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Raising and Losing Children in the Donbas War

by Daria Platonova

The Gorlovka Madonna, depicting mother and child as the innocent casualties of war (Image credit: ОЧИЩЕНИЕ/VK)

Child suffering is a largely neglected aspect of the war in Donbas. According to a recent UNICEF report, of the 3.4 million people in need of humanitarian support in eastern Ukraine, sixty per cent are women and children. Andriy Parubiy, speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, reported that 68 children had been killed and 186 wounded since 2014. Another report cites 199 dead and 500 wounded children, with approximately 10 thousand children living in the conflict’s ‘grey zone’ and being endangered daily.

Yet, analysts and reporters rather focus on ceasefire violations, the ‘Normandy format’ of the peace talks, or the so-called ‘special status’ granted to non-government-controlled areas of the region. In fact, in an interview with Hromadske.tv, the Ukrainian Internet television station, a father of two children affected by the conflict said, ‘I have no idea what the state thinks. I have never heard the word “children” from them’.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is responsible for monitoring the conflict’s ceasefires since 2014. It frequently reports on injuries sustained by children in both government and non-government-controlled areas. For example, a report from October 2019 reads: “The [OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM)] followed up on reports of a boy injured from the explosion of a hand grenade in Sontseve (non-government-controlled, 55km south-east of Donetsk) on 12 October. On 14 October, at Donetsk Regional Clinical Trauma Hospital, medical staff told the SMM that a nine-year-old boy had been admitted on 12 October with an injury to his left hand caused by detonation, as result of which he had to have four fingers amputated.” The report also cites five children having been injured from a hand grenade on 28 September in Chornohorivka (formerly Krasna Zoria), a non-government-controlled area 51km south-west of Luhansk.

The Eastern-Ukrainian Centre for Civic Initiatives has been monitoring child participation in governmental and non-governmental armed formations across the region. Over a period of three months in 2016, based on open sources and interviews, the monitoring group registered 41 individual cases of recruitment of children into armed formations.

The case of the deaths of 23-year old Kristina and her daughter, 10-month old Kira, during the bombardment of the public square in Horlivka (also known by its Russian name Gorlovka) on 27 July 2014 has received the most attention. Since then, pictures of “Gorlovka Madonna” have been circulating on both Ukrainian and Russian social media (more so on the latter). Kristina’s mother Natalia gave an extensive interview to the Ukrainian Internet newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda on 9 June 2016. She is understandably angry at the cynicism displayed by both sides in the conflict in using her daughter’s death to promote their ideological agendas. Below I have translated excerpts from her interview.

‘We could not believe; nobody believed, that they would bomb us in broad daylight… [Natalia was urging her daughter Kristina to leave for Kyiv]. On 27 July, the town was simply blasted. Shells were exploding. “Grad”/”Hrad”  (a multiple rocket launcher used by both the Ukrainian government and Donetsk People’s Republic formations) was shelling the town centre.  According to the official estimates, more than twenty people died next to my children. I then read about a woman in a report: she simply covered her child. Her husband stayed alive, but she died. I learnt about this later. But at the time, I simply refused to believe what was going on.

[Recalling the experience of searching for Kristina and Kira during the bombardment] I was gripped by terror; I was looking for my children. I was running to the square, shouting and crying for them. I then ran into the bomb shelter looking for them. The people inside were then not letting me out from there. I don’t know how long I remained there, possibly two hours. There was no light. The place was not ready for the shelling. I was shouting: Where are my children? Kira and Kristina?”. Somebody forced me to sit down on a bench asking me whom I was looking for. I said “a girl with a baggy and a small child”. They promised me to find out. Then they sent a paramedic to me who injected something into me and said: “you are making everybody stressed out here”.

Then someone came to me and said: “your children are alright; the baby has a scratch on her hand”. They lied. I calmed down a bit but couldn’t sleep. They were letting people out from the bomb shelter; I ran into another one. And there I saw… children were lying after operations; there were paramedics, holding their drip bags. There were very few children. I could not see Kira or Kristina there. I then ran to the accident and emergency point asking about my children. They said they brought someone in but by a different surname. I was shaking, the paramedic shouting. And then someone said to me “they are in the mortuary.”

Later, endless phone calls began. People were telling me to go to the mortuary. I still refused to believe. In the mortuary, the paramedic showed me my girls. “You are lucky”, she said. I couldn’t understand why I was lucky. When they use “Grad”, people are simply being torn into pieces. But my girls still had their faces intact. And they said that’s why I was lucky…. On 27 July, when all of this happened, I still had to make a few phone calls. Kristina then said to me “while you are calling, we will go out. We will catch up with you later”. I was then looking out of the window and calling everyone asking to take us out [from Horlivka]. [Kristina and Kira] crossed the road, walked down to the square. I then finally reached someone who promised to take us to Slavianogorsk. We had to wait. I then called Kristina to tell her the good news. And I heard how she said to Kira “we are going to leave with grandma tomorrow”. That was her last phrase…”.

