with not much effort [oops, this link now dead for the time being; apologies (June 2, 2014)].

  

 

More than anything else, the photos are a bit depressing.  Presumably shot in Luhansk city, the nearby sidewalks in these outdoor shots are strewn with gravel, the photos use drab, abandoned-looking post-Soviet backdrops like a gas station, and one photo (see below) even shows a bikini-clad Filatova sitting spread-eagled on a park bench clutching a champagne bottle, looking like nothing so much as one of the vodka-addled vagrants who people Russian cityscapes in the Western imagination.

Darn.  Well, I guess that’s the end of her political career, right?  That was certainly the gist of the exultant coverage of the Filatova revelations in the pro-Ukrainian press.  But, wait.  Not so fast.  In fact, not only might this be no problem at all, but it might have been actually planned.  By way of explanation, I’d like you to meet the newly appointed Minister of Culture in Lugansk’s unrecognized sister republic in Ukraine’s rebel-run Novorossiya (“New Russia”) region, the Donetsk People’s Republic (D.P.R.).

* * *

Natalia Voronina, minister of culture for the Donetsk People’s Republic

The new Donetsk minister, Natalia Voronina (Наталья Воронина), is a semi-celebrity fashion designer and, as with many female Russian celebrities, the line between sophisticated and tacky and between respectable and pornographic is ... well, let’s just say those lines are not drawn quite in the same place they are in other countries.

Voronina’s husband, the industrialist Aleksandr Kalyusskiy (Александр Калюсский), an habitué of the rebel capital’s hoity-toity “Donetsk Mafia Club,” happens to be the D.P.R.’s Deputy Prime Minister for Social Policy, but this red-headed bombshell also has a law degree and runs her own boutique and fashion line.  (Her boutique’s anti-Western, Anglophobic credentials may be in doubt however: Voronina’s spring line last year was called, in (sort of) English, “Lady Batterfly” (sic).)

Vorinina’s trophy husband: pro-Russian oligarch Alksandr Kalyusskiy

She is a positive asset to the popularity of the D.P.R.  Rebel-government handlers in her case were a bit more successful in scrubbing the Internet (in particular, VK) of some of her more erotic poses, apparently, but what remain are, while in the realm of high fashion, still fairly titillating.

If the culture ministries of the new “people’s republics” in eastern Ukraine are intended to provide their citizenry with “bread and circuses” while their rights are eroded and their once economically productive region is turned into a rubble-strewn war zone, then Filatova and Voronina are well cut out for the job—or, um, well, at least Voronina is.*

*[As of a couple weeks later, Voronina is no longer culture minister.  See my report in this blog on this development.]

Um ... whatever.

* * *

But this is nothing new in Putin’s new empire, and this is why this blog decided it was time for a Russo-specific follow-up to a popular previous blog post, “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists,” which included only two figures from the former-Soviet world (Emilia Plater, the 19th-century “Polish Joan of Arc,” and one of Chechnya’s presidents-in-exile, the actor and London playboy Akhmed Zakayev).

Though the pugnacious ultranationalist “new Russian” culture that Kremlin propaganda is erecting on the rubble of Ukrainian sovereignty is openly patriarchal, like much of Russian folk culture, there is a high proportion of female politicians in high positions in the zone of Russian expansion, but they feature a suspicious preponderance of visually pleasing ones.  Perhaps the most extreme example is Natalia Poklonskaya (Ната́лья Покло́нская) the new attorney general (chief prosecutor) of the Republic of Crimea, installed when it declared independence from Ukraine earlier this year and was subsequently annexed by the Russian Federation.

Poklonskaya, with her doe-eyed, innocent pretty looks, has unexpectedly become a global Internet meme and something of a cult figure in the mostly Japan-based world of the manga and animé subcultures.  A March 11th press conference by Poklonskaya posted on YouTube resulted in an explosion of fan art by Internet fans in Japan and China, who made her face into an animé icon in the pedophilia-tinged moé style—doubtless reinforced by her youthful appearance (though 34, she could pass for 14) and her office’s military-style uniform, with a jaunty tie that evokes the school uniforms popular in Japanese manga—and Japanese porn.

