uma guerra civil ou uma guerra de putin?

A pergunta é feita no 9º capítulo de um livro editado em 2018.

Dei-me à enorme fadiga de o converter, assim como às respetivas notas por OCR para que apenas os analfabetos possam ter realmente uma desculpa séria para ignorar as origens do que hoje se passa na Ucrânia (o texto é assim editável e, por consequência, pode ser copiado e transcrito para um tradutor automático sem prejuízo que o torne ininteligível).

Desde que a Rússia invadiu a Ucrânia que vamos sendo intoxicados por “serviços noticiosos” que parecem ter sido tomados – e muito provavelmente foram, nalguns casos– por serviços de informação de governo(s) cujos interesses são completamente alheios à maioria dos estados da UE e que sem pudor reproduzem as mais grosseiras mentiras. De tal maneira que, já num dia longínquo, a propósito do tema, a quase inerte Entidade Reguladora da Comunicação Social (ERC) foi levada a lembrar o dever deontológico de ouvir as partes e salvaguardar o contraditório. A juntar a este estado de coisas, a UE decretou a censura (chamam-lhe “suspensão”) da “comunicação social” russa a pretexto de que se trata de propaganda. Partindo assim da ofensiva presunção de que os cidadãos europeus são crianças incapazes de distinguir informação de propaganda.  Respaldados no facto de a Rússia ser a potência agressora, a opinião pública parece não querer saber deste gravíssimo abuso autoritário, impróprio de democracias funcionais. E, pela mesma razão, ninguém parece verdadeiramente interessado nos factos – também eles ignorados e/ou distorcidos por essa mesma “comunicação social” -, na história que precede essa agressão e de a tentar compreender. O que, de qualquer modo, nunca a legitimaria. Mas a verdade que fulge dos factos é que o que hoje sucede na Ucrânia procede de uma guerra civil em que os que hoje parecem inocentes são os maiores culpados. Importa saber se há honra nos sacrifícios que os líderes europeus estão abusivamente a impor aos seus povos como se estivessem investidos pelos seus eleitores do direito de nos tornarem parte de uma guerra por procuração em que o povo ucraniano é usado como carne para canhão.

"Terror in Donbass - Putin's War or Civil War?

 

Introduction

 

The war in Ukraine is regarded by the Maidan regime and the West as "Putin's war"-a war provoked entirely by Russian incitement and invasion. The U.S. government has played up the "Putin's war" narrative. In a statement commemorating the second anniversary of the Maidan revolt's ouster of Yanukovich, American ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, who helped manufacture the Maidan revolt, endeavored to blame the Maidan regime's failure to rid Ukraine of oligarchy, cronyism, and kleptocracy on "Kremlin-manufactured conflict in the East. In this view, the opposition to the Maidan's seizure of power was minimal and largely artificial, inspired by outside agitators, guerrilla fighters, and Russian intelligence and military personnel intervention. In this view, neither does the Donbass population support the Donbass resistance fighters and their political project, nor are those resistance fighters largely from the Donbass. In this view, the noted Girkin-Strelkov and several other Russia-dispatched acting Russian intelligence and military operatives started the war and were only able to sustain it by virtue of Moscow's direct intervention, including the supply of regular Russian troops, weapons, and ammunition.

For its part, Russia and the Donbass fighters have insisted the war was not their choice but rather Kiev's. In their view, they are freedom fighters, or at least fighters for regional autonomy and against the threat of neofascism emanating from the radicals within Maidan. In this view, Donbass's Donetsk Peoples's Republic (DNR) and Luhansk (Lugansk) People's Republic (INR) are popularly rooted and legitimate, and any official and unofficial Russian assistance has not been crucial either for the start or continuation of the war. The evidence suggests that the Russian/Donbass view is closer to the truth, despite significant but re strained, targeted, and often belated support from both Moscow and ordinary Russians. Most fundamentally, the Russian military intervention clearly occurred after civil war was initiated by Kiev's hand.

The revolt in the Donbass emerged in January in the wake of the revolts that spread in western Ukraine as the Maidan protests in Kiev mounted in violence. These two dynamics intensified together. In a veritable reign of terror after the Maidan takeover, three sources and types of physical violence were employed by the new regime against anti-Maidan per sons: (1) the "antiterrorist" operation (ATO) as carried out in Donbass by regular Ukrainian army troops using firearms and other standard military means; (2) the "antiterrorist" operation as carried out at the front by volunteer battalions dominated by ultranationalist and neofascist fighters also using firearms and many of the military means available to the regular army; and (3) "activists" or titushki-like thugs dispatched to the regions by the various ultranationalist and neofascist parties, especially RS, usually acting in the rear and without firearms. The latter two were the primary perpetrators of war crimes and human rights violations under the Maidan regime. The reign of intimidation, if not terror carried out across the rear was accompanied by a discourse of denigration, dehumanization, intolerance and hate encouraged by the new regime and robustly extant in society. As in Crimea, all this only intensified opposition in Donbass to the new Maidan regime and convinced many to adopt a stance of open resistance, even armed resistance, as the only way to pre serve their culture, faith, family, and Russian/Soviet roots.

Kiev declared its ATO against Donbass's Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts' resistance on April 14, 2014, and began operations the next day. Before that date there had been little organized armed violence against the Maidan regime from the Donbass, with the only serious exception the armed takeover of the MVD buildings in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk in Donetsk on April 12. But peaceful, political resistance to the Maidan revolt in eastern Ukraine began long before Grikin-Strelkov's arrival in Donetsk on that day. Now anti Maidan elements in the Donbass moved to preempt the imminent attack from the east already signaled by Kiev's publicized plans to carry out an ATO. The only events to which Kiev's declaration of the ATO could have been a response-the peaceful anti-Maidan demonstrations followed by coercive mobs seizing several arms depots and OGAS in the region-were not legitimate casae belli for an all-out invasion of the region without negotiations. For comparative perspective, Chechen rebels seized the entire Republic of Chechnya in Russia's North Caucasus in the autumn of 1991, but Moscow negotiated with them for three years before undertaking its counter-terrorist operation (Kontr-Terroristicheskaya Operatsiya, or KTO) in December 1994.

 

The Maidan in Power

The ultranationalists' leading role in forcing Yanukovich from power translated into key

appointments in the postrevolutionary government. Five members of Tyahnybok's neofascist SP were appointed to head five ministries in the provisional government: Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych, Defense Minister Thor Tenyukh, Prosecutor General Oleh Makhitskiy, Ecology and Natural Resources Minister Andrey Mokhnyk, and Agriculture Minister Ihor Shvayka. For his "organizational" efforts on the Maidan, radical nationalist Parubly was given the key post of chairman of Ukraine's Security and National Defense Council. He would focus much of his activity on recruiting his "hundreds" and other ultranationalists and neofascists, like the RS and SP, into the Ukrainian army, the National Guard and volunteer battalions for the "antiterrorist" operation in the east. Another nationalist, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, was appointed SBU director. Thus, ultranationalists and neofascists controlled the entire bloc of siloviki (military, security and law enforcement organs) offices. Moreover, the nationalist Arseniy Yatsenyuk was appointed prime minister. Yatsenyuk was a member of former president Yushchenko's nationalistic "Our Ukraine" bloc, which led the Orange revolution, and later joined Tymoshenko's Fatherland Party. Turchynov's cabinet was composed 90 percent of politicians from western and west-central Ukraine, disenfranchising the south and east.

