World News
03.15.14
Russia's Special Ops Invasion of Ukraine Has Begun
Putin appears to be using elite commandos—Spetsnaz—to spearhead his stealth move into Crimea and, perhaps, beyond.
This week the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) arrested a group of people led by a Ukrainian citizen who were said to be scoping out three of its most crucial military divisions in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.
In Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, press reports from the ground say that Russian provocateurs have attacked Ukrainians who organized anti-Russian street protests.
The forces behind these operations, according to U.S. officials briefed on the updates in Ukraine, are likely the Spetsnaz, the Russian military’s highly trained saboteurs, spies and special operations forces who may change the face—and the borders—of Ukraine without once showing the Russian flag on their uniforms. Or, for that matter, without wearing any particular uniforms at all.
In 1979 the Soviet Union was able to take over Afghanistan with less than 700 Spetsnaz soldiers. These same operatives are now spreading out over Ukraine, according to U.S. officials who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity. One of these officials stressed that while U.S. intelligence assesses there are more Spetsnaz forces surging into Ukraine, there is no reliable number on how many are inside the country and ultimately whether their presence is a prelude to a more formal invasion.Few politicians in Kiev seemed to have any doubts that the results of the referendumSunday will bring Crimea under the Kremlin's control.
On March 5, Jane's Defense Weekly ran an analysis of Russian troop movements near Ukraine and noted similarities with the USSR's special operations campaign in 1979 before the full invasion of the country. "A significant indicator of Russia's next steps would be the arrival in Crimea of personnel from Moscow's GCHQ-NSA equivalent organization, previously titled the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information (FAPSI), to carry forward the situation," Jane's wrote.
In the last seven weeks, two recordings of high profile telephone conversations featuring European Union and U.S. officials have mysteriously surfaced on the Internet, suggesting Russia's technical intelligence services have been active during the Ukraine crisis
Of course, the situation in Ukraine is fluid, and the intelligence coming from the area is incomplete. Most analysts say only Putin and a small circle of advisers will decide whether Russia's current military incursions become a full-fledged invasion.
On the ground in Ukraine, such confusion reigns that the role of Spetsnaz is hard to confirm. But its involvement would come as no surprise.
In Kiev’s Maidan Square, there’s the camp set up by veterans who fought for the Soviets in Afghanistan when Ukraine was still part of the USSR. Twenty-five years ago, Ukrainian and Russian soldiers belonged to the same army; they were dying shoulder to shoulder in Afghanistan. So the Ukrainian veterans watch closely and understand only too well the tactics used against them now.
For the last two weeks, Oleg Mikhnyuk, the commander of a group of veterans calling themselves the Afghan Hundred, has been receiving reports from southern and eastern Ukraine about the mysterious "Russian presence" on Ukraine's territory. "If in the beginning of March they were just 'little green men' without identity driving armored vehicles all over Crimea, now the invasion is official, as Kherson region is definitely outside of the Russian Black Sea fleet jurisdiction, " Mikhnyuk said. (Putin played his game initially within his self-defined version of a treaty that gives Russia the right to locate military bases in Crimea.)
This evening the crowd in the Afghan veterans’ camp grew quiet as one of their senior officers spoke on his cell phone. Earlier in the day, the foreign ministry of Ukraine declared that the Russian invasion had gone beyond the Crimean peninsula, and the ministry demanded immediate withdrawal of Russian military forces from Ukrainian territory.
On the previous night, locals of Strelkovoye village complained to Afghan veterans about Russian military helicopters circling over Kherson region. On Saturday morning about 50 militants in Russian army uniforms occupied a natural gas substation there. "But our forces immediately reacted and pushed them off our territory," Mikhnyuk said, expressing hopes that no "provocation could cause bloodshed in the future.”
Meanwhile, Petr Mekhed at the Ukrainian ministry of defense declared that "the statement about the invasion came from foreign ministry, and the defense ministry cannot confirm the invasion.”
Meanwhile, reports continue of "unknown armed men" kidnapping Ukrainian civil society activists, and even anti-Russian activities are suspected as “false flag” operations by Putin’s operatives. Saturday afternoon, an Orthodox priest, Nikolai Kvich, was reportedly kidnapped as he conducted a service in his church in Sevastopol church. At about 8 p.m. dozens of masked men stormed the Moskva Hotel in the Crimean capital of Symferopol. The hotel's visitors were told to stay in their rooms while the men armed with machine guns raided the hotel.
