The Ukraine List #472 compiled by Dominique Arel Chair of Ukrainian Studies, U of Ottawa www.ukrainianstudies.uottawa.ca 2 September 2014

------“Mega” Danyliw Seminar “Ukraine 2014”, Oct 30-Nov 1, uOttawa ASN 2015 20th Anniversary Convention: Call for Papers Next Week ------

1- Putin Recognizes “Novorossiia” 2- Guardian: Putin Demands “Statehood” for Southeast Ukraine 3- Le Monde: Tracking the Phantom Russian Army [UKL translation] 4- Reuters: Russia Human Rights Officials Says 100 Russian Soldiers Killed 5- Negotiating with the “Rebels”: A Facebook Exchange (Kudelia et al.)

6- Washington Post: Mothers of Russian Soldiers Kept in the Dark 7- Hayla Coynash: Committee of Soldiers Mothers Branded “Foreign Agent” 8- Window on Eurasia: Russia Lacks Resources to Occupy Eastern Ukraine 9- Appeal of Polish Intellectuals to the Citizens and Governments of Europe 10- BBC: Ukraine Activist Relives Humiliation Horrors

11- UN: Excerpts from Latest Report—On Casualties, Illegal Detentions etc. 12- khpg.org: Halya Coynash, President Signs Repressive “Anti-Terrorist” Laws 13- Kyiv Post: Porochenko and His Promises, Three Months Later 14- OpenDemocracy: David Marples, The Rhetoric of Hatred Misses the Point

15- The Independent: NATO Must Refocus on Collective Defense 16- Guardian: Wesley Clark, Persuasion Requires also Assisting Ukraine ------Language Politics in Ukraine ------17- Foreign Affairs: Arel, Why Ukrainians Fight Over Language (19 March) 18- HURI Conference: Arel, Towards a Language Consensus in Ukraine (11 June)

1 UKL #472 2 September 2014 19- Monkey Cage: Tim Frye, Policy Preferences Trumps Language for Candidates 20- Recent Publications: American Ethnologist, Kuzio, Liebich

------Thanks to Irena Bell, Brian Bonner, Hayla Coynash, Timothy Frye, Yevgeny Finkel, Paul Goble, Robert Homans, Christina Isajiw, Jeffrey Kopstein, Serhiy Kudelia, Bob Leshchyshen, André Liebich, David Marples, Kimberly Marten, Alex Melnyk, Motria Poshyvanyk Caudill, Oleksandr Sushko, Catherine Wanner, and Roman Zurba ------

A classic “brain cramp” had me announcing in the last UKL that the “Mega” Danyliw Seminar “Ukraine 2014”, on October 30-November 1, will be at the University of… Toronto. Well, I may be fond of my dear colleagues at UofT, but the Seminar is a proud initiative of the Chair at U of…Ottawa. A preliminary program will be available in the next week –DA ------

The ASN Convention will celebrate its 20th Anniversary on April 23-25, 2015, at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. The Call for Papers will be issued next week. No doubt, a large section will feature “Ukraine 2014”. Meanwhile, have a look at ASN’s new website: http://nationalities.org --DA ------

#1 President of Russia Vladimir Putin addressed Novorossiya militia ------Prezident Rossii website, 29 August 2014

It is clear the militia has achieved a major success in intercepting Kiev’s military operation, which represents a grave danger to the population of Donbass and which has already led to the loss of many lives among peaceful residents.

As a result of the militia’s actions, a large number of Ukrainian service members who did not participate in the military operation of their own volition but while following orders have been surrounded.

I call on the militia groups to open a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainian service members who have been surrounded, so as to avoid any needless loss of life, giving them the opportunity to leave the combat area unimpeded and reunite with their families, to return them to their mothers, wives and children, and to quickly provide medical assistance to those who were injured in the course of the military operation.

For its part, the Russian side is ready and willing to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Donbass, who have been affected by this humanitarian catastrophe.

2 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU I once again call on the Ukrainian authorities to immediately stop military actions, cease fire, sit down at the negotiating table with Donbass representatives and resolve all the accumulated problems exclusively via peaceful means.

#2 Vladimir Putin calls on Kiev to enter ‘statehood’ talks for south-east Ukraine ------by Shaun Walker in Mariupol and Dan Roberts in Washington Guardian, 31 August 2014

Vladimir Putin has called on Kiev to enter discussions on “statehood” for the south-east regions of Ukraine a day after the EU gave Russia a week to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine or face further sanctions. In excerpts of an interview with state television broadcast on Sunday evening, the Russian president said talks between Ukrainian authorities and separatist leaders in the east should begin immediately and be about “not just technical issues but on the political organisation of society and statehood in south- eastern Ukraine”. His spokesperson later said Putin had not meant the region should gain independence, but that dialogue should begin. Western leaders have accused Russia of fanning the flames of the insurgency in east Ukraine, and in recent weeks of providing direct military assistance, as the armed rebels suffered a number of losses to the Ukrainian army and appeared on the brink of defeat. The EU said late on Saturday that if Russia did not reverse course in Ukraine within a week, a further round of sanctions would be imposed, but there is disagreement inside the 28-member block about the effectiveness of sanctions and a fear that more serious measures would also harm European economies.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said the new sanctions would build on existing measures against Russia. Senior diplomats confirmed the punitive measures were not so much new as a tightening of the restrictions imposed in July on Russian financial, energy and defence sectors. “It’s about closing loopholes,” said a diplomat. They warned, however, that it could be weeks before any new sanctions were APPLIED, perhaps as late as October. The Senate foreign relations committee chairman and Obama administration loyalist, Robert Menendez, called for the US to arm the Ukrainian military. Speaking in Kiev, he said: “This is a watershed moment. Thousands of Russian troops are here and are directly engaged in what is clearly an invasion. We should be providing the Ukrainians with the types of defensive weapons that will impose a cost upon Putin for further aggression.”

Kiev has said it will not negotiate with the leaders of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, which it lists as terrorists. But in an apparent victory for Moscow, the separatists said they would be partaking in talks in Minsk this week with a delegation from Kiev. Analysts have speculated that Putin does not want a Crimea-style annexation, which would be expensive and militarily difficult, but instead wants to create a “frozen conflict” that would give Moscow permanent leverage in Ukraine.

3 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Since talks between Putin and the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, in Minsk last Tuesday, the situation on the ground has changed, with rebel forces taking control of Novoazovsk in the far south-east of the country, which they are believed to have taken with help from regular Russian army soldiers and equipment. But the promised assault on the key port city of Mariupol has not materialised. Many residents have been digging trenches on the outskirts of the city and preparing to defend it in recent days. Mariupol was under rebel control at the beginning of the uprising but was taken back by Kiev’s forces in June and most of its residents have little appetite for further violence, although many remain sceptical about the new Ukrainian government.

Kiev has said it will defend Mariupol from any rebel assault, though there is little sign of serious reinforcements with which to repel any attack. The majority of the forces involved in last line of defence appear to be from volunteer battalions. Vadim, a commander in the Azov battalion, known for its far-right leanings, said on Sunday that it was imperative to defend the city because it was a strategic importance. “If we lose Mariupol we will lose the war,” said the 34-year-old, as he headed to a factory to transport concrete blocks to reinforce checkpoints on the outskirts of the city. Ukrainian forces said two coastguard vessels had come under fire off the coast of Mariupol. Videos from the scene showed a plume of smoke rising from an object several miles offshore. It was unclear how the boats were attacked or whether there were victims among the crew. A military spokesman said a rescue operation was under way on Sunday evening. People in the vicinity said they heard loud explosions but did not see or hear any aircraft, suggesting they may have been hit by missiles fired from land.

Russia has denied all accusations that its soldiers are active in eastern Ukraine, stating that a group of paratroopers captured inside the country had got lost and crossed “by accident” and all other Russians fighting in the region were volunteers or serving soldiers “on holiday”. The paratroopers were handed back to Russia over the weekend after what a Russian general, Alexei Ragozin, described as “very difficult” negotiations. He said it was unacceptable that the Ukrainians had detained the men, and noted that Russia had returned Ukrainian soldiers who had strayed over the Russian border previously. The Ukrainian soldiers generally crossed the border to escape fighting, whereas Kiev accuses the Russians of coming to Ukraine to wage war. The latest such group, comprising 63 fighters, was sent back to Ukraine in exchange for the captured paratroopers.

In interviews, the Russian paratroopers claimed they had not realised they were inside Ukraine until they came under fire. The claims that they crossed the border accidentally have been mocked by Kiev, and during the capture of Novoazovsk earlier in the week there were numerous sightings by locals of “green men” – well equipped soldiers wearing no insignia but immediately distinguishable from the irregular rebels. Nato said it believed at least 1,000 regular Russian soldiers were operating inside Ukraine. Putin, however, has insisted that the conflict is an “internal Ukrainian” matter. His rhetoric in recent days has been bullish, comparing the Ukrainian army offensive in the east to the Nazi siege of

4 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Leningrad and reminding the west that Russia is a nuclear power and “it’s better not to mess with us”.

#3 In Southeast Ukraine, Tracking the Phantom Russian Army ------by Benoît Vitkine Le Monde, 2 September 2014 [translated by Dominique Arel for UKL]

Stange things are taking place in Kholodnoe. In this quiet village with a few dozen houses, living at the rhythm of the Azov Sea, people saw, for the first time in their lifetime, drones in the sky. It was on August 24, and even if the region until then was wisely keeping itself remote from the war and its bizarre effects, Natalia and Galina were not overly surprised.

Natalia went to see her neighbor Galina, who owns the store in this village at the edge of the world, a mere 500 meters from the Russian border. One is pro-Ukraine, the other pro- Russia. Yet the two women, supported by a third one who does not give her name, tells the same story of what happened in the past week.

The day after the passing of drones, explosive shells fell near the village on the positions held by soldiers tasked with monitoring this strip of the border at the extreme Ukrainian southeast — in practice, a few trenches hurriedly dug in the fields. The soldiers fled and, on the following day, others briefly appeared in the village, in order to cross the main road. Young, with helmets, all dressed with the same impeccable uniform: nothing that resembles the mismatched uniforms of separatists fighters that we usually come across in Donbas.

“Russian soldiers”, claim the three women without hesitation. Between 30 and 50, plus an armored personnel carrier whose identification number was covered with white paint. They said “good day” and moved. In the evening, other villagers saw tanks in the fields. Troops and personnel carriers were coming from the Russian side and were advancing west, towards Novoazovsk, the first Ukrainian town on the coast, ten kilometers later.

On this Sunday, 31 August, the tracks of military vehicles are still visible. They begin at the border custom post, two kilometers north of Kholodnoe, and then go deep into the fields. The post was taken on Monday, but the separatist fighters who keep watch now don’t know who did the job. They only received the order to move there.

Novoazovsk fell on August 27. The takeover of the town has caused shock and a near panic in Kyiv. This southeastern zone had until then not seen combat, and the sudden opening of a new front, after weeks of uninterrupted progression by the Ukrainian army, demonstrated the seriousness of the separatist counter-offense. Kyiv denounced this reversal as the result of a direct intervention by the Russian army.

5 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU In Novoazovsk, no trace of soldiers, only the shadow of a Russian presence, like these two men in uniform who quickly vanish and fit the description provided by these women in Kholodnoe. A dozen tanks are visible, parked in the center and on the various roads leading to the city. Mostly Soviet T-72 tanks, without white paint and not particularly new.

“We took these tanks in a Ukrainian base in Louhansk region,” swiftly says Gyurza, one the separatist leaders who hold the city. This veteran of the Foreign Legion dismisses the hypothesis of some kind of Russian support. The only Russians who fight with me, he assures, are volunteers. And none has arrived for several weeks.

Who then are the passagers of this jeep which stops shortly after Gyurza’s departure and whose driver, puling down the window, loudly asks fighters resting in a shade: “Where can we change rubles for hryvnia?”.

Shortly before the fall of the city, shell fell in front of Liuba’s house, at the eastern edge of the city. The young woman took refuge in the basement with her children. The front of her house, riddled with shrapnels, faces east, towards Russia, ten kilometers away. Impossible to know if the shells came from the Russian or Ukrainian side of the border.

Ukrainian positions, 200 meters away, seemed to be targeted. In these positions, we find the trail of a makeshift camp, rations that the US Army provides to the Ukrainian Army. These soldiers fled without fighting, probably to seek refuge in Mariupol.

The large city on the Azov Sea coast is 30 kilometers away. A port city drowning in the fumes of steelworks, Mariupol is the next separatist target. Gyurtza, the former legionnaire, even thinks of inviting Marine Le Pen [leader of the far right French party Front National –UKL], “since she is the only one in France who understand why we fight.”

Awaiting an incoming attack, Mariupol digs. Factory bulldozers have been requisitioned to build trenches and large blocks of concrete. But the Ukrainian Army is almost invisible, leaving the field to volunteer battalions, particularly “Azov”, the one that includes many Europeans. These men do not have heavy weapons: what will they when facing separatist tanks, while the Ukrainian positions in the north are falling one by one?

