The Fate of The DNR/LNR "Republics"

[Boethius]

An article suggesting the LNR/DNR cannot survive as independent "republics".


http://medium.com/@Hromadske/ukraine-separatist-republics-wont-survive-on-their-own-d6c6f10ab741


I tend to agree, but they could become a no man's land for criminals.

[AkMike]

I tend to agree, but they could become a no man's land for criminals.

 More so than now? 

 Even though 'annexed' by Russia about 20% of the population hasn't been paid yet.  Times aren't good there and will be worse in the future. Eastern area will follow suit as the 'tit runs dry' .

[lordtiberius]

Its like looking for one honest man living in Soddom and Gomorrah

[AkMike]

Donbas caught up in protests because of poverty and hunger
2014/11/18 • War in the Donbas EUROMAIDAN PRESS

A wave of social protests caught Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, which are being controlled by illegal armed formations. In Yenakiyevo mothers demanded social support for children, and in Sverdlovsk the popular assembly announced that 64 people had died of hunger. According to local volunteer, there is enough food in stores, however the people have no money to buy it.

Young mothers, pensioners, women who take care of children or disabled parents – these are the main participants of social protests in the cities of Donbas which are being controlled by pro-Russian mercenaries. These protests started throughout the past few days. People call them ‘hungry protests’ or ‘women’s rebellions.’ Women and children came forth, as they are convinced that pro-Russian mercenaries will not shoot at them.

Donetsk volunteer from civil organization Responsible Citizens Enrique Mendez says that while in Donetsk people receive aid from Rinat Akhmetov’s fund and at a small number of distribution points for Russian humanitarian aid, in small towns of Donbas the situation is much worse.

“It seems they managed to solve the problem with food distribution at a mass scale. Akhmetov’s Fund helped a lot. I live next to a distribution point of food packages from the humanitarian headquarters of this fund, I see the gigantic lines there each day, so really, a big number of people get this assistance. But there are small towns like Torez, Shakhtarsk, which this assistance does not reach. This problem is much worse. To be honest, I don’t understand very well how the humanitarian assistance from Russia is distributed,” the volunteer says.

Journalist: in Chervonopartyzansk 64 people dies of hunger

The main reason for social protests is the lack of social support, pensions, salaries the representatives of ‘LNR’ and ‘DNR’ had promised after the Ukrainian side suspended them, and hunger.

According to a Luhansk journalist, the popular assembly in Chervonopartyzansk on November 16 announced that 64 people had died of hunger, the oldest person was 95 years old. According to eyewitnesses, the so-called ‘commissioner’ of the town promised to the citizens that they would sell the humanitarian assistance they received from Russia and the money would be given to the people.

This is not the first time such machinations happen with Russian humanitarian assistance. “Pavel Dremov, the leader of cossacks in Stakhaniv, who are subordinate to Nikolay Kozitsyn, the leader of the ‘Don Army,’ stated at a meeting that Igor Plotnitsky (‘the head of the Council of Ministers of LNR’ – ed.) manipulated humanitarian aid. Something is given out, but it is almost nothing,” said the Luhansk journalist.

The protest wave was supported in neighboring Sverdlovsk. On November 17, a mass protest started in which, according to witnesses, about 2000 people had participated. The people gathered in front of the city executive committee. According to informator.lg.ua correspondent, the separatists in Sverdlovsk, which are there called ‘rebels,’ took the people’s side and started fighting against Russian cossacks, and during the meeting, the banner Sverdlovsk is Ukraine appeared, the people asked the Russian mercenaries to leave the city.

According to informator.lg.ua journalist, deaths of hunger were also documented in Rovenky, there is information that people are hungry in Lutuhine, Bryantsy, Horlivka. The biggest threat is to elderly, sick people who have no opportunity to leave the occupied territories for free Ukraine and re-register for pensions, as the Ukrainian government demands.

The situation in Antratsyt is also difficult. This city is controlled by the so-called ‘Great Don Army.’
Women in Yenakiyevo: “How do we explain to the children that there is nothing to eat?”

On November 17, a ‘female’ social protest happen in Yenakiyevo of Donetsk oblast. The mothers came to demand social support for children to the local ‘government.’ They were indignant that in Donetsk the ‘DNR’ had issued social support, and they have nothing to feed to their children.

