At the end of August and the beginning of September, Ukraine found itself at a turning point between endless war and peace at any price. The war flared up, bringing a twist on the terrain north and south of Luhansk and Donetsk and south to the Sea of Azov. In Jelenovka, a southern suburb of Donetsk, on August 25, the rebels broke through the front and opened the way to the Sea of Azov, in the west, a new alarm was raised due to alleged Russian tanks in the Ukrainian conflict.
On September 1, the rebels captured the Luhansk Airport, which was completely destroyed in the fighting and disabled for traffic, and the fighting continued for the "Sergei Prokofiev" Airport in Donetsk, where Ukrainian soldiers were surrounded by pro-Russian forces, just like in three other locations: Novokaterinovka , Starobeshevo south of Donetsk and Chervonopilsk. The situation of the population affected by the war became more and more dramatic - about 700.000 people fled to Russia, and about 200.000 to the more peaceful part of Ukraine. On August 29, Putin asked the rebels to open a humanitarian corridor so that Ukrainian soldiers could return home peacefully, and they obeyed him, on the condition that the "Ukris" go without weapons.
photo: fonet / apWHEEL OF WAR FORTUNE: Escorting Ukrainian prisoners to Donetsk...
Vladimir Ruban, a retired Ukrainian lieutenant general who heads the prisoner exchange center, later explained what happened on August 30 and 31 to a humanitarian corridor for besieged Ukrainian soldiers near Ilovaisk, 40 km southeast of Donetsk. It turned out that the information reached the Ukrainian soldiers prematurely, when the negotiations on the corridor had not yet been completed, and when the question of whether the Ukrainians would come out of the cauldron with or without weapons, with a war flag or under a white flag was still being considered. When the negotiations ended, the soldiers did not receive information about the details because, as the Russian "Forbes" reports, the batteries in their radios were empty, so 2000 Ukrainian soldiers spontaneously tried to leave the ring with their weapons, while the corridor was not yet open. opened, and many of them perished, and much equipment was destroyed or fell into the hands of the rebels.
ACROSS THE BORDER WITHOUT WEAPONS: Before that offensive, the rebels acquired a lot of weapons: Western sources believe directly from the Kremlin, and the news itself says that there was wartime expropriation and exchange of rifles for kartoška (potato guns), that there were surrenders and captures. Cossack associations worked, and businessmen from the gray and white zones also worked. The Russian "gulbinka" (province) also did something patriotically.
photo: fonet / ap...and the Ukrainian army in Mariupol
So far, no one has given a relevant estimate of how many Russian fighters there are in the east of Ukraine (according to NATO, about 1000 Russian soldiers, the rebels claim that there are about 4000 Russian volunteers). Some sources estimated the numerical strength of the rebel forces at around 20.000, and the Ukrainian forces at around 50.000. At the beginning of the conflict, the Russian Ministry of Defense estimated that Ukraine had deployed 24.000 soldiers in the east, members of the National Guard and volunteer units.
The thesis of Western journalists (and Ukrainian officials) is that the intervention of Russian soldiers and Russian equipment radically changed the situation. Western media searched for Russian tanks in the southeast of Ukraine, and found discarded packages of military supplies with Russian army markings on their wrappers, and spotted tank drivers "with Asian facial features."
The report of the OSCE observation mission from the Kamensk-Shakhtinsk and Gukovo border crossings near Luhansk, on September 3, describes the profile of people crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border: families going on foot or by car with a lot of luggage; elderly people with several bags; adults (mostly younger) without luggage or empty cars; people wearing military clothing with or without backpacks…
At both border crossings, some supporters of the self-proclaimed republics explained that they were not allowed to cross the border with weapons. On the other hand, on the Ukrainian side of the border, OSCE observers say, places were organized where they received weapons, ammunition and equipment: upon returning to the Russian Federation, they hand over weapons, ammunition and other military equipment in front of the border. In Gukovo, there is even a shooting range for calibrating newly acquired weapons before proceeding to the battlefield. The RBK reporter who followed a group of volunteers recorded how a uniformed employee jokingly called them "two hundred" at the crossing, in the local military terminology the code 200 marks the plastic bag in which the dead are transported from the battlefield.
Average Russians were willing to help their brothers in Ukraine, but as Nikita Mikhalkov, who is close to Putin, said at the time of the May tragedy in Odessa, they were told that the Russians would not come (Ruskie ne prijdut!). What they do themselves, they did.
