Donetsk Rebels’ “Novorossiya” Fits Russian Vision of Reshaped Europe in 2035

Ultranationalist demands by ethnic Russians and their supporters in eastern Ukraine have now shifted from talk of Crimea or the Donetsk People’s Republic and are now focussing on creating a larger entity to be carved out of southern and eastern Ukraine to be called Novorossiya, or “New Russia,” using Czarist Russia’s name for the region.  The most high-profile proponent of the idea is Pavel Gubarev, the imprisoned “people’s governor” of Donetsk, whose covertly-Kremlin-backed government-building takeover in that southeastern oblast (provincial) capital last month sparked the uprising and military confrontation in the region.  From prison in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, last week, Gubarev said that “we”—i.e. the Donetsk People’s Republic, which he considers already independent—“want to join the new federative State of Novorossiya, which will build its own relations with the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in the future.”  The leadership of the neighboring “Lugansk People’s Republic” plans to join the Donetsk republic in holding the May 11th vote.  He added that plans were underway—as other Russian-backed rebels have said also—to hold an independence referendum on May 11th in Ukraine’s rebel-held regions.  (Gubarev’s wife, Yekaterina Gubareva, the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic’s “foreign minister,” has since then announced that her husband is on hunger strike to protest the Ukrainian military’s offensive on the northern Donetsk Oblast city Slovyansk.)

Yekaterina Gubareva, foreign minister and first lady of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”

But there is nothing “new” about Russian nationalist dreams of a “New Russia” carved out of Ukraine. Nationalism- and separatism-watchers in Europe were abuzz in late 2012 and early 2013 over a high-level report by Russian security and policy experts on what Europe’s borders would probably look like in 2035.  The accompanying maps offer an unsettling insight into Russian ultranationalists’ hopes and fears—but also, as is now becoming clear, their plans.  The Russians apparently based the projection on Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) and other United States and Russian intelligence sources as well as the writings of American geopolitical experts like Zbigniew Brzezinski (President Jimmy Carter’s Polish-born national-security advisor) and Samuel Huntington (the xenophobic neo-conservative political scientist who wrote Clash of Civilizations).

A pro-independence demonstrator in Catalonia.
Madrid says “don’t hold your breath,” but Moscow thinks she’s got it in the bag.

In 2035 in western Europe, the report envisions, quite feasibly (see map below), independent republics in Scotland, Catalonia, the Basque Country, northern Italy, and even Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily.  Less feasibly, a reunified Ireland will become closer to Scotland than the rump United Kingdom is.  Southeastern France’s Provence region is to have become an Arab republic—something that presumably Marine Le Pen will not take lying down.  But in the Russian view this is how the French government will solve the inevitable “multicultural collapse”—by picking a region and sticking all the unassimilable Muslims there.

It takes no expert to suggest that Belgium might divide—it is practically two states already—though it is a stretch to think, as Russia’s expert prophets do, that Flanders will join the Netherlands in a “Holland Union” while Wallonia becomes a tiny land-locked state and Alsace–Lorraine confederates with Germany as something called simply “Lorraine.”  The experts here underestimate not only Alsatian pride but Germany’s appetite for expansion—after all, they already control Europe financially, so why change the map?  Equally comical is the suggestion that Germany will retake Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia from Poland—and, incidentally, from Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast exclave.  Don’t these Russian “experts” realize that no Germans live there anymore?

The Russian map of 2035 in the Balkans (see map above) likewise reeks of Russia’s preoccupation with U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) hidden agendas in the Wars of Yugoslav Succession—especially the Kosovo War, in which Russia resolutely sided—and still does—with Serb nationalists who saw it as a Trojan horse for some sort of Islamization of Europe.  The 2035 map’s whittled-down Serbia feeds the shared Serb and Russian ultranationalist feeling that the West has been cruelling paring down these once-mighty Slavic nations: Albania has swallowed up western Macedonia, Kosovo, and a juicy slice of southern Serbia proper (in reality, Kosovar and Albanian nationalists do indeed openly plan for a united “Greater Albania” within the European Union); Hungary now extends into western Romania’s Transylvania region as well as Serbia’s Vojvodina province; and the disappearance of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an independent state has, quite unrealistically, only meant its near-complete absorption into Croatia, including presumably subject Serbs in the former Bosnian subdivision of Republika Srpska.  (Poor maligned Serbia doesn’t even manage to pull Montenegro back into its orbit.)  Turkey and its bloodthirsty Saracens have also, apparently, by 2035 retaken the Rumelian and Pomak areas in the southeast of proud Slavic Bulgaria.