Natalia blames the governments of Ukraine, Donetsk People’s Republic and Russian Federation for not investigating the deaths of Kristina and Kira in the bombardment. The case has since been taken up by the European Court of Human Rights. The experience of children and their parents in the Donbas highlights the horrifying aspects of the ongoing war and the general humanitarian catastrophe that has engulfed the region since 2014.

Daria is a PhD student at King’s College London. Her research focuses on violence and the unfolding of conflict across several regions in eastern Ukraine, 2013 – 2014. She also leads one of the Causes of War seminars in the War Studies Department. Prior to joining King’s, she worked as a teacher. She graduated with a degree in History from the University of Cambridge in 2011. Her broader interests include European history, war studies, and interdisciplinary methods.

The Road to Oligarchic Peace: Comparing the Nashville Conventions of 1850 and the Severodonetsk Congress of 2004

by Daria Platonova

During the Orange Revolution, the people of Ukraine spontaneously took to the streets in what would become known as the country’s “first” Maidan (Image credit: WikiMedia/Sirhey).

In March 1850, following a compromise motion on slavery tabled by Henry Clay in the US Congress and the debates that ensued John Calhoun, a statesman from the slave-holding state of South Carolina, threatened the “aggressive” North with southern secession if it continued to encroach upon the rights of the South in relation to slavery. He said: “If you, who represent the stronger portion, cannot agree to settle [the questions] on the broad principle of justice and duty, say so; and let the States we both represent agree to separate and part in peace.” This statement was followed by two Nashville Conventions in Tennessee at which the southern states debated the Compromise and the potential for secession. In the end, moderation prevailed.

Fast forward a century and a half and in a different country, in 2004, regional deputies took a more radical action than their American counterparts in a series of congresses held in eastern Ukraine and proposed the secession of the east, after mass protests erupted in Kyiv in a phenomenon known as the Orange Revolution. Like Calhoun in America, during the Severodonetsk Congress (Luhansk region) on the 28 November 2004, the chairman of the Donetsk regional council, Borys Kolesnikov similarly couched his message to the deputies in the language of rights: the people of the East exercised their constitutional right to elect Yanukovych, and neither the Ukrainian Parliament nor Viktor Yushchenko could violate it.

After a decade, both countries were plunged into war.[1] In this article, I argue that a comparison between the secessionist endeavours in the United States and Ukraine indicates that, to put it very broadly, internal wars are not caused by some primordial animosities and differences between ethnicities (the so-called “ancient hatreds”). Rather it is the breakdown of an “oligarchic” peace that accounts for internal wars. Here, the different sectional, political and economic interests are held more or less in equilibrium. In this regard, it are especially the compromises that are made between elites that accounts for internal wars.  Indeed, elite compromise is an essential part of a peace process.

On the surface, Ukraine in the post-Soviet period and the United States in the mid-19th century evolved as quintessential “divided societies”. The South in the US was largely agricultural. Slavery, as an economic system, naturally encompassed nearly every aspect of life, and therefore had an undeniable impact on culture and politics of the South. The North, by contrast, was industrialised, with no toleration for slavery. The historian Kenneth Stampp describes the differences between the two sections of the US in the following terms: these were “Southern farmers and planters… and Northern merchants, manufacturers, bondholders, and speculators.” The historian Lee Benson describes the United States at that time as “bicultural,” although there are debates whether the South was a truly distinctive “civilisation”.

The post-Soviet Ukraine developed along the lines of a divided society as a result of its turbulent history: as in America, similar regional divisions existed between the agriculture and services-dominated West and the industrialised East. In Ukraine, the divisions were reflected not only in the political economy of the different regions but also in voting behaviour, the use of Ukrainian and Russian languages, and opinions on the political situation.

In the US, the vital interests of the South were periodically threatened by the North. The two parts of country therefore existed in an uneasy union. In Ukraine, similarly, there were tensions between the West and the East, with the East often resisting the Ukrainisation campaigns (the introduction of the Ukrainian language), showcasing a higher inclination towards Russia, while the West of the country sought closer ties with the European Union and NATO.

In the United States, the pressure to abolish slavery in the South had been building up for a long time. The North criticised the institution of slavery and issued legislation limiting economic growth there. After the Mexican-American war (1848), the major issue facing the Union was whether slavery should be permitted on the new territories. A Compromise was devised by Clay which allowed certain territories to decide the slavery issue for themselves, while entrenching the existing rights of the South to their property in slaves. Continuous debates were held in the Congress for the next several months, with the aim of averting a simmering crisis. Calhoun and the “fire-eaters” (as the radical group of Southerners were called) however argued that the continuing “Northern aggressions” were threatening the state of the Union. The Nashville Conventions inspired by Calhoun were therefore expected to be radical undertakings to demonstrate the unity of the southern states to the North and put pressure on it to ceased its aggressions.