Natalia Poklonskaya’s many moods

But far be it from me, or this blog, to suggest that Poklonskaya is merely decorative or was chosen only for her looks.  As reported recently in this blog, her actions since taking office have included threatening the Mejlis (Council) of the Crimean Tatar Nation—which represents the 12% of Crimea who are Muslim Tatars and overwhelmingly opposed the annexation—with “liquidation.”  For a people that suffered ethnic engineered famine, ethnic cleansing, and mass deportation and death under Josef Stalin, the experience of suddenly finding themselves ruled from Moscow again and intimidated with words like “liquidation” is having the effect of terrifying many of them into silence.  So one could hardly say that Poklonskaya does not know how to do her job.

Poklonskaya’s unusual sort of fame has been welcomed by many Russian nationalists, and she famously wielded one press query about her private life by saying, “As the idiom goes, ‘Beauty saves the world.’”  But the velocity of the growth of Poklonskayamania has baffled and worried other Russian officials.  And the Kremlin has at times tried to contain the problem of floods of inquiries about her, as well as a fake Twitter account in her name.  (A Twitter tribute account remains.)

This is many Japanese middle-aged men’s fantasy, but Crimean minorities’
nightmare.  One way to put it is: the Tatars don’t have a safeword.

* * *

A little less polished and professional, so far, is Yekaterina Gubareva (Екатерина Губарева), wife of the founder of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Pavel Gubarev (Павел Губарев), who has, initially through the connection with her husband, become the D.P.R.’s Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Gubareva being interviewed at a separatist rally, with St. George’s Ribbon in buttonhole.

Gubarev first came to the attention of this blog in March when he led the first major rebellion in mainland Ukraine this year by declaring the “Donetsk Republic,” though he had already been arrested and jailed by Ukrainian authorities (as reported in this blog as well) by the time the D.P.R. was declared under its new name a month later.  (Flags still say simply, “Donetskiya Respublika.”)

Yekaterina Gubareva

Her husband’s imprisonment and, according to his supporters, his suffering torture at the Kyiv government’s hands (never substantiated) enhanced his status as “people’s governor” and lent Gubareva a kind of Yelena Bonner–like moral authority.  Her fashion-model good looks did not hurt the cause, either.

Gubareva became spokeswoman for her imprisoned husband.

(The D.P.R. does not seem to run a particularly tight ship when it comes to the protocol for cabinet appointments, however.  This week the leadership was embarrassed when a medical-school professor named Konstantin Scherbakov heard second-hand that he had been appointed the republic’s Ministry of Health.  No one had even asked him if he wanted the job, or even suggested his name was in the hopper.  As it turns out, he has no interest in the position.  “I never agreed to this, I never signed any papers, it was a complete surprise,” Scherbakov said, adding, “I work at a medical university.  I have things to do.”)

Yekaterina Gubareva

Though other leaders have come to the fore in the D.P.R., leaving Gubarev (who was released by Ukrainian authorities in a prisoner exchange this month) with a more symbolic “people’s governor” role, Gubareva’s influence has only grown, and she may prove in the long run to be even more of a shaker and mover in the separatist movement than her husband.

* * *

Already established in politics before the Ukraine crisis began last year was Nina Shtanski (Нина Штански), who is Minister for Foreign Affairs for the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, a.k.a. Trans-Dniester Republic, a.k.a. Transnistria, a.k.a. Transdniestria.

 

This tiny sliver of eastern Moldova along the Ukrainian border, defended by the Russian military and propped up by infusions of rubles from the Kremlin, declared independence in 1991 but has existed in a kind of limbo, serving mainly as a way to prevent Moldova from being absorbed into the European Union (E.U.) or NATO.  After the annexation of Crimea, it was Shtanski who became the public face of Transnistria’s effort to get her small, diplomatically unrecognized pseudo-state admitted to the Russian Federation as well.