It is once we get to the former Soviet Union itself (see map below) that things really get wonky.  First of all, the Russian experts see an independent Carpathian Ruthenia emerging from Ukraine’s Zakarpattia (Transcarpathia) oblast.  This is the region—formerly the eastern tail of Czechoslovakia, where Slavic-speaking Ruthenians (Rusyns) are far outnumbered by ethnic Ukrainians—where alleged Kremlin provocateurs staged a declaration of independence in 2008 which came to nothing.  Today, pro-Russian nationalists in Ukraine are envisioning a “Transcarpathian People’s Republic,” though the oblast is so far, in 2014, quiet.  Romania, in 2035, will supposedly have swallowed up nearly all of Moldova, except for the tiny sliver of Bessarabia—i.e., the current Russian puppet state of Pridnestrovia (a.k.a. Transnistria, a.k.a. Transdniestria)—which the Russian geopolitical visionaries see absorbed into the Russian Federation along with Crimea (that part, in 2014, is a done deal) and the south and eastern region of Novorossiya and Donbas (those are, today (April 26, 2014), works in progress).

But not even all that’s left of Ukraine gets to be Ukraine, according to the Russian experts.  They see, by 2035, in what is today far-western Ukraine, an independent Galicia (Halychyna, in Ukrainian—no relation to the Galicia in northwestern Spain), with its capital at Lviv.  This Galician state even takes in part of southeastern Poland, while Romania has also taken Bukovina, also in Ukraine’s west (i.e., Chernivtsi oblast, where the population today is about 20% Moldavian (Romanian).  It seems odd for Russian nationalists to claim on the one hand that Ukrainian national identity is only some post–Cold War figment invented by the West but then assume that a “Galician” national identity (which in the real world barely exists at all) is strong enough to snatch away NATO (Polish) territory with such ease.

Galicia (Halychyna) was its own kingdom briefly during the First World War,
but today’s Galicians mostly want to be in a united Ukraine.

Belarus as an independent state has vanished in the 2035 map, becoming just a big Russian oblast, which actually does seem fairly likely.  Belarus is barely even independent today.  Belarussians never had as strong a national identity as Ukrainians and would never have asked for independence on their own if they hadn’t been handed it on a platter in 1991.  Much less plausibly, eastern Latvia, including its ethnic-Russian-dominated second city, Dagauvpils, has become a Russian oblast called Dvinskaya (Dvinsk is the city’s name in Russian), while Estonia’s northeast, including the Russian-speaking city of Narva, is not even an oblast; it is a raion (district) within Russia called Narvskiya.  Apparently, Russians doubt how seriously NATO takes its mutual-defense pact with the Baltic states.  In reality, a Russian invasion would put President Vladimir Putin on an immediate war footing with three nuclear powers (the U.S., France, and the U.K.), so he will probably leave the Baltics alone, at least territorially (economic blockades and punishments are another matter).

These Belarussians, shown at an independence-day rally last month in Minsk,
stand with Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.  But, in Belarus, they are a minority.

In the Caucasus, there is a mixture of hope and fear as well.  Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia have become split away as the Caucasus Emirate, which is the name that an ongoing Islamist insurgency does indeed want to plaster over the whole north Caucasus.  The Russian puppet state of Abkhazia has been absorbed into Russia, but its sister republic within internationally recognized Georgian borders, South Ossetia, is returned to Georgia as a consolation prize.  The reverse, to my mind, has more logic to it: in reality, Ossetes seem to feel far more Russian than Abkhaz do, and the dispossession and expulsion of ethnic Georgians in Abkhazia has been more extreme.  Plus, just think: annexing South Ossetia puts Josef Stalin’s home town of Gori, in Georgia proper, close enough to recapture as well!  How could they pass that up?

The Caucasus Emirate terrorist group’s map is slightly different.