Daily Beast correspondent Jamie Dettmer, who was there, says they may well have been Spetsnaz: “They initially claimed it was an anti-terror exercise and then said it was a false tip off. They were aggressive, waving guns, automatic weaponry with silencers on, and they lashed out at a cameraman with rifle butts. Maybe an exercise in intimidation—we don't know."
Few politicians in Kiev seemed to have any doubts that the results of the referendum Sunday will bring Crimea under the Kremlin's control. The question discussed in political circles continues to be whether Russia will use open military force against Ukrainian army bases outside the peninsula, in the rest of Ukraine. With the Spetsnaz deployed, it may not have to.
Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty
World News
03.15.14
Crimeans Are Resigned To Pro-Russia Vote
While
a handful of Tatars, students and pro-Kiev activists have spoken out
against the referendum and Russia’s invasion, most Crimeans have bought
into Putin’s propaganda or are too scared to speak out.
“The Baltic states will be next, if the West doesn’t act,” hazards Ali Khamzin, a senior member of the Mejlis, the main Crimean Tatar organization, which is firmly opposed to Crimea seceding from Ukraine.
Moscow’s warning that it will protect “compatriots” following overnight clashes between Russian separatists and pro-Ukrainian activists in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Kharkiv is fueling fears that Putin means to seize more of Ukraine than just the ethnic Russian-dominated Black Sea peninsula. Crimea was handed over to Ukraine in 1954 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
A build-up of Russian forces on the borders and the overnight re-deployment of some Russian units—including artillery detachments—to north Crimea is adding to the anxiety of Ukraine’s new leaders, who fear a full-scale invasion could be in the offing.
Whatever Putin’s overall objectives, it’s increasingly clear in Crimea that the Moscow-installed pro-Russian authorities will go to great lengths to ensure that the referendum to join Russia will succeed by a super-majority—one to resoundingly answer Western and Ukrainian claims that the sudden plebiscite is an illegitimate stunt.
Even those who support union with Russia guffaw when asked whether the referendum will be above board. Kirill, a 20-year-old biology student who is firmly in the Russian camp, doubts it. “It is hard for old Soviet habits to die off,’” he admits standing outside a cell phone store in a shopping precinct in central Simferopol.“If they provoke the Russian military,” says Putin’s handpicked leader of Crimea, “they deserve everything they get.”
Suspiciously, half-a-million extra ballot papers have been printed for the referendum. Western journalists joke among themselves that it would be handy for their deadlines if Aksyonov, whose political party won a meager four percent of the vote in the regional parliamentary elections in 2010, would provide embargoed results ahead of the official declaration.
Overreach, though, is actually undermining the goal of the Russian separatists. With each turn of the screw—from the closing of Simferopol’s airport to all flights except those from Moscow, to reports of goons cracking down on the sprinkling of sporadic pro-Ukraine protests—the referendum appears more squalid. Little has been left to chance in this stage-managed plebiscite, one straight out of the playbook of Putin’s own presidential elections. The game involves tight media control, fear-mongering and the sabotaging of dissent.
Ukrainian television channels have been knocked off the air, replaced with Russia’s rigidly state-controlled outlets that laud the qualities of Putin’s leadership and broadcast ever more garish claims that the uprising last month against Ukraine’s president and Putin ally, Viktor Yanukovych, was all the handiwork of neo-Nazis and fascists. For ordinary working-class Crimeans not used to searching around the Internet for alternative news sources, the tales of far-right conspiracies are accepted as accurate.
On roadside billboards, posters for the referendum show two maps of Crimea, one painted in bright Russian colors, the other darker and enveloped by a Swastika. There are no posters around that oppose the union with Russia. The 41-year-old Aksyonov says no one has called for them but if anyone had wanted to finance and mount them, that would have been okay.
In the run-up to the referendum Russian separatists have sought to block Ukrainian democracy activists from entering Crimea. Half-a-dozen Ukrainian journalists were turned back at checkpoints this week trying to enter the region. There is only pro-Russian political marketing on television, much of it targeted to older generations with adverts reminding viewers of the sacrifices of the Red Army during the Second World, and spots assuring the elderly—the voters most likely to endorse a break with Ukraine—that pensions and other social payments will be higher once Crimea is back with Mother Russia.