The Russians, on the other hand, did not hide even in the UN Security Council that there were volunteers from Russia in Ukraine, but they denied that they were sending troops there. The opposition press in Moscow excitedly wrote about the burial in Peskov of someone whose grave was marked with only "soldier". Even after that, the Russian Ministry denied that members of the Russian army were in Ukraine, and only admitted that one group of Russian soldiers with maneuver ammunition in their rifles had strayed on the unmarked border (it was returned as part of the exchange of prisoners). Opposition commentators in Moscow began to ask more seriously: "Can an undeclared war be won?"
When the glorified commander Igor Strelkov was removed from his position in the Donetsk Republic in the east of Ukraine, he was filmed in a monastery in Karelia, in the north of Russia, in the company of monks. The rebels got rid of the commanders of the Russian volunteers, began to listen to what Moscow was saying and agreed to a truce, although many did not believe in its sustainability.
photo: fonet / apWHO TO WHOM: V. Putin and P. Poroshenko at a meeting in Minsk
PROTOCOL OF THE TWO PRESIDENTS: A more serious exchange of prisoners took place only after the signing of the "Protocol on consultations of the Trilateral Contact Force on joint steps to implement the Peace Plan of the President of Ukraine P. Poroshenko and the initiative of the President of Russia V. Putin" at a meeting in Minsk. That 12-member paper was signed on September 5, 2014 by the members of the Trilateral Contact Group: OSCE Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini, former President of Ukraine LL Kuchma, as a representative of President Poroshenko, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Ukraine M. Zurabov, and below, without specifying any functions and without mentioning the leaders of the self-proclaimed republics of the DNR and LNR AV Zakharchenko, IVPlotnitsky.
The following were agreed upon: (1) an immediate bilateral cessation of weapons use; (2) monitoring and verification of the regime of non-use of weapons by the OSCE; (3) decentralization of power through the adoption of the Law of Ukraine "On the Provisional Order of Local Self-Government in Certain Regions of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts" (Law on Special Status); (4) constant monitoring of the Ukrainian-Russian state border and verification by the OSCE with the provision of a security zone in the border regions of Ukraine and the Russian Federation; (5) immediate release of all prisoners and illegally detained persons; (6) enactment of a law prohibiting the investigation and punishment of persons in connection with events in certain regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine; (7) inclusive national dialogue; (8) measures to improve the humanitarian situation in Donbass; (9) holding extraordinary local elections in accordance with the Law of Ukraine "On the Provisional Order of Local Self-Government in Certain Regions of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts" (Law on Special Status); (10) execution of illegal armed formations, military equipment, as well as fighters and mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine, (11) program of economic recovery of Donbass and establishment of life sustainability of the region, (12) guarantees of personal safety for consultation participants.
PUTIN'S PLAN: Before the signing of the protocol in Minsk, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Vladimir Putin, announced, on September 1, a seven-point plan that largely coincides with the Minsk protocol, and what is new is that it specifically mentions the withdrawal of armed formations, military equipment, and also fighters and mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine, which probably refers to Russian equipment and volunteers and other inter-brigade fighters, which were pointed out by Ukrainians, Western politicians and Western media.
President Petro Poroshenko immediately ordered the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to start a ceasefire on September 5 at 18 p.m. The rebel leaders later pointed out that the Ukrainian side was not respecting the ceasefire, that it was regrouping its forces and concentrating them for a new offensive, as was the case after the ceasefire at the beginning of July. On the Ukrainian side, on the other hand, it was said that the rebels are not respecting the ceasefire.
Most of the explosions were heard on the lines of earlier fierce clashes around the airport in Donetsk, where the Ukrainians were still in the vicinity from where they were shelling the city. There were stronger detonations northeast of Donetsk in the Debaltsevo zone, an important junction through which the Ukrainians once separated Donetsk from Luhansk with a wedge, only to be surrounded later and asked for help from Kiev. Russian sources reported that Ukrainian forces are leaving smaller places in the area and concentrating their forces in that "half boiler" instead of withdrawing from it. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also announced about this concentration of forces, suspecting that the Ukrainian side is preparing some kind of military action at that point.
