NYT's Report on Crowdfunding for Novorossiya: Raising the Steel Curtain Back Up in the Western Mind

Jo Becker and Steven Lee Myers are back at work grubbing up their phony "Deep Throat" investigative reporting directed at Russia. This morning's offering has to do efforts by Novorossiya's supporters to raise money online, "Russian Groups Crowdfund the War in Ukraine." The lifeless opening three paragraphs read as follows:

WASHINGTON — The Novorossiya Humanitarian Battalion boasts on its website that it provided funds to buy a pair of binoculars used by rebels in eastern Ukraine to spot and destroy an armored vehicle. Another group, Save the Donbass, solicits donations using a photograph of a mortar shell inscribed with its web address and the names of donors. Yet another, Veche, states that its mission is to “create modern, combat-ready” military units fighting Ukraine’s central government. 

These organizations are part of an online campaign that is brazenly raising money for the war in eastern Ukraine, using common tactics that have at least tacit support from the government of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Although they often portray their mission as humanitarian, most of the groups explicitly endorse the armed insurgency and vow to help equip forces in the two regions at the center of the fighting, Donetsk and Luhansk.

An examination by The New York Times of the groups’ websites, social media postings and other records found more than a dozen groups in Russia that are raising money for the separatists, aiding a conflict that has killed more than 6,400 people and plunged Russia’s relations with the West to depths not seen since the Cold War.

It is a lengthy, soporific story, complete with online "smoking gun" screen-shots, that is bereft of the obvious: There is a lot of public support for Ukraine's pro-Russian rebels, something revealed in the recent Pew survey (Michael Gordon, "Survey Points to Challenges NATO Faces Over Russia"):

The findings on Russians’ attitudes are likely to be disappointing for NATO supporters. 

Western officials have calculated that economic sanctions will eventually erode Russian support for Mr. Putin’s decision to intervene in eastern Ukraine, but he has remained extremely popular by riding a wave of nationalism and controlling much of the news media. Most Russians are unhappy with the state of the economy, but they tend to blame not Mr. Putin but the drop in oil prices and the West’s efforts to punish Russia. 

Eighty-eight percent of Russians said they had confidence in Mr. Putin to do the right thing on international affairs, the highest rating since Pew started taking polls on the question in 2003. 

“The Ukrainian situation continues to be very good for Vladimir Putin with his own people,” Mr. Stokes said. “The Russians feel the pain of the economy, but they blame it on the West, not on Putin.”

I wish Becker and Myers would have included links to Strelkov's web site. I would make a donation. Instead, this is what we get:

The Western sanctions lists, for their part, have not kept up with the groups’ ever-changing names. Mr. Strelkov’s Novorossiya Movement, for instance, stopped soliciting funds after the European Union placed sanctions on it in February. Instead, it asked that the funds be sent to a related group, not blacklisted, called Global Initiatives, run by the movement’s chief of staff and chaired by Mr. Strelkov. 

In early May, it morphed yet again, redirecting funds to yet another related group, ANO KNB. Later in the month, a group identified by the Novorossiya Movement as its partner, Strelkov Info, wrote that because of constant blocking of its accounts, “we’ve decided to not post them in places open to all”; donors could send an email “to find out transfer details.”

One interesting aspect of the Becker and Myers piece is its description of the virtual-payment company QIWI (a blue QIWI terminal is pictured above, photo by James Hill for NYT):

But the widespread use of QIWI has created potential risks for its partner, Visa. Nearly all the fund-raising groups solicit donations through QIWI, a virtual payment company founded in 2004 and later incorporated, like many Russian companies, in Cyprus. QIWI provides consumers in Russia — and increasingly other countries — with a variety of ways to make payments online or through a network of tens of thousands of terminals that act like reverse A.T.M.s, allowing users to deposit cash and then pay participating vendors.

Users can also move money to individuals — or charitable organizations — as long as they have accounts linked to working telephone numbers. Its partnership with Visa, begun in 2012, allows customers to use a QIWI-Visa credit card to pay vendors outside QIWI’s network. 