Bands of thuggish pro-Russian separatists clothed in black with red armbands have added to an air of menace and intimidation already firmly established by the presence of the Russian army in the peninsula, which swarmed into Crimea after Yanukovych ‘s ouster. Often drunk and rough and likely drawn from the ranks of the unemployed, their stop-and-searches and questioning of anyone deemed suspicious is unchallenged by local police.
Opponents of union with Russia among the educated young and the region’s Tatar population are a minority but they have been too cowed and weighed down by a feeling that tomorrow’s outcome is a foregone conclusion to even try to mount a concerted countervailing message or organize dissent in a bid to try to persuade the majority to pause and rethink.
Mikhail, a 28-year-old father of one small boy, is an ethnic Russian but says he and his father who run a construction business together, don’t want Crimea to break with Kiev, fearing it will impact badly on their business. “But what can we do to stop this? There is nothing we can do, it is all pre-ordained and why risk anything by expressing our opinion? We will have to do business with the new authorities. “
His opinion is a minority one. Outside the regional parliament here, the silver-haired Yuriy Meshkov, who was President of Crimea between 1994 and 1995 and a long-standing advocate of the region being annexed by Russia, is applauded by a mostly elderly crowd when he tells The Daily Beast: “Crimea belongs to Russia, every meter of the ground is Russian.” Paunchy Cossacks guarding the building and sporting the orange and black ribbons of the military order of St George—commemorating victory over Nazi Germany—on their combat fatigues nod approvingly. They block the path to the parliament, saying lawmakers don’t want to be interviewed by the media.
Aksyonov exudes confidence about the outcome. “I am sure 80 percent of Crimeans support union with Russia,” he told a crowded press conference on Saturday.
Asked how a referendum can be conducted fairly under the guns of the Russian army, Aksyonov raised his arms and looking around the hall and quipped, “Do you see any guns here?” Asked why foreign journalists have been attacked, he responded less sweetly: “If they provoke the Russian military, they deserve everything they get.”
And what of the pro-Russian gangs patrolling mostly urban areas of Crimea? They are self-defense militias protecting Crimeans and deterring neo-Nazis from western Ukraine mounting “provocations,” the prime minister argued in his characteristic rapid-fire delivery.
For others, the self-defense militias add to a sense of intimidation—complementing the few thousand Russian troops deployed in the peninsula. “Most people are scared and lost,” says Vilora, a 20-year-old economics student, whose family is mixed Russian and Crimean Tatar.
Yulia, a final-year languages student, whose parents are pro-Russian, says, “Most people just want to stay safe. You have to understand that Crimea is far from the center. Crimeans are parochial and they have seen many violent changes and they are keen just to go along to get along.”
It isn’t hard to find evidence of fear. The streets of Crimea’s capital have been deserted at night. One of the hottest nightspots in town, the Amsterdam nightclub, was bashing out Euro-techno music on Saturday to an almost empty dance-floor.
The determination to avoid trouble is evident even on the campuses of the region’s universities. At Simferopol’s Tarvid National University, the press officer is polite but says none of the academic staff will agree to be interviewed about the referendum. “The university has a policy not to get involved in politics,” he says after intercepting The Daily Beast in the director’s outer-office.
“You are welcome to talk with the students—but off campus,” he smiles sheepishly.
On the other side of town, academics at the Crimean Economic Institute of Kiev, a branch of Kiev’s National Economic University, are equally reticent. They decline even to discuss what the economic and business ramifications will be for the region after breaking with Ukraine. “No one wants to risk their tenure or promotion by speaking out of turn,” confides a senior professor. “But it is ordinary people who are going to be hit hard by this and it is going to be a long and painful process of adjustment.”
While their teachers shy away from expressing their opinions, students don’t. Out of two-dozen interviewed, only two say they are in favor of Crimea returning to Russia. The others voice frustration, saying that the population has been fed lies by the controlled media and that hysteria has been whipped up about the threat of neo-Nazis.
They fear a break with Ukraine will damage their job and economic opportunities. And they express the same kind of sentiments that young participants at the Maidan protests voiced against the pro-Russian Yanukovych when arguing that turning away from Europe will condemn them to reduced life choices.
“The young here are more contemporary and have progressive-thinking but the older Crimeans hark back to their memories of the Soviet days when they were young and strong,” says Vira, a 21-year-old student. “They can’t accept the situation that Crimea has been part of Ukraine for a long time. In the 21st century it is not normal to make an annexation in such a military way.”