In front of the main “construction site”, Saturday, several hundred people gathered to form a human link reaching over a kilometer. People stir Ukrainian flags, sing the national hymn, support fighters and factory workers who dig trenches. These Mariupol residents show their faces on camera, have their pictures taken. If the city is taken, they could be in danger, as happened to all those, in the “Donetsk Peoples’ Republic”, who dared to openly express pro-Ukrainian sentiments.

“Normally, Mariupol is a city where factory workers are put in ranks, they are told what to do, for whom to vote…When I see these citizens ready to rise for a common cause, I am ready to take the risk” whispers Taras, an unemployed metallurgical worker.

6 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU #4 Over 100 Russian soldiers killed in single Ukraine battle - Russian rights activists ------by Thomas Grove Reuters, 28 August 2014

More than 100 Russian soldiers were killed in eastern Ukraine in a single battle this month while helping pro-Russian separatists fight Ukrainian troops, two members of the Russian presidential human rights council said on Thursday, citing accounts from eyewitnesses and relatives of the dead.

Ella Polyakova and Sergei Krivenko, both members of the council - an advisory body with no legal powers and an uneasy relationship with the Kremlin - said around 300 people were wounded in the same incident on Aug. 13 near the town of Snizhnye, when a column of trucks they were driving, full of ammunition, was hit by a sustained volley of Grad missiles.

“A column of Russian soldiers was attacked by Grad rockets and more than 100 people died. It all happened in the city of Snizhnye in Donetsk province,” Krivenko told Reuters. Polyakova said she had been given the same figure for the number of Russian soldiers killed.

They said they had spoken to around 10 relatives of the dead and fellow soldiers who witnessed the attack, some of whom had accompanied the bodies back to Russia. Their sources said there was no documentation proving the soldiers had been in Ukraine, and the death certificates were filled out to suggest they had died elsewhere.

“When I talk to the guys who accompanied these coffins of these contract soldiers, they tell me that the order was given orally, there were no forms of documents,” said Polyakova. If confirmed, the deaths would support assertions by Kiev and its Western allies that Russia is fuelling the conflict in eastern Ukraine by supplying the separatists with both weapons and soldiers.

They pose awkward questions for the Kremlin, which has consistently denied involvement in the conflict. A defence ministry official repeated that denial in strong terms on Thursday.

No one answered the phone when Reuters called a ministry spokesman to ask about the Snizhnye incident.

“The soldiers serving on contract are given an order, and the columns go across Russia and they stop at a camp, as though part of a training exercise, on the border with Ukraine,” said Polyakova.

7 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU “They take off all the (identification) numbers or blotch them out, and then cross the border,” she said.

Rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko said on Thursday that active Russian soldiers were fighting with the rebels against Ukrainian troops but were doing so while on vacation.

Polyakova said not one of the soldiers she or her colleagues had spoken to had filled out a form to go on vacation, standard procedure for contract soldiers.

Krivenko said that around the middle of August they had received complaints from parents of the soldiers that they could not contact their sons.

The pair said they had asked Russia’s Investigative Committee to open a probe into the case.

“We’ve made requests to official bodies, but as of yet we’ve received no answer,” Polyakova said.

#5 Negotiating with the “Rebels”: A Facebook Exchange ------1 September 2014

Serhiy Kudelia (Baylor U)

A week after Ukrainian President Poroshenko promised to use only “the language of force” to deal with Donbas insurgents his representative is meeting with the two leaders of self-declared states Andrei Purgin (DNR) and Aleksei Kariakin (LNR) to discuss political solution to the crisis. Both Purgin and Kariakin are sought by the Ukrainian Security Service on charges of terrorism and state treason. It took Russian military incursion and dozens of Ukrainian soldiers killed or captured in the insurgent counteroffensive for Kyiv authorities to possibly start realizing that this crisis can only be solved through talks.

Oleksandr Sushko (Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, Kyiv)

Serhiy, yes, through talks! But you are absolutely aware that Purgin and Kariakin decide nothing, the just articutate what “starshye tovarischi” tell them. Their todays manifesto is a brilliant proof of this. This is just an intermediaty tricky mechanism which Putin imposes on us all to imitate his “non-engagement”. So I don’t see any reasons to celebrate irrelevant people sitting at the table.

Serhiy Kudelia

8 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Oleksandr, I am far from celebrating anything related to Donbas these days. Yes, DNR/LNR follow the Kremlin line and without Putin’s approval no deal can be made or will hold. The main thing is to realize that it’s time to stop the senseless war and start seriously looking for a negotiated solution. Given the ongoing parliamentary campaign, however, I am a bit wary about this prospect. For months Ukrainian leaders have been been pounding the drums of war. So it will be much harder now to sell the idea of negotiations to the public.

Oleksandr Sushko

Poroshenko came to Minsk for peace. He told openly that he was going for peace some days before Minsk. Nobody among serious people in Ukraine confronted this position. But Putin denied peace talks and continued his tricks: “talk to my puppets”

Steffen Halling (German Institute for International and Security Affairs)

Despite “pounding the drums of war” the public does not seem to reject the idea of negotiations per se [citing a recent survey showing that mnore than half of Ukrainians are for the termination of the “Anti-Terrorist Operation”]

Serhiy Kudelia

Unfortunately, that’s not what Poroshenko’s and Yatsenyuk’s core electorate thinks.

Oleksandr Sushko

Nobody checked if there is a “core electorat” of those two politicians at all. And what this core electorat thinks about war and peace.

Serhiy Kudelia

You just need to look at the electoral maps with results of the most recent elections. Their core electorate is in Western and Central Ukraine.

Evgeny Finkel (George Washington U)

Your assumption that this crisis can be solved only through talks might be no less questionable than the assumption that the crisis can be solved through use of force. There is a third possibility -- it might not be solved at all, frozen at best. And for many actors that would be the best case scenario, so we better take it seriously.

Serhiy Kudelia

Evgeny, I agree with you - a negotiated settlement had a much better chance earlier in the conflict than now. Still, is Russia interested in keeping it in the frozen form and paying for

9 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU the restructuring and welfare of the parts of Luhansk and Donetsk oblast under insurgent control? I have my doubts.

Evgeny Finkel

I think Russia’s interest is to keep it low intensity, or if it becomes frozen, to make the Ukrainian government and the West to pay for reconstruction.

Dominique Arel (Chair of Ukrainian Studies, U Ottawa)

There is a fundamental problem here. A negotiated settlement implies that the two parties with real decision-making powers agree to engage in substantive talks. These two parties are Ukraine and Russia, but Russia refuses to even acknowledge that its army is directly intervening. Kyiv couldn’t talk to the Novorossiia rebels before, because its leaders were Russian citizens (Strelkov, Borodai). As was said in this thread, talking to their territorially Ukrainian official successors does not mean much, when these successors know they have the might of the Russian Army behind them and when everybody knows that Putin calls the shots. When Britain finally negotiated with Sinn Fein/IRA, it was meaningful, because this was an autonomous organization (even if weapons were brought in from the diaspora). This is not the case here. I agree that ultimately this has to be solved politically. But right now Russia wants to unilaterally impose its interests through the force of arms.

Serhiy Kudelia

Evgeny: by frozen I suppose we mean the territory remaining de facto outside of the “parent state” jurisdiction, but still claimed by that “parent” state. Ukraine and the West would never pay for the reconstruction of the region which remains outside of Kyiv’s effective sovereign control. So if it’s frozen, Russia will eventually have to pay for it.

Dominique: actually, this could make things easier. If Dublin controlled Provisional IRA like Moscow controls DNR/LNR it would have been an easier entity to deal with and the agreement would have been reached earlier (Thatcher signed a deal with Ireland on Ulster in 1985 that IRA condemned). So if Putin is interested in keeping Donbas part of Ukraine under a particular institutional arrangement, DNR/LNR leaders would ultimately go along with this. Now, it’s a separate question whether Russia’s institutional offer is acceptable for Ukraine, but I don’t see why DNR/LNR dependence on Moscow means the agreement can’t be negotiated.

Evgeny Finkel

Serhiy , I guess we understand ‘frozen’ a bit differently. What I mean by frozen is not necessarily the Transnistria scenario, but also a Bosnian one, where there is no fighting on the ground, but the conflict is anything but resolved. And it seems that such a confederation would be Russia’s pipe dream because it absolves them of all responsibility

10 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU for what is going on on the ground, and allows them veto powers over any meaningful decision of the Ukrainian government. And will not require paying for reconstruction either. If there is anything I am confident of in this totally unpredictable mess is that Russia would do everything it can to avoid paying for reconstruction.

Vadim Gorbach

“The senseless war”: the war was not entirely senseless: without it, Novorossiya would now be a subject separate from West-Central Ukraine. Possibly, even with Kyiv included. Thus, the negotiated solution depends on the real public support, military capabilities, and foreign political coalitions.

Evgeny Finkel

Dominique and Serhiy , I think the crux of the argument is what exactly Russia wants to achieve. If they want an outcome that will improve the status of the Russian language or strengthen the autonomy of the Donbas or Novorossiia (whatever this means), then a negotiated settlement is possible. If their goal is incapacitating the Ukrainian government, then why would there be any negotiations at all?

Serhiy Kudelia Well, this then broadens definition of “frozen” to include a number of EU member-states and Russia itself, not to mention other functioning states around the world (India, China etc.). I don’t see it as the worst scenario for Ukraine, but it would still require negotiations and some sort of agreement.

Dominique Arel

The problem is precisely that no one knows that Putin’s endgame is. Merkel, who is constantly on the phone with him, said that she still cannot make “a final judgment” on his intentions. If she can’t, then nobody can, and that includes everyone in Russia but Putin himself. This unpredictability, coupled with Putin’s increasingly erratic statements, makes negotiations almost a non-starter. At a minimum, we know that we are way past language and autonomy.

In the case of Dublin, I assume that the rationale was that Ireland had the power to rein in IRA insurgents. This hardly applies with Russia and Novorossiia. Russia is not reining in DNR leaders -- when some become a problem, like Strelkov, they vanish just like that -- but saving them from ignominious defeat (at a steep cost for civilians, we all agree on that).

Evgeny Finkel

Serhiy , no not really. Can you give me an example of a functioning EU or non-EU state where one region, backed politically and militarily by a foreign power, can veto any

11 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU important decision of the national government? Because this what any new negotiated institutional arrangement might boil down to.

Serhiy Kudelia

Evgeny: where did you see the demand to have a veto power over “any important decision of the national government”?

Dominique that’s why it could potentially be easier for Kyiv to negotiate with DNR/LNR than for London to negotiate with IRA - they can’t defect from the agreement if they know Russia approved it.

Evgeny Finkel

I saw it in the talks about foreign alliances and orientation, as well constitutional reforms and budgets requiring the approval of 2/3 of the regions, or even higher threshold. These demands were voiced earlier in the conflict and I am quite sure they will reappear when the discussion of actual nuts and bolts of the new institutional arrangement will start. This is a de facto, if not de jure veto power.

Serhiy Kudelia

Well, Donbas is not even close to 2/3 of the regions. I have seen the demand to maintain economic relations with Russia, and I am sure this can be accommodated even once Ukraine creates a free trade zone with the EU.

Jeffrey Kopstein (U of Toronto) it’s a good point and I’m thinking the true intention is to make Ukraine unincorporable (not a word but you get my point) into the west. But couldn’t Putin have accomplished this at a much lower cost and without all the novorossia talk and the threat of a land corridor etc? Of course the Russian escalation does make sense if the separatists were on the verge of defeat, in which case it is a logical statement of resolve to the west and to Kiev.

#6 What does Russia tell the mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine? Not much. ------by Terrence McCoy Washington Post, 29 August 2014

They are the nameless ones. The faceless ones. Called the “men in green,” they are a group of hundreds, if not thousands, of Russians fighting in Ukraine with neither identifying insignia nor official documents — soldiers in everything but name. Instead, they’re called “volunteers.” They’re called “vacationers.” They’re “blood brothers,” as rebel leader

12 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Alexander Zakharchenko described the Russians crossing the border to fight alongside him.

But such anonymity, which helps Moscow pretend that no Russian soldier fights in Ukraine, comes at a high cost. Rights groups,activists and local journalists now allege that Russia, already burdened with a dark history of soldier abuse, has suppressed the truth of its own killed soldiers, obfuscated details of their demise and buried some of the dead in unmarked graves to hide their role in Ukraine. And Russia’s response if its soldiers are caught: They’re wanderers who “accidentally” crossed the border.

Valentina Melnikova, who leads the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee, told the Daily Beast she was “personally humiliated as a citizen of the Russian Federation by our commander- in-chief’s pure, direct crime.” She said Russian President Vladimir Putin is “violating not only international laws, not only the Geneva Convention, [he] also is breaking Russian Federation law about defense. And as for the [Russian airborne commander], we should be too disgusted to even mention his name. He forces his servicemen to fight in a foreign state, Ukraine, illegally, while mothers receive coffins with their sons, anonymously.”

Another rights activist said he got a call from a Russian mother. The woman said her son’s remains were dropped off at her house last week. The accompanying documents said he had died of wounds — but there was no mention of where he died. “She called other soldiers who served with her son,” Sergei Krivenko, of Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council, told USA Today. “These aren’t just civilians, but people who are following [military] orders. That is why we asked that these deaths be investigated.”