 

Maidan Discourse: Vatniki, Kolorady, Moskaly

Residual revolutionary élan, the seemingly ubiquitous neofascists, and Putin's annexation of Crimea together created a highly charged atmosphere-a subculture of hate. It focused on ethnic Russians and pro-Russians, pro-autonomy or pro-secessionist Donbassians, or those from other regions. The Maidan's neofascist element intensified the everyday popular nationalism which infused western Ukraine and imparted to the immediate post-take over period of the "revolution of dignity" a rather undignified tolerance of discrimination towards non-Maidan citizens. This oppressive atmosphere of intolerance and hatred aimed at the Donbass and its people manifested itself both in word and deed, the latter increasingly violent in nature. One intrepid Western journalist described this atmosphere and its pervasiveness:

This is what I heard from respectable people in Kiev. Not from the nationalists, but from liberals, from professionals and journalists. All the bad people were in one place-why not kill them all? I asked Mishin and Bik if they'd known, when they declared independence, that it would lead to war. "If you pick up a gun, they'll come for you with guns," in the words of one anti-DNR resident of Donetsk. But Mishin and Bik, like every other DNR supporter to whom I put this question, said no. They were just trying to be heard. And they pointed out that even in early April, before Strelkov and his crew had taken Slovyansk and escalated the conflict, Ukrainian fighter jets would fly very low over the pro-Donbass protests held in Donetsk. From the very start, Kiev had been prepared to use force.

Similarly, during the Maidan protests, representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia dis tributed a letter stating that southeastern Ukraine's inhabitants are "an undeveloped, lower sort of people" for whom "a kind of ghetto must be built" where they should live in accordance with their ways. Some historians specializing in the history of the Holocaust participated in the dissemination of the letter. One Ukrainian historian, Alexander Dyukov, asked them: "How can you spread such hate speeches? Hasn't the story of the Holocaust taught you anything? Because it also started with a hate speech." Dyukov received no answer, but offered another question: "How can a unified Ukraine be talked about and all of this hate speech simultaneously be spread?"

Thus, the new regime, especially its ultranationalist and neofascist elements, would initiate a racist discourse to dehumanize the ethnic Russians and other pro-Russian elements in Donbass and across the country as they also proceeded to carry out a reign of intimidation in the ATO's rear and a reign of terror at the front. Usually without distinguishing between armed rebels, protesters demanding autonomy, or even the civilian population in Donbass, the Maidan regime began to characterize all these anti-Maidan elements as "potato beetles," "vatniki," "Moskaly," "subhumans," and "terrorists." The word "Kolorady" or potato beetles, a black and orange bug not unlike the American ladybug, was used to denigrate anti-Maidan elements, especially Donbassians, equating them with insects. It was a reaction to the widespread use of the black and orange striped St. George's ribbons (attached to some Russian military medals) that became a symbol of support for the Donbass rebels both in Ukraine and Russia. The Ukrainian journal Korrespondent of the popular Ukrainian newspaper and Web site Vesti noted: "Maidan and the ATO gave these terms as presents to Ukraine," and they were now part of the "new Ukrainian vocabulary." However, it defined the term narrowly as pertaining to the Donbass rebel fighters alone.4

Another derogatory term that gained broad use in public discussions and mass media was "vatniki." Not directly or easily translated, it derives from the term vatnaya kurtka, which refers in both Ukrainian and Russian to a warm, cotton-padded jacket or short coat. The jacket came into use during the Tsarist period as warm wear for Russian soldiers and Caucasus Cossacks. A similar jacket was used in the Red Army and by prisoners in the USSR, including those of the Gulag. Thus, vatnik invokes the image of both the Soviet and Russian prisoners of the Gulag and connotes the idea that Russians are inherently inclined to subordination before authoritarian rule, in contrast to the ostensibly freedom-loving Galician Ukrainians. It is generally applied to those one who wants to label as mindless Russian patriots and imperialists. A newspaper in the Ukrainian nationalist hotbed of Vinnitsa Oblast reviewed the ten most popular new terms which entered the vernacular in the "tense" year of 2014. Included was "vatnik," which it defined as "a man with a Soviet mentality that does not understand why there is Ukraine, loves totalitarian power, hates the US and everything foreign." In this sense, the term is often applied to Donbassians and Crimeans. A derivative term, "vyshyvatnik," describes Ukrainian "pseudopatriots," who "have their own opinion but blindly support the authorities." The paper added that the concept of vatnik "had become popular also among stars and politicians," reflecting its broad use in the state and other mass media. The dehumanizing nature of the term and its use as a broad brush to desensitize Ukrainians for Kiev's use of force against those seeking autonomy or separation in the southeast, especially Crimea and Donbass, was reflected in a statement by a Ukrainian activist: "We need to raze to the ground the vatniks' refuge of Sevastopol.” 6

 

The term "Moskal" or "Muscovite"-a Ukrainian derogatory term for ethnic Russians and the mirror opposite of the Russians' derogatory term "khokhol," meaning an ethnic Ukrainian -came into wide use as well. Use of this term originated and was especially widespread among the ultranationalists, but spread across society in the highly charged atmosphere of nationalistic revolution that was part and parcel of the Maidan takeover. Thus, the chant was organized at schools, holiday celebrations, and soccer games. During ultranationalists' and neofascists' demonstrations and marches-for example, those celebrating Bandera, the OUN and UPA-the chant "Moskaly on the knife" (Moskaliv na nozhi) is frequently heard. Another widespread neofascist-derived demonstration and mass mobilization method is the so-called "Who Doesn't Jump Is a Moskal." Rally leaders organize a chant: "One nation, One country, One Fatherland! Hang the Muscovites! Whoever does not jump is a Moskal." The attendees are all then obliged to jump up and down in hysteric unison. Sometimes this method uses the "Russians on the knife" chant as well. This is often used at rallies involving thousands of young people to indoctrinate them in an ideology of hate towards Russians, such as at an April 2014 "patriotic" rally for Ukrainian youth attended by several thousand teenagers in western Ukraine. Some of the new terminology also began to be applied by pro-Maidan elements to ethnic Ukrainians who opposed the new order or refused to answer the military draft. 