The system has become wildly popular, used by 17 million Russians, but it has also skirted legal trouble. The company’s terminals and credit cards — along with the failure to require identification for transactions, as demanded by Russian law since last year — can be easily exploited to transfer proceeds from illicit activities, from drug dealing to tax evasion.

Once the again the Gray Lady is pumping out the column inches, making it appear as if she is documenting massive Russian corruption, and in the end there is really nothing much there.

It is illuminating in one aspect though. We are witnessing the erection of another steel curtain in the Western mind.

Gray Lady's Info War Against Novorossiya

For the most part the Gray Lady's reporting on the battle for Novorossiya has been adequate. If a person is willing to read the dispatches every day from start to finish, while maintaining an eye on other sources available on the Internet, then one can basically figure out what is going on.

The problem is in what the Gray Lady chooses to emphasize. Take the story by Andrew Kramer, "Ukraine Says Army Controls Center of a Rebel City," which I spied on the newspaper of record's web site last night before going to bed:

DONETSK, Ukraine — The Ukrainian military on Sunday moved into the heart of the separatist hub of Luhansk for the first time, officials said, chipping at one of the cornerstones of the pro-Russia rebels’ disintegrating virtual state. 

Ukrainian officials said army units had raised the national flag over a police station in central Luhansk, the eastern city that, along with Donetsk, has been a center of rebel activity and an important destination for Russian fighters and aid. Other parts of Luhansk, however, were still said to be under rebel control. 

The claim could not be independently confirmed, though a photograph of the flag and police station was circulating on social media, and the report was consistent with the progress of fighting there going into the weekend.

There is a tendency in the Western press to "stovepipe" or "front load" all bogus junta claims to the top of the story, usually constructing the headline out of said claims, and then append a demur, parenthetical "could not be independently verified." With that disclaimer the Gray Lady can argue, in a legal sense, that she is objective and neutral, when clearly she is waging an information war.

The objective is to create the impression that for Novorossiya all is lost. And I must admit it had an impact on me. I went to bed and dreamed disturbed, harrowing dreams. But all is not as the Gray Lady would have us believe. For instance, Kramer says that "Besides the advance in Luhansk, the Ukrainian military made another critical move, capturing the town of Yasinovataya, a strategic railway hub north of Donetsk." But according to a report by the reliable Colonel Cassad, Yasinovataya has not been captured by the junta:

Yasinovataya is currently not captured by the junta. As stated at the beginning of the offensive, Yasinovataya is a key goal for the junta in the battle for Donetsk. So when junta tanks rolled into Yasinovataya, Poroshenko’s Twitter reported it captured, although there is a difference between entering a city and capturing a city. Similarly, claims about the taking of Lugansk were untrue, when a couple of days ago junta’s infantry entered to the West of Hriaschevaty suburbs. Yasinovataya is now under fighting, both sides have been amassing reserves, with extensive use of tanks and artillery.

So there you have it. A night filled with nightmares for nothing. But that is the point of disinformation.

In his story Andrew Kramer paints a picture of drunken and unruly rebels at the point of collapse:

The army has tightened its siege on Donetsk in recent weeks, and inside, a breakdown in discipline among the hard-pressed rebel fighters had locals on edge. Residents said rebel fighters had taken to carousing drunkenly at night and wearing civilian clothes at checkpoints, a change that would allow them, at a moment’s notice, to throw down their weapons and blend in with the population.

Kramer also speculates that the large number of empty trucks in the humanitarian aid convoy, still idling at the border where they have been since Friday, are meant to transport the routed rebels back to Russia:

The seemingly imminent defeat of the rebels also raised the possibility that the huge convoy of trucks waiting to bring aid from Russian to civilians in Luhansk and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine might also be used to carry fighters and weapons out of the country. During random inspections by journalists, a number of the trucks have turned out to be mostly empty, and Russian officials have not offered much explanation other than to say they were trying to account for the possibility that some trucks might break down.