Shtanski, who is 37, is trained as a jurist and political scientist and has served diplomatic functions in her home republic since its foundation.  She was made foreign minister in 2012 and this year was given the added title of Deputy Prime Minister.  But she has also attracted attention for dressing in a manner that would not exactly be considered professional in other countries.  You’ve never seen Madeline Albright, Condoleezza Rice, or Hillary Rodham Clinton gussied up like this.

 

Many, including myself in this blog, have speculated that annexing Transnistria may be a goal of the Putin administration.  Though not at all far from Crimea’s western edge and though including the navigable estuary of the Dniester River, Transnistria is still landlocked, and linking it to Russia would probably mean the annexation or control of at least the predominantly-ethnic-Russian and fairly restive Odessa Oblast (activists have already declared it the “Odessa Republic of Novorossiya,” as reported in this blog), with its valuable Black Sea port.  Putin may even be contemplating the pros and cons of seizing all of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.  That would make Transnistria Russia’s westernmost outpost other than the Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast, at the location of Germany’s former East Prussia province.  A race for Transnistria across Ukraine’s soft underbelly might also spark a true Second Crimean War.  If so, Nina Shtanski will rise from obscurity to become a major player in global geopolitics.

It’s Christmas in Transnistria, and Nina Shtanski’s got the whole world in her hands.

* * *

Also in this category we could put Alina Kabaeva (Али́на Каба́ева), an Uzbekistan native of half-Russian, half-Tatar ancestry and since 2007 a member of Russia’s parliament for Putin’s United Russia party, whose long-term romantic relationship with the only-recently-divorced Putin is an open secret in Russia.  Kabaeva was recently listed by one business-news website as one of the “9 Most Attractive Politicians in the World” (a list with an admitted right-of-center bias; others included Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney of the United States’ Republican Party; at no. 1, Silvio Berlusconi’s former Minister of Equal Opportunity in Italy’s cabinet, Mara Carfagna; Mexico’s establishment president, Enrique Peña Nieto; and Orly Levy, a Likud–Yisrael Beiteinu member of Israel’s Knesset who heavily courts the Russian-immigrant vote).

She is also an Olympic gymnast—a rhythmic gymnast, as the tabloids never tire of specifying—who won a bronze in Sydney in 2000 and a gold in Athens four years later.  Her presence as a torch-bearer at the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Sochi earlier this year was seen as in some sense a “coming out” and acknowledgement of her personal ties to Putin.

 

Though she serves in the Duma (parliament), her athletic past hardly qualified her for the position.  Like most United Russia deputies, she votes in lock step with Putin as he expands his quest for Eurasian domination.  This trophy wife—actually, trophy mistress—of one of the world’s most brutal authoritarian rulers is a decorative figurehead indeed.

Duma legislator Alina Kabaeva plunks down her designer attaché case
for another day of pretending to listen to long boring speeches.

* * *

On the other hand, it is hardly the pro-Russian faction in Ukrainian politics that has a lock on beauty and fashion.  The pro-E.U. but, most agree, quite corrupt former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko (Ю́лія Тимоше́нко)—who was later imprisoned by her pro-Kremlin successor Viktor Yanukovych and became a hero of the Euro-Maidan movement before running for president again in this weekend’s election (she is not favored to win)—has frequently been called “the world’s most beautiful politician.”

With her trademarked blonde braids, she has been a telegenic constant in coverage of Ukrainian politics.  Her stark beauty, while a political asset, has been used against her as well, both by pro-Ukrainian, anti-Moscow groups like the Ukrainian feminist culture-jammer guerilla-theater collective Femen, who have skewered her appearance in nude street demonstrations targeting her corruption—

—and perceived too-conciliatory approach to Putin—

—as well as by pro-Russian mobs and activists in places like Slavyansk in eastern Ukraine, whose loutish misogyny cannot separate their political opposition to her from her status as a sexual object:

* * *

Yet another Ukrainian beauty, Natalia Korolevska (Наталія Королевська), of Luhansk, was running for the presidency until withdrawing her candidacy on May 1st.

Natalia Korolevska

Korolevska, who turned 39 last week, was Yanukovych’s Minister for Social Justice until his ouster and then shifted her support to Tymoshenko.  The social-democratic “Ukraine—Forward!” party Korolevska runs focuses on anti-corruption.

