The U.S. and Kiev Have Lost

Though it might not look it, the American project in Kiev is in serious trouble. The victories in Slovyansk and Kamatorsk ended up costing far more than they were worth because they exposed the brutality of the junta -- so much so that reliable coup scribe David Herszenhorn poetically assessed that "Control came at the expense of untold destruction" -- and the spottiness of the rationale of the Anti-Terrorist Operation -- purported Russian supply and control of the rebels.

That is why NATO general secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen was in D.C. yesterday, to blow life back into the corpse that Russia is to blame for everything going wrong in Ukraine. No proof is supplied. In fact, U.S. reporters on the ground regularly write about the anger of Donetsk People's Republic fighters because Russia is not doing anything to help them. The only proof Rasmussen provided was the imploring question, "Who else could supply anti-aircraft batteries?" Well, for one, I would think Ukraine herself. Why is it so hard to think that the freedom fighters of Novorossiya could liberate some heavy weapons from the feckless junta military?

Sabrina Tavernise and David Herszenhorn are reporting from Donetsk, "With Talks Uncertain, Ukrainian Rebels Cling to Hope in Strongholds," that

In Donetsk, at least for now, the rebels were confident enough to saunter around the city as if they owned it. With a population of one million, the city is outwardly affluent, with an Infiniti car dealership, a fancy sports stadium and several luxury hotels. Any bombing would seem likely to inflict severe civilian casualties as well as property damage, and the rebels may be counting on the government trying to avoid that.

Poroshenko made another phony overture for negotiations, insisting that the rebels must first lay their weapons down and turn themselves in. The chocolate king said he would talk " 'with the authentic owners' of this part of Ukraine, such as steelmakers and miners."

At this point the Obama administration must know that the game is up. Any assault from the air on a metropolis with all the trappings of Western prosperity will be impossible to justify. The optics will be irrefutable. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki will have to be furloughed due to nervous exhaustion brought on by her "spectacular feats" of propaganda.

The city seemed as if it was waiting for something. Streets were empty. Many stores were closed. And rebels were building barricades on some of the smaller outer roads. A giant pile of gravel had been dumped across one access road in the Petrovsky neighborhood in the southwest of the city, and workers were moving large concrete barricades into place nearby. 

The quiet was broken around 1 p.m., when a fighter jet fired at an abandoned coal mine that had served as a makeshift base for some of the rebels. Local news agencies quoted Ukrainian forces as saying that fighter jets had not been flying Tuesday. But the sound was clear, prompting dozens of pedestrians to look skyward. No one was hurt, but residents were shaken. 

“I never thought I’d see such a thing in Donetsk,” said Alexander, 17, who was standing with his mother at a bus stop near the explosion. He said that his bus, No. 42, arrived with several broken windows just minutes later, and that people at the bus stop were panicking, with “tears and hysterics.” 

He had been trying to persuade his parents to let him join the rebels, he said, and now he would redouble his efforts. 

“If everyone here sits around with their hands crossed, who will protect our land?” he said.

Proof that Obama has bungled again is Germany. Germany has always been the linchpin in Ukraine. And Germany has now been lost by the administration. Merkel is gone. When Obama called the German chancellor last Thursday to jawbone her on ratcheting up another round of sanctions on Russia apparently he was clueless that a CIA spy who worked at the BND, the German federal intelligence service, had been arrested. Mark Mazzetti and Mark Landler have the story, "Spying Case Left Obama in Dark, U.S. Officials Say":

When President Obama placed a call to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany last Thursday, he had a busy agenda: to consult with a close ally and to mobilize wavering Europeans to put more pressure on Russia to end its covert incursions in Ukraine.

What Mr. Obama did not know was that a day earlier, a young German intelligence operative had been arrested and had admitted that he had been passing secrets to the Central Intelligence Agency.

While Ms. Merkel chose not to raise the issue during the call, the fact that the president was kept in the dark about the blown spying operation at a particularly delicate moment in American relations with Germany has led frustrated White House officials to question who in the C.I.A.’s chain of command was aware of the case — and why that information did not make it to the Oval Office before the call.

I think it is clear that at this point Germany is moving briskly to reorient itself toward the BRICS. Merkel's trip to China on a day when the Chinese commemorated the 77th anniversary of the start of the Sino-Japanese War is a strong tell. No, I don't think there is any question of the U.S.-German estrangement:

Last week’s disclosure came at a delicate moment: Mr. Obama needs Ms. Merkel’s support to impose additional sanctions against Russia for its role in the Ukraine crisis. Germany, with extensive energy ties to Russia, has many reasons to resist, though Ms. Merkel has signaled she is running out of patience with President Vladimir V. Putin. 

The American authorities are also pursuing heavy financial penalties from German banks, including Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, for dealing with Iran and other countries that are blacklisted by the United States. The German government owns 17 percent of Commerzbank, raising the prospect of further tensions. 

The prospect of new strains between the United States and Germany drew an expression of concern from the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who met with Mr. Obama at the White House on Tuesday. 

“I encourage them to sort this out as quickly as possible,” Mr. Rasmussen said in an interview after his meeting, adding, “All NATO allies profit from an intensive exchange of information and intelligence, so that’s also part of the whole equation.”