On April 29, two weeks after the beginning of the ATO, a journalist from the Ukrainian publication Tyzhden, Bogdan Butkevitch, during an interview on Western-funded Hromadske TV, proposed eliminating 1.5 million "extra people" in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions so the Maidan regime could make use of the regions' natural resources more easily: "The Donbass - is not just a depressed region. There's a wild amount of unwanted people there. I am absolutely and consciously talking about this. The Donetsk region has about 4 million inhabitants. At least 1.5 million are unnecessary. We do not need to understand the Donbass. We need to understand the Ukrainian national interest. “The Donbass must be used as a resource... Concerning the Donbass - I don't have a recipe on how to do it quickly. However, there is something that must be done: there are people who just need to be killed.”10 

On the evening of June 17, prime-time television viewers in Ukraine were treated to another of the neofascist performances now part of the country's very fabric. Dmytro Korchynskiy, an ideologist of the Ukrainian far right, urged the Maidan regime to set up concentration camps for the Donbass's and Crimea's population and carry out a full ethnic cleansing and depopulation of the Donbass rebel regions and Crimea:

“Americans are our teachers of democracy. The USA is truly the most democratic country in the world today. All democratic institutions were preserved in Amer ica during WWII, such as elections, etc. Nevertheless, several million American citizens were deported to particular concentration camps-American citizens of Japanese ethnicity. In wartime they constituted a potential threat. The USA, having preserved the high level of humanism inside its own nation, carried out a nuclear strike upon Japan. They also bombed German cities. Eighty per cent of residential buildings in Germany were destroyed by Anglo-American air raids. The doctrine implied shelling of residential areas first and foremost in order to demoralize German soldiers at the front, etc. Thus, we also should have the highest level of freedom in Ukraine. We have too little freedom. We should have more freedom. Nevertheless, in the front-line zone and occupied territories we should act in the American way; that is, if we lost territories and cannot get them back, they must be lifeless. If they cannot be ours, they ought belong to no one. 11

The dehumanizing discourse was not limited to mere opinion makers and cultural figures. On June 15, 2014, Ukraine's Prime Minister, Arsenii Yatsenyuk, referred to Donbass rebels and "those who sponsor them" as "non-humans" (nelyudi) prepared to come to all Ukrainians' homes and exterminate them in a statement posted on the Web site of the Ukrainian embassy in Washington and elsewhere. 12

Of course, on the other side, Donbassians and Russians routinely referred to western Ukrainians and those who support the Maidan regime as "fascist," "Nazis," "Banderlogy" (derogatory for those who support Bandera and the OUN), and Maidowny (invoking people with Down's Syndrome). The Ukrainian conflict also gave birth to a new derogatory Russian term for Ukrainians-"ukrop," from the Russian word for "dill," which is said to deter potato beetles. Putin's new Russian patriotism has sometimes encouraged a dangerous chauvinism, and those and more radical, opposition-oriented neofascists comprised a significant portion of the volunteer fighters who came from Russia to fight on the Donbass side. From the "Nashi" (Ours") youth street gang-like pro-Kremlin youth movement of the early 2000s, to the tolerance of the Vladimir Zhirinovski's Liberal Democratic Party, to the recent anti-American media campaigns and Putin's use of the term "national traitors" in his March 18 speech, Putinism has played a role-if inadvertent at times-in the rise of Russian ultranationalism in some circles, both in Russia and now among some in the east ern Ukrainian resistance movement. It is important to note, however, that Russian courts began to crack down severely on Russian ultranationalists beginning in 2008, and this pattern has continued in Russia during Putin's third term.

Anti-Semitism is also a factor in Donbass as it is in Maidan Ukraine. A recent article on the Russian Web site SVPress engaged in somewhat veiled anti-Semitism in reporting on an April 24, 2014, SS Waffen Galicia Corps' march in Lviv: "Yarosh gave a major press conference to local media at the 'Dnepro-Info' news agency which belongs to the present Dnepropetrovsk governor and president of the European Jewish Union, Igor Kolomoiskii. This co-founder of 'Private Bank' continues to pay $10,000 for each head of a 'separatist moskal. Already eight Judases have been found, who sold their brothers to Kolomoiskii's mercenaries" (a reference to eight pro-Russian resistance men killed by the Ukrainian army in eastern Ukraine). In this Russian anti-Semitic response to a Ukrainian neofascist march, we see in microcosmic form how the "ultras" (ultranationalists) on both sides are feeding each other, driving events and helping to rapidly polarize Ukraine. But there should be no mistaking the greater level of xenophobic hysteria-including anti-Semitism, as 1 demonstrate in the next chapter-extant in Kiev and the western provinces of Galicia, as opposed to the Donbass. This rhetoric further alienated the Donbass population even before Kiev dispatched the Ukrainian army and neofascist-manned volunteer battalions to put down the rebellion it called a "Russian invasion."

The usually politically correct Western governments and media left Kiev's dehumanization campaign without criticism. To the contrary, Western politicians and pundits joined in the racist discourse. Alexander Motyl, a nationalist Ukrainian-American academic and frequent guest commentator on Ukraine for U.S. government media outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL), called the people of the Donbass "the most retrograde part of [Ukraine's] population. Motyl made this remark in a RFERL interview on the benefits of partitioning Ukraine, and it was published just before the Maidan takeover of power. This rings ironic in hindsight of the hysteria surrounding then former Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski's claims that Putin had stated "Ukraine is not a real state" and proposed to Polish President Tusk that Poland and Russia partition Ukraine. As Pietro Shkatian correctly notes, Motyl also "has attempted on more than one occasion to draw parallels between them [Donbass rebels) and white US southerners who supported Jim Crow.” 15

The Ukrainian nationalists' dehumanization campaign escalated to touch not just Russians in Ukraine but Russians and Russia as a whole, with Western political and opinion leaders driving the theme. As noted in previous chapters, the Ukraine-EU AA was characterized in quasi-, even pseudo-Huntingtonian terms by Western politicians and analysts as a "civilizational choice" for Ukrainians between a "civilized Europe" and a "barbaric, Asiatic and Mongoloid Russia." Now, as early as December 2013, Carl Bildt, Sweden's former foreign minister, former EU and UN envoy during the Yugoslav wars, and EU Eastern Partnership Program co-architect, seemed to be channeling the late Huntington. He tweeted that which many commentators were saying-that the growing conflict in Kiev was in fact "Eurasia versus Europe in the streets of Kiev.”16  In November 2014, now exiled former Georgian president Saakashvili was declaring from podiums in Kiev that Ukraine was defending Eu rope from a Russia that represented "a new Tatar-Mongol yoke.” 17

Maidan's "Reign of Intimidation"