She says: “If the majority wants to be Russian we can hold a referendum and maybe 70 to 80 percent will vote for Russia but it shouldn’t be held now when all these Russian forces are here.”
Several say they worry about limited freedom in Russia and cite the imprisonment of the punk-performance art band Pussy Riot and they say they plan to leave Crimea and move to Ukraine to complete their studies.
But there are students who look to Russia and not Europe.
Dasha, a 24-year-old journalism student, says Ukraine’s parliament did great harm to its cause by abolishing earlier this month a law that allows regions to use Russian as a second language. The acting President vetoed the abolition but the parliamentary move still rankles in Crimea. “The Western Ukrainians are crazy about Europe and Germany but they don’t understand Russia is a great country and they denigrate our Slavic culture,” she says.
The thuggish Aksyonov—who sports the battered nose of a boxer and was elected to his position at a dubious closed-door meeting of Crimea’s parliament that likely didn’t even reach a quorum—has been assuring the international press here that not only is the snap referendum legal (the Western powers and Ukraine’s new leaders in Kiev insist it breaches the country’s constitution which stipulates referenda have to be nationwide) but all the procedures for it will be transparent.
That will be hard to judge: the director of elections has so far failed to divulge many technical details.
He declines press interviews and has avoided appearing before a media conference to be cross-examined about minor matters such as the maintenance of the electoral register, how many ballot papers have been printed and the security and counting procedures to be followed at polling stations. Nor are there any rules in place for how, or who, will judge or resolve electoral disputes or rule on complaints of electoral fraud or vote rigging.
But such Western technical quibbles prompt bitter laughter from Muslim Tatar official Ali Khamzin. The Tatar Mejlis has urged the U.S. and Britain to uphold their end of a 1994 agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity in return for the country giving up its nuclear arsenal. Tatar leaders argue that if Washington and London don’t intervene, no one will ever believe the West’s promises again.
“The count has been made already, everything is counted, all the videos celebrating the union have already been produced,” argues Khamzin. “I am surprised that journalists asks questions as though this is a legitimate poll. This is a fake, false referendum; it is just a spectacle, a show.”
He adds: “You live in a fine democratic country in the U.S. Here we don’t have your developed procedures. Here we have an imperialist power, Russia, and a bunch of chauvinists who want Crimea to join Russia.”
The leaders of Crimea’s quarter-of-a-million Muslim Tatars have urged a boycott of tomorrow’s referendum. Aksyonov says most will still vote and that at least half of the Tatars are pro-Russian separatists and will turnout. Khamzin says that is “a lie.”
Crimean Tatars make up about 12 percent of the Black Sea peninsula’s population and they have endured two centuries of persecution at the hands of Russia stretching back to Czar Alexander II. But for the Tatars, what they endured as a result of Moscow diktats is living history.
Most of the region’s Tatars have only lived in Crimea since 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when they started to return to their ancestral homeland after having been deported on mass by Stalin in 1944. Most were not born in Crimea but in Uzbekistan and the Urals where their parents or grandparents had been dumped as collective punishment on the false pretext of collaboration with the Nazis. About 9,000 Tatars actually fought with the Nazis during the Second World War.
There are still many Tatars around who experienced as small children the forcible deportation that left nearly half of the Tatar population dead, and the tales of the wretched brutality they suffered and witnessed is etched into the community’s consciousness.
Seventy-seven-year-old Guldjihan is one of the survivors. “I remember everything. They came at night,” she sighs. She emphasizes her words with her gnarled hands and she closes her eyes and turns her heavily wrinkled face towards the sun as she recalls how the NKVD, soldiers from the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, rounded up the Tatars from her village of Alushta, about 15 miles from Simferopol, on the night of May 18 1944.
Her strongest memory of the roundup is of her father realizing he wouldn’t be coming back and “opening the door of the livestock shed to let the animals out before we were taken away.” Like thousands of others she, along with her parents and young brother, endured a 28-day train journey in crowded cattle cars, surviving squalor, illness and hunger only to be dumped in Uzbekistan and used as Gulag slave labor.
She is dead-set against the union with Russia and will heed the Tatar leadership’s boycott call.