Putin exemplifies Chechnya

Russian President Vladimir Putin blames the Ukrainian government for creating conditions for social protests.

“Remember our tragic events in the Caucasus, even on the worst days, months and years, we can say that we never stopped financing the Chechen Republic, we issued regular pensions and social dues, as well as budget subsidies. This looked somewhat foolish at first glance but we did it on account of moral obligations to the people. This played its positive part,” stated Putin.

Donetsk journalist, blogger Denys Kazansky thinks that pro-Russian mercenaries are fully responsible for hunger and lack of social welfare.

“Poland once had Auschwitz, but Poland is not responsible for it. Kyiv had Baby Yar, where Nazis killed thousands of Jews. This is not Ukraine’s fault and the USSR was not responsible for these crimes. The same way there is not an occupied territory where government was taken over by mercenaries. They completely abolished Ukrainian laws, tore down Ukrainian flags and coat-of-arms. Accordingly, they are the only ones responsible for what is happening there,” the journalist thinks.

He is convinced that there is a threat of armed invasion of pro-Russian forces with Russia’s support and encouragement of other Ukrainian territories outside of the ones they control today, it is dangerous for the rest of the country to create a rear for them.

“When you know that you have hungry people in the rear, for which you cannot provide by yourself and you know that if you take another city, the people will be hungry there as well, because all social support will stop there, the terrorist will think: is it worth going to Zaporizhya or Kharkiv or not, because he will understand that he cannot support them either,” notes Denys Kazansky.

As such, for the first time since Holodomor in 1932-1933 and the post-war hunger of 1945-1947, there are instances of mass deaths of hunger in Ukraine.

Donetsk volunteer from civil organization Responsible Citizens Enrique Mendez emphasizes that there is enough food for sale, but the people simply ended up in a situation when the stores have everything they need, but they have no money to buy it.

He is convinced that the Ukrainian government should find an effective mechanism to pay pensions, in particular to disabled elderly people who have no physical opportunity to leave the occupied territories.
http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/11/18/donbas-caught-up-in-protests-because-of-poverty-and-hunger/

[Boethius]

This is a good piece by Chrystia Freeland.  I don't agree with everything in the article, but ignoramuses I've read online who spout about "Novorossiya" and Russians "coming home" could learn something by reading this -

While the linguistic factor is real, it is often oversimplified in several respects: Russian-speakers are by no means all pro-Putin or secessionist; Russian- and Ukrainian-speakers are geographically commingled; and virtually everyone in Ukraine has at least a passive understanding of both languages. To make matters more complicated, Russian is the first language of many ethnic Ukrainians, who are 78 percent of the population (but even that category is blurry, because many people in Ukraine have both Ukrainian and Russian roots). President Petro Poroshenko is an example — he always understood Ukrainian, but learned to speak it only in 1996, after being elected to Parliament; and Russian remains the domestic language of the Poroshenko family. The same is true in the home of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's prime minister. The best literary account of the Maidan uprising to date was written in Russian: Ukraine Diaries, by Andrey Kurkov, the Russian-born, ethnic Russian novelist, who lives in Kyiv.

In short, being a Russian-speaker in Ukraine does not automatically imply a yearning for subordination to the Kremlin any more than speaking English in Ireland or Scotland means support for a political union with England. As Kurkov writes in his Diaries: “I am a Russian myself, after all, an ethnically Russian citizen of Ukraine. But I am not 'a Russian,' because I have nothing in common with Russia and its politics. I do not have Russian citizenship and I do not want it.”
 
That said, it's true that people on both sides of the political divide have tried to declare their allegiances through the vehicle of language. Immediately after the overthrow and self-exile of Yanukovych, radical nationalists in Parliament passed a law making Ukrainian the sole national language — a self-destructive political gesture and a gratuitous insult to a large body of the population.
 