The two Nashville Conventions held in June 1850 and November 1850, however, were by all means moderate. There were some radical Southerners present but, in the end the delegates adopted a “wait-and-see attitude”. They condemned Clay’s Compromise and also the Compromise that was enacted by the Congress in September 1850, issued calls for an extension of the Missouri Compromise Line to the Pacific Ocean, and agreed to meet again. In essence, the Conventions were held in order to demonstrate to the North that the South could act as a single front. In doing so, conflict was avoided.

It can be argued that the reason why the moderates prevailed in America was because the Compromise did not threaten the prevailing “oligarchic peace.” In other words, the Compromise did not endanger the representation of the South in American politics.  As McPherson writes: “California… did not tip the balance in the Senate against the South”. The South still wielded a lot of power in the country. Henry Wilson goes on to write on the power of the South: “They had dictated principles, shaped policies, made Presidents and cabinets, judges of the Supreme Court, Senators, and Representatives”.

In Ukraine, galvanised by the dissatisfaction with the incumbent President Leonid Kuchma’s rule and the outrage at the fraudulent election of his chosen successor Viktor Yanukovych to the Presidency, people in Kyiv and Ukrainian regions took to the streets on that 22 November 2004. These gatherings came to be known as the Orange Revolution. In response to the pickets of the Ukrainian Parliament by the competing candidate from the West Viktor Yushchenko, and the recognition of Yushchenko as president in western Ukraine, the disgruntled deputies in the eastern regions organised a series of congresses attended by delegates from almost all across those regions. They proposed radical actions to tilt the balance back in favour of the East and to force the Parliament and Yushchenko to recognise the unalienable right of eastern Ukrainians to choose their own president. Accordingly, on the 26 November, the deputies of the Kharkiv regional council supported the creation of the South-Eastern Autonomous Republic. The Kharkiv governor Evhen Kushnaryov ruled that no budgetary transfers were to be made to the centre. The regional council deputies proposed to concentrate all power in the regional council and on the 27th of November, the council refused to recognise the central government.

Similar developments took place in other regions. On 28 November 2004, the Donetsk regional council decided to hold a regional referendum in December on granting the Donetsk region a status of an autonomous region within the “Ukrainian federation”. On the same day, the famous “separatist” congress was held in Severodonetsk in the Luhansk region. Following the Congress, a union of all regions was created and the chairman of the Donetsk regional council Borys Kolesnikov was chosen as its head. Kolesnikov proposed to create a “new federal state in the form of a South-Eastern Republic with the capital in Kharkiv,” if Yushchenko won the presidential election.

However, as in America, the conflict was avoided and, in the end, moderation prevailed. Again, the talks between the opposing camps of Yushchenko and Yanukovych carried on through the crisis period. The election results were cancelled, a new election day was agreed, and, most importantly, the two competing sides agreed to a major amendment in the Ukrainian constitution. Like Clay’s compromise, Kuchma’s amendments to the Ukrainian Constitution appeared to save the day. The Constitution was to divide the executive (Hale) and grant more power to the Prime Minister and Parliament. This ensured that Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions, despite now going into opposition, could still wield enormous power in Ukrainian politics. Hence, in the elections of 2006 the Party of Regions won plurality in Parliament and Yanukovych came back as Prime Minister. Yanukovych’s Donetsk clan continued to play an important role in politics.

The historical experience of the US before the Civil War demonstrates that when compromises between elites are made and some deeply entrenched elites are still able to stay in power, a conflict can be avoided. With the election of Abraham Lincoln on the 6 November 1860, it can be argued that the elite compromise ceased to work for the South. In the case of Yanukovych, he fled in February 2014 and left the dominant network of the Party of Regions and its members in disarray. It follows therefore that wars are not caused by primordial ethnic hatreds but by the break down of elite compromises.

[1] This is not a place to discuss whether the war in Ukraine is a civil or any other kind of war. This discussion would merit another article altogether.

Daria is a PhD student at King’s College London. Her research focuses on violence and the unfolding of conflict across several regions in eastern Ukraine, 2013 – 2014. She also leads one of the Causes of War seminars in the War Studies Department. Prior to joining King’s, she worked as a teacher. She graduated with a degree in History from the University of Cambridge in 2011. Her broader interests include European history, war studies, and interdisciplinary methods.

Feature – Shabiha in Syria and Titushki in Ukraine as Elements of Authoritarian Control

by Daria Platonova

15 July 2019

“Titushki” on their way to Mariinskiy Park (Image credit: Unian)

Introduction

Incumbent authoritarian regimes[1] can use a variety of tools to protect the status quo and their hold on power. Among those tools is the deployment of groups of armed civilians to disperse political protest that threatens to dislodge the regime and disrupt that status quo. A comparison can be drawn between the Syrian Shabiha and Titushki in Ukraine as elements of the regimes’ responses to political protest. Shabiha in Syria was a complex phenomenon described in most general terms as numbers of pro-Asad[2]  individuals who attacked anti-government protestors from March 2011, at the start of the Syrian uprising, and then became “pro-state … militias, which acted in an auxiliary capacity to government forces”.