The U.S. and Kiev have lost. Will Donetsk and Luhansk be made to needlessly suffer? The answer at this point is yes.

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.

The Battle in Eastern Ukraine: Greystone vs.the Green Men

Well, the battle(s) to retake eastern Ukraine appear to be underway this morning. The Gray Lady's C.J. Chivers reporting from Donetsk, along with Andrew Higgins in Kiev and Alan Cowell in London, writes that the putsch interior minister Arsen Avakov is claiming victory in clearing the Mariupol city hall of protesters thanks to the vigilance of "civilian activists" (read: Right Sector goon squad) wearing masks and wielding baseball bats:

In his Facebook posting, Mr. Avakov said there had been “no victims” in the tussle for City Hall in Mariupol, but that bomb disposal experts were checking the building for explosives. 

The A.P. quoted Yulia Lasazan, a spokeswoman for Mariupol’s police department, as saying that roughly 30 masked men had used baseball bats to beat pro-Russia protesters after storming the building in the early hours of Thursday. 

The occupiers did not offer resistance, even though some of them were believed to be armed, The A.P. said, but called the police instead. 

Five people were taken to a hospital, Ms. Lasazan said. 

Ms. Lasazan said the police were controlling the perimeter and were negotiating with the remaining protesters, asking them to leave the building.

So Mariupol city hall has fallen to the putschists. While that is not goods news, Mariupol is not one of the critical protest zones in the east. Slovyansk is. And what is being reported there is that five pro-Russian protesters have been killed manning barricades that block entry into the city. The Wall Street Journal has the story, "Ukraine Says Up to 5 Militants Killed in East":

Ukrainian authorities said Thursday that up to five pro-Russian militants were killed and three roadblocks overrun outside an eastern city at the heart of a local insurgency, as Kiev restarted a military operation to regain control in the region. 

Also on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the use of military force against Ukrainian civilians would have consequences for the leadership in Kiev. He didn't elaborate on what they would be. 

"If the Kiev regime begins to use the army against its own citizens, that is, without a doubt, a very serious crime," he said. "This will certainly have an impact on those who make such decisions and on our bilateral relations." 

Mr. Putin didn't repeat his previous statements that Moscow reserves the right to defend ethnic Russians or Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine. There was no immediate indication that Moscow was preparing to use military force, though it has built up troops along the border with Ukraine.

There are a couple of questions here. First, if five died defending a few roadblocks at the edge of the city, what is the death toll going to be if an attempt is made to clear Slovyansk city hall? I would imagine it is going to be much higher. Judging from the video of a funeral service for a young man slain on Easter manning one of the barricades, Slovyansk is a city mobilized and solidly anti-putsch. The putschist special forces are going to be confronting enraged old women as well as armed men. This is a combination that routed the first "anti-terrorism" campaign last week. And recall then that Avakov had initially celebrated the success of securing an airfield at Kramatorsk before everything collapsed fantastically.

My assessment at the time was that the debacle the putschists experienced was proof that Russia was not going to allow a single victory for Kiev in the east. So that is the second question this morning: Does this assessment still hold? Will Russia allow the pro-Russian uprising in the Donbass to be rolled up by what is likely a U.S. mercenary-filled military force?

I don't see how Russia can. First, there is public opinion in Russia. For Putin to stand by as pro-Russian protesters are either killed or rounded up would be devastating to his standing domestically. Then there is the fact that if the putschists are successful in pacifying the east and completing their May 25 presidential election, predations against Russians are not going to magically cease. There is a strong chance they will accelerate. If Obama is willing to directly support the canard that the protesters in Donetsk were creating a system of registration for Jews, then there is little doubt that he will provide public relations assistance for the Kiev gang as they mop up the dissidents in the Donbass.

No, Russia has to act. And right now that looks like they are willing to match their "green men," their special forces, against whatever mercenaries the CIA has been able to piece together for the putschists. Call it Greystone vs. the Green Men. At this point I don't see a Russian ground invasion.

Russia Will Not Allow Any Putschist Victories in the Donbass

Yesterday ended with a lot of crowing in the Western media about the potent, measured display of force by the Ukrainian military in securing an airfield at Kramatorsk. The good news this morning is that "victory" by the putschists has already been reversed. This from a story this morning from Andrew Kramer reporting from Slovyansk, "Ukraine Is Said to Suffer a Setback in Bid to Confront Pro-Russian Militias":

The opening phase of what the Ukrainian government has called a military operation to confront pro-Russian militants suffered a setback Wednesday morning when six armored personnel carriers flying a Russian flag drove into town here and parked in the central square, Ukrainian news media reported. 

Pro-Russian militias commandeered the vehicles from the Ukrainian Army and went to the central square in Slovyansk, about 120 miles from the Russian border, according to the news reports. A crowd gathered to gape at the squat, tracked vehicles and at a red, white and blue flag flapping in the breeze. 

About 100 soldiers in unmarked green uniforms and bearing the equipment of professional infantry guarded the vehicles, but they showed no signs of allegiance other than the single flag. Some of the soldiers had grenade launchers slung over their shoulders.