That battle in which the woman’s son died may have occurred on Aug. 13. It was an eastern Ukraine skirmish that Reuters reported claimed the lives of more than 100 Russian soldiers. Despite the high death count, news of the fight broke Thursday — more than two weeks later.

The Russian Human Rights Council told Reuters the bodies were found without documentation proving they had been in Ukraine and with death certificates saying they had died elsewhere. “The soldiers serving on contract are given an order, and the columns go across Russia and they stop at a camp, as though part of a training exercise, on the border with Ukraine,” a council spokesman told the news agency. “They take off all the [identification] numbers or blotch them out.” Other soldiers, however, possibly had more than just a number obscured.

Numerous reporters, from the BBC to Reuters to local Russian journalists, have investigated what appear to be freshly dug, unmarked graves possibly holding the bodies of several Russian paratroopers who were killed last week in Ukraine. Reuters reported that all online accounts of the men who were buried there have been removed from the Internet, as have photos of the soldiers that their families placed on

13 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU their graves. When Russian journalists traveled there, the BBC reported that men told them they would “never be found” unless they left. “The [Russian] government is disavowing soldiers who are” in Ukraine, soldier activist Valentina Melnikova told USA Today. She estimated that as many as 15,000 Russian soldiers have crossed into Ukraine.

The Post’s Karoun Demirjian reports that one mother fainted when she got a call from a neighbor — not the army — who had seen a picture of her son in captivity in Ukraine. On Thursday, Demirjian said, the families of paratroopers went to a cramped office hoping to meet a representative of the military to get some information. They waited about two hours before getting a meeting with officers, which lasted about five minutes and was inconclusive. Later, some of them received calls from their sons in detention in Kiev, she reported.

Russia’s unwillingness to report soldier deaths reflects a dark precedent for its military, which has often peddled misinformation and trafficked in ambiguity. Only at the very end of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan did it specify that more than 13,000 had been killed, according to a 1988 New York Times report, with an official confessing that losses had been “quite heavy.” Parents, unaware of what had happened to their sons, had ventured into the region in search of them.

The war in Chechnya wasn’t much better. “I would trust maybe only a quarter of what is said about Chechnya,” one soldier told the Moscow Times in 1999. “One other soldier was killed from my unit. I called his mother, and she didn’t know.” Another soldier added: “I’m positive that the number of victims is being hidden because the military authorities don’t want panic in Russia and negative feelings about the war.”

The lot of the Russian soldier can be a sad one. Bullying and hazing, called dedovshchina, can be so severe that many soldiers are driven to suicide. “Such abuse is common throughout Russia’s armed forces,” the Chicago Tribune once said. “Its teenage victims frequently end up with serious injuries. An alarming number are killed or driven to commit suicide. Almost always, the mistreatment is ignored or covered up.”

In 2002 alone, hazing-related beatings killed more than 500 men, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was later murdered, told the BBC. “Officers are united in hatred of soldiers’ parents because every so often, when the circumstances are just too disgraceful, outraged mothers protest at the murder of their sons and demand retribution.”

Now, as more Russian “volunteers” flood across Ukraine’s borders under uncertain circumstances, that same anger appears to be growing in some Russian mothers. “Their connection [with soldiers] is lost,” one Soldiers’ Mothers official told USA Today. “They are afraid, they fear tragedy. Wives, mothers are coming to us.”

14 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU #7 Russian NGO branded as “foreign agent” after reporting on Russian military action in Ukraine ------by Hayla Coynash Human Rights in Ukraine, 30 August 2014

On 28 August, the Russian Ministry of Justice added the NGO “Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg” to its official list of “foreign agents” under the 2012 law. The decision came after its leader, Ella Polyakova, spoke publicly about the alleged death of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine against the Ukrainian forces.

Her organization compiled a list of some 100 Russian soldiers allegedly killed in Ukraine and a further 300 wounded, and demanded investigation into these allegations. The Kremlin denies sending troops to Ukraine and any direct Russian involvement in what it insists is Ukraine’s internal conflict.

“The timing of this decision indicates that the Kremlin is determined to muzzle its critics and keep a strong lid on any information which suggests that Russia plays a direct part in the conflict in Ukraine, although evidence to the contrary is mounting every day. The message is clear: if you dare to speak out, there will be serious reprisals,” said Sergei Nikitin, Amnesty International’s Moscow Office Director.

Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg will contest the decision in court. Ella Polyakova insists that the NGO does not receive any foreign funding. This, according to the law, is the necessary attribute of a “foreign agent”. The other necessary attribute is participation in political activities. According to the government, the NGOs’ political activities consist of “holding public meetings” and “forming public opinion”.

Another NGO, the Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information, also known for its independent position and critical pronouncements, was added to the “foreign agent register” on the same day.

Russia’s so-called “foreign agent’s law” was passed in June 2012 and came into force in November 2012. It was changed earlier this year giving new powers to the Ministry of Justice to add NGOs to the register of “foreign agents” without their consent and without the need to go through lengthy court hearings as had been the case until recently.

Hundreds of NGOs in Russia have experienced unannounced “inspections” by the authorities since the law was enacted; several have been heavily fined for refusing to brand themselves “foreign agents”, and some forced to close down. Twelve independent NGOs have now been added to the register against their will, in the course of less than three months.

15 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU #8 Russia Lacks Resources for Occupation of Eastern Ukraine, Moscow Military Expert Says ------by Paul Goble Window on Eurasia, 29 August 2014

The Russian military has the ability to seize Donetsk and Luhansk if no one provides assistance to Ukraine, Russian military affairs specialist Aleksandr Golts says, but he argues that Moscow “does not have the resources” it would need for “a full-scale occupation” of these and other Ukrainian regions.

In an interview published by the Ukrainian Gordonua.com news agency yesterday, Golts says that at the present time, he sees three possible variants as to how the military and security situation in southeastern Ukraine is likely to develop

The first would involve a Russian effort to address “certain tactical tasks” involved with providing assistance to separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk via the Azov Sea now that Ukrainian forces have reduced Moscow’s ability to supply them via other routes. In that event, he says, “Russian forces should be quickly withdrawn” once that goal has been achieved.

The second variant, Golts says, would be an effort to occupy “not all of Donetsk and Luhansk oblast but rather the creation of a belt of security along the Russian-Ukrainian border approximately 10 to 15 kilometers from Donetsk to Azov” so that the Russian government would be in a position to support the separatists for a long time.

That could be done by the troops available, but even in March 2014, when Russia had the largest number of forces along the border – some 80,000 men – the Russian general staff told the Kremlin that these forces alone “were insufficient for a full-scale invasion and seizure of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.”

The third variant, Golts says, would involve a decision to “occupy all of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and create new borders.” But if Putin were to take that decision, “the question arises:” with what forces would he do that? There aren’t enough professional soldiers in the Russian military to do that, and he would have to use draftees.

Using the latter, the Moscow military specialist says, would result in “an entirely different story.” Such troops have “low levels of discipline, poor preparation and must be changed every six months,” characteristics that would make an occupation impossible even if the seizure of more Ukrainian territory could be achieved relatively quickly.

16 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU #9 Appeal of Polish intellectuals to the citizens and governments of Europe ------http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/08/30/appeal-of-polish-intellectuals-to-the-citizens- and-governments-of-europe/

[The Appeal was translated and published in Le Monde on 1 September]

“To die for Danzig” is a phrase that symbolizes the attitude of Western Europe to the war that broke out 75 years ago. Three times, France and the United Kingdom gave the green light to the German dictator. Neither the Anschluss, nor the occupation of the Sudetenland, nor the dismantling of Czechoslovakia resulted in any serious consequences for Hitler and his state. And when on September 1, 1939, as a logical continuation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the first shots rang out in Danzig (Gdańsk), the Western powers could decide only on a “phony war.” Thus, they gave Hitler the green light for the fourth time, thinking they would save their own lives at the price of Danzig. The next capital on the list to be occupied was Paris, and then, soon after, the bombs fell on London. Only then did the cries begin: “Stop,” and “Never again!”

This selfish and shortsighted policy of the Europeans toward the aggressor must not be repeated again. However, the recent evolution of the world situation and the sudden heightening of tensions strangely resemble the year 1939. Russia, the aggressor state, is occupying a part of its smaller neighbor — the Crimea. The army and special services of President Putin, operating mostly incognito in the east of Ukraine, are supporting groups that terrorize the local population and are openly threatening invasion.

There is, however, a new element as compared to 1939: in recent years the aggressor has succeeded in attracting into the orbit of its interests many politicians and business people while its Western partners continue to believe in its “human face.” The lobby that was formed has influenced and continues to influence the policies of numerous countries. This policy is described as “Russia first” and even “Russia only.” Now it has collapsed and Europe urgently needs a new Ostpolitik.

Therefore, we are issuing an urgent appeal to our fellow Europeans and their governments:

[1] François Hollande, president of the French Republic, and his government are attempting to take a step that would be far worse that France’s passivity in 1939. In the weeks ahead, France is set to become the only European country to help the aggressor: it intends to deliver to Putin’s Russia two brand new Mistral helicopter carrier warships. The cooperation on this matter began in 2010, and generated many protests even then. Nicolas Sarkozy, the president at the time, used to cut off all discussion by repeating “the Cold War is over.” Now, open war is truly taking place. Therefore, there is no reason to honor old commitments. Several politicians and Bernard-Henri Lévy have proposed that

17 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU France sell its ships either to NATO or to the European Union. If President Hollande does not change his mind, the citizens of Europe should convince him by boycotting French products.

[2] The Federal Republic of Germany, since 1982, has begun to depend increasingly on Russian gas. Even at that time, Polish intellectuals, including Czeslaw Milosz and Leszek Kolakowksi, warned against the installation of new pipelines, calling them potential “instruments of blackmail” against Europe. Successive presidents of the Polish Republic, from Aleksander Kwasniewski to Lech Kaczynski, also issued the same warning at different times. But German politicians, either because of the famous German guilt complex, or believing in the “Russian economic miracle” and hoping to profit from it, greatly appreciated the cooperation with Russian power. At the same time, they continued, possibly unconsciously, the unfortunate German tradition of carrying on discussions with only one partner in the East — Russia. In recent years, the companies owned by the Russian state or its oligarchs increasingly have been established in Germany, whether in the field of energy resources, the world of soccer, or the tourism sector. Germany must put a stop to this kind of dependence, which always conceals political pressure.

[3] All Europeans and each country individually should become involved in actions to support imperiled Ukraine. Hundred of refugees from the eastern territories of Ukraine and Crimea are in need of humanitarian assistance. Its economy has been devastated by years of a draconian contract with Gazprom, which holds a monopoly on energy resources and which imposes on Ukraine, its most destitute client, the highest rate possible The Ukrainian economy is in dire need of emergency assistance, new business partners and new investors. The spheres of culture, media and civic initiatives, which are dynamic and of extraordinary richness, also need support.

[4] For many years, the European Union has made it clear to Ukraine that it had no chance either to become a member or to receive anything other than symbolic assistance. The policy of the “Eastern Partnership” has not changed much in this respect. The question arises if perhaps this solution was considered as a lesser evil. However, overnight all these questions have taken on their own dynamic, due largely to the determination of Ukrainian democrats. For the first time in history, the citizens of a country were dying under bullets with the European flag in their hands. If Europe does not show any solidarity with them now, it will mean that the ideals of liberty and fraternity inherited from the French Revolution no longer mean anything to it.

Ukraine has the right to defend both its territory and its citizens and to respond to external aggression by using its police forces and its army, including in the regions bordering with Russia. After all, since 1991, stable peace has reigned both in the Donetsk region and in the entire country. There was no violent conflict, and no conflict on the issue of minority rights. Vladimir Putin, releasing the demons of war and testing a new type of war, has transformed Ukraine into a military training area in the image of the Spanish Civil War, where fascist units supported by Hitler’s Germany attacked the young

18 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU republic. Those who will not tell Putin today “no pasarán!” (“They shall not pass!”) expose the European Union and its values to ridicule, while agreeing to the destabilization of the world order.

Nobody knows who will lead Russia in three years. It is unclear what will happen to the current ruling elite, the one that is leading this reckless policy that is contrary to the interests of its own people. However, one thing is certain: those who continue “business as usual” are risking new deaths of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians, the exodus of hundreds of thousands of new refugees, as well as new imperialist attacks by Putin against new countries. Yesterday Danzig, today Donetsk : we must not accept an open bleeding wound in Europe for years to come.

Gdańsk, September 1, 2014

#10 Ukraine activist relives humiliation horrors ------BBC.com, 31 August 2014

A pro-Ukrainian activist accused of spying for the Ukrainian army in Donetsk has endured hours of public humiliation orchestrated by the armed rebels in the centre of the eastern city.

Freed with the help of foreign journalists, Iryna Dovgan was on her way out of the rebel held area when the BBC’s Dina Newman spoke to her.

Ms Dovgan is a gently spoken 52-year-old resident of Yasynuvata - a town just outside Donetsk. Before the war she ran a beauty salon.

When the conflict started, she decided to help the Ukrainian army. So she collected donations from local residents - she said there were plenty - and delivered food and medication to an army unit stationed in the region.

One day, she decided to take photos of the supplies on her tablet in order to account to her donors for the money she spent on their behalf. Those photos turned out to be a very bad idea.