The truce was signed at the moment when the rebels announced the conquest of Marijupolje, from which they were expelled in May. Western analysts have speculated that via Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, Putin intends to secure a land route to Crimea. By the way, the Russians are already contracting the construction of a bridge to Crimea down there across the Kerch Strait. It should be built by the Volga Group, which has repeatedly been subject to Western sanctions.
The Ukrainians emphasized that they intend to fortify and defend that city. One Ukrainian armored column headed east from Mariupol toward Novazovsk and suffered heavy losses. The village of Teljmanovo on the Donetsk-Marijupol road changed hands several times. When the rebels hit and set fire to a Ukrainian patrol ship, and the first wounded sailors began to arrive in Mariupol, the reporter of the Russian edition of the American magazine "Forbes" describes a picture from the shore where fishermen calmly watch smoke rising from the burning ship on the horizon. The peace of the weak. (See the text "Mariupolj, trapped in fear")
On September 48, President Poroshenko traveled to that city, where 44 percent of Ukrainians, 7 percent of Russians and XNUMX percent of Greeks lived before the war. He met with the workers of the company "Azovstalj" and the metal company "Iljica". He ordered high alert, said that Ukraine is being defended in Mariupol, and that he would discuss respect for the ceasefire with Putin at the same time. By the way, they talked about it at least twice and announced that the truce was mostly respected with individual outbursts.
On the same day, September 8 was celebrated in Donbass, the Day of Liberation of Donbass from Hitler's occupation.
Small groups of people with flags and umbrellas, trampling over a pile of shell casings, reached Saur-Mogilu Hill, where the memorial complex was completely destroyed during the fighting in recent weeks.
ARMY IN DRONJCI: Putin probably estimated that the offensive of the rebels would lead the Ukrainian side to recognize them as a war adversary, which Moscow had requested before, and Poroshenko had no other choice but to conclude a truce at the moment when the rebels threatened to occupy Mariupol, and even to will return to Slavyansk, which passed into the hands of the Ukrainian army on July 5, which Poroshenko once marked as a symbolic victory.
photo: fonet / apLIFE IN THE EAST OF UKRAINE: Traces of war;…
His offensive was collapsing. The mobilization of soldiers he was sending to the front poorly trained and ill-equipped and the news that in the east there was death and a lot of equipment was being destroyed caused indignation, while Ukrainian public opinion in Kiev became more and more radical. Near the front in Svatovo, north of Lugansk, Ukrainian soldiers concentrated there for the purpose of regrouping and replenishing their units were drinking, singing, chanting, and some were firing cannons. The officers were drinking at headquarters. A group of soldiers took a taxi and shouted "Nakanjec dembelj!" Finally demobilization...
When he was elected president on May 25, Poroshenko promised to win the war and preserve the unity of Ukraine, but in the end he was left with an "army in tatters", and he may have to cede territory to the rebels, writes "Mond".
While his allies talk about this impossible mission of suppressing the rebellion as a defeat not by the rebels, but by Russia, Poroshenko should continue negotiations with Russia on gas for the winter and enter into negotiations with the rebels, who will fiercely defend their status. Poroshenko declares that in those war conditions he will organize transparent elections to see who represents Donbass. Rebel leaders in camouflage uniforms insist that the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics have not been given up. The OSCE should send 79 observers to monitor the ceasefire, and 700 election observers.
photo: fonet / ap...winter shelter and ammunition
POROSENKA IS THREATENED BY THE THIRD MAIDAN: The war will be the key theme of the pre-election agitation of all political forces in Ukraine. Poroshenko appears as a peacemaker who is ready to die for Ukraine, but also reprimands politicians who would play war.
And the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which approved new tranches of the two-year arrangement of 17 billion dollars, warned that the war in the east is harming the economy.
Persecuted communists and representatives of the weakened Party of Regions (to which the Ukrainian media are now linking Rinat Akhmetov and the persecuted and then freed mayor of Kharkiv Mihailo Dobbs) will talk about the necessity of negotiations and a peaceful settlement of the crisis.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Aleksandar Turchynov, who may go to the elections with a separate party, and may be placed on Proshenko's list, would like to use a peaceful niche, but will be forced to side with the party of war. Among the parliamentary parties, Svoboda went the furthest, sending seven of its deputies to the anti-terrorist operation zone as part of the Sich volunteer battalion, but it can hardly compete with Oleg Ljaško's Right Sector in terms of radicalism.
Yulia Tymoshenko chose a war cry for her Batkivšćina, but at the same time she criticizes the president for the absence of peace. One Ukrainian analyst calls it a Trotskyist position.