It is no surprise that Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh and Lachin regions are shown (again, see map no. 3 above) as part of Armenia in the Russians’ map of 2035; those areas are already the unrecognized Armenian puppet state of Artsakh (a.k.a. Nagorno-Karabakh Republic).  Russia has indeed been increasingly building ties with Armenia and making Armenia’s expansionist agenda an ancillary cause to its own Slavic blood-and-soil nationalism.  But a big conundrum for Russian nationalists today is how to fully incorporate Armenia into the Russian geopolitical backyard.  Today, Armenia is slated to join Putin’s envisioned Belarussian–Kazakh–Russian “Eurasian Union” trade bloc—the same one that Ukraine was almost bullied into joining last year, which is how the whole Ukraine crisis erupted in the first place.  But Armenia–Artsakh is currently nearly entirely surrounded by Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, all of them Western-aligned states (Turkey is even in NATO).  The only Russian-allied state bordering Armenia is Iran, but that is a circuitous supply route for a geostrategic partner; plus, Iranians and Armenians regard each other far, far more warily than their shared alliance with Russia would otherwise suggest.  So the solution, in this 2035 map, is a “transport corridor” that bisects Georgia, running from the Russian–Georgian border ’round about Ossetia to northern Armenia.  The coloration on the map implies that Georgia will remain united but become territorially discontinuous, divided into “Western Georgia” and “Kakhetia.”

Russia would like to draw the Artsakh Republic into its sphere of influence.
But why stop there?  Next: Legoland!

One modification missed in the 2035 map is the question of the Armenian minority in the southern Georgian region of Javakhk.  Already, since earlier this year, the Russian consulate has been distributing Russian passports to ethnic Armenians there, which is the kind of thing that was a precursor to the Russian takeovers in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Crimea.  An Armenian-annexed Javakhk would shorten the necessary “transport corridor.”  On the downside for the Kremlin would be the complication that Javakhk is only the eastern part of Georgia’s Samtkhe–Javakheti province; the western part is Meskhetia, a.k.a. Moschia, whose indigenous Meskhetian Turks were deported eastward by Stalin during the same campaign of ethnic cleansing in the 1930s that shipped Chechens, Crimean Tatars, and others to Siberia and Central Asia as well.  Like the Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks were not allowed to return during the repatriations of Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization policies, though, like Crimean Tatars, they trickled back in the post-Soviet era.  Any realization of Javakhki irredentist aspirations could reawaken Meskhetian grievances.  Then again, Putin seems to have made an art of “rehabilitating” the Crimean Tatars as an official national minority while still cracking down on their political leadership, so perhaps the Armenian government could learn to perform that dance with its own Turkic minority.  Armenians are quick learners, and their government seems eager to make them solid citizens, as a junior nationality, in Putin’s neo-Czarist Russian empire.  When it comes to shitting all over Muslims, Armenian nationalists have shown an eagerness to learn from the best.

“Greater Armenia” in the Armenian—and maybe also Russian—imagination

Now, it is important to take predictions a quarter-century out with a grain of salt, even when they come from intelligence sources.  After all, the C.I.A. had agents and bureaus in every Arab capital in 2011, and nobody saw the Arab Spring coming.  The way to read these Russian maps is not as a true vision of the future but as a map to the Russian ultranationalist mentality with its hopes, fears, and—as I mentioned above—perhaps its plans.  Be warned: this is not the future, but it is a peek into the madness swirling inside the brains of the Kremlin’s strategists.

The Donetsk People’s Republic’s Yekaterina Gubareva whips out her foreign-policy agenda.

[You can read more about these 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.]

Members of the Ukrainian feminist political collective Femen demonstrating against Russia outside the Ukrainian peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 17th.

Scotland’s Shetland, Orkney Isles, Though Unionist, Scorn U.K. “Annexation” Idea

The Northern Isles of Scotland—the territories of Shetland and Orkney—have in this year of the Scottish independence referendum shown themselves to be mostly strident unionists.  They want to stay in the United Kingdom.  This they share in common with many Highlanders, since Scottish separatism is mainly a phenomenon of the more densely populated lowlands, where Glasgow and Edinburgh are.  But, even though the two archipelagoes are expected to be strongholds of the “no” vote in the September 18th vote, Orcadians and Shetlanders are apparently even less keen on another idea: “annexation” by the U.K. in case of a Scottish secession.

This suggestion was raised by Hugh Halcro-Johnson, a unionist (i.e., he is against Scottish independence) who headed the Orkney Islands Council until 2003.  He feels that if Scotland splits away, Shetland and Orkney should petition, separately or together, to rejoin the U.K., in a kind of “retrocession” movement (like West Virginia during the Civil War in the United States, or like Anglophone portions of Canada’s sometimes secessionist Quebec province).  As Halcro-Johnson told a reporter earlier this month, “Should Scotland vote ‘yes’ then everything changes.  I think that scenario would provide an opportunity for the islands to seek special status—particularly in relation to defense in view of the islands’ strategic importance.”  Unionists have typically invoked fears that a Scottish secession would compromise British security.  Halcro-Johnson is also, of course, mindful of the irony that an independent Scotland’s territorial waters would include most of the U.K.’s current lucrative North Sea oil reserves—with most of it being in the territorial waters of jurisdictions that want to stay in the U.K.

