Ukraine's Government Gains the Advantage Over the Separatists
Ukrainian troops coming to checkpoint on the road near the eastern city of Izum, Donetsk
With the notion of invasion or annexation by Russia apparently off the table for now, the conflict in eastern Ukraine has settled into a slow, grinding stalemate, and the next phase will probably be more political than military. The battleground is already clear: nationwide presidential elections scheduled for May 25. The interim government in Kiev will hold elections for a new leader, and aims to begin moving the country out of its post-Maidan crisis period. The pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, however, say there will be no voting in the territory they control. Whether the election occurs in Donetsk and Luhansk—two regions that declared independence after hastily prepared referendums earlier this month—will be a test of the strength and durability of eastern Ukraine’s separatists, and give a good sense of whether Kiev is recapturing momentum in the region.
In Donetsk, the would-be capital of the pro-Russian separatist forces, both sides act as if they’re in control, with each probably more confident than reality warrants. The Kiev-appointed governor of Donetsk, Serhiy Taruta, claims that voting on May 25 will proceed normally—even though he was forced to make the announcement from a hotel ballroom rather from than his official office in the regional administration building, long overrun by anti-Kiev fighters. The nominal head of the Donetsk separatists, Denis Pushilin, has said there will be no elections at all. Following the legally dubious referendum overseen by his supporters, Pushilin calls the Ukrainian military forces in the east are “occupiers” and says the election will select a president of a “neighboring state.” That is surely braggadocio, but Kiev’s writ is indeed weak over much of the Donbass, the eastern region heavy with industrial plants and coal mines where the separatists claim the most support.
Ukrainian troops stand guard at a checkpoint on the road near the eastern city of Izum, Donetsk
Yet their reach may not be enough to cover the thousands of polling places that the Kiev government plans to operate across the region. The separatists have enough fighters to disrupt voting and keep some polling stations from opening, especially in areas where they’re strong such as the military stronghold of Slaviansk. But they lack the numbers to take over every school, cultural center, and administrative building where voting will occur. They will probably focus on preemptive intimidation, targeting electoral officials and other local administrators for threats and attacks. In Luhansk, for example, separatist fighters kidnapped an election commissioner. Voting day may be a flashpoint for violence, because pro-Kiev paramilitary groups are expected to deploy to ensure voting while anti-Kiev fighters may fan out to do the opposite. Civilians could be the ones who suffer, as they did on May 11 during the separatist referendum, when a pro-Kiev battalion of unclear authority fired into an angry crowd in Krasnoarmeysk, killing two people.
It appears for now the separatist movement may be losing strength in the wake of last week’s referendum. The Kremlin’s lukewarm reaction to its appeal to join Russia has left eastern Ukraine’s pro-Russian activists and fighters in an unclear position. What are the movement’s prospects if its benefactor and greatest hope is giving it the cold shoulder? A video appeal by a pro-Russian military commander asked for more volunteers, suggesting the military ranks of the separatists may be thinning. A demonstration in the center of Donetsk on May 18, where the crowd was smaller than in previous pro-Russian protests, called for opening the borders with Russia—another sign that the separatist cause is waning and in need of additional support.
Also working against the separatists is the opposition of Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and a longtime kingmaker in the Donetsk region, to the idea of eastern Ukraine becoming independent or joining Russia. “I strongly believe that the Donbass can be happy only in a unified Ukraine,” Akhmetov announced. His support may be enough to ensure that voting will be held in the many towns in the east that have factories and industrial plants under his control. And informal militias and neighborhood watch patrols made up of employees of Akhmetov’s companies are keeping an eye on cities such as Mariupol, on the Azov Sea.
Steelworkers employed by Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov already helping police keep order in some disputed cities
After the May 25 election—or, if no candidate emerges with more than 50 percent support in the first round of voting, after a runoff in early June—the conflict in eastern Ukraine will inevitably move into a new phase. At a minimum, the vote will produce an interlocutor acceptable to Moscow in future negotiations. The Kremlin so far has refused to enter into talks with Kiev, saying Ukraine has had no legitimate leader since former president Victor Yanukovych fled office. But President Vladimir Putin and other high-ranking officials have given their measured support to the election, indicating that Russia will be ready to deal with the new president. The country needs someone to talk with if it wants to advance its notion of “federalization,” a proposal that would see far-ranging powers granted to Ukraine’s regions, neutering the country as a threat to Moscow and preserving a lever of influence for Russia.