However, the contentious language bill was never signed into law by the acting president. Many civic-minded citizens also resisted such polarizing moves. As though to make amends for Parliament's action, within 72 hours the people of Lviv, the capital of the Ukrainian-speaking west, held a Russian-speaking day, in which the whole city made a symbolic point of shifting to the country's other language.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2015/myukraine

[Anotherkiwi]

This is a good piece by Chrystia Freeland.  I don't agree with everything in the article, but ignoramuses I've read online who spout about "Novorossiya" and Russians "coming home" could learn something by reading this -

However, the contentious language bill was never signed into law by the acting president. Many civic-minded citizens also resisted such polarizing moves. As though to make amends for Parliament's action, within 72 hours the people of Lviv, the capital of the Ukrainian-speaking west, held a Russian-speaking day, in which the whole city made a symbolic point of shifting to the country's other language.

Something I hadn't heard of before now, and something conveniently never mentioned by the Novorossiya advocates on this forum.

[Larry1]

Something I hadn't heard of before now, and something conveniently never mentioned by the Novorossiya advocates on this forum.

or any other

[Boethius]

Something I hadn't heard of before now, and something conveniently never mentioned by the Novorossiya advocates on this forum.

I think I may have posted this at the time.

 

[JayH]

This is a good piece by Chrystia Freeland.  I don't agree with everything in the article, but ignoramuses I've read online who spout about "Novorossiya" and Russians "coming home" could learn something by reading this -

http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2015/myukraine

It was a common mistake of western media last year who persisted in ignorant assumptions based on the language issue when trying to sort out what was happening in Ukraine last year.
The quoted piece gets it right.

Of course--the distortion promoted by Kremlin propaganda only serves to promote confusion in the west- and in Russia itself.What should never be forgotten -- Putin is attempting to control Ukraine-or destroy it and if it means destroying it to get control-that does not bother Putin.

[Anotherkiwi]

I think I may have posted this at the time.

Thanks Boe.

[Welder]

http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2015/myukraine

Thanks Boe, it is a very well written piece.

[Belvis]

I'll add my 5 cents to discussion about  linguistic factor for the conflict. I told before and repeat it now that issue of  language was not decisive, however it plays.  From Canada or US remote point of observation this is not a problem at all. Well, we also would scratch a head if we see a quarrel in Canada between English-speaking and French-speaking people.
   The conflict was ignited because of different civilization choice Ukrainians had to make after the coup in Kiev.  Now de-facto the people at Donbass and in Ukraine speak different languages, celebrate different holidays, read different books, watch different movies,  have different heroes and different history. 
    Will new born respublics survive? Yes, mentality of population has changed after civil war and thousands of killed at both sides. Men at Donbass begin to feel themselves in minds beyond of Ukraine, never was before, even a year ago. Some pictures from celebrations 9-11 May in Donetsk:

Military parade on 9 May in Donetsk. Rainy day, but 20-thousand crowd greeted cheerfully their regular army:



On 11-th May, Independence Day in Donetsk:

[lordtiberius]

Belvis, my family is from Southern and Eastern Ukraine.  They are Ukrainian not Russian.  What you wrote is not a lie but it is not true.  My family has no desire to join Russia.

[Belvis]

Belvis, my family is from Southern and Eastern Ukraine.  They are Ukrainian not Russian.  What you wrote is not a lie but it is not true.  My family has no desire to join Russia.

So what? You wanna me to strike your family off the list of pro-Russian separatists?
OK, done.

PS. And remember, any civil war has two sides. Civil - because of the same citizenships. War - because they failed to coordinate their desires by other means.

[Boethius]

From Canada or US remote point of observation this is not a problem at all. Well, we also would scratch a head if we see a quarrel in Canada between English-speaking and French-speaking people.

No, it is not in Canada or the U.S. that people assume it is a quarrel about language.  I have said from Day 1 that language was not the issue.  But there are posters, both here and elsewhere, who have stated this was a major issue.

As for Canada, there is no quarrel between anglophones and francophones.  The sovereignty issue is not about language.  But note the difference.  In Quebec, two referendums and endless debate.  But no one has taken up arms.

The conflict was ignited because of different civilization choice Ukrainians had to make after the coup in Kiev.  Now de-facto the people at Donbass and in Ukraine speak different languages, celebrate different holidays, read different books, watch different movies,  have different heroes and different history. 

It was ignited not because of a different civilization class, but as a grab for power (and money).