Titushki in Ukraine were groups of individuals reportedly hired by state actors, including local elites, to attack Euromaidan protestors[3] in Kyiv and Ukrainian regions from November 2013 to January 2014. In this article, I demonstrate the similarities and differences between the provenance of and the deployment purposes of Shabiha and Titushki. Through this comparison, I argue that the systematic use of these groups is in function of the regime’s strength and the ruler’s expectations about the regime’s viability.

The similarities between the regimes of Yanukovych and al-Asad

The attempts made by Viktor Yanukovych to introduce an authoritarian regime in Ukraine resembles Bashar al-Asad’s consolidation of an already existing authoritarian regime which he inherited from his father, Hafez al-Asad. Both presidents cultivated a patronage system based around a specific minority group. Yanukovych relied on the Donetsk clan, originating from his home region of Donetsk, and the political-economic conglomerate of the Party of Regions, also originating from Donetsk.

Similar processes of over-concentration of patronage took place under Asad, who came to rely on “Alawi familial, tribal and communitarian base” and, specifically, on the Asad-Makhlouf family clan. Like Asad, who increasingly surrounded himself by an increasingly narrow clique of supporters, Yanukovych later in his presidency drew upon the support of his real and metaphorical family.

File photo of Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, with his brother Maher, left (Photo credit: AP)

Both presidents recognised the importance of the security service in maintaining their regimes, with Asad inheriting a vast security apparatus and a strong army from his father. Yanukovych attempted to build a strong security force, appointing his supporters to the key position of the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine and investing heavily in a special police force Berkut.

Bashar al-Asad followed arising challenges to his regime through by imprisoning challengers and severely restricting and repressing civil society. In Ukraine, Yanukovych imprisoned his key rival, Yuliya Tymoshenko, from a competing network of Batkivshchina Party, while exercising increasing control over the Ukrainian media and opposition groups. Viktor Yanukovych’s rule was the ultimate culmination of the domination of eastern Ukrainian forces in Ukrainian politics, which, on the surface, created an expectation that the regime was going to stay. Asad’s strong reliance on the Alawite minority inherited from the three-decade long rule of his father created similar expectations.

We would therefore expect that if in Ukraine the regime was truly authoritarian, as described by many analysts, it would have responded to the challenge of the Euromaidan similarly to how Asad responded to the Syrian uprising, that is: with severe and more or less systematic repression. However, how Shabiha and Titushki were deployed demonstrates that the regime in Ukraine was not truly authoritarian. The major flaw in the regime was that it did not believe in its own durability.

Shabiha in Syria

The Shabiha who came to prominence in March 2011 started as Popular Committees – volunteer vigilante groups originating in Latakia and Homs, who wanted to keep their neighbourhoods free from anti-government protestors. Not unlike Titushki in Ukraine, they consisted of volunteers “who were often unemployed young men” and were initially armed with basic equipment such as sticks. Similarly to Titushki, the motivations to join these Popular Committees and then Shabiha varied widely. Nakkash documented motivations ranging from pragmatic-economic concerns to strong feelings of hostility towards the Sunni community.

However, as Asad’s regime was much more cohesive and held strong expectations about its own durability compared to Yanukovych’s regime, shabiha became one of the key elements of Asad’s strategy to salvage the regime. As Michael Kerr argues, the regime’s “civil war strategy was simply to survive, militarily, at any cost”.

Thus, throughout the province of Homs at least, Shabiha quickly came to be used strategically and systematically by Mukhabarat (security service) to prevent anti-regime mobilisation throughout spring to summer 2011. They were involved in killing protestors from the start, such as on 26 and 27 of March 2011 in Latakia and Baniyas. It was reported that Shabiha were numerous numbering 10,000. Shabiha later morphed into “armed paramilitary group or militia with links to the army, the secret service or the Ba’ath Party”.

Families gathered around bodies of victims killed by violence that, according to anti-regime activists, was carried out by government forces in Tremseh, Syria (Photo credit: AP)

In contrast to Titushki, Shabiha came to be strongly identified with the state in Syria. Lund, for example, writes on shabiha formations as being directly sanctioned and legitimised by the state when the protests began in March 2011: “the state encouraged the formation of local gangs, often composed of Alawis or other minority groups that felt threatened by the Sunni-dominated uprising”. Not only that, Shabiha came to be identified with the wealthy business owners in the local communities. Nakkash writes on a proud owner of a real estate business, in charge of about 200 Shabiha, who stated that “they “should be thankful for what I am doing”.

As the protests evolved into an insurgency, Asad’s regime mobilised a vast array of minorities, such as Christians and Shi’a, into Shabiha militias. The sheer diversity of pro-regime militia movement and the advent of the “National Defence Forces” drawing on shabiha demonstrated that, through a systematic and open recruitment and deployment of Shabiha, the regime created strong and durable expectations about itself.

Titushki in Ukraine

The use of Titushki in Ukraine demonstrated a highly unsystematic and reactive nature of Yanukovych’s regime. As mentioned above, Titushki were groups of young men, reportedly hired by the government to disperse Euromaidan protests. They were named after Vadym Titushko, a professional athlete, who was hired to and eventually prosecuted for attacking journalists in Bela Tserkva, near Kyiv, in May 2013.