The Tatar leaders have been careful not to be confrontational, fearing that to do so would lead to violent clashes with Russian separatists. Thousands of Tatars rallied on February 27 in front of local government buildings but since then dissent has been reserved to media interviews. Not that the Russian media has been eager to hear their views during the run-up to Putin being able to say ‘mission accomplished. ‘
Photo by The Daily Beast
World News
03.14.14
Russia’s American Crimea Hero
John
Paul Jones, the ‘Father of the American Navy,’ led Catherine the
Great’s 18th-century occupiers, before a sex scandal chased him out of
the empire.
Jones, who was born in Scotland and only immigrated to America two years before the Revolution, was without a command in the 1780s, as the United States had no navy at the time (the last ship of the Continental Navy was sold off in 1785). So he went to Europe seeking opportunities to continue his naval career and achieve the rank of admiral, which he had long desired (because of the monarchist overtones of the rank, the U.S. wouldn’t have a single admiral until the Civil War). And he found one in Russia.
Russia had just occupied the Crimea a few years earlier, and incorporated the peninsula into the Czarist Empire only nine years after establishing it as a puppet state independent from the Ottoman Empire in 1774. The Turks weren’t pleased about this or other developments as Russia continued to expand into Ukrainian territories that it had previously seized. Finally, after Catherine the Great made a grand procession through the newly conquered parts of Ukraine, the Ottomans were sufficiently provoked and attempted to regain the possessions they had lost bordering the Black Sea. As a result, Russia needed naval commanders and Jones was given the rank of rear admiral and sent to fight the Turks.
One problem: There were a few other rear admirals fighting the Turks, too, and Jones, a thin-skinned man in the best times, soon faced some rather ferocious infighting as command of the Russian fleet was divided. (Leading all Russian military efforts against the Ottomans was Prince Grigori Potemkin, best known for “Potemkin villages” who was a prime intriguer himself). The result was chaos, as Jones, who thought he was in charge of the entire Black Sea fleet, was only commanding “the squadron.”
Despite this dysfunction, Jones initially fared well. He helped the Russians win several victories and displayed his typical derring-do. At one point, Jones had a Cossack sailor row him on a boat in the midst of the Turkish fleet in the middle of the night on a scouting expedition. In course of this, Jones chalked in giant letters on one Turkish ship “TO BE BURNED. PAUL JONES.” This came true as Jones’s flagship, Vladimir, sunk the vandalized vessel the next day in battle.
But all his bravery and bravado was not enough. While Jones’s efforts helped the Russians secure the crucial estuary of the Dneiper River, where that body of water emptied into the Black Sea, he had incurred the jealousy and dislike of his fellow officers and was sacked from his position and sent back to St. Petersburg.
While waiting there in vain hope of another command, Jones was accused of rape by a 12-year-old girl. While Jones was almost certainly innocent of rape, he had been patronizing her services as a prostitute. In a letter, he insisted that he had not taken her virginity but that, in exchange for money, “she lent herself very amiably to do all that a man would want of her.” Instead, it seems that the girl had been bribed by a rival of Jones to say that she was raped in order to ruin the American’s Russian naval career. It worked. Jones soon left Russia under a cloud and never returned. He died in obscurity in Paris in 1792, never having another opportunity to command a fleet.Jones had incurred the jealousy and dislike of his fellow officers and was sacked from his position and sent back to St. Petersburg.
Things ended better for the Russians, though. They won the war and the Ottoman Empire recognized the Crimea as part of Russia. (In addition, Catherine the Great conquered yet another chunk of what is now Ukraine, including the land on which the city of Odessa would be built). With brief exceptions during the Crimean War and World War II, the entire Crimean Peninsula would be ruled by Russia until 1991, when the Soviet Union fell and it became part of the new country of Ukraine. (The peninsula had been transferred for administrative reasons from Russia to Ukraine in 1954.)
Jones, though in death, would finally experience the glory and honor he had so lusted for in life. In 1905, a government expedition found his remains in Paris (the cemetery in which he was buried in 1792 had been built over in the century since) and transported them back to the United States, where they were reinterred in honor at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. There, Jones is buried in a special crypt beneath the Naval Academy Chapel and he is venerated there as “the Father of the American Navy.”