With revolutionary élan still high, the three most prominent ultranationalist/neofascist parties-Svoboda, RS, and the Radical Party (RP) of the rising dark horse in Ukrainian radical politics, Oleh Lyashko - began a reign of intimidation and sometimes terror both at the front and in the rear of the ATO. They initiated this reign of terror before the Maidan government's declaration of the ATO and did so under the Maidan regime's protection. Alexander Dyukov, professor of history and coordinator for the EU-based International Group for Crimes Against the Person, gave a good overall summation of the repressive atmosphere emerging in Maidan Ukraine under the neofascists' intimidation campaign and violent attacks:

Ukraine is now consistently being transformed into an anti-democratic state. We see the pressure of censorship; an independent press de facto no longer exists. We see the consistent persecution of political opponents, both at the state level, for example, in the dissolution of the Communist Party faction in parliament and the persecution of the association "Borotba," and at the unofficial level, when the representatives of the opposition forces are subjected to attacks by various militiants who burn their houses, occupy their offices, issue threats and so on. In normal countries the like is impossible. But here it is happening with the state's connivance. An atmosphere of spymania reigns in the Ukrainian society, and it even permissible to call those who protest against the deterioration of the social situation and the war in the southeast Putin's agents and send the SBU to arrest them.  18

Indeed, beatings of former Yanukovich government officials and members and Rada deputies of the Communist Party, Socialist Party, and especially the former ruling Party of the Regions were commonplace. Humiliation was also employed, as RS and SP hooligans dumped tens of officials in garbage containers across the country. On April 7, 2014, Right Sector activists in Kiev stormed the Supreme Court building and ejected and humiliated its judges. 19

In the immediate aftermath of the Maidan takeover, RS "activists" and some other ultranationalist parties' thugs began to fan out across the country, attempting to spread revolutionary chaos, including or perhaps especially to pro-autonomy, pro-Russian regions. This was coordinated with the new regime's siloviki. In mid-March the Maidan MVD sent operatives to Donetsk to meet with "civic leaders," but for the most part they met with the football ultras and "demanded that they arm themselves and prepare for battle against the pro-Russian forces in the city." 20  This strategy would lead to a terrorist pogrom in Odessa weeks later (see below). Some neofascists began an unofficial lustration of officials, forcing them to sign resignation statements under threat of violence. In March, for example, at least three Rada deputies from the Svoboda Party barged into the offices of the director of Ukrainian state television, Oleksandr Panteleimonov, beat him, forced him to resign, videotaped the entire operation, and posted the video on the Internet. The same month 15 to 20 masked men-organized by the Yuschenko era governor, led by a former parliamentary deputy in the region, and supported by Fatherland Party deputies and the head of the self-defense forces of the Maidan movement in Kherson-stormed the office of governor Nikolai Kostyak of Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine and then forced him to resign with a knife to his ribs.22 This happened to tens of governors and mayors across the country.

The campaign of intimation targeted city councils as well. On February 27, 2014, the RS's Igor Mosiychuk, aka "Moisha," led a group of RS men wearing masks and armed with bats and hammers into a city council meeting in the town of Vasil'kov in Kiev Oblast and coerced all Party of Regions deputies in the assembly to "voluntarily" resign. The RS men warned that they had just convinced another local meeting to expel other elected members of the Party of Regions. The Party of Regions Vasil'kov council members replied that they had already done so that morning and were then forced to close the council.  25   Mosiychuk had just been released from prison under an amnesty for Yanukovich-era political prisoners, having been imprisoned to a six-year term for attempting to blow up a monument to Lenin, 24 

In late February and March, RS organized bus convoys of its activist thugs to spread the Maidan regime's reach into the Russophone-dominated regions and seize OGAS in the cast, such as Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, and other regions. In many cases such expeditions failed. Locals either got wind of, or noticed the arrival of buses filled with young toughs from Lviv, Rivne, and Poltava. Many of the RS activists, some very young teenage boys led by middle aged men, got a good beating. The entire lot was often subjected to mass shaming and chants of "Russia, Russia!" or "Berkut, Berkut!" Like the Berkut and pro-Yanukovich officials in the west, the easterners forced the RS intruders to get down on their knees, apologize to the locals, and promise never to do it again. In Kharkiv, the RS activists were discovered with primitive Maidan-style weapons-pitchforks, shovels, clubs, etc.-and the mayor claimed the city council building had been shot at, demonstrating a bullet to cameras at a mass protest against and shaming of the RS invaders, and asking Hromadskoe.TV to broadcast this bit of news,25 In April, Gennadi Kernes, the pro-Yanukovich, pro-Russian, Jewish mayor of the city of Kharkiv, was shot in the back and nearly killed by a sniper. Prior to that, he had been accused by the new Maidan regime of separatism and organizing anti-Maidan demonstrations and kidnappings of pro-Maidan demonstrators and was detained briefly.

Lyashko and his extremist Radical Party were particularly active in waging violence. Lyashko, a deputy in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada champions "the sacred cause-creation of a Great Kievan Empire" and the restoration of Ukraine's nuclear weapons capability. One of Ukraine's youngest and most boisterous politicians, even within the ultranationalist wing, Lyashko was born on March 12, 1972, in the western region of Chernogiv. He studied law and became a journalist through the period of the Soviet collapse. In 1993 he was sentenced to six years in prison for embezzlement. His sentence was reduced to four years and he was released under a broad amnesty in honor of the 50th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Lyashko resumed journalism and then was elected to the Verkhovna Rada on the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYT) in 2006 and again in 2010. In 2010 a video was published on the Internet of Lyashko discussing a homosexual relationship of his. He claimed the videotape was doctored, but was soon expelled from the BYT on a political pretext. In 2011 he founded the Radical Democratic Party of Ukraine, later renamed the Radical Party Lyashko, it is not an overstatement to say, is the most physically violent politician in the world in the direct personal sense, wont to get into fistfights and other physical dustups with political opponents, fellow parliamentarians, and security guards.2 Thus, in the immediate post-Maidan period he and his Radical Party committed what can be characterized as terrorist attacks in the months after Yanukovich's removal. Lyashko claimed responsibility for organizing the May 23, 2014, storming of a government building in Torez by his "soldiers from the Lyashko Battalion "Ukraine," who killed an unarmed pro-Russian supporter of the breakaway Donetsk People's Republic and maimed a second. Immediately after the murder, Lyashkov boasted on his Facebook page: "Soldiers from Battalion "Lyashko Ukraine' just liquidated and released the Kolorado (potato beetle) from the executive committee of Torez, Donetsk Oblast. Two terrorists killed, nobody among our soldiers suffered there. Glory to Ukraine!" The post received 5,000 likes in just a few hours before Lyashko deleted it. But the Kyiv Post retrieved a cached mobile version. One early May 2014 video shows Lyashko himself interrogating a bound, semi-naked man, with cuts on his body, who under duress admits being a former defense minister in the breakaway People's Republic of Donetsk. 29 In July, with his armed militiamen backing him, Lyashko forced the mayor of Slovyansk to resign his post. 29  Promotional RP propaganda videos frequently show Iyashko berating and humiliating separatist suspects hunted down and held by his militiamen. 31

By August 2014, Lyashko's activities earned him condemnation from Amnesty International, which called them "a terrible violation of international law and standards," adding: "Though he doesn't have the right to detain people, he abducts them and abuses them verbally and physically while the camera is rolling. His and other similar websites feature numerous video clips showing what appear to be cases of abduction and violations of the rights to fair trial, liberty and security of the person, and the right not to be subjected to torture and other ill-treatment." 32 But Iyashko boasts of his vigilante "work": "If the government and law enforcers are inactive, the patriots must act. Especially now, when Ukraine is fighting for its independence." 33 Amnesty asked Ukraine's prosecutor general to investigate Lyashko, and the latter supposedly opened an investigation, but Lyashko has refused for nearly two years to respond to a summons and has never been detained, organizing his battalions, leading his party in the Rada, and running in presidential elections. Lyashko and his party would not be the only ultranationalist elements that would be able to maraud at the front and in the rear with utter impunity.