Ukraine’s former social-justice minister Natalia Korolevska

* * *

But the real question remains: is Irina Filatova ready to take on the heady responsibilities of the Ministry of Culture portfolio in the Lugansk People’s Republic?  We believe she is.  We believe she is.  I mean, just look at her.

[You can read more about Transnistria, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Thanks to William Abernathy, Olga Buchel, and Jeff Groton for alerting me to sources and information used in this article.

Ukraine Loses Grip on Crimea, Prepares for Open War with Russia; Role of Far Right in New Kiev Regime Unclear

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.

“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.)

“I think I’ll slam back a few more of these and then swap some oblasts around just for shit and giggles."

Despite the precedent of inaction on Georgia, the interim Ukrainian government on March 1st appealed to the NATO with “a request to consider all options to defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.”  The North Atlantic Council, which governs NATO, is meeting today (March 2nd) to address the situation.  The Ukrainian parliament has also requested international help in securing their nuclear facilities.  (Like Kazakhstan, Ukraine ended up with some nuclear weapons in its territory after the Soviet Union imploded in 1991.)

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.

Russian irregulars patrol Crimea’s airports.

Russian authorities in Crimea are reportedly distributing Russian passports to members of the Berkut, the dreaded élite anti-riot police force under the command of the recently ousted pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, which the post-Yanukovych interim government has disbanded but which still seems to be involved in keeping order in Crimea.  There are other reports of Russian passports being distributed to ethnic Russians.  This was also a strategy used in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the run-up to the South Ossetia War in 2008.

The dreaded Berkut

In Crimea itself, the pro-Russian president of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said that he himself was in control of all military and police in Crimea.  He also followed up an earlier promise of a referendum “on Crimea’s status” in May with a new promise for an explicit referendum on independence in only four weeks.  This follows the Crimean parliament’s refusal to recognize the newly installed pro-Western interim government in Kiev.

Sergei Aksyonov says he is now in charge of Crimea.

Local Crimean special forces presumably under Aksyonov’s command, armed with assault rifles, have established checkpoints on all roads connecting Crimea to the Ukrainian mainland and are flying Russian flags there.  According to the latest news reports, hundreds of Russian troops are headed from the leased Russian military bases in Sevastopol and headed to Simferopol, the Crimean capital.  Actual Russian military forces have, according to sources, been looting Ukrainian military facilities on the peninsula of their weapons.

The Crimean parliament building under Russian occupation

Also today (March 2nd) in Simferopol, according to Russian media, members of the Ukrainian military are abandoning their barracks and handing over their weapons to pro-Russian militias.  The Ukrainian ministry of defense denies that any of this is occurring.  To whatever extent it may actually be happening, it may be isolated responses to the reported recent statement by Ukraine’s acting minister of defense, Ihor Tenyuh, in a closed-door parliamentary meeting, to the effect that “Ukraine does not have the military force to resist Russia.”  At the very least, it is confirmed that Ukrainian forces are being ordered not to engage Russian troops directly until so ordered.

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).

Admiral Berezovsky has switched sides.

The Tatar Factor

The indigenous Crimean Tatars, who make up 12% of the peninsula’s population and are Turkic-speaking Muslims, have resolutely sided with the anti-Yanukovych and anti-Russian forces and support the interim government in Kiev.  Tatar leaders, who are guaranteed a certain number of seats in the Crimean parliament, claim that they have been barred from the chamber for the recent pro-Moscow resolutions there.  On February 28th, Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, arrived in Kiev to meet with the chairman of the Mejlis (the mostly toothless “parliament”) of the Crimean Tatar People, Mustafa Abdülcemil.  The Mejlis does not recognize the new emergency governmental structures that Aksyonov has been setting up in Crimea.  This raises worries that Turkey may intervene militarily to defend the Tatars, a kindred ethnic group with deep historical ties, despite the fact that this would bring NATO (of which Turkey is a member) into direct confrontation with Russia.  Turkish government policy, though nominally democratic, is in the de facto control of its “deep state” military complex, which is always poised to stage a coup d’état if Turkish policies are not sufficiently jingoistic.