Hugh Halcro-Johnston—retrocessionist

But local leaders in the Northern Isles have solidly rejected the idea.  As Gary Robinson of the Shetland Islands Council put it, “We seek to benefit from the exploitation of the resources surrounding our islands by way of community benefit and more control over what happens around us.  I haven’t detected any overwhelming desire for outright independence for the islands or crown dependency status.”  Crown dependency is the status held today by the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, which are under U.K. suzerainty and military protection but fully self-governing; they are not really parts of the U.K. but independent states in free association with it.  Crown dependencies set up in Shetland and Orkney would raise the question: why not just go the extra mile and be independent?  Full-on independentism is barely existent in the islands, however; the islanders prefer to be part of something.

Where the North Sea’s energy resources are—
and whose they are

Not surprisingly, Scottish separatists pooh-pooh the annexation idea too.  Robert Leslie, the “Scotland Yes” campaign’s chairman for Orkney, said Halcro-Johnston’s proposal was “not surprising coming from a movement that is determined to defend the privileges currently enjoyed by the political and business elite in the U.K.”

Scandinavian-style flags on (currently) British islands
(top: Orkney, bottom: Shetland)

So what do Shetlanders and Orcadians want?  Well, the referendum result is largely out of their hands; the islanders, numbering fewer than 40,000, are less than 1% of Scotland’s population.  But they are for the most part determined to parlay either a “yes” or a “no” vote in September into a conversation that leads to reforms that will give them greater autonomy—including control over, and remuneration from, their energy resources.  (See my article on this subject from this blog, “Orkney—the Next Dubai? Further Reflections on Scottish Independence.”)  These are a steely lot: their ancestors were Vikings, not Celts, and their culture is in many ways more Scandinavian than Anglo-Saxon.  Geographically, the islands are closer to Oslo, Norway, than to London—and closer to Bergen, Norway, than even to Edinburgh or Glasgow.

Funny, you don’t look Celtic: a Shetlander in the annual “fire festival”

It should also be mentioned that is not only those in the British Isles who are watching the Scottish referendum campaign closely.  The above quotations come mostly from a report filed from Orkney by a reporter for R.I.A. Novosti, Russia’s state news agency, which of late has been a geyser blasting forth shrill and often wildly inventive propaganda about the conflict in Ukraine.  This coverage routinely shines a spotlight on western Europe’s separatist troubles, in places like Catalonia, northern Italy, and of course Scotland, mostly as a way to show that NATO supports separatism only when it is convenient.  Fair enough, and it is true of most world leaders, of course, not least President Vladimir Putin, who bombed Chechnya into the stone age to keep it part of Russia but now pays lip service to Crimeans’ and eastern Ukrainians’ sacred right to binding secession referenda.

A pro-independence rally in Edinburgh

There is an exception, though.  Around the world, it is hard to find a country that, as much as the United Kingdom, supports separatism even when it is not convenient.  Once the largest empire in the world, swallowing up massive civilizations in India, Africa, and elsewhere, the U.K. is, with astounding maturity, committed to holding on to no territory against the majority will of its citizens, whether it is Hong Kong, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Northern Ireland, or Scotland.  The world—and the neighborhood of Russia in particular—would be a better place if everyone settled their borders as the English and Scottish are finally able to do, with words, arguments, and an orderly vote.

[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.]

Russian Ultranationalists in Odessa Go for Whole Enchilada, Declare “Republic of Novorossiya”

It is in eastern Ukraine where the Russian ultranationalist separatists—organized and staffed, beyond doubt, by Kremlin-commanded forces—have grabbed the most headlines: seizing government buildings in more than a score of cities, resulting in lethal standoffs with the Ukrainian military.