“This was my mistake. Someone must have found out what I was doing, and informed the separatists,” she said.

“Fighters from the rebel Vostok battalion came to my town, Yasynuvata, and detained me in the garden, while I was watering my plants. Most of our neighbours had fled by then, so no-one noticed when I went missing.”

19 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Iryna was blindfolded and taken to the battalion’s base.

During the first interrogation, she revealed the passwords for her online accounts but refused to name those who helped her.

The fighters got frustrated with her and sent her to another group of interrogators, whom she believes came from North Ossetia in the North Caucasus.

“Those guys had an altogether different approach. They beat me, they threatened and tortured me, they shot pistols next to my ears, so I lost most of my hearing, they made me shout Sieg Heil.

“They threatened to rape me in the most sadistic ways they would describe to me in detail. I was crawling on the floor, begging them to shoot me.”

‘Praying for death’

But the rebels did not want to kill her, yet. Instead, they came up with another elaborate torture. “They wrapped me in a Ukrainian flag, they hang a poster around my neck saying: ‘She kills our children.’ And they took me to the centre of Donetsk”.

The rebels accused Iryna of providing the Ukrainian army with information on targets in Donetsk. Many residential areas in the city have been shelled, so this is a strong accusation in the eyes of the locals - even when it comes without any proof.

“I stood there, holding to lamppost, in order not to collapse. I was in tears. One woman squashed two tomatoes against my face, and tomato juice was running into my eyes so I couldn’t see much.

“Passers-by were curious. People would drive up in nice cars, come over and pose for photos with me. Young men came with their girlfriends. Men did not hit me, but local women were vicious. One elderly woman hit me on the head and shoulders with her walking stick.”

Iryna said she stood there for three hours, guarded by armed Ossetian fighters. They would hit her every time she started to collapse.

She says she heard them laughing and discussing what else they could do to her. She was praying for death the whole time. She was scared of what they could do to her afterwards, in private.

“Eventually, some strangers came up to me, they were calm, and that’s how they stood out from the crowd. They turned out to be photographers. They took a few pictures and left. These pictures saved my life.”

20 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Foreign journalists who had witnessed Iryna’s plight, got in touch with the commander of Vostok battalion, Alexander Khodakovsky.

The commander, a former military man, said he had not been aware of the story and was outraged by the cruelty of his fighters.

Iryna was released with apologies. Today, fleeing eastern Ukraine, she doubts that any of her tormentors will ever be punished.

#11 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights ------Report on the human rights situation in Ukraine, 17 August 2014 http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/UA/UkraineReport28August2014.pdf

[The following are short, but politically sensitive, excerpts of the 32 page single-spaced report released by OHCHR last week – DA]

On the Use of Weapons in Civilian Areas

There have been numerous reports alleging the indiscriminate use of weapons, such as artillery, mortars and multiple rocket launcher systems, in and around the densely populated areas. Ukrainian officials have reiterated that the Ukrainian armed forces never target populated areas. These officials suggest that all reported cases of such targeting should be attributed to the armed groups only. However, in those urban settlements which have been controlled by the armed groups and insistently attacked by the Ukrainian armed forces, responsibility for at least some of the resulting casualties and damage to civilian objects lies with the Ukrainian armed forces. On the other hand, the armed groups are locating their military weaponry within or near densely populated areas, and launching attacks from such areas. This constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law by the armed groups. However, such actions by the armed groups do not absolve the Ukrainian armed forces of the need to respect their obligations under international law, including upholding the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack.

On Casualties

As a result of intensified hostilities, there has been an escalation in the number of casualties which has more than doubled in total since the last report. By a very conservative estimate of the HRMMU and the World Health Organization (WHO), based on the best data available, at least 1,200 people have been killed, and at least 3,250 have been wounded in east Ukraine between 16 July and 17 August. On average, at least 36 people have been killed and 98 have been wounded every day during this period.

21 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU In total, since mid-April, and as of 17 August, at least 2,220 people (including at least 23 children) have been killed and at least 5,956 (including at least 38 children) have been wounded in the fighting in eastern Ukraine. This includes civilians, personnel of the Ukrainian forces and some members of the armed groups (for whom no separate casualty figure is known). This overall figure does not include the 298 people killed in the crash of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 on 17 July.

The actual number of fatalities due to the violence and fighting in the east of Ukraine is probably much higher. Indeed, casualties in the areas controlled by the armed groups have been underreported for two major reasons. First, although many of the hospitals continue to work, insecurity has prevented people from seeking medical aid. Second, many of those killed have been buried without being taken to morgues or bureaus of forensic expertise. In addition, communications have frequently been disrupted. There are also allegations that bodies of some members of the armed groups killed in action have been taken to the territory of the Russian Federation.

Reports of medical establishments from the areas under the control of the armed groups do not distinguish between civilian and military casualties. A gender imbalance of casualties reported by these establishments (as of 11 August, women comprised 11% of killed and 13% of wounded in the Donetsk region)20 may indicate that members of the armed groups who are predominantly male constitute a considerable part of these casualties. On the other hand, women comprise a large proportion of the internally displaced (IDPs) who have left the areas of fighting. On Arbitrary and illegal detention and enforced disappearances

Detention by Ukrainian armed forces and police

As the Government’s security operation continues, Ukrainian armed forces are gaining back control over more localities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that were previously seized by armed groups. A number of people suspected of collaborating with or belonging to the armed groups have been detained by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), by territorial battalions under the Ministry of Defence, or by special battalions under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. From mid-April until 16 August, more than 1,000 “militants and subversives” had been detained by police and SBU in the Donbas territory, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The detainees are usually accused of violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine (Article 110 of the Criminal Code) or participating in terrorism (Article 258 of the Criminal Code).

The cases followed by the HRMMU suggest that there have been violations of the criminal procedural law during some of these arrests, particularly regarding detention by the volunteer battalions. People are being detained without being given any explanation, for example while they were leaving the security operation areas affected by the fighting and security operation, and questioned without being delivered to law enforcement agencies.

22 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU The presumption of innocence and privacy rights of those detained have been violated when their apprehension was filmed and made public through the Internet and TV. Detainee’s relatives were often not notified about the detention, and legal aid was rarely made available. According to the Criminal Code, an illegal detention is a crime, and as a consequence, the individual who is unlawfully detained must be immediately released. This does not seem to have been the case for those arrests which the HRMMU followed: in the few cases of what appeared to be arbitrary detention that were brought to the attention of a court, releases have been rare.

Some people were kept in detention by the Ukrainian armed forces for up to 14 days, subjected to ill-treatment and released after signing a paper that they do not have any claims against those who detained them. According to a Ukrainian human rights organization, many such cases have been associated with the Aydar battalion. The organization informed the HRMMU about the detention by the battalion of an armed group commander nicknamed Batko who reportedly died as a result of torture. The HRMMU was also informed about the arrest and torture of a member of the Aydar battalion who allegedly tried to protect Batko from torture, and who had to leave the unit in order to save his own life. Some of those armed groups members who were exchanged for Ukrainian servicemen allege that while in detention, they were beaten, kept in dungeons, and deprived of food and medical aid.

Detention by the armed groups

Estimates vary concerning the number of people detained by armed groups, although the numbers are coherent in scale and reflect the constantly evolving pattern of detentions and releases. According to the adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs, as of mid-August, some 1,026 people have been abducted or detained by armed groups since mid-April, and of these, 468 people were still missing. Victims come from all walks of life: police, servicemen, border guards and security personnel; journalists; judges, advocates and prosecutors; local executives, city and regional council officials; politicians and civil activists; volunteers involved in humanitarian action; and many persons not affiliated to any of the warring parties and who were not engaged in any public activity. The HRMMU has been following the cases of 510 people who have been abducted or detained by armed groups since mid-April. Of these, 200 have been released, 9 people are dead (some having visible signs of torture), 301 are still in the captivity of armed groups, of whom 293 are men and 8 are women.

Accountability for Human Rights Violations

Investigations into the 2 May violence in Odesa

The official investigation into 2 May violent events in Odesa has made little progress. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Office of the General Prosecutor, which are two of the

23 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU entities leading the investigation, have not provided results. However, they did present some preliminary findings. On 6 August, at the request of the Temporary Oversight Commission of the Odesa Regional Council, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the SBU and the Regional Prosecutor’s Office presented their preliminary findings on at a Council session. Most of the information provided did not contain new elements; some information published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Office of the General Prosecutor appeared to be contradictory with regard to the number of suspects and detainees and the results of forensic examinations. There was also a difference of opinion about the proposal to disclose the detainees’ political affiliation since this might be considered as influencing the case.

Killing of protesters on 19-21 January and 18-20 February 2014

The Office of the General Prosecutor is conducting an investigation into the circumstances of the death four people between 19 and 21 January 2014 and of at least 98 people between 18 and 20 February 2014. So far there has been no significant progress in this investigation. However, the Office of the General Prosecutor expected that the case would be submitted to the court in the nearest future.

The Prosecutor’s investigation has found that these crimes were instigated by a group, headed by the then President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, and composed of the highest level officials, including from the law enforcement agencies such as the SBU and special police forces. The Office of the General Prosecutor said that the investigation is complicated by the fact that all members of the group have fled Ukraine and are beyond its jurisdiction. The Government of Ukraine have taken all the necessary procedural steps at the international level to be able to prosecute the suspects.

#12 President signs repressive ‘anti-terrorist’ laws ------by Halya Coynash Human Rights in Ukraine, 22 August 2014

On Aug 22 President Petro Poroshenko signed into law a bill reinstating the military prosecutors. This comes a day after he signed bills which human rights organizations warn are an unwarranted restriction on people’s rights. The increase they make to the prosecutor’s powers could lead to criminal proceedings being questioned, if not in Ukraine, then in Strasbourg.

24 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU The reinstatement of military prosecutors negates one of the very few steps Ukraine has taken over the last 19 years to fulfil the commitment it gave on joining the Council of Europe in 1995 to reform the Prosecutor’s Office.

Instead of reducing the Prosecutor’s powers in order to bring this institution into line with counterparts in other European countries, the new laws serious extend these powers.

The main two laws of concern which Poroshenko failed to veto give the prosecutor much broader powers under martial law, a state of emergency or in areas where an anti-terrorist operation [ATO] is underway and enable prevention detention of terrorism suspects of up to 30 days.

Draft law 4311a gives the Prosecutor power to authorize searches, wiretapping or even detention without a court order. The bill is in breach of a number of provisions in Ukraine’s Constitution (29; 30; 31) while Article 64 makes it clear that these rights may not be restricted even under martial law, etc. In his damning analysis of the bill, Volodymyr Yavorsky points out that there is no country in Europe which allows arrest without a court order. He believes therefore that evidence obtained under such circumstances could not legally form the basis of a later conviction. Even if domestic courts allow the evidence, Ukraine would be unlikely to win a case over this at the European Court of Human Rights.

The move, he says, is away from Europe to the role of the prosecutor in Soviet times [more details here khpg.org.ua]. Draft bill No. 4312a introduces amendments to the law on fighting terrorism that will enable people to be detained for up to 30 days without a court order.

The decision to carry out such detention on warranted suspicion that the person has committed terrorist acts would be taken by the head of the central division or a division of the SBU [Security Service] or Interior Ministry in the Crimea; the relevant oblast or Kyiv and Sevastopol. This would be with the agreement of the prosecutor but without a court order. A copy of the decision would be handed to the detainee, and immediately passed to the investigative judge, and court of the relevant jurisdiction together with an application for a preventive measure to be chosen. Preventive detention cannot continue after the investigative judge, court has considered the application.

The apparent safeguards that the latter details give are probably largely theoretical and would be unlikely to stop people being detained without the court’s OK for up to 30 days.

A further bill signed into force over recent days extends the powers of the police in the ATO region.

These laws, it should be remembered, have been adopted despite the lack of vital reforms to all law enforcement bodies.

25 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Ukraine is unquestionably facing unprecedented aggression and firm measures are needed. Nonetheless, the attack on its sovereignty and territorial integrity was triggered by the EuroMaidan movement and Ukrainians’ insistence on their chosen path towards European integration. This choice must not be sabotaged through the adoption of retrograde laws.

#13 Poroshenko has not kept several promises ------by Olena Goncharova Kyiv Post, 30 August 2014

It’s been more than three months since the May 25 election in Ukraine that propelled Petro Poroshenko to the presidency in an unprecedented first-round victory.

Poroshenko made many promises during his extensive campaign trips, but has failed to keep several of them. It has not eroded his support so far, however. Some 57 percent of Ukrainians still support their president, according to the latest findings of the pollster Research & Branding Group published on Aug. 15.

The Kyiv Post has revisited some of the election promises ahead of Poroshenko’s three months in power since his June 7 inauguration.

Promise: “I will nominate my team the day after inauguration” Status: failed

On his campaign trail, Poroshenko was very secretive about the team he planned to work with, but never stopped repeating that he will nominate his team “the day after inauguration, possibly on the land of Donbas.” But the first major appointments were not made until June 10, when Borys Lozhkin, Poroshenko’s former business partner, was named chief of the president’s administration.

Oleksiy Haran, a political expert and professor at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, says it’s OK because the president “should spend some time trying to find out who will work out for him.” But the president has been taking his time filling key vacancies in the Cabinet, presidential administration and the National Security and Defense Council.