Much of the criminal activity and many of the atrocities that would be carried out under the cover of the antiterrorist operation at the front were carried out by recruits for volunteer battalions enlisted from or through Lyashko's RP as well as Yarosh's RS and Tyahnybok's SP (see below). Lyashko was removed allegedly as a supplier of his fighters after Interior Minister Avakov claimed to discover that 12 of the first 15 Lyashko recruits had criminal issues. 34 RP members were prominent in the Shakhtyorsk Battalion, ostensibly subordinated to the MVD and Avakov, which covered Thorez, where RP members murdered an alleged "separatist" in May. Meanwhile, Lyashko was demanding that Radical Party members fighting in the antiterrorist battalions "have to immediately after the war become prosecutors, judges, etc." 35  Other volunteer battalions dominated by ultranationalist and neofascist elements also carried out vigilante abductions, arrests, beatings of alleged "separatists”, coercive resignations of officials and disbandings of city councils, adding to the revolutionary disintegration in law and order, state breakdown, and democratic backslid ing rather than the promised democracy-building. 36

Whether the new regime-with its many Maidan activists and neofascists-supported these efforts to intimate former regime members and send convoys of RS thugs to the regions is unclear. What is clear is that the new regime never discouraged these actions, and Yarosh's RS, Lyashko's RP, and Tyahnybok's SP were able to act with utter impunity. The gravest crimes, however, were not carried out in the rear, but at the front, under the cover of the "antiterrorist" operation or civil war. The neofascist reign of intimidation would de volve into a reign of outright terror with the ATO's onset. As in Crimea, Donbass residents and many in other regions had good reason to distrust if not fear the new, neofascist infested order (or disorder) and would themselves rise up against it.

The Donbass Revolt

In late January, with the Maidan revolt spreading across the country and Right Sector activists spanning out into the regions, including in Donbass's Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts, native anti-Maidan "partisans" emerged in Luhansk and captured arms depots in Artemevsk and Slavyansk. These installations warehoused enormous caches of former Soviet weapons and ammunition and, according to some, pre-Soviet weapons of the Russian Imperial Army. This explains the appearance of ancient weaponry among the Donbass rebels in 2014.

At the same time, local oligarchs such as Rinat Akhmedov and Sergei Levochkin initially and generously began financing the Donbass opposition to Maidan, including anti-Maidan demonstrations and then the initial local resistance forces, in order to protect their assets from raids by the western Ukrainian and local ultranationalists who were beginning to grab assets on behalf of pro-Maidan and other oligarchs such as Ihor Kolomoiskii and Dmitry Firtash. Oddly, Levochkin had been demoted from his post as head of Yanukovich's presidential administration to the position of advisor of the president on January 17. The same day, the Chief of the General Staff of Ukraine's Ground Forces was fired. 37 Could Yanukov ich have been pursuing the possibility of declaring martial law with deployment of the army, prompting their resignations or at least dissent and consequently Yanukovich's dis trust? In conditions of crisis politics, coup politics follow close behind.

Regardless, already on the day after Yanukovich's removal, anti-Maidan forces in eastern and southern Ukraine began rejecting the Maidan's overthrow of Yanukovich and threatening separatism in earnest. The February 21 Kharkiv congress of PR southeastern oblasts' deputies declared that their regional governments would "take upon themselves responsibility for guaranteeing the constitutional legal order and citizens' rights" until these were restored in Kiev. This meant that Crimea, Sevastopol and other regions in the south and east were refusing to recognize the Maidan regime in Kiev. Soon anti-Maidan demonstrations began on squares before the oblast administration buildings across much of Donbass and in other cities in southeastern Ukraine from Kherson to Dnepropetrovsk, sometimes. met with pro-Maidan protests. The urgency of the Donbass and other regions' resistance elements could only have been piqued when the pro-Maidan rump majority in the Supreme Rada- the pro-Yanukovich and pro-Russia deputies of which were under intimidation and threats from ultranationalist deputies and their allied armed revolutionaries- adopted well-known amendments to the law repealing the status of Russian as a state language in regions with large ethnic Russian and Russophone minorities or pluralities. Al though the amendments were themselves repealed the next day under Western pressure, the Maidan revolution's clearly ethno-nationalistic instincts reinforced fears in the east that the revolution was ultranationalist and even fascist rather than democratic and that their rights had only just begun to be eradicated.

Anti-Maidan rallies mounted in the cast and in some southern and central Ukrainian provincial capitals through March. The first seizure of a regional OGA in the east by anti Maidan protesters occurred at the Donetsk OGA on March 2, 2014, when unarmed protest ers occupied the building. Expelled by SBU forces, a larger group of protesters retook the building on March 5. On March 6, SBU forces again removed them. The demonstrators had "elected" Pavel Gubarev as Donestsk's new anti-Maidan "governor" on March 1. An un signed article in The Economist misleadingly identified Gubarev as "a marginal politician previously unknown in Donetsk" and a member of Dugin's ultranationalist Eurasian Youth Movement. In fact, Gubarev was born, brought up, and went to school in Donetsk, graduated Donetsk National University, founded and led a business in Donetsk, and lived his entire life in Donetsk. Moreover, he was a member of the pro-Russian, Soviet-nostalgic Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine active in southeastern Ukraine, historically known as Novorossiya, eponymous of the ideological and state-building project he would try to lead as Donetsk's separatist leader before being nearly assassinated in October 2014. From the beginning of the crisis in Crimea in late February, Gubarev was leading pickets and then larger demonstrations on Lenin Square in central Donetsk adjacent to the OGA. 38