Ironically enough, one of the most notable graduates of the Naval Academy today, Sen. John McCain, is perhaps the one public figure battling hardest to reverse the Russian occupation of the Crimea, more than 200 years after Jones helped the Russians cement their hold on the peninsula the first time they conquered it. However, McCain, who left for Ukraine Thursday, doesn’t face an ideological rift with his alma mater’s pioneering spirit in this struggle. After all, Jones, who joined the Continental Navy in 1775 out of a love for the cause of liberty and what he called a sense of “universal philanthropy,” might fight for Catherine the Great, but he would never ever side with Putin.
Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters
World News
03.14.14
Russia Swears No Invasion, Never Mind All the Tanks
Is Moscow massing troops on the border for leverage or for war?
"Everyone understands what Crimea means to Russia," Lavrov said, referring to the contested region in southern Ukraine that has been occupied by Russian military forces and is holding a referendum on Sunday to determine whether it will join the Russian Federation or declare its independence from Ukraine.
Remaining a part of Ukraine, as Crimea had been prior to being occupied by Russian military units, is not an option on the ballot. Secretary of State John Kerry, who met with Lavrov for four hours Friday, called the Crimean referendum a violation of international law and warned of economic sanctions and other consequences for Russia if it is not called off. Despite Kerry’s rebukes, Lavrov was steadfast about the importance of Russia’s relationship with Crimea, and allowing the vote there to occur as planned.
Russia's actions aren't as irrational as some critics have
alleged. Declaring the importance of diplomacy while pointing a loaded
gun is an old and familiar practice in international politics.
Emphasizing the need to protect a special relationship
with Crimea, while Russia’s military postures for war elsewhere along
Ukraine’s borders, may be a gambit to convince the opposition that
giving up Crimea is better than the alternative--full-scale war if Moscow's efforts are blocked.
Large columns of Russian tanks, troops and military vehicles massed
on Ukraine’s borders yesterday, in what may not be a sign of impending
war but is a clear escalation and attempt to shape the country’s future by threat of force.Russia’s defense ministry, which had earlier denied the military buildup, acknowledged operations along the border but described them as training exercises. Moscow’s invasion and de facto occupation of Crimea, was also preceded by Russian military exercises along the region’s border.
The ramped up militarization along Ukraine’s borders may be a bargaining tool to increase leverage in ongoing negotiations. Moscow’s next move is hard to predict but the meaning of the current escalation has been clear to Ukrainian officials and world leaders—Russia may not initiate a full-scale war but it’s ready to do so if it chooses.
“Ukraine today is facing the threat of a full-scale invasion from various directions,” Andriy Parubiy, a top Ukrainian defense official told the press on Wednesday. Before the arrival of additional reinforcements yesterday, Parubiy reported that there were over 80,000 Russian troops, up to 450 tanks and armored vehicles, and high concentrations of artillery and combat aircraft deployed near the Ukrainian border.
The spread of Russia’s military forces from the Crimean peninsula in the south, to the eastern and northern borders of Ukraine, reveals a significant change in its military posture.
As street fights raged between Russian and Ukrainian factions in the ethnically mixed Eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, with one pro-Ukraine protestor killed by Russia supporters Thursday night, reports surfaced that 1,500 Russian paratroopers had landed at a Russian base in the Rostov region, across the frontier from the Ukrainian city.
The Russian ministry of foreign affairs responded to the fighting in Donetsk with a statement that accused Ukrainian right wing groups of initiating the attacks and blamed the government in Kiev for being “not in control of the situation in the country.” Reporting from the English language Russian-funded propaganda network RT, echoed the claim that Ukrainian fascists were responsible for the violence in Donetsk and noted that the ministry’s official statement stressed “Moscow reserves right to protect compatriots.”Moscow’s next move is hard to predict but the meaning of the current escalation has been clear to Ukrainian officials and world leaders—Russia may not initiate a full-scale war but it’s ready to do so if it chooses.
The claim that Russian nationals in Ukraine are under attack from fascist groups and need the protection of Russia’s military was one of the justifications Moscow gave for the incursion into Crimea and is seen by many as a pretext for a larger invasion.
North of Donetsk in the Ukrainian city Kharkiv, more reports described a large scale Russian troop buildup less than 30 miles from Ukraine’s border.
Ukrainian border guard officials reported that aircraft patrolling the country’s frontier were fired upon Thursday by Russian anti-aircraft vehicles. It was the second time they took fire this week according to the border guard officials who also stated that the aircraft were unarmed.
Even leaders who had been more conciliatory towards Moscow condemned Russia’s recent actions.