So far, he has failed to fill some key vacancies, the most prominent of which is the job of secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Poroshenko did make a number of appointments to the Presidential Administration and appointed some members of the Cabinet that fall under his competence. Most prominently, he nominated Pavlo Klimkin as foreign minister and Valeriy Heletei as defense minister.

26 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU He also appointed Valeriya Gontareva, former Investment Capital Ukraine board chairperson, as governor of the National Bank of Ukraine. Gontareva became the first woman in Ukraine’s independent history to become a chief banker. One of EuroMaidan Revolution activists and volunteers, Yuriy Biryukov, also made it to the presidential pool. He was appointed the president’s adviser on Aug. 13.

Haran says that this time the Presidential Administration “keeps a low profile, which is good – because it’s only a support service of the president.”

Promise: “Anti-terrorist operation cannot and will not last two or three months. It has to, and will, last hours.” Status: failed

During his first press conference after the election vote on May 25, Poroshenko said that the anti-terrorist operation will last hours. It has been three months, and a new front just opened in eastern Ukraine as Russian soldiers crossed the border in southern Donetsk Oblast and took over the town of Novoazovsk just days ago. Large parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts still remain under separatist control, while the death toll of Ukraine’s army is running over 700 soldiers. The United Nations estimates that 2,200 civilians died in clashes.

The country’s anti-terrorist operation was initially announced in mid-April. Haran, the professor at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, believes that the situation may have been different had Russia not decided to openly invade Ukraine. “Nobody expected then Russian government would send its (humanitarian) convoy to Ukraine and then keep sending its forces in Ukraine,” Haran explained.

Two weeks after the inauguration, Poroshenko announced a unilateral ceasefire by the government forces as a part of a peace plan. The president was calling on Russia-backed insurgents to put down the arms. But during the 10-day ceasefire the casualties in Ukraine’s army actually went up as militants opened fire at Ukrainian forces more than 108 times, killing at least 28 servicemen, according to official figures. They also shot down a Ukrainian military plane, and all 49 passengers of that plane died. As of Aug. 28, armed insurgents backed by Russian regular troops keep the number of strategic cities, including Ilovaisk, Amvrosiivka, Starobesheve and Novoazovsk in Donetsk Oblast.

Promise: Full reboot of power Status: partially fulfilled

The promise of a full reboot of power was one of the key points of Poroshenko’s presidential program.

27 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU “I will provide a power reboot and make every effort within the constitutional powers and announce parliamentary elections by the end of 2014, based on the proportional representation of the political parties,” reads Poroshenko’s program.

After the Independence Day celebrations, Poroshenko announced that he set an early parliamentary election for Oct. 26. In his speech Poroshenko stressed he was issuing his decree “taking into account the expectations of the majority of Ukrainians and trying to keep my own word, which I gave while running for president.”

But the original promise was to conduct parliamentary elections based on new rules and a proportional system, where parties would create election lists of their candidates in a open and transparent manner.

However, the Oct. 26 vote will be based on the existing parallel system, where each resident gets two ballots to vote. One of the ballots will offer a list of parties, who will have created their lists of candidates behind closed doors. The other ballot will offer a list of candidates specific for each of the 226 majority constituencies in Ukraine. It’s still unclear what will happen in the annexed Crimea and in the war zone in the east.

Promise: To sell business (except for Channel 5) in case of presidency Status: pending

Poroshenko, the country’s 18th richest man, whose wealth Forbes estimates at $1.3 billion, this month has picked an agent to sell off his significant business assets. His interests will be represented by Rothschild & Cie Investment Company, according to Giovanni Salvetti, co-chairperson of the company, who spoke to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

“We’re very delighted to be selected for this important mission (selling Poroshenko’s assets),” Salvetti said in a televised interview. He said that the company will team up with their Ukrainian counterparts, Investment Capital Ukraine and promised on Aug. 21 that “the effective work on selling (Poroshenko’s) business will start the next week.”

Investment Capital Ukraine is the company that used to be co-owned by Gontareva, the National Bank governor, before her appointment by Poroshenko on June 19. She had to sell her business assets after the appointment.

Apart from an international candy empire Roshen with a turnover of $1.021 billion last year, according to Candyindustry.com, a specialized website, Poroshenko owns assets in automobile, shipbuilding, real estate and agriculture. He also owns Channel 5, which he refuses to tell for sentimental reasons.

Promise: “All the soldiers will be paid Hr 1,000 per day starting May 26” Status: failed

28 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU “The soldier of Ukraine will no longer be naked, barefoot and hungry. He has to be well paid, his life has to be insured,” Poroshenko said in his speech on election day.

He promised to make improvements of the Ukrainian army his top priority. He said he would raise what servicemen make from $50 a month to $83 a day, and that each volunteer would get a life insurance worth $83,000. However, the soldiers who take part in the country’s unfolding anti-terrorist operation, still earn Hr 5,700 ($424) per month, according to the deputy Defense Minister Petro Mekhed.

#14 @F… Putin ------by David Marples Open Democracy, 22 August 2014

[Using certain words in a mass e-mailing can prevent the message from reaching destination, which is why I had to remove a few words, such as “F…”. The meaning should nevertheless be obvious to all –DA]

The rhetoric of hatred describing the situation in Ukraine misses the point – Ukraine has problems that are not derived from Russia or the Putin presidency.

Slowly, the Ukrainian government’s Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) is succeeding, as the anti-Kyiv insurgents are reduced to small areas within the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. The future is far from clear since there is no guarantee that all the rebels will be captured, and they appear to have ample weaponry at their disposal. Russia may or may not launch a full-scale attack, though it seems increasingly unlikely. Its leaders will clearly not be happy at the outcome; and the failure of the Novorossiya vision embraced by some Russians and separatists.

Polarisation

For those of us who study Ukraine, in my case for over three decades now, the events of the past nine months seem in many ways bewildering: for their violence, the polarisation of parts of society, the severing of ties with once friendly neighbours, the loss of Crimea, and not least for the rhetoric of hatred, which has permeated the media. Somewhat lost in the overwhelming haze of propaganda disseminated over social networks, is the human tragedy that has taken place in the Donbas, which is not always evident in analyses, though it permeates despatches from troops on the ground. Several cities that form the heartland of industrial Ukraine are in ruins, their economies shattered.

Yet we read mainly about the triumphs of the ATO or, earlier, the rebels, not about the civilian population that is facing destitution. No doubt most would leave if they could,

29 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU but it seems likely that those who were financially able to leave have already departed. Reportedly, about 175,000 refugees had left the two oblasts [regions] of Donetsk and Luhansk by August 20.

What has struck me most is the polarised and often bitter nature of the reporting from outside Ukraine; and not just in Russia. The combination of academic and public interest in events has brought about an inflamed discussion in which there seems to be no middle ground. Its focus is largely limited to the person of the Russian president.

@F…Putin

Even a glance at the names of Facebook and Twitter sites provides ample evidence of the degeneration of the debate into platitudes and crude insults: Facebook has Blow- up Putinism, Putin khuylo worldwide, Khuylo Putin, and F… U Putin; Twitter carries @F…Putin, @F…Putin123, @PutinP…, @DarthPutinKGB, @BOYCOTTRUSSIANS, and @ PutinisFa…t. The level of discussion at such sites can easily be imagined. That is not to say, however, that one cannot disagree (as I do) with scholars like Stephen F. Cohen, who has taken a strong stance in support of the position of Putin. But there is no call to refer to him, as Julia Ioffe has done, in terms such as ‘Putin’s toady.’ Reasoned and civil discussion has been lacking for some time in public discussions of this conflict.

Western political leaders have been quick to resort to similar sloganeering, headed by my own Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who not only compared Putin with Hitler – as did some other leaders – but then claimed he was a Communist as well, and thus responsible for all the evils of the Soviet past. Harper has led the charge against Russian imperialism despite the fact that Canada only spends 1% of its annual budget on its military, the same level as Papua New Guinea; and ranks 22nd of the 28 NATO member countries, for military expenditure. The Hitler analogy has come up quite often in comments from Western statespersons, from Hilary Clinton to Prince Charles, and, less surprisingly, Senator John McCain. No doubt, Western leaders are right to be preoccupied with the machinations of Putin, but to compare him with the perpetrator of the Holocaust is taking things too far.

Alexander J. Motyl, who by his own admission has been comparing Putin to Hitler since the late 1990s, goes even further:

‘Both Germany and Russia lost empires and desired to rebuild them. Both Germany and Russia suffered economic collapse. Both Germany and Russia experienced national humiliation and retained imperial political cultures. Both Germany and Russia blamed their ills on the democrats. Both Germany and Russia elected strong men who promised to make them grand and glorious again. Both strong men employed imperialist arguments about ‘abandoned brethren’ in neighbouring states, remilitarised their countries, developed cults of the personality, centralised power, gave pride of place in the power structure to the forces of coercion, constructed regimes that may justifiably be called

30 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU fascist, and proceeded to engage in re-annexing bits and pieces of lost territory before embarking on major landgrabs. Both strong men demonised friendly nations.’

It is a weak analogy. How can one compare Germany, dismembered by the Treaty of Versailles; prohibited from having an army of more than 100,000; with French troops occupying the Saar; an enormous reparations bill for allegedly starting the First World War, as well as suffering – perhaps more than any other country – the impact of the Great Depression bringing rampant inflation, with post-Soviet Russia? Russia has enjoyed a relative economic boom in Putin’s time, thanks to high world prices for oil and gas.

If Russia’s government is Fascist (the term is not defined by Motyl) then it is a form of Fascism that has little in common with National Socialism, which focused attention on the disaffected and disillusioned lower middle class, and former war combatants. Putinism caters to entrepreneurs, cronies, and the security services. Whereas Weimar Germany in late 1932 was destitute, contemporary Russia is, at least by this comparison, relatively prosperous. Putin, moreover, improvises policy; one would be hard pressed to discern a programme, let alone an expressed policy, calling for the elimination of entire races from Europe as the ostensible cause of all the world’s problems. He did not cause the frozen conflict in Transnistria; and even in Georgia, in the 2008 war, the operation was limited and inconclusive. Hitler moved decisively, swallowing entire countries at a gulp.

The situation in Ukraine today appears more similar to the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, which prompted many to join the proud, if doomed, cause of the Republicans against the Falangists, one of good versus evil. But the reality on the ground, as George Orwell and others showed, was very different from that envisaged by the crusading writers and poets. Ultimately, the major Fascist powers helped Franco to win that war; and Stalin’s USSR did not do enough to assist the Republicans – the Western democracies did nothing at all. In Ukraine, Western powers, while embracing the Ukrainian cause, have acted rather like Britain and France in the 1930s, perhaps, but they are not facing a similar adversary. Putin already appears to have failed in eastern Ukraine – the former Santa Clauses and misfit right-wing ideologists have already largely departed the scene.

Fantasy and Propaganda

Let us be clear: the vitriol and outright distortions of Russian propaganda have exceeded that of the Soviet era. The Soviets were adept at rewriting history, doctoring photographs, mythologising key events like the October Revolution and the Great Patriotic War, covering up mass atrocities, and idolising leaders. But they lacked the technology to broadcast fabricated information as Russian networks have done, when they showed people allegedly crossing the Russian border, which was actually the Polish one, or photographs of crucified children and other atrocities that were blamed on right-wing neo-Nazi extremists and the ‘junta’ in Kyiv.

The entire depiction of the war in Russia is based on fantasy. It has failed entirely to acknowledge any responsibility, even indirectly (providing BUK missile systems to the

31 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU insurgents), for the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner last month. Likewise, Russia has depicted the United States (and to some extent, the European Union), falsely, as the architect of the uprising that removed former president Viktor Yanukovych from office last February. In reality, while Washington was supportive of Euromaidan (perhaps noisily so), it never directed or controlled it. The EU’s Association Agreement, in turn, never entailed the loss of Ukrainian ties with Russia.

Plus ça change

Perhaps Euromaidan itself was the catalyst that prompted many Westerners to leap on to a bandwagon in similar fashion to 2004, during the Orange Revolution. But Euromaidan was violent and, as participants inform, was many things to many people. It is simplistic to portray it as a straightforward movement toward Europe, away from Russia and authoritarianism. Yet both politicians and even reputable analysts often use such phrases – Chrystia Freeland wrote recently, for example, that, ‘In the historic fight over the future of democracy in Ukraine, Kyiv is winning and the Kremlin is losing.’ It is all too easy to overlook the deeper societal problems of Ukraine that existed before and after Euromaidan, which was about power rather than democracy.

Petro Poroshenko, the newly elected president of Ukraine, for example, is an oligarch, who has appointed another oligarch, Boris Lozhkin, as his chief of staff. His closest associates are ‘businessmen’ with shady pasts. Lozhkin declared his income last year to be just over $102,000, which seemed questionable considering the sale of his media holdings in this same period for $450 million to a company linked to Yanukovych.

Poroshenko was also one of the founders of the Regions Party, now largely defunct, that carried Yanukovych to power. He was perhaps the popular compromise candidate, but he does not represent fundamental change. Ukraine’s most pervasive and crippling problem is corruption, and it is as deeply embedded as ever. There are many key problems yet to be addressed (see here). But there is no indication so far that the new president intends to uproot corruption, as Yulia Tymoshenko promised to do in the 2010 presidential elections. Indeed, to do so might endanger his business empire and connections.