Petro Poroshenko's bloc is in a complicated situation since his opponents will remind him that during the presidential election campaign he made many promises to fix the situation in the east. The commentator of the French newspaper "Mond" concludes that Poroshenko is threatened by a "third Maidan".
At the start of the campaign, he still has a minimal advantage. The Ukrainian weekly "Mirror of the Week" cites sociological research, according to which his party, which was called Solidarnosc, was renamed the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, and for which 16 percent of citizens are ready to vote at the start. Behind him is the right-wing Radical Party (Oleg Ljaška) with 14 percent. Batkivšćina (Yulije Tymoshenko, who was abandoned by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk) initially has 13 percent, for Anatoly Gritsenko's Civic Position party, whom some call "Oleg Lyaski for intellectuals", seven percent of voters would vote, for Vitali Klitschko's UDAR party, six percent, for the Silnaya Ukraine party (Sergei Tigipko) six percent. Nationalist Svoboda (Olega Tyagnibok), Communist Party of Ukraine (Petra Simonenko), Right Sector (Dmitrija Yarosh), Party of Regions (Rinat Akhmetov, Mihail Dobkin) and others have less than five percent of the vote.
THE BLAME GAME: The atmosphere in Ukraine will be marked not only by war hatred and election exaggerations, but also by echoes of the "blame game" (blame game) between Moscow and Washington, which is not abating. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that Washington considers Putin's plan insufficient for a ceasefire and that the Ukrainian side would accept that plan if President Putin stopped funding, arming and training separatists, and if he withdrew the Russian military from Ukraine. "USA here"he writes that the ceasefire weakens Kiev's control in the region and reduces the likelihood of Ukraine's economic and military alliance with the West.
The American hawks did not land on the ground. Herbert E. Meyer, during Reagan's CIA assistant director, in the newspaper "American Finker"he thinks about how the USA should behave towards Putin, who he thinks is the new Stalin, but who actually looks more like Argentina's Juan Peron. He writes that it would be good if he left the Kremlin, no matter how, whether with an honorary plaque or with a hole in the back of his head, and he also thinks about "poetic justice", about how it would be if, for example, the next time Putin wakes up was flying back from visiting his good friends in Cuba or Venezuela or Iran, some shadowy paramilitary group somehow, suddenly, pressed a button on a surface-to-air missile. Toby Gatti, former advisor to President Bill Clinton for Russia, assessed that Putin has impressively demonstrated that he believes that the presence of the US or NATO in that part of the world is inadmissible, and that the basic rules should be dictated by Russia. Several Western media resignedly assess that the ceasefire in Ukraine represents a political victory for Vladimir Putin. Republican Senator McCain called from Kiev and said that the hospitals were full and that weapons should be sent to Ukraine.
The Russians, through UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, returned the ball to the Americans and objected that Washington, by implementing crude political engineering and regime change policies in various countries, was undermining world security. Churkin enumerates how everything was destroyed in Libya, and that country found itself in a state of free fall, how chaos spread from Libya to Mali, a Central African republic that fell apart by itself, how South Sudan fell into a prolonged civil war with the support of the US, and how the apotheosis of that policy is represented by the story of the "Islamic State" in Iraq...
DEFERRED SANCTIONS: Under pressure from the USA, on September 9, the EU agreed on new sanctions against Russia that affect the oil companies Rosneft, Transneft and the oil part of Gazprom (they will not be able to borrow long-term on the Western European market) while blacklisting 20 new persons. The gas sector is not affected. At the request of Finland, the measures will be reviewed in the next few days, and either partially or completely abolished, depending on the maintenance of the ceasefire in the east of Ukraine, which the OSCE observers on Monday, September 8, described with the word shaky - wobbly. The Russians don't argue much with the Europeans, but they again announced an asymmetric response (Prime Minister Medvedev), and the Russian media is speculating about a possible ban on flights over Russian territory for Western airlines.