But it is in western Ukraine that the pro-Russia secessionists have become most ambitious.  Last week in this blog I discussed the declaration on April 16th of a “People’s Republic of Odessa” in Ukraine’s southwest, bordering Transnistria and Moldova, though at the time it seemed to be mostly an online phenomenon, not yet a street-politics movement, though it was calling for one.  Now Russian media are reporting a rally in Odessa’s Kulikovo Field where crowds are declaring an “Odessa Republic of Novorossiya.”  “New Russia,” or Novorossiya, is the name given in Czarist times to much of what is now Ukraine, but especially the flatlands just north of Crimea, including Odessa and spilling into the areas in today’s southeastern Ukraine that have been declared the independent “People’s Republics” of Lugansk (Luhansk), Kharkov (Kharkiv), and, most dramatically, Donetsk.

Valery Kaurov in 2008, during an anti-NATO uprising around Odessa

One Valery Kaurov has been named the “people’s president” of the Odessa Republic of Novorossiya.  He is currently the head of the Union of Orthodox Citizens of Ukraine.  (Nearly all of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking minority are Eastern Orthodox Christians, while most of the country’s Catholics live in the Ukrainian-speaking west.)  Kaurov addressed the rally via Skype, since, apparently, he had fled the city fearing arrest.  More information on the rally, including its size and who organized it, has so far been difficult to find.

Pro-Russian activists in Odessa recently

The new republic also apparently recognizes the “independence” of the Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kharkov republics as well as a new entity called the Carpathian Ruthenian People’s Republic.  Carpathian Ruthenia, now called Ukraine’s Transcarpathia (Zakarpattia) oblast, which formed the eastern part of Czechoslovakia between the world wars, is home to a minority of Rusyns (Ruthenians) and was the site of an aborted declaration of independence in 2008 that was presumed by Ukrainian authorities to be the work of Russian provocateurs.

One version of the Odessa “national” flag as it appeared online recently

But why Odessa in particular (a question posed not so long ago in this blog)?  Founded by Catherine the Great in 1794 on land just conquered from the Ottoman Empire, Odessa has long been considered a Russian, rather than Ukrainian, city.  And, as Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, told the world at his recent press event, “Kharkiv, Lugansk, Donetsk, Odessa were not part of Ukraine in Czarist times, they were transferred in 1920.  Why?  God knows.  Then for various reasons these areas were gone, and the people stayed there—we need to encourage them to find a solution.  We must do everything to help these people to protect their rights and independently determine their own destiny.”  (He has also taken lately to using the term Novorossiya.)  Putin also allegedly mentioned Odessa as a possible site of Russian military intervention as long ago as his early-February phone call with the United States president, Barack Obama.

What’s old is new again: borders in Ukraine in 1918,
during the chaos of the Bolshevik–Menshevik civil war

Moreover, as the Economist recently summed up Putin’s possible next geostrategic moves: “ One possibility is opening up a land corridor to Crimea through Donetsk and Mariupol.  Another is a corridor extending from Crimea to Transdniestria, a pro-Russian breakaway territory in Moldova which is home to a Russian army, by way of Odessa.  A third, extreme, option might be splitting the country along the Dnieper.”  It is of course option no. 2, plowing a corridor to Transnistria (a.k.a. Transdniestria, a.k.a. Pridnestrovia), that would make Odessa key.  Transnistria, which is ethnically about a third Russian, a third Ukrainian, and a third Moldovan (i.e. Romanian), is a sliver of land occupied by Russian troops which declared independence from Moldova in 1991.  Unlike Abkhazia and South Ossetia, within Georgia’s internationally recognized boundaries, it has not become a formal puppet state diplomatically recognized by Moscow.  Unlike Crimea, it has not been annexed.  But it craves either option.  Transnistria’s foreign minister has now repeatedly asked for some version of a Crimea-style path to annexation, starting with formal recognition.  But the Kremlin has been coy on the issue so far, though it has raised alarms about the Ukrainian military’s sealing of the border between Transnistria and Odessa Oblast in order to prevent the further westward flow of Russian matériel or even personnel.

Nina Shtanski, Transnistria’s minister for foreign affairs, has set fashion trends
worldwide on the question of where to position buttons on a power suit.

And, of course, calling everything in between Novorossiya would have the argument of efficiency—eliminating, in terms of symbolism and in terms of groping for and waiting for provocations, the painfully slow process of “retaking” Ukraine oblast by oblast, as was begun in Crimea.  Putin wants the whole enchilada.  And the whole enchilada is called Novorossiya.  Watch this space.

