Unrest in Eastern Ukraine Benefits Putschists

Since last month's accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation we've been waiting for the other shoe to drop in Ukraine's industrial East. Something like the sound of a boot thudding on the floorboards is presently audible. Beginning Sunday pro-Russian demonstrators occupied government buildings throughout eastern Ukraine, principally the cities of Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkiv. The Kharkiv occupation has been rolled back by Ukrainian Interior Ministry troops, who, according to the Russians, are rife with Right Sector goons and mercenaries from the contractor formerly known as Blackwater. This is from today's story, "Ukrainian Troops Move to Reassert Control in East," by David Herszenhorn and Andrew Roth:

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, responding to the deployment of Ukrainian Interior Ministry troops, issued a stern statement accusing the Ukrainian government of embedding within its forces in eastern Ukraine both nationalist militants from the group Right Sector and private American mercenaries from a company called Greystone. 

It said the American contractors were being disguised as members of a military unit called “Falcon.” 

Academi, a private American security company affiliated with Greystone that was once known as Blackwater, notorious for its military contracting work in Iraq, issued a statement in mid-March saying its personnel were not working in Ukraine, after similar allegations surfaced in the Russian press. 

The company did not immediately respond to the statement from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In Donetsk the protesters called for the formation of an independent republic and a referendum on secession. The occupations in Lugansk and Donetsk are under siege.

The message being sent in unison from the putschists in Kiev and their Western benefactors is that this outbreak in the East is from Russian orchestration:

While widely regarded as political theater that is supported, if not directed, by the Kremlin, the protests could help promote what analysts say is Russia’s primary goal of destabilizing the shaky government in Kiev, preventing it from drifting further into the West’s orbit and giving Moscow leverage over the country’s future ahead of presidential elections in May. 

The turmoil in eastern Ukraine also makes it extremely difficult for the provisional government in Kiev to begin putting in place austerity measures and financial overhauls required by the International Monetary Fund as a condition for an $18 billion loan package that the country desperately needs to avert a default on its debt. 

The protesters themselves may be trying to provoke a violent response from Kiev, analysts say, hoping to provide the pretext for a Crimea-like military incursion in a country that Moscow considers an integral part of historical Russia.

You'll notice that in making the case for Russian string-pulling, Herszenhorn and Roth actually produce an argument that points to the putschists being the main beneficiaries of turbulence in the East. The IMF mandates, likely not only to fire up the Maidan once implementation begins but also end any hope of keeping Right Sector on the reservation, can be put off as long as there is a crisis of potential invasion from Russia.

The Gray Lady's lede unsigned editorial today, "A Familiar Script in Ukraine," repeats the same contradiction: It starts off asserting Russia's initiation of the protests but then makes a persuasive case that the Russians couldn't be behind the building seizures because they have nothing to gain and a lot to lose:

Yet [Putin] must understand that the cost of invading eastern Ukraine would be much greater than the putsch in Crimea, both in damage to Russia’s already sagging economy and in the new Cold War that would surely arise. Ukrainians would not forgive the theft of an economically critical region; NATO would be re-energized; and opposition within Russia would also grow as isolation and potential recession shut off the freedoms and prosperity Russians were learning to enjoy.

One thing we have learned is that Russia, unlike the United States, is a rational actor. Clearly Putin knows the difference between Donetsk and Sevastopol. The Crimea operation was a slam dunk. Assimilating eastern Ukraine into the Russian Federation would be no such thing. This is obvious.

No, the Russians have been consistent here. Their bargaining position is -- 1) give the regions broad autonomy, and 2) no NATO inclusion for the Ukrainian state. The putschists, holding a terrible hand, facing painful austerity and economic collapse, are taking a page from the playbook of their Western benefactors -- when you have a problem, make it bigger.

Russia, as I see it, was content to wait unlike the billionaire chocolate oligarch Petro Poroshenko is elected president next month, at which point his seized Russian factory would be on the negotiating table as part of any deal.

The putsch regime is fundamentally unstable. The neo-Nazis can only be kept on the reservation as long as the Russian bogeyman is alive and kicking. Once austerity sets in all bets are off.