Titushki were often members of local boxing and fight clubs, and it was reported that coaches and entire clubs participated in the attacks on the Euromaidan, especially in Kyiv. Titushki not only dispersed protestors but also damaged their equipment and vehicles. Like their Syrian counterparts, there were those who held strong Anti-Maidan convictions and considered Euromaidan protestors to be “traitors and hooligans”.

Vadym Titushko in Kyiv, 18 May 2013 (Photo credit: Umoloda)

Here however the similarities between Shabiha and Titushki end and reveal the fatal flaws in Yanukovych’s regime. The major flaw of the regime was the lack of belief in its own durability. Unlike in Syria, where Shabiha came to consist of a broad variety of minorities, Titushki in Ukraine were groups of young unemployed people who were easily coopted due to their lack of employment. Reports claimed that titushki were being paid for attacking Euromaidan protestors because many of them were unemployed. According to these reports, some were paid 100 US dollars per day, with an additional fare for beatings.

In Ukrainian regions, such as Kharkiv region, Titushki were deployed to intimidate protestors rather than kill them, which signified that the regime seriously questioned its repressive capacity. Cataloguing of Euromaidan protests using opposition and pro-government press in Kharkiv and Donetsk cities indicates that the deployment of Titushki was highly unsystematic compared to what was taking place in Syria. In Kharkiv, half of the Euromaidan protests were followed by Titushki attacks; in Donetsk, this number was even less.

If in Syria, the attacks were deadly from the start, in Ukrainian cities, followed a gradually more violent trajectory, which however never became systematically deadly: in Kharkiv, for example, first, Titushki attacked property of the Euromaidan protestors, then the groups of “unknowns” – a label which often described Titushki – attacked individual organisers, and then they began attacking entire groups of protestors using more sophisticated equipment. In Donetsk, most Euromaidan protests were followed by verbal attacks and highly unsystematic violence by Titushki. All this was taking place before the Titushki attacks in Ukrainian regions suddenly tapered off in late February 2014, just before Yanukovych’s flight. Additionally, Titushki were not as well-equipped as their Syrian counterparts.

Finally, as if to demonstrate that the regime was afraid of itself and unsure of its own survival, it is impossible to trace with certainty who hired Titushki at the regional level. In Kharkiv city, there was only indirect evidence implicating the incumbent supporters of Yanukovych, the mayor Hennadiy Kernes and the governor Mykhailo Dobkin. For example, they issued a number of ambiguous statements, endorsing Titushki, but there is no systematic evidence that they hired them. Only after the “Russian Spring” protests were in full swing, the Ministry of the Interior of Ukraine released some evidence that titushki were hired by a local oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko. This was after Kurchenko fled Ukraine.

Conclusion

In this article, I have argued that if an authoritarian regime is truly authoritarian, one of the elements of political protest control, such as the use of armed civilians, should be systematic, violent and clearly linked to the state. Through the comparison between the use of Shabiha in Syria and Titushki in Ukraine, I have demonstrated the true nature of Yanukovych’s rule and questioned whether it was truly authoritarian. More specifically, I have shown that the highly unsystematic deployment of Titushki and their unclear links with the state actors demonstrate that Yanukovych’s regime either did not believe in its own viability or failed to implement the lessons of the Orange Revolution. In this way, one can characterise Ukraine as a highly fluid polity where no regime can truly stabilise itself.

Daria is a PhD student at King’s College London. Her research focuses on violence and the unfolding of conflict across several regions in eastern Ukraine, 2013 – 2014. She also leads one of the Causes of War seminars in the War Studies Department. Prior to joining King’s, she worked as a teacher. She graduated with a degree in History from the University of Cambridge in 2011. Her broader interests include European history, war studies, and interdisciplinary methods.

[1] While the authoritarian nature of Bashar al-Asad is not in doubt, we can consider Viktor Yanukovych’s regime as a regime with authoritarian tendencies. Hafez sought to build an authoritarian state – Kerr, intro 10, History of autocratic rule there 174, adaptable autocrats

[2] I used the standardised spelling of Asad, instead of Assad, as found in Kerr, M. and Larkin, C. (eds) The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2015).

[3] Euromaidan was at first a political protest against Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign the EU Association Agreement. It later evolved into a general protest against Yanukovych’s government demanding its resignation.

 

Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Donbas Conflict in Ukraine

by Daria Platonova

5 June 2019

Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskiy was elected President of Ukraine in May 2019 (The National Interest)

Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s[1] election to the presidency in Ukraine[2] has taken everyone by surprise. A former comedy actor and producer, Zelenskiy is widely seen as someone “outside the system,” despite having connections to the Ukrainian oligarchs. In the few interviews that he granted prior to the election, he acknowledged that the conflict in the Donbas is the most serious problem facing Ukraine. In this article, I discuss Zelenskiy’s views on how to resolve the conflict and his options.