Another view: this image, circulating on the Internet, is said to be of a map produced by the Communist Party of Ukraine.  It shows modern Ukraine divided into (clockwise from upper left: Ukraine, the Dneprovsko-Slobozhanskaia Republic (including Kharkiv and half of Kyiv), the Donbas Republic (Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Luhansk), the Republic of Crimea, and the Republic of Novorossiya (including Odessa and Kherson oblasts).

Two alternate flags of an independent “Novorossiya”
declared very briefly, and without effect, in 1992

[You can read more about these and other separatist 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 special announcement for more information on the book.]

Thanks to Olga Buchel for directing me to some of the information used in this article.

West Watches Helplessly as Declaration of “Odessa People’s Republic” Hastens Dismemberment of Ukraine

Amid news of the chaos in eastern Ukraine—where, as I am writing this, the latest reports are of a dozen or more key government buildings in the control of “Donetsk People’s Republic” activists, with lots of conflicting reports as to Ukrainian defectors and casualties—a perhaps momentous declaration was made in an ethnic-Russian-populated area at the other end of Ukraine, in Odessa.  For many Westerners, Odessa is known only as the city whose famous “Odessa Steps” were used to stage one of the most riveting images in 20th-century cinema: in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin, about a 1905 anti-Czarist mutiny, a baby-carriage is let loose and tumbles down these steps during a bloody massacre, the mother struck dead by a Cossack rifle.  Nearly a century later, it is still difficult to watch this scene and sit still.  As film viewers, all we can do is watch helplessly and wait to see if the carriage tips over or reaches the bottom intact, or doesn’t.  It is something like the feeling that most in the West have as we watch a European nation of 45 million people attacked, invaded, and dismembered by a populist ultranationalist lunatic at the helm of one of the largest militaries in the world.  There is little we can do but watch and wait—or avert our eyes in horror, as film-goers did in 1925.

A statement on the website of Odessa’s “Anti-Maidan” group announced on April 16th, “Beginning today, the Odessa region becomes the People’s Republic of Odessa, where the power belongs only to the people living on its territory.”  It added, “At 16:00 tomorrow, Odessa must get blocked!  Literally.  Everybody who has not yet realized that the war had come to our houses should not go to work tomorrow.  ...   If you do not want a war that turns our country into ruins, like Syria and Libya, that costs thousands of lives, then you have to act.  Odessa is already surrounded by enemy checkpoints.  A state of war has already been declared in the country.”  Though of course it is President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, with a stealth military invasion that it continues to deny, that is plunging the Ukrainian mainland into civil war.

This declaration has so far not been accompanied by the physical takeover of administrative buildings, as has been the case in the eponymous capital cities of the three other separatist entities declared in the east, the People’s Republics of Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kharkov.  Nor have there been reports that the public is being acting on the separatists’ call to arms.  But it is clear that Odessa Oblast, between the Black Sea and Moldova, where Russian-speakers outnumber Ukrainian-speakers, is a place Putin has his eye on.

Pro-Russian demonstrators in Odessa

Donetsk Oblast, with its agricultural and industrial resources and the highest proportion of Russian-speakers of any Ukrainian oblast outside the now-all-but-surrendered Crimea, is where Russia has been concentrating most of its efforts so far, with a whole string of towns now more or less under the control of pro-Russian mobs almost certainly augmented by trained covert Russian troops taking direct orders from Moscow.  It is in Slovyansk, Donetsk Oblast’s second city, that Russian and Ukrainian troops are facing one another on the ground as I write this.  In two other mostly-Russian-speaking oblasts in the east, Luhansk (Lugansk, in Russian) and Kharkiv (Kharkov), the capital cities are seeing key buildings under pro-Russian control, but the hinterlands are so far not very affected.  So far there has been relatively little pro-Russian militancy in the two Ukrainian-majority oblasts between Odessa and Crimea—Kherson and Mykolayiv (Nikolayev)—but in Zaporizhia, the last of the truly majority-Russian-speaking oblasts, there are reports that so-called “self-defense forces” (i.e., pro-Russian mobs) are organizing themselves.

