Russian Aid Convoy a MacGuffin

Yesterday, Thursday, August 14, might be looked back on as the day Novorossiya died. Putin was in Yalta giving a speech to the State Duma; he said, “We will do all we can to end the conflict as soon as possible, to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine.” This was widely interpreted as Putin's capitulation. For instance, as quoted by Andrew Roth and Andrew Higgins in "Russian Convoy Draws Stern Warning From Ukraine and Stops Short of Border," Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs, says “It was indirect confirmation that Russia will not intervene.”

But then you have the reports of Russian armored personnel carriers entering Ukraine near where the Russian aid convoy now sits at a military base outside the town of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky. The junta says that Ukrainian border guards are inspecting the trucks; others within the junta deny this. This is from a recently filed story by Higgins and Roth, "Border Inspection of Russian Convoy Begins, Ukrainian Military Says":

The Ukrainian military announced Friday that border guards had begun checking the contents of a convoy of more than 250 Russian trucks said to be carrying humanitarian supplies, but other officials said the trucks had not moved from a Russian military base where they were parked and inspections had not yet begun. 

In a statement posted on the military’s Facebook page, officials said that 59 customs officers would inspect the trucks on the Russian side of the border before the convoy would be allowed to proceed to the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, currently controlled by pro-Russian separatists and suffering from shortages of food, water and electricity.

The statement said the inspectors included 41 representatives of Ukraine’s border control service and another 18 from customs.

But other Ukrainian officials said that the trucks had not moved from the Russian Army post to the border town where inspections were set to take place. The officials said that Ukraine was waiting for documents from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was in turn awaiting documents from Moscow.

I have been of the opinion that the fate of this aid convoy will tell us a lot about the future of Novorossiya. If the junta allows it across the border and it rumbles on into Luhansk without an incident, offloads its cargo of cereal and sleeping bags with a temporary lull in the shelling and then returns to Moscow, Kiev will have won and Putin will have clearly telegraphed that the rebellion is over.

If, however, the junta, which is anarchic and prone to enormous gaffes, fucks up and escalates its conflict with Russia, as it did in a bellicose response to Putin's pacific Crimea speech, by perhaps shelling the convoy, mistakenly or not, or seizing it, then, well, it is hard to say.

But more and more the Russia's humanitarian aid caravan seems to be a classic MacGuffin, a plot device going nowhere meant only to distract.

Which brings us back to yesterday. The big news was Igor Strelkov, military mastermind of the Novorossiyan forces, was reported to be seriously wounded, and then he was reported to have been replaced. The Gray Lady reported the latter:

The Ukrainian military has made steady progress in recent weeks, with Mr. Lysenko, the military spokesman, asserting on Thursday that territory controlled by the rebels had shrunk to a fifth the size of what it was earlier this year. He also said the rebel leadership faced growing disarray in its ranks, a claim that was bolstered Thursday by the resignation of Igor Strelkov, one of the top separatist leaders, as “defense minister” of a rebel enclave in Donetsk.

This was followed by a report by Colonel Cassad where he offered the opinion that Strelkov's absence was only temporary and that he would return within a week. Several commentators took this information as proof that reports of Strelkov's near-death injury and sacking were junta fabrications meant to sow discord in the rebel ranks.

Niqnaq, who has been so good on keeping everyone abreast on all aspects of the war for Novorossiya, posted a translation of Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin's interpretation of events. Dugin thinks Novorossiya has been sold out by the Kremlin. The battle now is between a crushing defeat delivered by the junta personified by "Kolomoisky with the Right Sector" backed up by neocons in the Obama administration versus an Akhmetov-led truce followed by folding the Donbass back under Kiev's wing: "The position of Akhmetov is: a truce in exchange for a United Ukraine. The position Kolomoisky is: take it all, and immediately. And tomorrow Crimea."

In any event, the situation in Luhansk is dire. A ceasefire must come shortly or there will be a great deal of death. Andrew Kramer reports from the besieged city:

Luhansk is indeed a grim place, besieged and partly abandoned, with no electricity or running water, where hospitals are packed and the streets are patrolled by twitchy gunmen looking for spies. 

But the shelling remains the greatest danger and the most trying aspect of daily life. The separatist government reported Thursday that 40 people had been killed in the shelling in the previous 24 hours. 

On the main boulevard, rebels tear about in trucks mounted with Grad rocket launchers, moving from one site to another inside the city, to avoid the inevitable return fire. 

The Ukrainian forces are in the countryside all about, dug into positions in the open steppe. In their trenches and armored vehicles, they are all but impervious to even the most intensive rebel shelling.