During the presidential campaign, Zelenskiy appealed to the softer, compassionate side of his voters and detractors by saying that he did not want Ukrainians to continue dying in the Donbas, therefore a ceasefire and the return of all prisoners of war to Ukraine is essential. In the televised debate with the outgoing President Petro Poroshenko on 19 April 2019, he blamed Poroshenko for the massive loss of life in Iloviask (August 2014) and Debaltseve (February 2015), when the Ukrainian forces were repulsed by the separatist and Russian state forces. In his inauguration speech on 20 May, Zelenskiy reiterated these ideas. It can be argued that this appeal to the “war weariness” of Ukrainians has won Zelenskiy so many votes, especially in the east.

In relation to more concrete proposals, Zelenskiy’s position has been  more vague. Contrary to the political premise of the Minsk Agreements, Zelenskiy has ruled out an autonomous status for the separatist republics within Ukraine. He argues that Ukraine should re-establish its sovereignty over the entire territory of the Donbas and Crimea, he supports the idea of a peacekeeping force in the Donbas, and proposes “reformatting” the Minsk Agreements, which presupposes the inclusion of the US and Great Britain in the negotiations. To Ukrainian commentators, these proposals are not radically different from those made by the previous administration. Moreover, they are somewhat contradictory, in that, on one hand, Zelenskiy wants a dialogue with Russia and the separatists and, on the other, he wants to “fight until the end” to regain what belongs to Ukraine.

Several developments have taken place since Zelenskiy’s victory. His stance towards Russia has somewhat hardened. For example, he reacted vitriolically towards Vladimir Putin’s decree to simplify the issuance of Russian passports to the residents of separatist-controlled parts of Ukraine, pointing out flaws in the current Russian regime. As of now, he refuses to launch direct talks with Russia. At the same time, it is significant that, despite the pressure from international representatives, such as the US Special Representative in Ukraine Kurt Volker, Zelenskiy has not spoken of complete disarmament and elimination of the local separatist administrations in Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. He however continues to believe that the separatists are “not independent actors”.

When considering Zelenskiy’s options as to resolving the conflict, we must take into account that, despite the seeming simplicity of how the conflict has been reported (low-intensity fighting, both Russia and Ukraine alternately depicted as aggressors and fighters for sovereignty/freedom), the developments in and around the conflict zones have reached an unprecedented complexity. The rebellious republics have amassed significant resources – even if many are imported from Russia, especially military hardware – and demonstrated considerable legislative and state-building capacity. They are now deeply entrenched, while the republics’ people are not at all eager to be integrated back into Ukraine.[3] The republics’ leaders are highly sceptical about Zelenskiy’s proposals. If we recall the situation back in May 2014 when “launching a direct dialogue with the separatists” was one of Poroshenko’s campaign promises, and he failed to follow it through, even if the nascent break away states were still in their infancy and their military capacity was small, we can expect that  Zelenskiy is unlikely to suddenly start talking to the separatists directly.

Secondly, the understanding of how to follow the Minsk Agreements and whether they actually work differs between Russia and Ukraine. One suspects that both sides misinterpret the agreements deliberately because they see to take advantage of the current situation and promote their own agendas. All these years, Russia has kept insisting – as do the separatist leaders – that Ukraine must stop its “punitive operation,” in the Donbas and grant it a special status within Ukraine. This is Russia’s main objective. Ukraine insists that Russia must stop supporting the republics militarily and free the territories of the Donbas. Amid the flurry of diplomatic talks at many levels along these lines, both sides continue attacking each other positions and people continue to die. It seems that, for Ukraine under Poroshenko, the Donbas conflict turned into an opportunity to build a powerful military force and disassociate itself from Russia completely. Therefore, the separatists had a point when they argued that Poroshenko sought to use the conflict to “salvage his regime”. For Russia, the Donbas is a military and state-building project, a testing ground for new military technology and an attempt to exert its influence on the politics in Ukraine. Ukrainians therefore are right when they say that Putin is using the conflict to keep up his regime.

Zelenskiy therefore is likely to continue relying on diplomatic talks. Perhaps, he would be less insistent on the major international players’ roles in resolving the conflict as Poroshenko was. Zelenskiy’s most recent decision to put the conflict resolution to an all-Ukrainian referendum indicates a move in this direction. In line with the “human side” of his campaign promises, he would try to contain the violence in the conflict zone and avoid a full-fledged war with Russia. When Poroshenko became president in 2014, straight after his victory, the most vicious fighting followed in Donetsk Airport. According to some reports, Poroshenko ordered an offensive aimed at retaking the airport, even before he was sworn. He then was caught up in the unenviable cycle of “action-response,” as the separatists built their armies and Russia provided them with support. Zelenskiy is much luckier in this respect in that no significant fighting followed his victory. He is therefore unlikely to suddenly ramp up the military effort in the Donbas.