If the vehicles were indeed seized from the Ukrainian Army, it was not immediately clear whether they had been taken by force or with the collusion of defecting Ukrainian troops. Either possibility, however, would signal an escalation by Russian-backed militants in eastern Ukraine.

Tsenzor.net, a Ukrainian news website, reported that militants seized the vehicles in a neighboring town, Kramatorsk, where the Ukrainians landed paratroopers Tuesday to secure an airfield, in what was intended to be a show of force. 

The Ukrainian general who commanded the military operation, Vasily Krutov, stood near armored personnel carriers outside the town and warned loudly that gunmen who did not surrender their weapons would be “destroyed.”

I must admit I went to bed last night feeling ill at ease, thinking that possibly Russia would stand aside as Ukrainian troops backed by neo-fascist irregulars would roll up the uprising in the Donbass. Sure, it was obvious what was going on -- a small, inconsequential action at a small, inconsequential airfield was being blown up out of all proportion to herald the legitimacy of the illegitimate putsch regime in Kiev. Nonetheless, I felt agitated; that is what information war is designed to do.

The presence of the "100 soldiers in unmarked green uniforms and bearing the equipment of professional infantry" is a clear statement that Russia is not going to allow even the smallest display of potency by the putschists in the east.

So it is to be expected -- though still a little surprising giving its vehemence and lock-step coordination with NATO pronouncements -- that you get a frontpage attack by David Herszenhorn, "Russia Is Quick to Bend Truth About Ukraine." It is not labeled "analysis," as is the protocol for the Gray Lady when she prints opinion pieces outside the editorial page; we are to accept Herszenhorn's attack on the Russian media as straight-up fact. (Elites in the West are obviously upset by Prime Minister Medvedev taking to Facebook to declare, as he did yesterday, that "Blood has been spilled in Ukraine again.")

What is going on here is the West's media monopoly is not what it once was. Daily newspapers, except for a few behemoths like the Gray Lady and Wall Street Journal, are dying if not already dead. Television network news is fading fast. It is a splintered informational world, and in this world Russia has proved an adept player. Hence the attacks on the Russian media by the New York Times. The same thing happened last month during the Crimea vote to join the Russian Federation. These attacks are necessary for the West because it cannot defend a violent, unconstitutional uprising in Kiev at the same time reject the same kind of uprising by pro-Russian Ukrainians in the Donets Basin.

NATO did its part by proclaiming that a military buildup will commence on its eastern boundary. According to Kramer:

In Brussels, the head of NATO said Wednesday that the alliance would strengthen its military presence along its eastern border in response to the developments in Ukraine. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the alliance’s secretary general, said that NATO would immediately send forces to the region as a deterrent. He did not specify how many troops or aircraft would be involved or what kind of assets would be deployed. 

Earlier this month, the alliance ordered an end to most military cooperation with Russia because of the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea and its threatening military posture near eastern Ukraine.

Add to this a story, "General and Former Defense Official Urge Nonlethal Military Aid for Ukraine," by Michael Gordon published today and the horizon of the New Cold War stands clearly before us:

“Implementation of U.S. nonlethal military aid is seriously flawed and needs immediate correction,” Gen. Wesley K. Clark and Phillip A. Karber wrote in a copy of the report that The New York Times obtained on Tuesday. General Clark, who is retired, is the former NATO commander who led the alliance’s forces during the 1998 Kosovo conflict, and Mr. Karber is a former strategy adviser to Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.

***

“The most important assistance currently needed to make the existing Ukrainian force as defensible as possible in the current crisis (between now and the elections of 25 May) is nonlethal equipment from the U.S.,” they wrote after a recent visit to Ukraine. 

The visit of General Clark, who ran for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, and Mr. Karber took place in late March and early April. They traveled at the invitation of Ukrainian officials, and the trip was paid for by the Potomac Foundation, an American nonprofit research center. 

General Clark and Mr. Karber met with Ukrainian generals and defense officials, and Mr. Karber visited Ukrainian armored, mechanized and light infantry brigades on their northern, eastern and southern fronts. 

According to their assessment, which has been provided to Obama administration officials and lawmakers, Ukraine’s forces are facing a formidable military challenge. “The 1,000-mile-long front is three times the frontier that Ukraine’s modest armed forces are designed to handle,” they wrote. “Moreover, decade-long corruption has left their Air Force ill equipped, vulnerable and unready for modern air combat. 

“Russian occupation of Crimea has virtually destroyed Ukraine’s coastal defense from the south,” they wrote, adding that threats from other directions “divert Ukrainian political attention and disperse badly needed forces to the southwest and northwest.” 

Ukraine, they say, needs more aircraft, and more antiaircraft and antitank missiles. But it also has a dire need for nonlethal assistance.

Michael Gordon fails to mention that Wesley Clark, as NATO commander during the the Kosovo war, almost started WWIII when he ordered troops to attack Russia forces occupying Pristina airport. Fortunately for all of us British General Mike Jackson refused to comply with the order, saying, famously, "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you."

Direct military support and consultation will begin with nonlethal assistance and take off from there. The United States and Europe now have another Afghanistan. This one one is being called Banderastan.