Odessa is crucial to Putin’s plans not only because of its long Czarist history but because it is adjacent to the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (a.k.a. Transnistria, a.k.a. Transdniestria), a sliver of eastern Moldova where Moldovans are in the minority and which declared independence in 1991 in much the same way Crimea did early this year.  Transnistria is occupied by Russian troops and propped up economically by Moscow, but Russia has not recognized it diplomatically in the way that it has its two similar puppet states within the Republic of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  But Transnistria has recently asked for diplomatic recognition from Moscow and for eventual incorporation, like Crimea, into the Russian Federation.  That would be difficult for Russia to do without also controlling Odessa.  Odessa is so close to Crimea by sea, and Crimea so close to Krasnodar Krai in Russia proper, that it would not be necessary for Russia to annex Kherson and Mykolayiv—where the Ukrainian majorities would presumably be more resistant—in order to create a safe corridor to Transnistria from the Russian mainland, though it is not impossible that those oblast’s more-Russian-populated coasts could be secured.

Transnistrian foreign minister Nina Shtanski’s newest fashion statement is these fetching shades from
the Wojciech Jaruzelski Collection.  They say, “I’m a puppet state—and I’m feeling confident today.”

But is this going to happen?  Well, in his question-and-answer press conference yesterday, Putin finally admitted that he had indeed, despite his protestations at the time, sent an advance covert military force into Crimea before its secession from Ukraine, though he still denies that this is what is happening right now in Donetsk.  He also said, for the first time, that he reserved the right to intervene militarily in the Ukrainian mainland to “protect” Russians and Russian interests there, and he described the current Ukrainian military moves against the pro-Russian separatists as “criminal.”  This reverses his earlier statement that he had no plans to do that.  In light of the fact that the events in Ukraine Putin says is “responding to” are events that he himself has staged, it becomes frighteningly clear that a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine will come soon.

An alternate Odessa separatist flag to that used on the Anti-Maidan website (see above)

As Putin himself put it this morning, “Kharkiv, Lugansk, Donetsk, Odessa were not part of Ukraine in Czarist times, they were transferred in 1920.  Why?  God knows.  Then for various reasons these areas were gone, and the people stayed there—we need to encourage them to find a solution.  We must do everything to help these people to protect their rights and independently determine their own destiny.”

Hmm, what to gobble up next?

The Ukrainian military is clearly powerless to stop Putin’s irredentist juggernaut should he decide to set it in motion.  Only the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  But perhaps “losing” Ukraine, or half of it, is preferable to nuclear war?  For now, keep your eye on Odessa.

Our sentiments exactly.

[You can read more about Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, 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.]

Maduro, off His Meds, Warns of Opposition Plot to Hand 6 Venezuelan States to U.S., Colombia for Annexation

When Nicolas Maduro became president of Venezuela last year, he had big shoes to fill.  His predecessor, Hugo Chávez, was wildly popular among the poor and was well known for his charisma, his compelling oratory, and his fear-mongering conspiracy theories about the United States.  Well, Maduro isn’t quite as charismatic as Chávez was, and his speeches aren’t as colorful, and he’s certainly not as popular—in fact, Venezuela is in chaos as uprisings against his policies rage across the country—but when it comes to conspiracy theories, he has shown that he is worthy to be Chávez’s successor.

Peaceful protesters in Caracas being teargassed last month.

On April 3rd, Maduro, in a press conference at his presidential palace, wielded what he claimed was a high-level report from his intelligence services outlining the political opposition’s dastardly plans to foment separatism in six of Venezuela’s 23 states.  He called it part of a plan to turn Venezuelan regions over to “neo-fascists” in the mold of Chile’s former right-wing military dictator Augusto Pinochet.  And he even claimed that the ultimate goal was for some or all of these states to be annexed by neighboring Colombia and by the United States.  And Maduro knows a thing or two about annexation plots: as discussed recently in this blog, his government was one of only eleven nations to side with Russia against a United Nations resolution to condemn the annexation of Crimea.  (In this, Maduro keeps company with the likes of Belarus, Syria, Zimbabwe, and North Korea.)

A map of Venezuela’s constituent states, with the six supposedly secessionist ones highlighted.
(The “Zona en Reclamación” at right is the western half of the independent state of Guyana,
which Venezuelan nationalists claim as their own.)

“In Carabobo,” Maduro said, referring to a small state just west of the capital, Caracas, “the first autonomist meeting has already been concretized, and then the rest of the states in crisis will follow.”  He quoted a supposed secessionist leader as having said, “The only possible exit for states such as Táchira, Mérida, Carabobo, Lara, Nueva Esparta, and Zulia is secession.  I doubt that the citizens of Táchira or Mérida will say today: ‘It’s enough!  We surrender and go back to living the way we used to live!’  Given the serious circumstances in states such as Táchira and Mérida, there can be no return to the initial situation.”  There has been no independent confirmation of any aspect of this scenario, which Maduro explicitly compared to similar situations in Yugoslavia, Libya, Ukraine, and Syria—and Venezuela’s general orientation in foreign policy would imply that in these particular parallels he is sympathizing with radical Serbs, Moammar al-Qaddafi, Viktor Yanukovych, and Bashar al-Assad, respectively, rather than with the actual pro-democracy forces in those conflicts.