Daria is a PhD student at King’s College London. Her research focuses on the political protests and conflict in eastern Ukraine, 2013 – 2014. She led one of the Causes of War seminars in the War Studies Department in 2017. Prior to joining King’s, she worked as a teacher. She graduated with a degree in History from the University of Cambridge in 2011. Her broader interests include European history, war studies, and interdisciplinary methods.

[1] The spelling is consistent with the English spelling as it appears in Kyiv Post, the major English-language news and opinion outlet in Ukraine.

[2] Zelenskiy won a landslide victory across the majority of Ukrainian regions, except in Lviv in the West of Ukraine, with 73.22% of the vote. Petro Poroshenko won 24.45%.

[3] See also comments on Vkontakte social media pages and my sporadic conversations with some people from Donetsk online.

Peacekeepers in the Donbas: Pro et Contra

by Daria Platonova

31 May 2019

UN Peacekeeping in Donbas? (European Council on Foreign Relations)

The conflict between the Ukrainian government and Russia-backed separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk[1] in the east of Ukraine (known as “the Donbas” or “Donbass” in Russian) has been raging since 2014. It started locally, when numerous anti-government protests in the Donbas were sparked by the radical changes of government in Kyiv in February 2014. In April 2014, the protests morphed into an insurgency, with the help of Russian military reserve officers, military intelligence operatives, and various non-state actors. In response, the Ukrainian government launched several offensives, some of which were successful, but, later, it was repeatedly repulsed by the separatist and Russian state forces. Since 2015, the “contact line,” that is the border between the government-controlled and separatist-controlled territories has calcified, in that no side has been making any significant territorial gains. The Ukrainian and separatist forces continue attacking each other’s positions; each side reports failed ceasefires almost every day. The conflict has claimed over 10,000 lives, and currently, there is no conflict resolution plan on which all parties would agree.

This article aims to discuss the proposals for the peacekeeping mission in the Donbas and the views of the separatist leaders and the people living in the republics on this mission. The main points of contention between the different sides making the proposals – Russia, Ukraine, the U.S. and EU – seem simple: firstly, the sides have conflicting views on where the peacekeepers should be deployed and, secondly, whether they should facilitate ceasefire or be deployed after an effective and long-lasting ceasefire has been established. The local people and former and current separatist leaders describe Russian and Ukrainian proposals as the “Serbian Krajina” scenario.

According to the (now former) Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s proposal first voiced in 2015, the peacekeepers’ mandate should be broad and cover the entire territory of the Donbas. Poroshenko hoped that the peacekeepers would force Russia to remove its troops from the Donbas, disarm the republics’ forces, and allow Ukraine to restore control over its border with Russia. Russian personnel must not be part of the mission. Overall, Poroshenko pinned many hopes on the peacekeepers, because currently a complete disarmament desired by Ukraine is almost impossible. Both Ukrainian and Russia-backed forces continue blaming each other for violating the ceasefires.

In September 2017, the Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed his own idea for the peacekeeping mission. According to him, peacekeepers should be deployed to monitor only the contact line between the government-controlled and separatist-controlled territories, to ensure the safety of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) conflict monitoring mission. The peacekeeping mission must be deployed after the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the contact line and the disengagement of the opposing forces, and the republics’ leaders must participate actively in the establishment of the mission. Further, according to Putin’s proposal, the peacekeepers must not come from countries hostile to Russia. The Ukrainian government interprets the Russian proposals as an attempt to “freeze” the conflict in that they seek to prevent Ukraine from gaining complete control over the territory to assert its sovereignty.

One rendering of the military situation in eastern Ukraine as of 2016 – 2017, showing Russia-induced violations of ceasefire (Lugansk News Today)

To many (such as the U.S. Special Representative in Ukraine Kurt Volker), a peacekeeping mission is the surest way forward in resolving the conflict, because, in theory, it allows to enforce a lasting ceasefire and follow it through with the implementation of the political premise of the Minsk Agreements. However, this is complicated by the potential “veto playing” role of the separatist leaders, the local people in the Donbas, and some Russians who are still influential among the people in the Donbas. Rather than accepting everything Russia is saying, as one might expect, these current and former parties to the conflict are very sceptical about both Poroshenko’s and Putin’s proposals.

To gauge separatists’ opinions on the peacekeeping mission, I selected two major separatist news and opinion outlets, Rusvesna and Newsfront, and surveyed several articles under the tag “Peacekeepers in The Donbas” (Миротворцы на Донбассе).  I also surveyed the opinions of a group of local people from Donetsk via the Russian-language social media platform Vkontakte. Finally, I consulted Vkontakte online archive. Please note most weblinks have since been taken offline.