Kramer could just as easily talk about the rebel victories in, as Colonel Cassad says, "Ilovajsk, Miusinsk and Krasny Luch," or the fact that the junta cannot use air power without it being shot down:

Today self-defence shot down 3 aircraft: one MiG-29 and two Su-25. Regarding the MiG, there’s confirmation from the junta. A video already appeared about Su-25 (although the video is confusing, a fuller version actually shows visible characteristic of the wreckage of a MiG-29, so this may be one and the same aircraft). So, confirmed 2, and 1 unconfirmed. In general, we can say that junta’s attempts to use aviation in the zone of punitive operation has always ended with losses, because of no opportunity to crush even such old air defence systems, as ADMS and MANPADS.

Why doesn't the Gray Lady report any of the turmoil emanating from Kiev? The sanctified space of the Maidan has finally been cleared by skinheads. Where is the outrage? Where is the unsigned editorial inveighing against the use of violence on peaceful protesters? Also, an internal power struggle has broken out into the open between Dmytro Yarosh of Right Sector and junta interior minister Arsen Avakov. Yarosh is threatening a march on Kiev to be staged by Right Sector's volunteer paramilitary unit unless the interior ministry rescinds all charges against the group's members.

But for all the exigencies of the information war -- what trifling anecdotes get emphasized at the expense of real newsworthy events like the forced clearing of the Maidan, the epicenter of the February coup which brought us where we are today -- the Gray Lady's Kramer concludes by pointing the informed reader in the correct direction:

In the past week, three senior rebel leaders have left the war zone, in moves seen as setting the stage for a possible negotiated settlement by removing contentious personalities or Russian citizens from top positions. 

In Luhansk last week, the prime minister and military commander of the Luhansk People’s Republic, Valery Bolotov, announced in a recorded video address his “temporary resignation” as leader and departure for Russia for medical treatment. 

Aleksandr Borodai, a Russian citizen, stepped down and was replaced by Mr. Zakharchenko. Mr. Borodai later announced that a fellow Russian who had been the military commander, Igor Girkin, who uses the nickname Igor Strelkov, or Igor the Shooter, had also resigned and a Ukrainian citizen appointed in his place. 

Mr. Borodai said Mr. Strelkov had left the eastern Ukrainian war zone for a “vacation,” and would return. 

Something is definitely in the works. The aid convoy is a distraction meant to buy time. In Berlin there is a powwow between the foreign ministers of Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine who are trying to hammer out a deal. It doesn't look like we are there yet.

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.

Russia Has Already Won

The city of Slovyansk fell yesterday to the Kiev junta. The blue-and-yellow Ukrainian national flag flies from the city council building as Ukrainian soldiers patrol the streets. The junta could not resist crowing, as reported by David Herszenhorn in "Pro-Russian Fighters Routed From Stronghold, Ukraine Says":

Government officials were jubilant. “Run!” the Ukrainian interior minister, Arsen Avakov, wrote in a Facebook post on the retaking of Slovyansk. “The terrorists are bearing losses, surrendering.” 

Ukrainian officials said that those fleeing included the well-known commander Igor Girkin, who the authorities here say worked for the Russian military’s foreign intelligence directorate. In east Ukraine, he identified himself as Col. Igor Strelkov, which means shooter or gunman. 

Mr. Strelkov had posted a video on YouTube on Friday, pleading with Mr. Putin for broad-scale military support and predicting that Slovyansk would fall if help did not arrive soon. 

“The enemy has so much ammunition — I did not see so much in Chechnya,” he said, apparently referring to his time fighting in the Russian Army against Islamic separatists there.

The city of Kramatorsk is also under junta control.

Putin is being impugned as a "nothing man" for saying that he would defend the ethnic Russians of Novorossiya:

With the separatists losing ground, there were signs of growing frustration in the east with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for not making good on his promises to defend Russian people in a land with historic ties that he has referred to as New Russia. 

“What to say,” a rebel leader, Denis Pushilin, wrote on Twitter. “We were given hope. Given hope and abandoned. Nice were words of Putin about protecting the Russian, protecting New Russia. But only words.”