Will new born respublics survive? Yes, mentality of population has changed after civil war and thousands of killed at both sides. Men at Donbass begin to feel themselves in minds beyond of Ukraine, never was before, even a year ago.

LOL.  Right.  Their factories are destroyed, and most of their workers are involved in a dying industry, with mines that are a depleting resource.

[lordtiberius]

So what? You wanna me to strike your family off the list of pro-Russian separatists?
OK, done.

PS. And remember, any civil war has two sides. Civil - because of the same citizenships. War - because they failed to coordinate their desires by other means.

The vast majority of people LIVING in the disputed lands are Ukrainian.  Do you deny that?

  if ever there was an argument against gun control, the Russian invasion of Ukraine undermines

[Anotherkiwi]

Military parade on 9 May in Donetsk. Rainy day, but 20-thousand crowd greeted cheerfully their regular army:

Wow!  20,000 people celebrated - out of a population of well over a million.  That number is not even within a poll's margin of error, let alone constituting any sort of affirmation of the new republic.

[fathertime]

Wow!  20,000 people celebrated - out of a population of well over a million.  That number is not even within a poll's margin of error, let alone constituting any sort of affirmation of the new republic.

Are there a million people living there currently?  Not everybody who supports is going to come to a parade, especially on a miserable day.  How many of the million *if there are that many currently* are young children or very elderly/sick/disabled?   
How many soldiers are participating in the parade itself?

20,000 isn't a bad showing. 


Fathertime!   

[lordtiberius]

20,000 isn't a bad showing. 


Fathertime!   

I would say its pretty good.

[jone]

I don't doubt that there is sentiment beyond Ukraine.  However, Donetsk is a dependent of Ukraine.  The people are hoping for pensions from Ukraine. 

This is not and never was a civil war.  It was a war fought generally by mercenaries hired by Russia against a native army. 

The alleged country has no outside contact, except through Russia and no country will do business with it.  It is not Krim which was brought into Russia.  It is more like Transnisteria, a country within a country.  I would be interested to know how many of the different organizations celebrating were actually from Ukraine and how many were from Russia. 

[Boethius]

Good article on how the educated are leaving the DNR/LNR, leaving behind criminals, the elderly, and dullards.  Note, the majority of these Russian speakers flee West, not East, contrary to all the propaganda pro Russian conspiracists would have you believe   -

Alesya Bolot worked for a contemporary arts foundation that converted an abandoned factory into a mecca for young and bright people with daring ideas. Vibrant and cosmopolitan, the 27-year-old would not look out of place in a gallery in New York.

She was at the forefront of the avant-garde arts scene in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk when a pro-Russian insurgency took over and upended her life. When a rebel-controlled local television station portrayed creative people like her as the enemy, she decided it was time to flee.
"Everything we did ran counter to their ideology," she says, "the fact that we worked with foreign artists, the fact that we advocated for a plurality of opinions."


More than 2.2 million people have fled their homes in eastern Ukraine since the war between government forces and Russia-backed separatists began in April last year, according to the United Nations, some to neighboring Russia, but about 1.3 million to Ukrainian regions under government control.


Educated, middle-class people like Bolot, whose arts center was turned into a rebel training camp and prison, represent a big chunk of those who opt for Ukraine-controlled areas, especially the capital — a serious brain drain for Ukraine's east. There are so many of them in Kiev, the displaced say, that it often feels like their city has moved with them.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3119475/Educated-Ukrainians-flee-east-Ukraine-new-lives-Kiev.html

[Boethius]

The treatment journalists can expect in the DNR/LNR

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-crisis-violent-arrest-of-leading-russian-reporter-fuels-fears-for-journalists-covering-the-conflict-10327176.html

[Rick4G]

Coup?
people who use that word to describe the grass roots popular uprising against a government that no longer followed the rule of law nor did the will of the people that elected them in a flawed election are nothing more than mindwashed moskali who forget that
after fleecing Ukraine for billions and taking over 8.1 billion with him, Yanukovych left on his own, abandoning his post.

With the exception of a handful of people, the Rada is essentially the same as it was before the uprising.

