Ukraine President Says Losing East To Russia As NATO Doubles Down

Forbes: 1. May 2014
Ukraine President Says Losing East To Russia As NATO Doubles Down

By Kenneth Rapoza

Pro-Russian protesters have occupied the government buildings in eastern Ukraine regions Donetsk and Luhansk 

Kiev may be losing control of parts of Eastern Ukraine, the country’s president said on Wednesday.

“I want to say honestly that today the power structures are incapable of operatively taking control of the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” President Olexander Turchynov said about political unrest in Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, both within a four hours drive from the Russian border.

Armed pro-Russia separatists on APC's and while on their duty at the check-points 

Over the past several weeks, pro-Russian politicians in Donetsk have said they wanted to either become politically autonomous regions within Ukraine, or be annexed by Russia.

The Crimean peninsula , majority populated by ethnic Russians, voted to secede on March 16. Eastern Ukraine is around 50% ethnic Russians, not enough to withstand a democratic vote on whether to rewrite the Ukrainian border. So in the meantime, pro-Russian militants have been inciting riots in the cities while the Ukrainian military has been unable to launch a charm offensive against those Ukrainian citizens of Russian descent. Some separatists were quoted in the press recently as saying that the Geneva agreement, reached last week between the Russian government, U.S. and Europe to stop the violent protests, were none of their concern.

Washington and Brussels, meanwhile, believe that the Russian government or billionaire oligarchs acting on its behalf, are partially funding or technically supporting the pro-Russia militias.

Ukraine has since tilted Westward following the Feb. 22 ouster of Viktor Yanukovych.

Kiev maintains control of the vast majority of its 45 million inhabitants. But pro-Russian sentiment remains strongest in the East, and this is where more violence is expected as the May 25 elections approach.

“The authorities today are not controlling the situation in (the East), as well as in…Donetsk,” interim president Turchynov said.

Ukraine’s UNIAN news agency quoted Turchynov as saying that the armed forces are in “full operational readiness” amid the threat that Russia could wage a continental war against Ukraine.

A Ukrainian policeman stands guard next to Ukrainian soldiers in a tank at their newly erected checkpoint near the eastern Ukrainain city of Slavyansk

The idea that Russia would actually invade Ukraine has largely come out of the Kiev and Western media. Russian president Vladimir Putin has stated, however, that his country reserves the right to defend ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

So far, Russia’s official military apparatus has not stepped foot into the East. But if one follows the news close enough, it seems the ex-Soviet masters of Ukraine are ready to roll across the border in T-90 battle tanks.

The Ukrainian army is “on full alert” due to the “threat of a Russian invasion,” Turchynov said again today. ”I am going back to the real threat that Russia would unleash a continental war against Ukraine. Our armed forces have been put on full alert,” Ukrainian news agencies reported.

Ukrainian army armor regiment - eastern Ukraine

The torrid affair has been worsening since Yanukovych left Kiev in February, a city that does not seem to miss him.

Maj. Barak Amundson and 1st Lt. Matthew Scott, 493rd Expeditionary Fighter Squadron pilots, fly over Lithuania during a training mission with the Lithuanian air force April 23, 2014. The 48th Air Expeditionary Group has been conducting the Baltic Air Policing mission here since January and will be handing over the mission to the Polish air force at the beginning of May.

The country, long mired in corruption and revolution, boiled over again late last year when Yanukovych rejected a trade deal with the E.U. in favor of moving the country closer to Russia. The new prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, quickly became the new figurehead of the country. Staunchly pro-Western, Yatsenyuk’s first order of business was to fan ethnic Russian flames by banning the Russian language from government communications. Crimea immediately acted by calling for a secession vote. Yatsenyuk recently axed the no-Russia policy and said the language was welcome in all official communications between the Ukrainian provinces.

Despite the occasional fig leafs, the biggest punishment has come from afar, in Washington DC, where dozens of Russian politicians and billionaire businessmen have been sanctioned, along with their businesses, because of their involvement in the anti-Kiev protests.

Putin said sanctions were having a negative impact on Russia, at least in terms of investor perception.

The Russian stock market is the worst performing of the big four emerging markets, and according to one senior U.S. Treasury official, $60 billion has flown out of Russia, more than all of last year’s capital flight, as foreign and domestic investors lose confidence in the Russian economy.

With the election nearing, the war of words and conspiracy theories will be a blaze as eastern Ukraine teeters towards Russia. The imbroglio has the usual story lines, both military and economic.

When Ukraine leaned West, Russia was quick to guarantee its rights to the Black Sea via its historic naval base in Crimea. The U.S. used Ukraine’s tilt as a way to convince Europeans to buy American natural gas instead of Russian.

Meanwhile, Putin looks across the Ukrainian border and sees nothing but NATO nations.

Canadian jets left Canada on Tuesday for deployment to Romania as part of the “NATO efforts to reassure Allies in Central and Eastern Europe,” the organization said on its website, admitting that recent drills and a doubling of ally fighter planes is all because of Russia.

Over the last 10 years, NATO member states have taken turns sending fighter aircraft to police the airspace of the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The three countries, all former Soviet members, do not have fighter jets of their own. The three countries are now part of the NATO Alliance’s airspace and member countries like Canada take up the patrols for a four-month rotation. Allies have traditionally deployed only four fighter jets for their rotation in peace time, but NATO increased its presence with additional jets after the outbreak of the crisis in Ukraine.