Ceasefire Goal of Russian Aid Convoy

I haven't posted on Ukraine since the end of last month when the United States successfully herded, thanks to unsupported allegations that rebels were responsible for downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the European Union into sanctioning Russia. Since then MH17 has been discarded down the memory hole, its task accomplished, and the rebels, despite a number of impressive battlefield victories, have gradually been pushed back into the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. The Ukrainian military has not punched through to the centers of the cities; the rebels still largely control the outskirts. But the junta is indiscriminately shelling the urban core of both Donetsk and Luhansk, a war crime, and in this the United States has been complicit.

Then early this week the junta shelled a hospital in Donetsk, a war crime, and narrowly missed slaughtering a maternity ward filled with expecting mothers and newborns. Andrew Kramer reported on August 10 that

In the previous strike on the hospital, on [last] Thursday, shells hit the dental ward, killing one patient, destroying a pediatric wing and sending people running into the street midway through their dental work. 

On Sunday, the explosions and flying shrapnel blew out windows in the maternity ward. Tragedy was averted only because the deputy head doctor, Marina Ovsyanik, had evacuated 52 new and expecting mothers into the basement the night before, even though one woman was already in labor. She gave birth to a healthy boy in the basement, Dr. Ovsyanik said.

At this point Putin had to act. If he did nothing the huge popular support that he has received since February's coup in Kiev would curdle on him and he would be faced with a volatile, unpredictable domestic political situation. And what should be obvious by now is that Putin doesn't like volatility and unpredictability.

Putin's solution to the problem of inaction in the face of a weaker opponent's atrocities was to send from Moscow a large aid convoy comprised of some 260 trucks loaded with food and sleeping bags and generators bound for Luhansk.

This sent the junta and its Western allies into conniptions. Since Tuesday there has a been a constant back and forth between the parties -- the International Red Cross in Geneva, Moscow, Kiev, the United States -- about which border crossing the trucks will travel to, whether the trucks will be offloaded into new vehicles, whether they will be accepted into Ukraine at all.

Once again it appears that Russia has made a shrewd move. At the very least the aid convoy has revealed that the U.S. does in fact issue diktats to the Kiev junta. According to a story, "A Russian Convoy Carrying Aid to Ukraine Is Dogged by Suspicion," by Neil MacFarquhar in yesterday's paper:

Mr. Chaly [who is Poroshenko’s deputy chief of staff] also said outright that Ukraine had accepted the aid because of pressure from its Western allies.

In initially saying that Ukraine would accept the aid, the office of President Petro O. Poroshenko announced that President Obama had supported the move and offered American aid as well. Later, the Ukrainian president’s office amended the statement to note that the United States had endorsed the plan but not offered aid. 

Not everyone agreed to acceptance. 

At a morning session of Parliament, Oleh Lyashko, a nationalist politician who has helped form several paramilitary battalions, called for Ukraine to turn back the convoy and seal the border.

In today's paper MacFarquhar updates the aid convoy situation:

The dispute over the convoy comes as Kiev is bearing down militarily on the separatist rebels, forcing many of them to retreat into the region’s two major cities, Donetsk and Luhansk, which they control. 

Shelling there and elsewhere in the region by the Ukrainian forces has taken a heavy toll on civilians, with the death toll in the war doubling in the last week to more than 2,000, the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported on Wednesday. 

Conditions in Luhansk, under siege by Ukrainian government forces, are particularly dire. City officials said Tuesday that its 250,000 residents had been living without power, water or a sewage system since Aug. 3, and that only essential food was available.

Nevertheless, both Kiev and its Western allies have warned that the Russian aid convoy was either a cynical ploy to get much-needed military assistance to rebel fighters in Luhansk, who are running low on ammunition, or, in the worst case, the first step in an invasion of southeastern Ukraine. 

***

Presuming the convoy does end up at the Shebekino crossing in Kharkiv, there were still issues to be resolved. Both Russia and Ukraine said they were expecting the Red Cross to handle the logistics of the delivery, but officials from the group said that the two governments had to agree first on the inspection of the goods and their transfer — if indeed they are transferred — to other vehicles for transport to Luhansk. 

“The Russians and the Ukrainians have not agreed on the first step,” Pascal Cuttat, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Moscow, said in an interview. Once the aid material had been inspected and cleared for entry into Ukraine, the Red Cross could take responsibility for it, he said. 

That could take time, depending on whether the inspection was by X-ray or by hand. Agreement had to be reached on questions like whether in a grain shipment every bag would be inspected, he said. 

But the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, had already rejected the idea of unloading the goods as impractical and too costly.

Now, according to a story filed today by Andrew Roth, "Russian Convoy Rolling Again Toward Ukraine," the aid caravan appears to be headed to the rebel-held crossing at Izvarino:

The convoy itself was headed to the border post at the Ukrainian town of Izvarino, just southeast of the beleaguered eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, diplomats said. A New York Times reporter following the long line of vehicles said they had turned off the main north-south highway in Russia toward that crossing, which is not under Ukrainian government control. 

Initially the two sides had agreed that the goods would cross farther north in a location fully under the control of Ukraine. But the apparent change of destination, said one diplomat, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to comment publicly, meant that the previous agreement would have to be reworked. 

That is only one of the outstanding issues, diplomats said. It appeared that the Russian trucks would be allowed to cross into Ukraine, for example, but it was not clear who would drive them and where exactly they would go in or around Luhansk.

This prompted threats threats threats from the junta that force would be used to stop the convoy if it attempted to enter Ukraine:

Andriy Lysenko, a Ukrainian military spokesman, said on Thursday that Kiev had no precise information on the current whereabouts of the Russian aid convoy or where it might try to enter Ukraine. 

He warned that Ukraine would use “all forces available” to block the Russian trucks if they tried to enter Ukrainian territory without being checked first by border guards and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

“This convoy has to be checked to see what cargo it is carrying. This has to be controlled by Ukrainian border guards,” Mr. Lysenko told a news conference in Kiev. Red Cross representatives, he added, also “need to learn the exact contents of this cargo.” 

He said Ukraine hoped that Russia “will adhere to all these requests and will not violate Ukrainian law.” Asked what would happen if it did not, he said: “In this case the movement of the convoy will be blocked with all the forces available.”

So there you have it. The junta is on record. All available force will be used against the humanitarian aid convoy if it crosses the rebel-held border. This will give Putin the casus belli he seems to need. The U.S. and its feckless European allies are in a difficult spot. They can't crank up their shrill media monopoly smoke-screen machine over Russia providing relief for civilians in obvious crisis; the West's partisan prestige press organs acknowledge the perilous situation for residents who have not been able to flee Donetsk and Luhansk.

If and when the junta attacks the Russian aid convoy, the thinking in Moscow must be, the West will realize the dangerous offspring they have spawned in Kiev and press for a ceasefire. Even the force-addicted Israelis have agreed to a ceasefire.