At the same time, the Maidan regime was planning its ATO against the Donbass, and in the first days of April-well before the first armed rebels moved into Slavyansk-Ukrainian fighter jets would fly low over the anti-Maidan protests in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv Kiev was sending a message of war. On April 6, the occupation of the Donetsk OGA was repeated yet again, after 1,000-2,000 demonstrators gathered on the square in front of the building protesting "nationalism and other forms of Nazism." The protesters, unarmed, seized the OGA and would declare the "sovereign state of the People's Republic of Donetsk," or Donetsk People's Republic (DNR). 40 In an official statement, the protesters demanded an emergency session of the oblast legislative assembly for the adoption of a law declaring a referendum on the region's autonomous status within or secession from Ukraine similar to that held in Crimea. If the assembly failed to declare the referendum, the demonstrators threatened to take control of the OGA on the basis of "people's man date" and dismiss the assembly. Those who led the storm claimed their group included representatives of 30 public associations, which had been trying by conventional means to get the assembly to vote on a referendum. During the official statement, attending protesters chanted "Donetsk is a Russian city" and appealed to Russia to "defend them." The press conference closed with the statement: "The Russian-speaking community demands autonomy.” 41  The legislative assembly rejected the demand, and the protesters held their own assembly and declared their "people's republic." 42

Protesters also broke into the OGA in Kharkiv, located in Ukraine's eponymous second largest city, but later left the building voluntarily. Some 1,000 protesters also seized the OGA buildings and SBU headquarters in Luhansk Oblast. These included former Berkut officers who had clashed with Maidan demonstrators in Kiev and now called themselves "the army of the southeast." Some reports, without photographs or video, claimed they wielded at least three machine guns and claimed to have many more weapons.43 In response, Kiev dispatched security officials - not negotiators - to the eastern cities of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv. By nightfall in Donetsk, Ukrainian Special Forces (Spetsnaz) again had taken the SBU building back under control and soon took the OGA, and the local prosecutor's office charged the detained anti-Maidan protesters with attempting to overthrow Ukraine's constitutional order. 44  Luhansk government facilities were taken back by security forces as well. 45 The takeovers by anti-Maidan elements on April 7 in several other oblasts also were successfully overturned by special forces. 46  However, in Luhansk after the OGA was cleared, the demonstration-elected "people's governor" Aleksandr Kharitonov, who led a militia group "Luhansk Guard" (Luganskaya gvardiya), and other members of the Army of the Southeast were arrested. The demonstrators then reconvened on the square before the OGA building, declared a "veche" or "people's assembly," demanded a 'people's government" and the release of Kharitonov and other detainees as well as the rehabilitation of the Berkut. They elected Valerii Bolotov their new "people's governor" and called for either regional autonomy within Ukraine or reunification with Russia. 47  Bolotov is a near-native Luhanskian-born in Taganrog, Russia, in 1970 but having moved to Luhansk, Ukraine, in 1974: A former Soviet paratrooper, he was now leading the "Army of the Southeast" as well as the Union of Veterans of the Paratroop Forces. 48 

The next day, in response to the unrest, acting president Turchynov, who, as noted above, had supported sending troops against protesters in Crimea weeks earlier, promised the country in a televised address that an "anti-terrorist operation will be conducted" against "those who took up arms," though at this point no armed fighters had emerged in Donbass, Media organs tied to USAID such as Mustafa Nayem's Ukrainskaya pravda described the takeover of the Luhansk SBU headquarters as having been carried out by "armed men." 49 However, a video of the takeover shows not a single demonstrator with firearms. 50  Ignoring the role of the domestic political strife on the Maidan in Kiev, the west, and elsewhere across the country, which the takeovers in the east mimicked, Turchynov claimed the pro tests and OGA takeovers were "the second wave of the special operation of the Russian Federation against Ukraine," aimed at "tearing our country into pieces."   51  He was backed up by deputy head of his presidential administration, Andrei Senchenko, who warned on television the same day that not just spetsnaz or special troops would be deployed against the "separatists," but also "special means.” 52   Hours later it was announced that Turchynov had appointed a new head of the Antiterrorist Center under the SBU, Vitaliy Tsyganko, to his new "antiterrorism" team for putting down the Donbass unrest. The remainder of the team included new National Security and Defense Council Chairman and former Maidan MSD hundreds' commander Parubiy and new SBU Director Valentin Nalyvaichenko, who were sent to Donetsk; First Vice Premier Vitaliy Yarema, who was dispatched to Donetsk; and MVD chief Arsen Avakov, who was sent to Kharkiv. 53  The Maidan leadership seemed to walk back the rhetoric days later. On April 9, MVD chief Avakov said that the Donetsk un rest would be resolved within forty-eight hours by way of either negotiations or force. 54  On the same day, acting president Turchynov signed a decree that mandated retaking the Donetsk OGA building. 55  The next day he made a vague, verbal and unreliable amnesty of fer to the demonstrators that they would not suffer criminal indictment if they "laid down their arms," but the demonstrators had no firearms, adding to the latter's distrust.  56

Like the Ukrainians, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry publicly chimed in, asserting the events "did not appear to be spontaneous." In a great irony, Kerry also demanded in a phone call to Russian foreign minister Lavrov that Moscow "publicly disavow the activities of separatists, saboteurs and provocateurs."  57  But Washington had not disavowed the neo fascists' violation of the February 21 agreement and illegal seizure of power in Kiev. These protesters were already being referred to as "separatists, saboteurs and provocateurs." With the "antiterrorist" operation begun days later, they were made out to be "terrorists" by the Maidan regime.

All this occurred before Girkin-Strelkov, not to mention non-volunteer Russian forces, had entered Donetsk and Luhansk. The West and Kiev immediately attributed the Donbass counterrevolution to Moscow and its alleged agent, the Russian monarchist Girkin Strelkov, However, the SBU reported that Girkin had arrived in Donetsk only on April 12, having left Crimea on April 8 by the Kerch ferry and entering Ukraine through Rostov-na Dom, Russia. 58  Curkin had entered the Donbass after the first OGA takeovers in the region. As in the Crimean case, Girkin exaggerated his role, claiming he had initiated the Donbass revolt, but this simply was an attempt to bolster his supposed credentials as a Russian national here and leader of the Donbass resistance to the Maidan revolt. In fact, Girkin was not a player in the Crimea takeover and would only emerge as one after several weeks in Donbass. His arrival in Donbass was hardly a legitimate reason for starting a civil war against a still nonviolent, if increasingly assertive and potentially violent uprising in Donbass.