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel warned of an impending catastrophe in a speech to the German parliament on Thursday. "We would not only see it, also as neighbors of Russia, as a threat. And it would not only change the European Union's relationship with Russia," Merkel said, "no, this would also cause massive damage to Russia, economically and politically."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who is meeting with Russia’s foreign minister in London today, was less sharp in his criticism.
In a congressional appearance on Thursday, Kerry asserted that Russia had not yet made the military preparations to undertake a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kerry acknowledged that the situation could change quickly but said that he wanted to avoid “hysteria or excessive concern about that at this point of time.”
Both Kerry and Merkel threatened Russia with further economic sanctions if the country continues its military aggression.
As Russia was deploying troops and equipment to put the military on a war footing, one kind of attack was already underway as Moscow silenced its own press. The Russian websites of prominent dissidents like Garry Kasparov and Alexei Navalny, were taken down and the editor of Lenta.ru, one of the country’s only independent news outlets, was fired and replaced by a Kremlin loyalist.
“We had seen the clouds gathering for a long time, but it was still a shock,” Kasparov told The Daily Beast. “Clearly Putin is preparing for war, whether or not he will actually launch one. It’s timed nicely for Kerry’s meeting with Lavrov, and Putin always raises the stakes to see if his opponent will fold, since they usually do. Putin said in his autobiography that his KGB file dinged him for having a ‘reduced sense of danger.’ It’s possible he simply can’t imagine the US and EU won’t back down again.”
On Friday, as heads of state meet to negotiate and Russia maintains its war footing, diplomacy and militarism remain entwined and continue competing to shape the future of Ukraine.
Editor's Note: This article has been updated to include comments made by Russia’s Foreign Minister after the story was originally posted.
03.15.14
The Daily Beast Looks Ahead: March 15 - 21, 2014
From global politics to television premieres, here's what's going on in the world.
Saturday 3/15
Today marks three years since protests in the city of Daraa initiated the uprising against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Well over 100,000 people have been killed and a third of the population has fled the country.
Sunday 3/16
Ukraine's Crimea votes on a referendum to join Russia. The vote itself is illegal, according to Ukraine’s new leadership and its allies in the West; the country’s constitution states that all Ukrainians would need to vote for Crimea to secede.
Serbia holds parliamentary elections. Aleksandar Vucic and his conservative Progressive party are expected to win, mainly because of his positions on EU membership and economic reform.
Monday 3/17
President Obama hosts Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in DC. The meeting follows a violent flare up last week when dozens of rockets were fired from Gaza at southern Israel and the Israeli air force responded with air strikes. Abbas blamed Israel for the violence: “The Israeli occupation forces killed in cold blood three Palestinians in the West Bank and another three in Gaza, and we did not hear any condemnation or any apologies to these acts from the Israeli government," he said.
Congress is on recess until March 24.
We’re watching: The new Dancing With the Stars season premieres on ABC and The Tomorrow People premieres on The CW.
Tuesday 3/18
Fed Chair Janet Yellen will lead her first meeting of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee. In light of the positive economic conditions (unemployment went up, but only because more people came back into the labor market) forecasters expect the Fed to cut monthly bond purchases to $55 billion.
Iran and six world powers--United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany--are meeting in Brussels for the next round of negotiations on Tehran's nuclear program. Last month’s talks were described as “productive.”
Twenty-four mostly Hispanic and Jewish Army veterans--three of them living--will be awarded the Medal of Honor by President Obama for their combat service during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The ceremony comes after a review of veterans who were awarded the Service Cross, the second highest honor, but denied the Medal of Honor because of discrimination.
We’re watching: Glee’s 100th episode airs. Enrique Iglesias, Foster the People, and an artist by the name of Perfect Pussy all release new albums. American Hustle, Frozen, and Saving Mr. Banks are all released on DVD.
Wednesday 3/19
With her mother and daughters in tow, Michelle Obama heads to China to meet with Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping. She’ll stay through March 26.
We’re watching: The 100 premieres on The CW.
Thursday 3/20
President Obama hosts a Democratic fundraiser at former NBA player Alonzo Mourning’s Miami home.
Friday 3/21
We’re watching: Divergent, starring Shailene Woodley and Kate Winslet, hits theaters. So does Lars Von Trier’s controversial Nymphomaniac and the more family-friendly Muppets Most Wanted, starring Tina Fey, Kermit the Frog, and Miss Piggy.
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