It is warned that Washington, which does not have serious financial contracts in the military sphere with Moscow, is trying to thwart Russian-Ukrainian and European-Russian military contracts, such as the one under which the German company Rheinmetall is building a combat training center for the Russian Ground Forces in the Nizhegorod region. worth around 100 million euros, and of course the Mistral-class ships, helicopter carriers, which the French, under American pressure, "have no conditions" to deliver to Russia as part of the new package of sanctions. Moscow says it will seek $1,2 billion in restitution and $270 million in punitive damages. Those ships, by the way, are not, as is supposed, intended for the Black Sea Fleet, but for the security of oil platforms near Sakhalin.
photo: fonet / apORAL SUPPORT: President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso
INSURANCE POLICIES: In Moscow, it seems, considerable attention is being paid to the fact that the US, whose share covers 73 percent of NATO expenditures, is scaring the Europeans with the Russian threat in order to extract more money to finance the alliance, so the US ambassador to NATO, Douglas Luth, is quoted admonishingly there: If a country sees membership in the Alliance as a kind of lifetime insurance policy against security risks, it should pay for it."
On September 10, Putin held a consultation on Russia's insurance policy, on the state weapons program 2016-2025. The Russian Security Council announced at the end of August that Moscow will adopt a new military doctrine already this year. Threatening assumptions have been made in the Russian press that there may not only be a change in the hierarchy of assessed military threats, but that it is possible that the US and NATO as a whole will be publicly designated as Russia's military opponents, whose activity, according to Russia, since February 2014 .disproportionate in the Black, Baltic and Barents Seas, and also in Poland and the Baltic countries, which will consequently lead to an increase in the military potential of the Russian fleets.
In addition to drawing attention to the activation of the so-called missile shield, the EuroPRO system in Poland, the Russian media also mentions the possible deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Crimea and the Kaliningrad region. Russian analysts also pointed to the growing military presence in the Arctic of the armed forces of the USA, Norway and Canada, while news came from the Kremlin that Putin ordered the equipping of a Russian base to secure Russian interests in the deep north.
AMERICAN MILITARY WASTE CHECK: The Russian media rejoiced over the fact that the results of the NATO summit for Ukraine at the given moment were more than modest. Poroshenko was honored, they spoke with him at a round table as an equal partner - and awarded Kiev financial aid of 15 million euros for military reforms. They gave more through other channels, but the Russians scoffed, claiming it was enough, for example, to buy office supplies for Defense Ministry associates. Until the next NATO summit, which should be held in Warsaw in 2016, Kiev has no chance of receiving serious aid, which is an insanely long time for Ukraine, which is falling apart, according to Russia's assessment.
Ukraine may buy aircraft, armored vehicles and other Soviet weapons from the western neighbors of the NATO members, and Poland, Romania and Hungary will get rid of their outdated weapons and switch to the NATO standard, the US will give guarantees, and Ukraine will buy those weapons at a price of iron from waste, to borrow and become military waste of the former USSR. Russian media report that the most active, even to the point of panic in pointing out Russian aggression, was "new Europe" - the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, followed by Poland and Romania, which demanded that the US deploy its military bases on their territory.
The Russians conclude that they, like other European countries, were trying to secure it at the expense of the United States (the United States will provide one billion dollars). Someone says through gritted teeth that only the prostitutes in Tallinn will benefit from those soldiers.
In Russian media analyses, however, there is an expectation that the pressure will increase for even neutral Finland to join NATO (according to whose model of neutrality, according to Kissinger's proposal, an arrangement for Ukraine should be made). It is assumed that NATO will force the Czech Republic and Slovakia to cooperate more, whose leaders announced in June that they "do not see the need to strengthen NATO's military presence in Europe." It is also predicted that the Americans and NATO will probably continue to organize a "cordon" against Russia, the so-called GUAM - Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova). It is noted that NATO will increase its presence in Romania, where fighter jets will be located, and assumptions are made that it will provoke an escalation of the conflict in Transnistria, including provoking the Russian peacekeeping contingent located there. As if in a mirror, the Ukrainian and part of the Western press mention Transnistria as a base for potential Russian infiltration in the Odessa zone.
All of this is certainly reflected through Ukraine, including when the Russians calculate how much it will cost them to stop joint military production with Kiev - parts for helicopters, self-guidance devices for air-to-air missiles R-73, which are made by the Kiev institute "Arsenal", and another.
For the Russians, it seems, the calculator shows a higher cost of "separating the Siamese twins" of military-industrial cooperation from the time of the former USSR than the cost of shouted sanctions and counter-sanctions, but for now it is not clear whether already broken ties can be established at all.
The regional and global consequences of the tectonic upheavals caused by the Ukrainian collapse will have to be negotiated at a high level.
