Putin says troops on Ukraine border coming home; Ahmetov calls massive rally

The Washington Post: 20. May 2014Putin says troops on Ukraine border coming home; Ahmetov calls massive rally
By Anthony Faiola and Fredrick Kunkle

Russia says troops to pull back from Ukraine border. Russian President Vladimir Putin

Ukraine began a tense countdown Monday to weekend elections as the country’s richest man called for a huge peace rally in the restive east and Russian President Vladimir Putin said troops deployed near the border have been ordered home.

Despite Putin’s announcement, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance has “not seen any evidence at all that the Russians have started withdrawal of troops from the Ukrainian border.”

Putin previously claimed that about 40,000 Russian troops massed along Ukraine’s border had been withdrawn, but the United States and NATO say they have seen no signs of that. Putin’s office issued a statement early Monday saying troops involved in “routine spring” exercises in the Rostov, Belgorod and Bryansk regions had been ordered back to barracks.

In an interview Monday, Pavlo Sheremeta, Ukraine’s economy minister, welcomed Putin’s announcement, saying it appeared to go further than the Russian leader’s earlier declarations about withdrawing troops. Sheremeta said he sensed what could be a shift in tone and, hopefully, in substance. “Is this credible? We shall see, but at even up until 10 days ago, all his declarations were much more hawkish,” he said.

Meanwhile, Rinat Akhmetov, whose coal mines, steel plants and other factories are the industrial might of the Donetsk Basin in eastern Ukraine, said in a statement late Monday that he had asked all employees to stage a peaceful “warning protest” at their companies to send the message that a separatist rebellion endangers the region’s economy.

Workers of Metinvest, majority-owned by Rinat Akhmetov's System Capital Management, remove separatists barricades, and with police officers conduct a joint patrol in Mariupol  

Akhmetov said he called for the demonstration at noon Tuesday after intervening to halt employees’ plans to hold a peace rally in Mariupol on Monday. Akhmetov said he suspended Monday’s rally after he learned that unidentified gunmen had planned to shoot anyone who took part.

Rinat Akhmetov

Ukraine is set to go to the polls Sunday in historic presidential and mayoral elections that could affect the country’s very makeup and its alignment between the West and Russia. Tensions remained high in the troubled Donetsk and Luhansk regions near the country’s border with Russia.

Pro-Russian militants, who have seized administrative buildings in eastern Ukraine and fought government troops in the industrial region, have said they will boycott the elections.They allege that the recent chaotic referendums on self-rule in eastern Ukraine were valid. Kiev called the referendums a farce, and the West declared them illegal. Russia said their results — in favor of self-rule — should be respected.

The Economist: 17. May 2014

Life in Donetsk

Strange but also normal
Rebels and ordinary citizens rub along on the same boulevard

A woman stands in front of anti-Kiev protesters outside the district council building in Donetsk, Ukraine on May 4

ON MAY 11th, a balmy Sunday in Donetsk, people walked along the leafy boulevard, played with their children and sipped coffee in street cafés. Yet close by armed thugs in balaclavas guard a barricade fortified with barbed wire and tyres. A flag of the Donetsk people’s republic flutters atop an ugly ex-Soviet local government building. The city’s two realms seem separated by an invisible boundary.

The interior of the seized government building is a cross between a hostel for the homeless and a militant stronghold decorated with hate posters. Each floor has its own rules. “Attention: training of how to assemble and disassemble weapons on floor five.” Yet the rebels have left the running of the city and its utilities to local authorities, concentrating on commandeering arms and helping themselves to cars. The Donetsk rebellion seems like a cover for gangsters. On May 11th the rebels held a “referendum” on self-rule for the Donetsk people’s republic that was essentially a stunt. To create an illusion of mass attendance, the number of polling stations was reduced fourfold. In some cities, such as Mariupol, only four were open. The long queues that resulted were shown on Russian television throughout the day. “When I saw that everyone else was voting, I also went to vote,” one young man admits. Those who opposed the republic simply did not vote.

Insurgent leader Denis Pushilin, centre, walks through a crowd with his bodyguards after his news conference in Donetsk, Ukraine, Monday, May 12, 2014.

The leaders of the revolution are equally fake: few people had heard of them until recently. Roman Lyagin, who organised the votes, was involved in political shenanigans for Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. In 2006 he changed his name to register as a clone for the mayor. Denis Pushilin, self-proclaimed governor of the Donetsk republic, was involved in MMM, a notorious pyramid scheme that operated in Russia in the 1990s. Pavel Gubarev, a “people’s governor” fighting a “fascist junta” in Kiev, was once a member of Russian National Unity, Russia’s banned fascist organisation. A conversation reported by the Ukrainian security service found the party’s Russian leader, Alexander Barkashov, instructing one of the rebels how to conduct a referendum: “just write in the figure itself, say 89%”.

Red: Districts with government offices under the control of the so called "Donetsk People's republic"
Pink: Districts under other local paramilitary groups and out of Kiev's control
White: Districts under Ukrainian control

(As of May 16, 2014)

In many ways the referendum was run like a pyramid scheme. It drew people in and cynically exploited their frustrations, fears, anger and confusion. Having done their act, the leaders may now vanish. Mr Pushilin is said to have tried to leave already. His bodyguards, who follow him everywhere, may actually be his minders. But it is the men with guns who are in charge.