A sample of "the sky is falling" thinking is a post by Mark Sleboda, "What the Kremlin's inaction over the Ukraine means for Russia's geopolitics, international relations, and the Eurasian Union,"
which appeared on The Saker's blog yesterday:

If Putin's inaction in the face of what is happening in the Ukraine continue much longer it will not only mean the loss of Ukraine to the West, but in the long-term the suicide of Putin's own plans for a re-consolidation of even the core of the post-Soviet space particularly in the form of the Eurasian Union, as well as the end of dreams of a wider Eurasian civilization or "Russian world". The US will have achieved its primary goal in all of this, Russia's geopolitical horizons will shrink further to its own borders (or not even that), and it will in truth fade and diminish itself to the role and form of just another "normal nation-state" as fifth columnists like Dmitri Trenin at Carnegie speak of so longingly. "The end of Eurasia" as he once put it, in truth...

I don't think so. I think time is on Russia's side. Yes, Putin is coldly sacrificing the citizens of Novorossiya. But this is what heads of state do. The big picture is economic growth and trade with Europe. Let's remember that the Kiev coup was all about a trade agreement. Yanukovych was not allowed to bargain with both Russia and the EU. He was made by Europe to choose sides, one or the other. When he saw the onerous terms of the IMF bailout, he went with Putin's more generous offer.

While the Europeans were motivated by securing superior commercial arrangements, the United States was interested in two things: 1) keeping the EU yoked to a North Atlantic Alliance under the full sway of U.S. dominance, and 2) breaking off the prize chunk of former Soviet space real estate, the Lebensraum Eurasia land bridge of Ukraine.

I would argue that Russia has already won. Europe has abandoned any further U.S.-led sanctions and is talking with Moscow about the terms of Ukraine's association agreement, something it had refused to do earlier. There is no doubt that Germany has been alienated by the actions of Washington's neocons; France, too. Even Cameron has been a lackluster ally to D.C. Merkel knows that future German growth lies to the East.

And what is the actual strategic impact of the Strelkov's retreat from Slovyansk? Very little according to Dmitry Steshin:

Undoubtedly, Slavyansk became the symbol of the “Russian Spring,” moreover – it entered history. Forever. But the purpose of the city was different. Slavyansk attracted to itself all the battle-worthy forces of the Ukrainian army, it enabled the mobilization of the Militia in Lugansk and Donetsk. Slavyansk gave Mozgovoi an opportunity to crack the border on land and in the air. Whereby something real (you do not need to tell me about virtual YouTube armoured columns) actually made it into the region, by dribs and drabs, including “Tunguskas” purchased at the GUM [Note: GUM, or “State Universal Market,” in Moscow]. Slavyansk enabled the rest of the region to set up almost a dozen reinforced centres of resistance. Finally, it was Slavyansk that brought down the majority of Ukrainian fliers. And the “Slavic Sky” came true in every regard. Finally, Slavyansk gave the South-East time to create political centres of power, allowed to legitimize them, and, of course, provided covering fire for the referendum. And, one last thing, – thousands of untried militiamen and volunteers passed through the trenches of Slavyansk, all with minimal losses.

By the middle of June, Slavyansk outlived itself. Having drawn and bound to itself an enormous army grouping, the city, at the same time, required an ever-larger garrison, and, in return, started to tie up the not inexhaustible human and technical resources of the Donbass People’s Army. Besides, being the legal Commander-in-Chief of the Militia, Igor Ivanovich [Strelkov] could not provide fulsome guidance to his army from a besieged city. He had a direct line to the DPR government (I do not know about LPR), but this was, understandably, not enough for adequate control over the Militia units, each of which was beholden to the charisma of its direct commander. In a situation like that you need a “mega-Batka” [Note: Batka – an Old Man], but “mega-Batka” was forced to sit in Slavyansk and wax melancholy. I won’t be afraid of this word – he grew bored with blowing up endless ammunitions store on Karachun and pummeling Ukrainian checkpoints on the near and far outskirts of the city. Igor Ivanovich needed operational freedom, and, this night, he finally found it. Don’t forget – he came to Slavyansk some time ago with a few battered automatic rifles and even smoothbore “Saiga” and “Vepr.” He left with a column of armoured vehicles. No need to even mention the loads of other equipment.

Let Kiev crow. Its victory is cosmetic. It doesn't change the reality that the state it is creating is not a viable one. Inherently unstable, bankrupt, energy dependent on a shrewd behemoth, the chickens are bound to come home to roost. The name of that home? The Saker called it months ago. Banderastan.