On Saturday, April 12, anti-Maidan elements in Donetsk and Luhansk deployed some armed rebels to achieve their aims. Early in the day, miners began heading to Lenin Square to join the demonstrators. 59  Then armed men, including former Berkut riot police and now Donetsk militants, seized MVD, OGA, city hall and other buildings, first in Donetsk City and then fanning out across the oblast. The first came at the Donetsk City MVD building, where they encountered no resistance. Some wore Berkut uniforms, but most had various uniforms and equipment unlike the Russian special forces' "polite little green men" in Crimea, who were outfitted uniformly with state-of-the-art Russian arms and equipment. 60  They negotiated the police chief's resignation, seized the MVD station's weapons, and then spread their control across the city and oblast. The Donetsk and Luhansk OGAS were taken again by the anti-Maidan forces on April 14, assisted this time by Russian volunteers like Girkin, not Russian forces or even recently released conscripts, as would happen later. 61  On April 16, a local activist, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, and his organization "Oplot" seized Donetsk city hall. Zakharchenko would become a leading field commander in the civil war and eventually leader of the DNR after the first ATO and exodus of Russian leaders like Girkin. 62 

After taking control of the Donetsk OGA and declaring the founding of the DNR on April 12, pro-autonomy and pro-Russian groups fanned out to seize strategic infrastructure across Donetsk Oblast and remove from power all public officials who refused to swear allegiance to the republic. 63  The same day, Girkin arrived in Donbass and led armed men also wearing unmarked camouflage uniforms as they seized MVD headquarters in Slavyansk (Slovyansk) and then Kramatorsk, using force but inflicting no casualties. In Slavyansk the takeover occurred quietly, but the police station held 20 automatic rifles and 400 pistols, giving the rebels their first arms cache. Contrary to Westem, including NATO claims, the rebels, while well-equipped, were not wearing the same uniforms or using the same equipment, with wide variation in uniforms, helmets, etc.  64  This indicated that these rebels as well were not Russian servicemen or "polite green men" who occupied Crimea. In addition, Slavyansk mayor Nelly Shtepa stated that the rebels were locals, that she knew many of them, and that they were demanding a referendum on an unidentified question likely autonomy within Ukraine or independence. 65

Girkin's takeover in Slavyansk was not in and of itself the spark that ignited the civil war but one of many local fires to conflagrate the Donbass inferno. His men had seized a large cache of weapons in the MVD building and set up checkpoints around the city. On the morning of April 13, MVD chief Avakov declared a local ATO in the city being commanded by the SBU's central ATC and by himself from Donetsk, presumably with Turchynov's and the SNDC's approval. Avakov emphasized: "Forces are being brought in from all the country's organs of coercion (siloviki)." Social networks were reporting the constant buzz of helicopters flying low over the city and gunfire from machine guns and grenade launchers by mid-morning. Avakov claimed that the rebels had fired on special forces, and that one "checkpoint of the terrorists" had been destroyed and another was in the process of being so. 66

By the end of the day on April 14, after the expiration of Turchynov's deadline of 6 p.m. that day for those occupying government buildings in the east to leave, Donetsk's anti Maidan protesters and armed rebels had taken control of some government buildings in many cities across the oblast, including Artemevsk, Druzhkivka (Druzhkovka), Horlivka (Gorlovka), Kramatorsk, Makiivka (Makievka), Mariupol, Slovyansk (Slavyansk), Yenakiieve (Yenakieve), and Zhdanivka (Zhdanovka). By the time Donbassians awoke on the morning of the 15th, Kiev's ATO was already in operation. By the evening of April 14, the first casualties of the ATO-one SBU officer killed and five wounded in Slavyansk-had been registered when SBU special forces attempted to retake security buildings.  67  Thousands of Ukrainian army troops and largely neofascist-manned "volunteer battalions," armed with tanks and heavy artillery and supported by air power, were on the march east. On the 15th, a force of 500 Ukrainian soldiers, 20 APCs, and 2 helicopters descended on Slavyansk. 68 Ukraine's civil war had begun.

Yet the anti-Maidan takeovers of OGAS and other government buildings across Donetsk and spreading to Luhansk from April 12 to 14 came after Kiev had been discussing publicly for more than a week its intent to carry out an "antiterrorist" operation against what then were mere protesters. Moreover, the anti-Maidan takeovers in March and early April in Donbass were in response and identical to the pro-Maidan takeovers of Kiev government buildings and regional OGAS earlier. Thus, the Donbass's events were escalating in response to Kiev's actions. Certainly, Maidan Kiev's civil war or "ATO" could not have been a reaction to a Russian Invasion or intervention. Even as a response to the Donbass rebels' first violence in Slavyansk, Kiev, by failing to negotiate first, was overreacting. Kiev was doing so in part precisely because of Putin's Crimean gambit.

Geneva Failure

With the situation spinning out of control on the ground, actors on the international level intervened again. Moscow had warned that any attack on Donbassians would put talks with Washington and Brussels, scheduled for Geneva later the next week, at risk. Nevertheless, on April 16-17 the top foreign affairs officials of the U.S., EU, Ukraine, and Russia met in Geneva in a lust-ditch, belated effort to avoid civil war in Ukraine. Unlike the talks in Kiev that produced the February 21 agreement and included the pro-Maidan opposition party leaders, neither the Donbass rebels nor any representatives from Donbass took part in Geneva: On April 17 the sides signed a vague ceasefire agreement, a "joint statement," consisting of aspirational declarations for a ceasefire, withdrawal from buildings, and the initiation of a "national dialogue" on a new constitution rather than concrete steps for implementation and support. If not for the letterhead, the entire document would have fit easily on one page. It read in full:

The Geneva meeting on the situation in Ukraine agreed on initial concrete steps to de-escalate tensions and restore security for all citizens. All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions. The participants strongly condemned and rejected all expressions of extremism, racism and religious moderance, including anti-Semitism. All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated. Amnesty will be granted to protesters and to those who have left buildings and other public places and surrendered weapons, with the exception of those found guilty of capital crimes. It was agreed that the O.S.C.E. Special Monitoring Mission should play a leading role in assisting Ukrainian authorities and local communities in the immediate implementation of these de-escalation measures wherever they are needed most, beginning in the coming days. The US, EU and Russia commit to support this mission, including by providing monitors. The announced constitutional process will be inclusive, transparent and accountable. It will include the immediate establishment of a broad national dialogue, with outreach to all of Ukraine's regions and political constituencies, and allow for the consideration of public comments and proposed amendments. The participants underlined the importance of economic and financial stability in Ukraine and would be ready to discuss additional support as the above steps are implemented. 70

At a press conference after the signing, U.S. Secretary of State Kerry put the onus for compliance with the agreement by the DNR fully on the Russian side, much as he and President Obama had with the February 21 agreement: "Responsibility for successful implementation) will lie with those who have organized their presence, provided them with the weapons, put the uniforms on them, supported them, and have been engaged in the process of guiding them over the course of this operation." 71  But as noted above, the rebel forces were acting spontaneously, still unorganized, and poorly armed and equipped. This could not be said for Maidan Kiev.