One cant have a civil war when there is an outside force stating it and feeding it.  When the government buildings were taken over it wast by locals but by Russians.  There wasnt enough other troublemakers to sustain it.  It took criminals and thugs willing to loot their own country for personal gain and promises of power positions and enough Russian  sabatours that this whole "novorusiya" idea ever started.

Now, it has become a wasteland of little water and electricity,  criminal gangs run free and girls wonder when their luck wll run out and they will be raped.  Now that the fighting has been reduced on the front lines, the killing is between rival factions jostling for power and trying to establish their piece of turf.  Neither will ever be legitimate republics in any stretch of the word.

[mendeleyev]

Thanks for posting that article, Bo. I have not returned to that area for some time due to those conditions.

[Boethius]

Ukraine may be testing trial balloons on setting the DNR/LNR loose.

The "leaders" of the regions have, in the past, stated they do not want independence but to either have a de facto veto in Kyiv, or to join Russia.  Russia doesn't want this region, which will cost billions to rebuild. 

I have always thought Kyiv should cut them loose.  The issue will be whether that can be achieved through diplomatic negotiation, or whether the terrorists will continue to bomb Ukraine in order to increase their landholdings.

Ukraine expert Alexander Motyl has also advocated for DNR/LNR independence from Day 1, claiming they are a cancer on the rest of Ukraine.

Is Ukrainian public opinion turning toward getting rid of the Russian-occupied Donbas enclave?

The evidence is beginning to look persuasive. A year ago, the suggestion that Ukraine would be better off without the Russian-occupied bits of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces provoked cries of treason. No more. The view has become legitimate, and it may even be winning the day.

A May 2015 public opinion survey by the Sofia Center for Social Research showed that 61.8 percent of Ukrainians would be willing to give up the occupied territories in exchange for peace. Only 22.9 percent supported continuing military operations until the region’s full liberation. (The survey was not conducted in Crimea or the occupied territories.)

My own conversations—with experts, family members, friends, and colleagues—in June and July in Ukraine revealed only one die-hard supporter of Ukraine’s holding on to the enclave at all costs: a young television journalist. Indeed, I was struck by the prevailing view: people were tired of war, shocked and saddened by the killing and dying, and repulsed by the Russian separatists and their many supporters within the enclave’s population. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the Ukrainians I spoke to felt zero loyalty to it.

Now two highly authoritative voices have joined the growing chorus of anti-enclave sentiments.

On August 3rd, Volodymyr Lanovyy, the liberal economist who served as vice prime minister and minister of the economy in 1992, argued that, by maintaining economic relations with the enclave, Kyiv was effectively financing the enemy that was daily killing its soldiers. According to Lanovyy: “At present, Crimea and the Donetsk-Luhansk enclave have de facto stopped being internal regions of Ukraine.” Given that Russia controls the border, the “occupied lands of Crimea and the Donbas have provisionally entered the political and economic space of the aggressor country”—Russia. Given also that the Ukrainian authorities hold no sway in the enclave, it follows that “all talk of trade, subsidies to the coal mines, salaries to state employees, state-funded pensions according to Ukraine’s norms are simply out of place.”

Then, on August 17th, independent Ukraine’s first president, Leonid Kravchuk, stated the following:We should finally make an important political decision. We should state that the line of demarcation in the Donbas is the provisional line of separation between the occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces and Ukraine. We [should] sever all economic and political relations with these regions controlled by the militants and Russia. They seized power by force. I believe we should give them the opportunity to administer these territories, and life will then test their talents.All talk of the fact that our people live there and that they should be helped must be removed from the order of the day. This humanism and tears in general give Ukraine nothing. Today, as a result of Russia’s influence, a cancerous growth has formed on this territory. This growth can be eliminated only by surgery and nothing else.These are strong and unambiguous words. No less important, their author is Kravchuk. Is the architect of Ukraine’s independence and the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991 speaking only for himself? Could be. But nothing is ever quite that simple in Ukraine, especially as Lanovyy served as Kravchuk’s economy minister. Are the two coordinating their messages? Are they speaking for some faction in the government?Their statements are either trial balloons or a harbinger of things to come. Either way, the enclave’s days as a cancer in Ukraine’s body may be limited.

http://worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/anti-donbas-sentiment-growing-ukraine