Protesters portray Maduro as a puppet of Cuba’s Fidel Castro

Maduro also claimed that he would soon reveal the identity of the “neo-fascist” “oligarch” leading the secession efforts, but that hasn’t happened yet.  The terms, of course, are cribbed directly from Putin’s propaganda playbook.

Venezuela has red states and blue states too.
The red ones went for Maduro in last year’s election, the blue ones for Henrique Capriles.

Whether the allegations have a kernel of truth or not, there is a logic to the list of states.  In last year’s presidential election, in which Chávez squeaked to victory past the Justice First party’s Henrique Capriles with only 50.6% of the vote, the states of Lara, Mérida, Nueva Esparta, Táchira, and Zulia were among the eight which went to Capriles.  (The others were Anzoátegui, Bolivar, and Capriles’s home state Miranda, of which he is governor, just east of Caracas.)  And some of those areas have, naturally, also been the scenes of some of the most dramatic uprisings against Maduro’s rule since February, in a still-ongoing wave of protests that have killed 41 people and resulted in thousands of arrests and injuries.  Most of this is the result of public anger over short-sighted populist chavista economic policies such as wanton price-fixing, which has driven Venezuela’s economy into the ditch with food shortages and out-of-control inflation.

Nicolás Maduro dressed as the superhero Captain Venezuela on election night

Zulia, in particular, has (as discussed in an earlier article from this blog, on Maduro’s support for Puerto Rico’s secession from the U.S.), has been the focus of separatism in Venezuela before.  This oil-rich state, which contains 40% of Venezuela’s considerable oil wealth, was targeted in the 1920s by the Texas oil tycoon William F. Buckley, Sr. (yes, father of William F. Buckley, Jr.), who tried to foment a separatist rebellion there so he could, possibly with covert U.S. help, install a government more congenial to exploitation by U.S. firms.  There is very little indication that full-blown separatism has had much traction in Zulia since then, but during the 2000s, when there was a war of words between Chávez and President George W. Bush, Chávez made much of alleged Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) separatist provocations in Zulia.  There may have been something to that, but it is equally possible that the Bush administration simply enjoyed pushing Chávez’s buttons, as when the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela (supposedly accidentally) referred to Zulia in 2005 as an independent republic.  Chávez also claimed that a 2001 joint U.S.–NATO naval exercise which used a fictitious invasion and “liberation” of Zulia as its premise was a dress rehearsal for just such an intervention, but it may have been a Pentagon in-joke more than anything else.

Henrique Capriles campaigning with Zulia’s governor, Pablo Pérez, and the Zulian flag

Maduro’s worries about annexation of territory by Colombia reflect diplomatic tensions between the two countries, which in late last decade included Colombian accusations that Chávez was covertly supporting and arming Colombia’s powerful left-wing rebel army the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC).  Colombia is also involved in a dispute with Venezuela’s ally Nicaragua over San Andres, Providencia, y Santa Catalina, a territory which is administered by Colombia (validated in 2012 by the International Court of Justice, as reported at the time in this blog) and, like Venezuela’s Nueva Esparta state, is a Caribbean archipelago with cultural differences from the mainland.  (Nicaragua sides with Russia on the Crimea question as well.)

Anti-government protesters on the Caribbean island of Isla Margarita
flew the flag of Nueva Esparta state in a recent protest.

One wonders: does Maduro really think that Barack Obama—just as he is trying, through an evenly divided Congress, to pull off potentially disastrous military withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq, and just as he is trying to position the U.S. as a world leader with the right to lecture Vladimir Putin about the evils of territorial expansion—that just at that moment, or indeed any moment, Obama is going to decide launch an American annexation of part of Venezuela?  It is beginning to appear that Maduro may be as unhinged and out of touch as many in the political opposition claim.  Or is this fairy tale designed merely for the consumption of the Venezuelan masses, in an attempt to distract them from their economic and political grievances with a scary foreign enemy?  If so, then Maduro has even more in common with Putin than was thought.

[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 mid 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]