Rebuilding

It is illogical therefore, to place all Ukraine’s problems today at the door of Vladimir V. Putin. If separatism or federalism has gained a foothold in Donbas towns, there are reasons why. It will remain long after the ATO mission is over, when rebuilding of destroyed towns and villages begins. Even in a free and fair vote Crimea might (just) have voted for union with Russia. Certainly, the city of Sevastopol would have done so; and even a decade ago, Crimean leaders tried to hold a referendum on independence. The problems and disaffection of these regions were not created by Putin. He has behaved abominably, but he has exploited and exacerbated a situation rather than initiated one.

32 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Yet thanks to Putin, Ukraine is united as never before. Even those who detest the Kyiv government do not support a Russian invasion. So how should he be viewed? Like Yanukovych, and Lukashenko in Belarus, Putin is essentially a gangster who perceives politics as a conflict, and life-and-death struggle (see my commentary). In this respect, his actions are quite rational. One should keep in mind that he leads a country with a GDP less than that of California, and seven times less than the EU. Its population, which is declining at an alarming rate, is 45% that of the United States.

Russia is not a Great Power even though it may pretend to be; it is a fading middle power with nuclear weapons. If the West is resolute, Russia cannot win. But the point to be made is that Ukraine has problems that are not derived from Russia or the Putin presidency.

Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect that the Ukrainian Diaspora will ever look at Russia differently, given the Soviet legacy. But most would also prefer to see Ukraine as a unitary state, which means that they need to take into consideration the views of all residents, of which probably at least 40% (without Crimea) are opposed to both Euromaidan and the current government in Kyiv. They need to consider the future of the Donbas, the industrial heartland, as well as other regions, like Dnipropetrovsk, which is ruled like a medieval fiefdom by governor Ihor Kolomoisky, who has his own private army, controlled, along with at least three airline companies, by his company Privatbank (see here).

Analysts of Ukraine in the West likewise need to examine the situation more rationally. Soviet texts always used to cite the devastation caused by the German army to towns and villages in European USSR, as if the powerful Red Army that moved westward in 1943-45 carefully avoided causing any damage. The same applies today to the Ukrainian reports that are designed to exculpate the ATO from the deaths of civilians and the destruction of property. That was the choice of Poroshenko: it may bring victory but it will be at a terrible cost. The president clearly had his reasons for this choice. But few analysts – the American-based Ukrainian scholar Serhy Kudelia is a notable exception – dwell on the human losses brought about by the Ukrainian president’s decision.

On August 19, Mark ‘Franko’ Paslawsky, an American fighting as a private in the Ukrainian army, even though he was a graduate of West Point, died at the age of 55. As Simon Ostrovsky indicates, Paslawsky was motivated in part by hatred of Russians. But he was also disarmingly honest; and his tweets about the war are far more revealing than most official media reports. Paslawsky was deeply troubled by the corruption at the head of the Ukrainian army, and predicted also that ‘volunteer battalions’ would turn on Kyiv when the war in the east was over. Thus, it is time to dwell less on a ‘struggle for democracy’ or West versus East in a new Cold War, to quell the mad Putin – barring, of course, a full-scale Russian invasion – and more on the future of Ukraine, which is facing not only a social and economic crisis, and plummeting currency, but hard decisions about its future destiny. As Ukraine commemorates 23 years of independence, these questions are far from resolved. It must address the problems of the Donbas, and ensure the region has appropriate representation in parliament and other bodies; and it must deal with corruption.

33 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU In the ranking of corrupt nations by Transparency International last December, ‘Ukraine tied for 144th place in the ranking with Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Iran, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea’. Corruption, ultimately, is a more serious problem than ideology or language, or whether Ukraine can be part of the EU in the future. It is why radical dilettantes who promise to address it, like Oleh Liashko, have gained instant popularity; and it will be a critical issue during the October parliamentary elections. It is also one reason why Yanukovych was ousted from office. It will outlast the separatists and Russian convoys, will persist after this war is won, and could be the source of a new Euromaidan. But all too often, Western analysts perceive only one problem: the ogre in the Kremlin.

#15 Ukraine crisis: Nato is at a crossroads. Where does it go from here? The Independent (UK), 31 August 2014 ------

General Sir Richard Shirreff was, until recently, the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Nato Europe.

This week’s Nato summit at Newport will determine whether the long peace we have (western Balkans excepted) enjoyed in Europe since 1945 survives. Vladimir Putin’s adventurism does not presage a new Cold War. It is more dangerous than that, for we are back in the 1930s: demilitarised Western democracies and weak leaders for whom the risk of war is literally incredible facing an aggressor who has no hesitation in changing borders by force. Nato is at a crossroads and our political leadership must rise to the challenge.

The alliance has not helped itself. In particular, Nato’s promise of membership to Ukraine and Georgia at the 2008 Bucharest summit was seen by Russia as an attack on its vital security interests. Collectively, the West ignored the signals sent by Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, returned to business as usual with Russia and, in doing, so sent a green light that Russian aggression would go unpunished. Subsequently, Nato has been assiduous in attempting to develop a strategic partnership with Russia.

Long term we have to live with Russia. However, the invasion and annexation of Crimea and events in Ukraine have shattered any thought of partnership; the reality now is that Russia is a strategic adversary. Russia’s build-up of force on Ukraine’s eastern borders, its continued destabilisation of the situation illustrated so brutally by the shooting down of MH17 and now the invasion of south-east Ukraine are clear evidence of this.

But the logic of this grim dynamic was set some months ago in Putin’s bizarre and hyper- nationalistic speech in the Kremlin on 18 March in language which would not have sounded out of place at a Nuremberg rally in the 1930s.

34 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Effectively, that which Putin has previously described as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, the collapse of the Soviet Union, can be put right only by re-establishing Russian power in the former republics of the Soviet Union under the pretext of reuniting ethnic Russian speakers under the banner of Mother Russia.

At the same time, Putin has sought to neutralise Nato and the EU by exploiting Western disunity on the severity of sanctions, the sale of French-built amphibious ships, German dependence on Russian energy and the UK’s welcome mat to Russian oligarchs in London. It has been a Machiavellian display of divide and rule.

This poses a real and present threat to European peace because three Nato nations – Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania – have significant Russian-speaking populations. So to avoid Russia setting itself on a collision course with Nato, the strongest possible message needs to be sent: “Thus far perhaps, but absolutely no further”.

Nato must refocus on collective defence, the foundation on which Nato is built: Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, an attack on one is an attack on all. It means a return to deterrence, both conventional and nuclear, with credible, capable armed forces and the will and means to communicate that capability so that Putin is left in no doubt that if he steps over the Nato line, he will get hammered. It means forward defence in the Baltic states with a continuous, persistent presence. It means a regular cycle of training and exercising in order to demonstrate that Nato is capable of defending its member states by land, sea and air. Nato’s forces must be restructured to fight high-end conventional warfare, a skill and capability lost in two decades of stabilisation in the Balkans and counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Above all, it means increases in defence spending by all Nato members. Currently only four Nato allies spend more than the minimum of 2 per cent of GDP on defence signed up to and agreed by all allies. This must change; the European dependence on the US to pick up the bill must be reversed – and quickly. Given the extent of disarmament in Europe, this means rearmament. Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says now is the time to plan for greater investment when economies pick up. “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

As important as rearming is, thinking through what collective defence means in the 21st century, we still look at Article 5 through Cold War lenses. State-on-state war no longer means Soviet tank divisions sweeping across the central European plain. What we saw in Georgia and Crimea and are seeing in Ukraine is the breaking of the integrity of the state under that threshold which would trigger a response from Nato if targeted against a Nato ally.

Through the sophisticated integration of unconventional, asymmetric warfare and manipulation of minorities backed up by the threat of massive conventional force, Russia aims to break its adversary without having to invade. I suspect that Putin’s hand may have been forced into invasion by Ukrainian success against the Russia-backed separatists.

35 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Nato needs to develop the muscle memory and the lateral thought to ensure that Article 5 is proofed against such a threat. More profoundly, the entire construct of the alliance needs to change: decision-making, the principle of consensus, funding, organisation, command and control and force structure.

Finally and most important is will – sheer, blood-minded, Churchillian moral courage, guts and determination. As Napoleon said, “The moral is to the physical as three is to one.” Here our Western political leadership is starting 40-love down. Putin will have taken heart from the vacillation and loss of nerve of the UK’s political leadership in the face of the brutal violence of IS in northern Iraq and Barack Obama’s stepping back from the red line over Syrian use of chemical weapons.

In particular, what price the credibility of collective defence when a British Prime Minister demeans himself by writing in a Sunday paper that “we should avoid sending armies to fight”? Such flaccidity may, one day, be seen as an equally damning statement of appeasement as the Oxford Union’s 1936 motion: “This house will not fight for King and country.”

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, told me on Thursday: “War in Europe is a real possibility.” Putin has thrown down the gauntlet. Will Nato’s political leadership pick it up and throw it back? Will a dragon once again spit fire from Wales? We shall see.

#16 We need to tell the truth about what Russia is doing in Ukraine ------by Wesley Clark The Guardian, 31 August 2014

As the Ukraine crisis has intensified over the past six months, Russia has been developing a new form of warfare – inserting special forces, provoking, and slowly, deliberately escalating the conflict. Russian actions flout international law and the agreements that have assured stability in the post-cold war world. But warnings and sanctions have thus far failed. The Nato summit in Wales this week offers the best, and perhaps last, opportunity to halt aggression in Europe without major commitments of Nato forces. But to do so requires a deeper understanding of the situation and much more resolute allied action.

First, Vladimir Putin’s actions against Ukraine haven’t been “provoked”. They are part of a long-term plan to recreate a greater Russia by regaining control of Ukraine and other states in the “near abroad”. Russia is not going to admit that it has invaded because to do so might invite a stronger Nato response. But until Nato governments unambiguously label Russian actions “aggression” and “invasion”, they will have difficulty mustering support for the stronger actions that needs to be taken.

36 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Putin is not likely to be dissuaded by stronger sanctions; while they may disrupt some elements of the Russian economy, and he would of course prefer not to face them, he also uses sanctions himself to strengthen his leverage over those sectors most engaged with the west, and to gain sympathy from his own “electorate”.

Nato must act decisively to strengthen member states that feel threatened by Putin’s actions. Its forces should be permanently stationed in the Baltics, Poland and eastern Balkans. Its rapid reaction forces should be bolstered. Additionally, more demanding military exercises should be held. Nato’s nuclear deterrent must be re-emphasised. Long overdue modernisation should be undertaken. All this requires greater resources, including budget and manpower.

But these are the relatively easy steps. Even if undertaken – and they will take months and years to be implemented – they are unlikely to halt the growing threat, nor will they prevent the demoralisation of our friends in eastern Europe. As we like to say in America, “this is not their first rodeo”. They understand that aggressors are strengthened by their successes. And they know that today Ukraine is fighting on Nato’s periphery for the very same values of freedom, self-government and democracy that Nato espouses. They are asking themselves how courageous Nato will be, confronting a renewed Russian threat, if Nato nations today fear to provide information, military advice and assistance to an independent European state of 45 million fighting a defensive battle merely to regain control its own territory. And, yes, it is open warfare in eastern Ukraine now.

The success of this Nato summit will be measured not simply by its declarations of intent to strengthen alliance members in eastern Europe but, perhaps more importantly, by its willingness to provide Ukraine with the diplomatic, economic and, most immediately, military assistance necessary.

True, there is no “military” solution to Ukraine. The only solution is diplomatic: Putin must be persuaded to cease and desist. But, as we are learning, that persuasion requires not only diplomacy and sanctions, but also assisting Ukraine in creating the military means to defeat Russia’s new war strategy.

Information, training, military advice and hardware provided now will likely save thousands of lives and billions of dollars in the future. This is the time to speak the truth about Russian aggression and to act resolutely in aiding Ukraine to halt it.

#17 Double Talk: Why Ukrainians Fight Over Language ------by Dominique Arel Foreign Affairs, 19 March 2014 http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141042/dominique-arel/double-talk

37 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Dominique Arel holds the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa

Since the collapse of Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych’s regime last month, the question of minority rights within the country has become a matter of international concern. Russia based its military intervention in Crimea (and its threatened intervention in eastern Ukraine) on a supposed need to protect Russians and Russian speakers. In turn, the European Union has called for the “full protection of persons belonging to national minorities.” Both sides have conflated language and ethnicity. In Ukraine, however, the two are separate. Rather than Ukrainian against Russian, battles over language and representation in the country pit Ukrainian against Ukrainian. Kiev’s new government -- and the West -- must recognize that truth if they are to begin rebuilding the country.

In the 2001 census, the last conducted in Ukraine, 17 percent of the population declared itself to be ethnic Russians (or Russian by “nationality,” in the eastern European phrasing). Of the Russian population, 83 percent is concentrated in Ukraine’s nine eastern and southern provinces. With the exception of Crimea, however, none of these provinces has an ethnic Russian majority -- not even close. Taken together, Russians constitute only 30 percent of the population there (and only 38 percent in the Yanukovych stronghold of Donetsk) whereas ethnic Ukrainians make up 63 percent.