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.”

Stepan Bandera is still a hero to many Ukrainians.

On the other hand, Ukrainian nationalism is fiercely defined by being anti-Russian, and anyone or anything that defied Stalin is liable to be held up as honorable by the Ukrainian ultranationalist fringe.  Thus, throughout the Euro-Maidan protest movement, the blue-and-yellow national flag of Ukraine has flapped alongside the more grim, swastika-like red-and-black heraldry of pro-fascist organizations that fought Stalin during the Second World War.  For Ukrainian ultranationalists, these flags are “anti-Soviet” and “anti-Russian” rather than “pro-Nazi” or “pro-fascist.”  Or are they?  It is unclear how much of a role far-right groups have played in the Euro-Maidan movement and are playing in the new Euro-Maidan-installed and -vetted Ukrainian interim government.  One thing is certain: these groups have exploded in popularity over the past few months, even if they are still a minority.  It is also difficult to evaluate the situation clearly, because anti-Yanukovych and anti-Putin sources are likely to downplay the role of rightists as they court Western sympathy and pro-Yanukovych and pro-Putin sources are likely to exaggerate it for the opposite reason.

Dmitry Yarosh (left) of the Rightist Sector

One of the more frightening new Ukrainian opposition groups has been the Rightist Sector (Pravy Sektor), whose leader, Dmytro Yarosh, recently called on Doku Umarov, the radical Islamist Chechen leader of the Caucasus Emirate terrorist organization, “to activate his fight” and “take a chance to win” and to take up arms against Russia on the side of Ukraine.  Yarosh pointed out that “many Ukrainians with arms in hand” supported the Chechen Republic’s failed wars of secession from Russia and “it is time to support Ukraine now.”  That kind of statement is unlikely to win the hearts of Western supporters.  Yarosh’s views may or may not be fringe, but his own role is not: he is a deputy secretary—or claims to be one—in Ukraine’s post-Yanukovych National Security and Defense Council (N.S.D.C.) and was prominent on the Euro-Maidan side of the negotiations that led to the transition in power.

Doku Umarov (center)—an ally of Ukraine’s far right?

TheRightist Sector considers itself a successor to Bandera’s “Trident” organization.  In one viral YouTube video, a Rightist Sector activist brandishes an AK-47 and declares, “The Right Sector was armed and will be armed till the time when it will be necessary.  You did not give us this weapon and you will not take it away.  Who wants to take away my machine gun, my pistol, my knives?  Let them try!  As Americans say, ‘God made every man different; Sam Colt made them equal!’  I will put aside my Kalashnikov only when order in Ukraine is restored.”

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.

The Ukrainian far right.  The torches add a nice Transylvanian touch, don’t they?

Pro-Kemlin Mob Raises Russian Flag in Kharkov, Capital of Proposed “Malorossiya”
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.

The scene in Donetsk this weekend

Andry Parubij, Ukraine’s new acting secretary of defense, says that the country’s N.D.S.C. (see above) has foiled attempts by foreign forces to foment uprisings in other oblasts of Ukraine similar to the one that has played out in Crimea.  At least one western oblast, Transcarpathia, formerly part of Czechoslovakia, tried to secede in 2008 on behalf of its Ruthenian and Hungarian ethnic minorities.  Ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia seem at least to be siding against the new government in Kiev.

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.]

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“Games Begin! Ukrainian Hijacking, Putin Rounds Up Dissidents” (Feb. 2014)

“Yet Another Genocide Olympics: 10 Political Causes Sure to Disrupt the Sochi Games” (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)

“Is Ossetian Reunification Just Russian Irredentism by Another Name?” (Jan. 2014)

“10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2014” (Dec. 2013)

“‘Separatism’ Added to List of Things Russians Aren’t Allowed to Talk about” (Sept. 2013)

“Road Dispute Pushes Town near Moscow to Declare Independence from Russia—but with Dusted-Off Fascist Ukrainian Flags, Oddly Enough” (Oct. 2012)

“Transnistria’s Limbo to Continue Indefinitely” (Nov. 2011)