National Post: 20. May 2014
Steelworkers from plant owned by Ukraine’s richest man join police battling back against pro-Russia insurgents
Steelworkers and local police patrol past the partially burned city council building on May 16, 2014 in Mariupol, Ukraine
MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Steelworkers from plants owned by Ukraine’s richest man on Friday joined police on patrols to reverse the tide of lawlessness in the industrial port city of Mariupol.
About 120 kilometres north of Mariupol, armed volunteers dressed in black stationed in a village just inside the troubled Donetsk region say they intend to expel their foes through force if necessary.
The groups opposed to pro-Russian insurgents who have swept through eastern Ukraine have scored early successes, but threaten to open a new and dangerously unpredictable cycle of confrontation.
Government forces have in recent weeks achieved limited results in quashing the self-styled Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” — armed formations that this week declared independence for their regions following contentious referendums.
That has handed the initiative to forces acting independently of authorities in the capital, Kyiv.
In Mariupol, the second-largest city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, billionaire Rinat Akhmetov’s Metinvest holding group agreed with steel plant directors, police and community leaders to help improve security and get insurgents to vacate the buildings they had seized.
Several dozen Metinvest workers in overalls and helmets Friday cleared out barricades of debris and tires outside the Mariupol government building. Trucks carried it away and by midday, the barricades were nearly gone.
“[Residents are] tired of war and chaos. Burglaries and marauding have to stop,” said Viktor Gusak, one of the Metinvest employees cleaning the street.
Akhmetov has been notable for his noncommittal during the turbulence that has for more than a month gripped the region that is home to his most lucrative industrial assets, so the development is noteworthy.
A video statement by Akhmetov, 47, on Thursday made it clear that his loyalties are not so much with the Kyiv government but with his native Donbass — a territory that encompasses the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The only way, he said, was to effect major constitutional reforms, while preserving a united Ukraine.
“This is when power goes from Kyiv to the regions. This is when authorities are not appointed but elected. And this is when local authorities take responsibility for people’s real future,” he said.
Independence or absorption into Russia would spell economic catastrophe for the region, he said.
Since President Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster in February, Ukraine’s new leadership has reached out to oligarchs for help — appointing them as governors in eastern regions, where loyalties to Moscow were strong. Akhmetov, who served in Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, has avoided such engagements and his attempt to set future terms on the future of the east may cause the government to bristle.
A representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic was also a party to the Akhmetov-brokered deal in Mariupol, but the insurgent group later disavowed its participation.
Instead, Donetsk People’s Republic adviser Roman Manekin said in his own video address that Akhmetov should submit to the authority of the new would-be independent entity.
“We impatiently await such a statement. Otherwise, there will be no Akhmetov in Donbass,” Manekin said.
Manekin didn’t specify how the Donetsk People’s Republic intended to enforce its demands.
German Mandrakov, once the commander of Mariupol’s pro-Russian insurgent occupied government building in Mariupol, said Friday that his associates fled while he was “forced” to leave the building they had controlled for weeks.
A Ukrainian government soldier guards a checkpoint in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, Friday, May 16, 2014.
On Friday, around 20 battalion members were seen napping on bales of hay in a barn in Velyka Novosilka and gave no immediate indication of plans to deploy elsewhere. At least one identified as an activist in the nationalist Svoboda party, whose role in the interim government installed after Yanukovych’s ouster has led pro-Russian activists to decry what they have dubbed a “fascist junta.”
Other similar and apparently unaccountable groups look to be emerging.
Former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is running for president in a May 25 vote, announced Friday that 20,000 volunteers have enrolled in a resistance movement.
Speaking to supporters in the Poltava region, which lies just east of Kyiv, she said that militia units and defence brigades have already been created, although she provided few specifics.
When and if such groups make substantive incursions into the east, it is to be seen whether they will be perceived as liberators or attackers acting on behalf of a little-liked government. The latter could well precipitate civil conflict.
At the heart of the unrest in eastern Ukraine, however, it is the pro-Russia insurgents that are busy fortifying their territories.
Outside the strategic city of Slovyansk, an insurgent stronghold for more than a month now, armed separatists installed a new checkpoint on the eastern approaches to the city. That checkpoint blocks a major highway that links Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city — with the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don across the border.
In Kyiv, Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, on Friday urged residents of the eastern regions to stop helping the separatists and support the central government.
“You’ve got to support the anti-terrorist operation so that we could defeat terrorists and separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk regions together,” he told the parliament. “The actions of the terrorists are threatening lives and welfare of the people.”
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