BALTIMORE, Maryland April 13, 2014 - Ukrainian authorities had warned separatists in the eastern half of the country to stand down from their escalating effort to seize police stations and other government buildings. The warnings ended Sunday, and the military moved in en force. As this post is about to be finalized, the Washington Post says one member of the Ukrainian Defense Force is dead and many on both sides of the conflict have been injured. In recent days the separatists, whom Kiev says are being stoked and, in-part, coordinated and even manned by Russian Strong Man Vladimir Putin, have branched out from larger cities on the eastern edge of Ukraine, to smaller towns and communities. It was at one such smaller city that a flashpoint took place. Witnesses differ whether a Ukrainian soldier was killed inside of the city of Slavyansk, 90 miles from the Russian border, or as part of a convoy of Ukrainian Military Assets approached the city. The Washington Post says that five other soldiers have been injured in "fierce" fighting there, as well as four members of the separatist movement. Independent journalists have a difficult time telling exactly what sort of persons make up the separatist movement. Some, obviously, are domaciled in Ukraine, but are nonetheless ethnic Russians. Some are paid Russian community organizers, and some are Russian intelligence operatives dispatched to eastern Ukraine to stoke violence and make life miserable for the new Ukraine Government in Kiev.
Up to now Ukraine has been loathe to engage in fighting, even when separatists occupy buildings and other facilities that are and have been part of the Ukraine Government. The new leaders understand that any armed resistance on their part risks express Russian Military intervention, since that was the pretext Putin used when he sent up to 40,000 Russian troops pouring into Crimea in early March. Those troops are, for the most part, still there, and Russia says the Crimean people have voted to separate from Ukraine and become part of Russia. The Russian Duma has voted to make Crimea part of Russia, and Putin has signed what he says are the necessary papers. The Western World, en force, has rejected Russia's annexation of Crimea, but have done little beyond sanctioning certain Russian bureaucrats and wealthy Russians who would otherwise stand to benefit from the annexation. As part of the annexation, Russia seized many Ukraine military installations, commandeered all of Ukraine's naval assets, including its only submarine, and took over every Ukraine Naval base, since Ukraine's only port is in Sevastopol, which is in Crimea.
Now, however, the Kiev government has reached its apparent limit. The latest round of building occupations in even smaller municipalities gave indication that Putin does not intend to ease up in his efforts to create a situation which he can argue demands Russian intervention. The eastern part of Ukraine, the part that sits against the Russian border, is where much of Ukraine's industries are located. If Russia were to seize these eastern Ukraine lands, it would be a huge economic boon for Russia.
The expansion of sepatist seizures has drawn quick responses from both NATO and the USA. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the unrest “a concerted campaign of violence by pro-Russian separatists, aiming to destabilize Ukraine as a sovereign state.” The USA's ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, echoed Rasmussen's remarks and added that the United States is ready to ramp up economic sanctions against Russia. Additionally, it was revealed late last week that NATO is actively considering the deployment of troops to Eastern Europe. The commander of all NATO military assets in Europe, USA Air Force General Philip Breedlove, said any such deployment would doubtlessly include a large number of American troops. Russia, meantime, has some 40,000 of its troops massed on the Ukraine border, equipped with heavy artillery, tanks, armored personnel carriers, attack helicopters and fighter planes. These troops have more than adequate logistical support to maintain themselves, on the move, for many months. Russia has also recently massed troops and heavy equipment in South Ossetia - land it virtually annexed from Georgia after invading that country in 2008. There is also a report that Russian troops and fighter planes conducted large scale military exercises directly on its border with Finland, and a Russian military spokesman told a Finnish web site that the troops were practicing maneuvers that it would use in the event that a nuclear war started.
Authorities have been quick to point out that there are large differences between the situation in Eastern Ukraine and that which existed in Crimea before and during the Russian invasion there in early March. In Crimea, there was express public support for the Russian invasion and occupation. Crimea is heavily domaciled by ethnic Russians whose families were moved to Crimea by then-Russian leader Josef Stalin in the late 1940's. He kicked out and forcibly removed all of the Tatar people who had lived in Crimea since the 1200's because, he charged, they had cooperated with the Nazis when they invaded Crimea during the second world war. Nothing could have been further from the truth but the deed was done. Some Tatars have returned to Crimea, but today they make up only about 12% of the Crimean population. There are also many ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, but public support for the takeover of government buildings by armed separatists has been scant, reporters say. There is speculation that Putin has ramped up the occupations in an effort to elicit more public support. An invasion of the kind carried out in Crimea will be all the more difficult without the kind of public support the Russian military enjoyed in Crimea.
According to the Washington Post, USA officials speaking from Washington on Saturday expressed grave concerns about the Putin-sparked developments in the eastern part of Ukraine, and they placed the blame for these developments squarely on the back of Putin.
No comments:
Post a Comment