The leaders of Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR or DNR), such as Denis Pushilin, argue that Poroshenko wants to “conquer and subdue” the Donbas using the peacekeeping mission. He also says that he would not allow any peacekeeping mission on the Donbas unless agreed with the local people. This is consistent with how former leaders of the separatist forces have described the peacekeeping plans proposed by Putin and Poroshenko. They argue that both presidents follow the “Serbian Krajina” scenario to salvage their “failing” regimes. The commander of Vostok, one of the biggest and most famous battalions, Aleksandr Khodakovsky (now in Russia) believes that Putin is proposing such a scenario, and that everyone in the Donbas should mobilise to protect themselves. The former Donetsk People’s Republic Defence Minister Igor Strelkov (Russian citizen), who arrived in Sloviansk in April 2014 to lead the insurgent forces and currently lives in Russia, has a similar view. He labelled Putin “Slobodan Vladimirovich Yanukovich” (in reference to Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Viktor Yanukovych, the fugitive ex-president of Ukraine), arguing that Putin seeks to disengage from the Donbas as Milosevic did from the Krajina Serbs during the Croatian war of independence (1991 – 1995), while Poroshenko seeks to use the mission to prepare a military onslaught on the Donbas.

Ordinary people from Donetsk and surrounding towns, such as Makeevka and Gorlovka, expressed a variety of views. Some concurred with Pushilin and former separatist leaders that Putin and Poroshenko follow the “Serbian Krajina” scenario. They cited the example of the Operacija Oluja (Operation Storm), which led to the resounding victory of the Croatian army over Serbian Krajina, after the largely unsuccessful UN peacekeeping mission in Croatia. Some were sceptical about the idea, saying that the parties to the conflict would never agree with each other on a viable proposal, and the peacekeeping initiative would therefore be stillborn. Others supported the idea only if it led to the cessation of hostilities and the final peaceful settlement. To achieve this, they said, Russians have to be included in the peacekeeping mission. More importantly, the mission would have to be placed along the contact line separating the Ukrainian army and the republics.

When the separatist leaders and local people refer to the “Serbian Krajina” scenario,[2] what do they mean? To a certain extent, they are raising an important point. Following the outbreak of a civil conflict between the Croatian government and independence-seeking Serbian communities (Krajina including) in 1991, the UN mission in Croatia was first deployed the following year. Its purpose was to “contain violence, reduce civilian hardships, and open up space for a negotiated settlement.”[3] Hence, according to the so-called Vance Plan, the several-thousand strong UN peacekeeping mission, complete with assigned infantry battalions, was to supervise the demilitarisation of irregular units in the specially created UN Protected Areas with large minority populations. In particular, the UN Protection Force in Croatia supervised the disarmament and complete withdrawal of the Yugoslav National Army that protected the Serbs and sought to carve out large areas of Croatia for Serbian independence. According to Durch and Schear, Belgrade – and Milosevic – agreed to the mission in order to disengage from the Serbian Krajina. In fact, Belgrade maintained a relatively low-profile during the mission. Despite some success in preventing loss of life, the UN peacekeeping force could not contain sporadic hostilities between the Croatian army and Serbian local militia. In the end, the withdrawal of the Yugoslav National Army and the partial disarmament of the Serbs as well as mounting economic problems facing Serbian Krajina left the Serbs helpless in the face of a potential Croatian onslaught. The Croatian government in the meantime launched a military operation against the Serbs in 1993, which led to almost complete nullification of everything achieved by the UN. In August 1995, after an intense artillery bombardment of Knin (capital of Krajina) by Croatia in the operation known as Operation Storm, Krajina was occupied by Croatia causing a massive exodus of civilians. As Lise Howard concludes, “[The UN’s] presence in effect isolated the Croatian Serbs while enabling the Croatian government to build and train its army in preparation to retake the occupied territory…”[4]

Therefore, the people of the Donbas interpret the peacekeeping mission proposed by both Putin and Poroshenko as an attempt to completely disarm the separatist forces and then “force” the Donbas into Ukraine militarily, while giving Ukraine enough time to grow its military might. They lament Russia’s unwillingness to recognise the Donbas as an entity independent from Ukraine and provide complete protection from the Ukrainian army.

To conclude, the idea of a peacekeeping mission has been voiced in various circles. The Ukrainian government’s proposal is to establish control on the entire territory of the Donbas and not let Russia participate in the mission. By contrast, Putin’s proposals include vesting the mission with the responsibility for the safety of the OSCE and monitoring of the contact line between the government-controlled territory and the republics. The separatists themselves and ordinary people in the Donetsk People’s Republic, instead of endorsing everything Russia says, are extremely sceptical about Putin’s proposals. They argue that Putin is bent on “handing the Donbas over” to Ukraine to salvage his “failing” regime.

Daria is a PhD student at King’s College London. Her research focuses on the political protests and conflict in eastern Ukraine, 2013 – 2014. She led one of the Causes of War seminars in the War Studies Department in 2017. Prior to joining King’s, she worked as a teacher. She graduated with a degree in History from the University of Cambridge in 2011. Her broader interests include European history, war studies, and interdisciplinary methods.

[1] Ukrainian spelling is used in line with the established academic practice.

[2] This section is based on W.J.Durch and J.A.Schear, ‘Faultlines: UN Operations in the Former Yugoslavia’, in W.J.Durch, UN Peacekeeping, American Politics, and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s (New York: St. Martin’s Press), pp. 193 – 275.

[3] Ibid., p. 193.

[4] L. Howard, UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 228.