The language picture, however, is strikingly different. Censuses generally ask respondents for their ridna mova (rodnoi yazyk in Russian). That phrase is usually translated as “mother tongue,” but a closer rendering is “language of origin.” An overwhelming majority of western Ukrainians name Ukrainian.. But a majority of residents of southeastern Ukraine, 51 percent, claim Russian. In other words, nearly one-third of self-declared ethnic Ukrainians give Russian as their language of origin. According to sociological surveys conducted over the last 20 years, an even greater proportion of residents of southeastern Ukraine prefer to use Russian when given the choice. Thus, a survey conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology in 2004 indicated that 81 percent of residents in southeastern Ukraine prefer to use Russian. In urban areas of the East, Russian is almost always used in public offices, although the number of Ukrainian schools has grown notably.

As a whole, Ukraine is a bilingual state. But on the ground in southeastern Ukraine, it verges on unilingual: Anyone who has spent time in cities of eastern Ukraine can attest to the fact that Ukrainian is rarely heard publicly and that Ukrainian speakers who wish to converse with civil servants in Ukrainian will hardly ever succeed. (The reverse is true in Western Ukraine) The stark divide is why the language question has been so central to Ukrainian politics since its independence in 1991: those who prefer to speak Ukrainian want to be able to use it in public everywhere in the country, and those who prefer to speak Russian fear that they will be disadvantaged if they are suddenly required to speak Ukrainian in certain situations.

In Ukraine, language politics is first about symbols. Russian was the language of state administration in the Soviet Union. The 1989 Ukrainian language law, passed by the Soviet

38 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU Ukrainian parliament as a reaction to similar laws passed in the Baltics and Moldova, declared Ukrainian to be the sole “state language.” The move was partly symbolic, since it was vague on how the law might be implemented, however, and failed to require civil servants to use Ukrainian. What it did accomplish, however, was the rise of Ukrainian schools. Whereas merely half of pupils had Ukrainian as their primary language of instruction in the late 1980s, the proportion grew to 82 percent by 2011. It nevertheless raised hackles in southeastern Ukraine, where, over the next 20 years, parties and candidates demanded that Russian be given an official status as well. The 2012 language law, passed by the Yanukovych government, was the first to do so. It made Russian a “regional” language alongside Ukrainian as a state language. Meanwhile, Minister of Education Dymtro Tabachnyk began to dismantle the system that had given Ukrainian preference in school, for instance by no longer requiring that high school graduates take their university entrance examinations in Ukrainian (seen by Ukrainian-speakers as an essential way of making Ukrainian a language of mobility]. These moves, too, reinforced rather than changed facts on the ground: they meant that Russian-speakers would never have to use Ukrainian, but they had never done so in their own region anyway. And yet, they also signaled that the gradual trend making Ukrainian a language that one would need to make a career at the center would be reversed, a prospect that was anathema to Western Ukrainians.

Language is also an emotional topic in Ukraine. Ukrainian-speakers tend to present the predominance of Russian in the southeast as the result of an artificial “Russification” – the policies by Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union that prevented the use of Ukrainian in cities (Ukrainian was banned under the Tsars and Ukrainian schools disappeared from cities of southeastern Ukraine in the 1950s). That is something Russian-speakers (who are mostly ethnic Ukrainian) resent, since they do not like being told that their language of comfort is not legitimate. No matter how they historically came to speak Russian, they feel that they have language rights too.. On the other hand, Russian- speakers fail to understand that the official bilingualism that they demand means the willingness to speak two languages, not Russian exclusivity. For Western Ukrainians, the Ukrainian language is an expression of national identity. Eastern Ukrainians, however, are ambivalent towards Ukrainian: on the one hand, they want their children to acquire it; on the other hand, Russian is the language of their professional and cultural circles. In both cases, language defines who they are, as Ukrainians.

Given the symbolic and emotional weight of language in Ukraine, the rushed cancellation of the 2012 language law a mere 24 hours after the collapse of the Yanukovych regime (a decision since vetoed by interim President Oleksandr Turchynov) was unwise. It was interpreted in the southeast, both among Ukrainians and Russians, as an attack -- an attempt to ban Russian in public life. Actually banning Russian, of course, would have required capacity that the national and regional government do not have, since the vast majority of urban residents, and thus of state officials, in the southeast are more comfortable using Russian. The slogans of radical groups aside, banning Russian is obviously not what the national government intends but, as often happens in language

39 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU politics, lawmakers were unconcerned with the symbolism of repealing a law without discussion.

With Crimea formally annexed by Russia and with the looming threat of Russian military intervention in southeastern Ukraine, language policy has become a matter of national security. Russia is now demanding that Russian should become a second “state language,” which is a non-starter, as the experience of Belarus amply demonstrates what two state languages actually mean in practice in the post-Soviet world: only Russian is used in state offices. If people accustomed to speak Russian are told they can use Russian in all situations, then they will and speakers of the other language have to accommodate. The entire Soviet experience, at least since the early 1930s, speaks to that reality. In the escalating crisis, it would be easy for each side to double down on symbolically provocative stances (two state languages, no status at all for Russian, de-Russification etc.), but this can only aggravate the real danger of state fragmentation.

Instead, Ukraine should step back from the brink. Politicians must recognize that language rights starts with individuals, not those in positions of authority: it is people who need to have the choice of speaking Russian or Ukrainian when dealing with the state. This means that state officials across the whole country must be conversant in both, that graduation in school must be contingent of an active knowledge of Ukrainian, and the language of state administration at the national level must be Ukrainian. These changes, or the consolidation of existing trends, would not alter the reality that most people in the southeast would continue to speak only Russian, but it would create incentives for the development of Ukrainian as a public language. Since symbols matter, Russian should be given a status akin to a “regional” language, but only under conditions when incentives to use Ukrainian are in place. To be sure, with the Russian state labeling Ukrainian-speaking Maidan activists as “fascists,” and with emboldened Ukrainian far-right groups in the western part of the country disinclined to compromise on cultural matters, striking the right balance on language policies will even more difficult than it has in the past.

And that speaks to a broader challenge: For decades, Ukraine has been unable to build a culture of regional inclusion and politics there have remained remarkably regionally polarized. In the 2010 presidential election, Yanukovych obtained 77 percent of the vote in southeastern Ukraine, but only 18 percent in the center and west, where 53 percent of the electorate resides. In the 2004 election, Victor Yushchenko, the winning candidate, obtained 84 percent of the vote in the west, but less than 20 percent in the east. In both cases, the result was a government that largely excluded half of Ukraine.

One way to address this problem would be to build a party with cross-regional appeal. Efforts to have effect have repeatedly failed in the past two decades and the five parties in the current parliament are rooted in the regional half of the country: the Party of Regions and Communist in the southeast, Fatherland (Yatsenyuk), Udar (Klitschko) and Svoboda (Tyahnybok) in the West. Instead, Ukraine could promote inclusion by diminishing the powers of the president and transforming its political system into a parliamentary democracy. A second step would be to make government more representative of regional

40 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU interests. Any project for the “federalization” of Ukraine, now demanded by Russia, is stillborn, since the term is inexorably linked in the popular imagination to separatism and the collapse of the Yugoslav, Czechoslovak, and even Soviet federations. (Ukraine had to make a partial exception by granting Crimea the status of an “autonomous republic” in 1991, but under the legal contradiction that the Crimean autonomy was part of a “unitary state”) But Ukraine could increase regional representation by making regional governors elected, rather than appointed. It could also tweak its electoral system so that it favored the creation of coalition governments built on the principle of regional representation. Thus, instead of a single proportional representation list for the entire country, there should be several for a number of large regional entities. Such a system would have the side benefit of promoting competition within regions. For a long time, Yanukovych’s Party of Regions has held near total control in the southeast while two or three parties have competed for the vote in the West. Smaller blocs could force some cooperation between ideological and regional factions.

A balanced language law and regional inclusivity would not have anything to do with protecting ethnic Russians. That is just not how politics in Ukraine are organized: Ethnic Russians in Ukraine do not come together as one bloc (even in Crimea, the Russian nationalist party, which was installed in power by the Russian military obtained only four percent of the vote in the last provincial election), notwithstanding the violent attempts by Russia to portray ethnic Russians in peril. The fact that Yanukovych’s party called itself the Party “of Regions” and appealed to Russian-speakers, but never to ethnic Russians, is revealing enough. In day-to-day life, the identity boundaries between Russians and Ukrainians in southeastern Ukraine are weak to non-existent. A sense of regional belonging is what unites them. A surefire way of avoiding a growing sense of estrangement from Kiev is to include their elites in national decision-making. Some say that Russia’s meddling in Ukraine may spur what Ukraine has failed to create in 20 years: national unity. Yet national unity can only be achieved if Ukrainian politicians devise rules of governance that make it possible.

#18 Towards a Language Consensus in Ukraine ------by Dominique Arel HURI Conference on “States, Peoples, and Language” 11 June 2014

Since 1989, the language question in Ukraine has erupted into periodic political controversies, every three to five years, to the point of violence after the fall of Yanukovych. The cyclical nature of the sudden saliency of language grievances on the political agenda is the norm in polities where language acts as a marker of identity. Ukraine, however, stands out as a case where a political consensus has yet to occur over the foundational aspect of language politics, namely, the political status of the two main

41 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU languages fighting for public space and state regulations providing incentives to use the socially disadvantaged language.

There are three reasons why the status of languages and the regulation of their public uses can bring political contestation. The first pertains to political legitimacy. In the nationalist era, language symbolizes power. States promote the national language as a symbol of their legitimate right to exist as distinct political entities. This is true even when the political community is defined in inclusive terms, but when its identity is articulated around a historic language, as in the French republican tradition, the Quebec language law, or the preamble to the Ukrainian constitution. In the Soviet Union, after the crackdown on korenizatsiia in 1932, Russian became the language of legitimacy, with the use of Ukrainian constrained within a choreographed script, lest it deviates into an illgetimate “nationalism.”

The second reason why languages generate political contestation is the fluidity of language practices, arising from the fact that language identity is socially constructed. A language identity is acquired when speakers of a standardized language develop expectations about the use of their language in public spheres. Such expectations can arise from the first language learned, or from processes of horizontal linguistic assimilation. International migrants, as a rule, seek to have their children adopt the socially dominant language of their new home. Intrastate migrants, in particular when individuals from the countryside move to the city, often follow the same pattern, as when Flemish migrants to Brussels had their children adopt French, or Ukrainian migrants to cities of Eastern Ukraine adopted Russian. (In traditional Quebec, French Canadian urban migrants barely assimilated to socially dominant English due to a firm religious barrier). The core issue in Ukraine is that activists tend not to recognize the legitimacy of the long-term social construction of Eastern Ukrainian Russophones, while Eastern Ukrainians wish to be recognized for what they historically became and fear to be imposed a language that puts them at a disadvantage.

The third driver of political contestation over the use of languages is the asymmetry in the social status of languages. In seeking to regulate the public use of languages, states ascribe a political status to certain languages. The language with the highest political status (variably called “state” or “official”) is, in principle, the language of state symbolism, administration and communication. Within society, however, the language perceived to be the language of socio-economic mobility may or may not coincide with the state language. Language laws are passed with the intention of creating incentives for citizens to learn and speak the state language, to create conditions under which the state language is seen as indispensable to function in society and make a career. In other words, the legalization of political status is aimed at altering the social status of languages by making a language previously seen as not socially “useful” into a language a mobility.

This attempt at social engineering is exceedingly difficult to accomplish and inherently conflictual. A cardinal principle in the social status of languages is their asymmetry. On a given territory – a state, a region, a city – whenever two languages compete for space in

42 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU public domains (defined here primarily as government institutions, but which can extend to some areas of the private sector, such as the language of work and advertisement), one language will inevitably be perceived as more socially prestigious than the other. The social status of languages may vary territorially within a state, as they do in Ukraine, but the point here is about how these language dynamics operate within a bounded unit. As a consequence of this asymmetry, the speakers of the socially dominant language will tend to be less fluent in the other language, while the speakers of the low status language will tend to be more bilingual.

The asymmetry in social status is at the source of a persistent misunderstanding between actors during a language contestation. Speakers of the socially dominant language tend to understand official bilingualism —making two languages as state languages— as the exercise of the free choice of language use by speakers of each linguistic community. Yet free choice can only work when both linguistic communities understand each other, in other words when everyone is functionally bilingual, and this cannot happen without creating incentives for speakers of the high status language to learn the low status one. If high status language-speakers remain unilingual, then low status language-speakers will have to switch to the high status language in order to be understood and bilingualism will in fact translate into unilingualism.

This is why the political equilibrium in language contestation has been the establishment of a single state language, when the socially low status language becomes the politically high status one Thus, in order to obtain bilingualism on the ground (make speakers of a socially high status language able to communicate in the low status language), you need unilingualism at the top (when speakers of the high status language are forced to use the low status language in their official capacity). This dynamics of language politics is conflictual both on pragmatic grounds (when the acquisition of a language is seen as a career impediment) and normative principles (when the active use of a language is seen as unnatural or uncomfortable, as in Ukraine).

It is this determination to make Ukrainian a socially useful language – in the Ukrainian/ Russian idiom, to make it acquire long-term prospect (perspektivnyi), Ukrainian having become bezperspektivnyi in the Soviet era — that inspired the passing of a Language Law in Fall 1989, when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union. The law proclaimed Ukrainian as the state language, while remaining vague on the status of Russian.

The law had three major effects. First, Ukrainian became the language of the highest state functions, such as in public ceremonies featuring government officials, or in parliament, where the debates were increasingly conducted in Ukrainian. Second, the proportion of students enrolled in schools with Ukrainian as the primary language of instruction rose steadily, from 51% to 82% of all pupils. Third, Ukrainian became the language of written communication in state institutions, while most civil servants continued to orally use Russian. What remained unclear, however, was the status of Russian and the use of Ukrainian as a language of mobility. Crucially, high school graduates had to pass an examination in Ukrainian in order to be accepted to a higher educational institution. De

43 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU facto, readiness to use Ukrainian became a prerequisite to make a career in Kyiv (with flagrant exceptions, such as PM Azarov).

Yet whether this language requirement could one day apply to mobility within Eastern Ukraine was never clarified until 2012. Article 10 of the 1996 Constitution “guaranteed” the use of Russian, but without further specifications. A 2001 legal interpretation of this article, by the Constitutional Court, stated that Russian “can be used within the limits and order designated by the laws of Ukraine”, but the 1989 law was vacuous on this point. A 2006 ratification of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, codifying the use of minority languages in regional administration, put the territorial threshold at 50% of native language speakers (as was the case in the 1989 law), thereby disqualifying all of Eastern Ukraine, except Crimea. The lack of clarity explains why political controversies over language kept recurring in post-Soviet Ukraine.

In 2012, to the consternation of the political opposition and of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, the Party of Regions passed a law that overturned three core principles of the 1989 law. First, it gave Russian a formal status—“regional”. Second, it lowered the threshold to 10% for the use of Russian in state administration, which now meant everywhere in Eastern Ukraine, at least in urban areas. It also added that official communications with Kyiv could be done in Russian. Third, it provided incentives to open Russian classes in Ukrainian schools. A parallel measure by the Minister of Education abolished the requirement of entrance examinations in Ukrainian. The law was structured to give Russian the widest possible public space, without creating incentives for the use of Ukrainian.

This is the law that the Ukrainian parliament repealed in February 2014, a day after the constitutional vote to depose President Yanukovych. The repeal, however, was by a simple majority, with very few votes from Eastern Ukrainian MPs, and caused such an outcry that Interim President Turchynov refused to sign it into law a week later. The wildest interpretations were given to the repeal — that Russian was to be banned, that the physical security of Russian-speakers was at stake — a radical discourse used to justify the annexation of Crimea and the armed insurgency in Donbas. And yet some kind of international consensus arose that the repeal was not just tactically, but substantively wrong and that Russian was in need of an official status. In his inaugural address, President Porochenko in “guaranteeing the free usage of Russian” merely repeated Article 10 of the 1996 Constitution, the same formulation that could not be clarified by the Constitutional Court in 2001. Facing an armed insurrection abetted by Russia and with weak to failed security structures in the East and South, Ukraine is facing an existential crisis. In these extreme conditions, the political ambiguity over the status and use of Russian can no longer obtain.

What are the options? In polities where two languages compete for public space, the core principle is official territorial unilingualism. Canada is a bilingual country, but French is the only official language in Quebec. The message sent by the Quebec government is that French is necessary to make a career in Quebec, a message understood by Anglophone parents, since the overwhelming majority either send their children to an immersion

44 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU program within the English school system, or to French schools. Belgium is a bilingual country, but Dutch is the only official language in Flanders. The relevant application to Ukraine is that Ukrainian must be the sole official language at the center in order to make Ukrainian the language of mobility. What French in Quebec, Dutch in Flanders and Ukrainian in Ukraine have in common is that they are all competing with socially more powerful languages in their public spaces and require state regulations to make their national language the language of mobility. A language becomes socially useful if the more you move up the ladder, the more it becomes necessary to succeed. Keeping the entrance examinations in Ukraine is axiomatic in that regard. Developing state-funded programs supporting Ukrainian-language elite schools, book publishing, culture, and media, which is common practice in Canada and Europe, are also steps to increase the social prestige of Ukrainian.

The real bone of contention, however, is what happens to Russian in Eastern Ukraine. We know from the post-Soviet experience that Russian-speakers in the East will not “de- Russify,” in the sense of transferring to Ukrainian as their language of preference. Surveys in the past twenty years have shown that the overall proportion of Russian-speakers and Ukrainian-speakers has remained fairly constant. Moreover, we now know that in the dramatic conditions of political violence, the Russian language has been decoupled from state loyalty. To be sure, pro-Russia demonstrators and insurgents use the language question as one of their grievances, but the people they are fighting, whether in Odesa, Kharkiv or even Donbas, are also Russian-speakers, who are risking their security to defend the state. The upshot is that the vast predominance of Russian-speakers — individuals who prefer to use Russian in public spaces – is a demographic fact in urban areas of the East and South.

Using Russian in public spaces means functioning at work in Russian. This has always been the practice in the East, of course, but the absence of status and regulations for Russian meant that the possibility, in people’s perceptions, that one day bureaucrats from Kyiv would come down and demand a switch to Ukrainian, was also present (however impractical such a policy would be in practice, since there is no critical mass of Ukrainian- speakers in regional administrations). To achieve a political equilibirum over languages, Kyiv will have to concede that the intra-regional language of mobility within the East and South is Russian, that is to say, Ukrainian is not required, unless one has to communicate with the center, or wish to make a career in Kyïv. This would give tangible meaning to the status of “regional” language. The model would thus be: unilingual Ukrainian at the center, unilingual Russian in the East, unilingual Ukrainian in the West.

From a normative perspective, the greatest challenge is the fate of linguistic minorities in the regions, namely, Ukrainian-speakers in the East, but also Russian-speakers in the West. Inasmuch as the state seeks to make Ukrainian the language of mobility to the center, the development of a Ukrainian-language school system in the East is a prerequisite and, due to the social predominance of Russian, state incentives to enroll in Russian classes are counter-productive. The real issue is the ability to be served in Ukrainian by civil servants, a rare practice in the East. One argument is that the people

45 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU who really need language protection in the East are the Ukrainian-speakers, since they have little opportunity to use their language in formal interactions.

Yet requiring civil servants to abide by the linguistic choice of their customers amounts to make Ukrainian a language of mobility within the region, and this is exactly where Russian-speakers will object. The likelihood that such a policy could be enforced, is, in any case, remote in a context of low legal culture in Ukraine, and with a political culture inimical to the mirror delivery of Russian-language services in Western Ukraine. The stepping stone of a political consensus over language is the recognition that regional administrations in the East operate in Russian (but not when they communicate with the center). Ukrainian nationalists will not accept the “Russification” of the East, Russian nationalists will not accept the “Ukrainization” of the central state, but territorially- defined unilingualism is the empirical norm in the comparative experience. Ukraine has two layers and three kinds of official unilingualisms.

#19 For Ukrainian voters, key is policy preferences, not native language or ethnicity, of candidates ------by Timothy Frye Monkey Cage Blog, Washington Post, 27 August 2014

President Petro Poroshenko recently announced that Ukraine will elect a new Parliament on Oct. 26. One would expect voters to place a high priority on a candidate’s ethnicity and language. Both have been enduring themes in Ukrainian politics, and the tragic military conflict in the east of the country highlights these cleavages.

In a recent paper, however, I found that while a voter’s ethnicity and language influenced a hypothetical vote choice, a candidate’s language and ethnicity were far less relevant. Russian and Ukrainian voters were not much moved by learning that a candidate was Russian or Ukrainian or was a native speaker of Russian or Ukrainian. Far more important was whether a candidate favored an economic policy orientation toward Russia or Europe.

These findings are based on a national survey (see the paper for details) conducted in late June in which I created eight fictional candidates for a seat in the Ukrainian parliament who varied along three features: 1) ethnicity as revealed by either a distinctly Russian or Ukrainian name 2) native language of Russian or Ukrainian and 3) whether they supported closer economic ties with Russia or with Europe.More specifically, interviewers asked:

Let’s say that there were elections to the Supreme Rada. A candidate with the following features took part in the race. About how willing would you be to vote for this candidate? [Ivan Egorovich Filinov/Boris Bogdanovich Tkachenko] is a 40 year-old businessman who speaks [Russian/Ukrainian] as his native language. He is promising to

46 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU reduce corruption, increase spending on education, and build tighter economic ties with [Russia/Europe.]

One of the eight versions of the question was then randomly assigned to each respondent. Caveats up front. This vignette does not capture the nuances of language use, ethnicity, or policy orientation. Economic policy orientation toward Russia and Europe is freighted with deep cultural and political connotations; ethnicity is more subtle than a name; and native language does not include the possibility of being bilingual. Yet comparing how small changes in a candidate’s profile shape vote preferences can help identify the independent impact of these factors that are often highly correlated.

Despite the candidates’ distinctive ethnicities, native languages, and an ongoing conflict laden with ethnic and linguistic overtones, there is little difference in the average level support for each of these candidates. The differences in the average support for 7 of the 8 candidates are statistically indistinguishable from zero. Surprisingly, the “average” respondent does not appear to be strongly swayed by candidate language, ethnicity, or policy orientation.

These “average” levels of support mask, however, vast differences in the preferences of voters of different ethnicities and native languages. Breaking down the responses according to the language and ethnicity of the respondents reveals a far different pattern. Table 1 reports the hypothetical vote preferences of three groups of respondents: ethnic Russians whose native language is Ukrainian (23 percent of the sample), ethnic Ukrainians whose native language is Ukrainian (59 percent), and ethnic Russians whose native language is Russian (16 percent).

For example, consider Candidate 3. Filinov is an ethnic Russian who speaks Ukrainian and favors closer ties with Russia. Among native Russophone-Ukrainians, this hypothetical candidate is quite popular and receives a score of 3.90; among native Ukrainophone- Ukrainians, however, the score is just 2.28. Among the relatively smaller number of native Russophone-Russians the score is 3.29. Looking across all candidates, we find significant differences in the responses of Ukrainian speakers who are ethnic Russian and who are ethnic Ukrainian in five of the eight candidates.

Three candidates (4, 6 and 8) all of whom favored closer economic ties with Europe drew roughly equal levels of support from all three groups of respondents. That voters of different ethnicities and language backgrounds express roughly similar support for these three candidates suggests that voting in Ukraine has not yet been reduced to an ethnic or linguistic census despite the ongoing violent conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

Most interesting, among all respondents candidate policy orientation toward Russia or Europe is a powerful mover of vote choice, even more so than candidate language or ethnicity. Neither native Russian speaking nor native Ukrainian speaking respondents were much moved in their vote choice by changing the candidate’s language or ethnicity. However, as shown in Table 2, native Ukrainian speaking respondents were significantly

47 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU more likely to support candidates who favored an economic policy orientation toward Europe. The differences in responses in each of these four paired comparisons that hold candidate ethnicity and language constant, but vary policy orientation are statistically significant at the .10 level.

Among Russian speakers, the magnitude of the change in support for these four candidates is similar, but in the opposite direction as Russian speakers are far less likely to support a candidate who backs closer economic ties with Europe. The importance of policy orientation is even found among the subset of respondents from the four eastern regions of Ukraine. Of course, economic policy orientation here should be broadly conceived as ties to Europe and Russia area loaded with political and cultural meaning, as well.

In sum, native Ukrainian and native Russian speakers have different preferences over their candidates in many, but not all, cases, suggesting that voters consider factors other than ethnicity and language in the ballot box. Most interesting, a candidate’s policy orientation toward Russia or Europe drives vote choice far more than about a candidate’s ethnicity or language. That policy orientation, broadly understood, matters so prominently gives some hope that the parliamentary election in the fall will not be simply an ethnic or linguistic census.

#20 Recent Publications on Ukraine: ------Ukraine Crisis: Forum, American Ethnologist, Vol. 41, No. 3 (August 2014) All three articles can be downloaded freely at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ amet.2014.41.issue-3/issuetoc

Kuzio, Taras. 2014. “Impediments to the Emergence of Political Parties in Ukraine,” Politics, forthcoming (available online).

Liebich, Andre and Oksana Myshlovska. 2014. “Bandera: Memorialization and Commemoration,” Nationalities Papers, forthcoming (available online).

------UKL 472, 2 September 2014 ------Fair Use Notice: MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL THAT IS REDISTRIBUTED FOR PERSONAL, SCHOLARLY USE ONLY. UKL is a single emission e-mail to a limited number of scholars and professionals in the area of Ukrainian studies who have requested receipt of the list for scholarly and educational purposes. UKL is distributed on a completely volunteer basis. The UKL editor believes that the use of copyrighted materials therein constitutes “fair use” of any such material and is governed by appropriate Canadian and International law.

48 UKL #472 2 September 2014 BACK TO MENU ------Dominique Arel, Chair of Ukrainian Studies University of Ottawa 559 King Edward Ave. Ottawa ON K1N 6N5 CANADA tel 613 562 5800 ext. 3692 fax 613 562 5351

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