Orthodox Easter Cease-Fire and the RS Attack at Slavyansk

The one positive that came out of the agreement was an Easter cease-fire. However, it would soon be undermined by familiar culprits. From the outset, the neofascist element within the Maidan were determined to wage war against the Donbass. Towards this end, on the very day the cease-fire agreement was signed, an RS militant in one of the volunteer battalions just moving into Donbass from the west detonated a grenade in a hazy incident, killing himself and two Donbass rebels, who allegedly attacked him at a rebel checkpoint near Slavyansk. 72  Days later, on April 20, Easter Sunday, the Easter cease-fire was undone by another Maidan-coordinated false-flag operation. RS militants carried out a coordinated attack on a Slavyansk checkpoint. The attack left three Slavyansk rebels dead and four wounded, and one RS fighter killed and two wounded. Ukraine's SBU intelligence service immediately accused Moscow and allied "saboteurs" of carrying out a "cynical provocation," while simultaneously denying that there were any Ukrainian organizations of any kind in the area: "It has been established that on that night in Slavyansk there was not one organization besides saboteurs and representatives of the criminals who the GRU of the general Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation support and arm. This was es tablished by operational investigative activity at the site by Ukraine's law enforcement agencies.”  73  The National Security and Defense Council's deputy secretary Viktoriya Sumar brushed off on her Facebook page any RS involvement as "Russian propaganda": "Reports by Russian journalists about a shootout between supposedly the Right Sector' and 'self-defenders being in Slavyansk based on some business cards of Yarosh and un known weapons and the number of killed which grows by the hour and some other "de tails, evidence of which no one has seen, is a typical form of Russian propaganda which not only many Russian but also many other foreign mass media circulate today." Sumar added that the event was designed by Moscow to give the appearance of a civil war and justify a Russian invasion of Ukraine. 74

The Maidan regime's siloviki appeared to be coordinating the disinformation with the neo fascists, since RS spokesman Artem Skoropadsky also issued a denial, saying Slavyansk was a "blasphemous provocation from Russia: blasphemous because it took place on a holy night for Christians, on Easter night. This was clearly carried out by Russian special forces." 75 In an official statement on its VKontakte page, RS again denied having "any relationship" to the "operation" in Slavyansk, adding: "Any attempt to tie these actions with Right Sector have only one goal-to provoke fear of RS activists among the inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine." The party, the statement claimed, had "run into an unprecedented information attack supported by falsifications, intrigues, and manipulations of the facts by Russian mass media controlled by the Kremlin." At the same time, RS acknowledged that its "activists" were "now subordinated to the state's organs of coercion" (silovic organy) and thus their actions were within the legal limits. In this view, the ATO declared by Ukraine's government and to be carried out by its siloviki provided a "legal" framework for RS to carry out the "operation" it supposedly had not carried out.

The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed outrage over the killing of "innocent, peaceful citizens, regarded it as a breach of the Easter cease-fire, and blamed Right Sector, adding that the incident "testifies to a lack of desire on the part of the authorities in Kiev to rein in and disarm nationalists and extremists.” 77  Ukraine's foreign ministry in turn reproached Russia for rushing to judgment and failing to fulfill its obligations under the Geneva deal: "The Russian side must be reminded about their obligations under the Geneva agreement to bring all necessary influence to bear on separatists to clear illegally held buildings, un block roads, lay down arms and prevent any bloodshed.” 78

Despite all the official denials and charges from Maidan Kiev and the RS at the time of the incident, RS leader Yarosh acknowledged in two interviews on successive anniversaries of the incident, first in a BBC interview that he took part in combat on that day in Slavyansk, and then in a Censor.net article/interview that he led the operation, which was an attack initiated by him and his RS fighters and ordered by acting president Turchynov. 79  In addition to Turchynov, Dnepropetrovsk's deputy governor Gennadii Korban was also involved in the operation's authorization. MVD chief Avakov's assistant Anton Gerashchenko was aware of and assisting the operation. In a Censor.net interview, Yarosh claims that he and his fighters acted after being outraged by the killing of three Maidan volunteers and Gor lovka deputy mayor Volodomor Rybak.  80 Yarosh seemed to blame the murders of Rybak and the volunteers on the Donbass rebels, but the SBU blamed them on the Russian GRU. 81  Later, an RS-affiliated Web site included on its list of heroic members killed during the ATO, Mikhailo Stanislavenko, noting he was killed in Slavyansk on April 20, 2014. 82 On that day there was only one violent incident in Slavyansk.

Moreover, forensic evidence later emerged further confirming RS militants' involvement in the incident. For example, two 2016 Ukrainian court decisions show that prosecutors' investigations had determined that two RS fighters were wounded in the Easter attack and that they had used the very same firearms used on Maidan on February 18, 2014, to kill two MVD troops and wound three more. Moreover, an eyewitness reported that one of the Slavyansk separatists killed at the checkpoint was shot by a sniper, and forensics has shown the sniper used the same kind of expanding 7.62mm caliber bullets, which were recovered at the site of the attack at the checkpoint, that were used on Maidan, and with the same kind of AKM and hunting carbines based on the Kalashnikov assault rifles used on Maidan. Also, Yarosh's business card, a list with names of several other RS leaders, and an RS battalion's Security Service medallion number 20 were seized by separatists during the fight. Yet the involvement of RS in the attack was immediately denied, not just by the RS but by the SBU, the MVD, the National Security and Defense Council, and pro-Maidan media, claiming again without any evidence that the Yarosh business card and other evidence were fabrications. 83

Thus, the data show that Maidan Ukraine's highest-ranking officials, Yarosh, and the RS stood behind the Easter attack. The coordination between the new government and RS elements reveals another Maidan-style provocation, given the history of the Maidan snipers massacre and events to come in Odessa. Moreover, the Security and Defense Council, the SBU, and other state organs issued what was then still at least unverifiable-and it now ap pears known to be false-information in designating the attack a Russian provocation and denying RS's involvement, which was later acknowledged by the RS itself and recorded in court documents. This is consistent with the Maidan Ukraine's practice of excessive and non-credible strategic communications and disinformation, usually blaming Moscow, such as was the case in the snipers' massacre and events to come in Odessa in May. With Kiev's attack at Slavyansk, the cease-fire ended. Ukraine's civil war was about to begin in earnest. This was an opportunity, lost by Kiev's aggressiveness, to prevent Luhansk's LNR from joining the mounting DNR insurgency.

Luhansk: From Oblast to Insurgency 

The RS's April 20 Easter attack had an immediate effect in Luhansk. Those who in early April stormed the government buildings and others remained on the square near the OGA for weeks, and Kiev undertook no attempt to negotiate with them, Geneva offered hope, but no dialogue began, and instead the Easter attack escalated the level of violence, with the first combat casualties in Donbass. On April 21, the protesters organized a series of veches across the region to elect delegates to a region-wide veche held in Luhansk City the same day and attended by several thousand, chanting: "Russia! Referendum!" Some pro testers appeared to support Ukraine's federalization as a path to regional autonomy within Ukraine, while others supported Ukraine's reunification with the Russian Federation. The Luhansk veche declared the Luhansk People's Republic (INR) and two referenda. One referendum was scheduled for May 11 to determine whether the region should seek autonomous status within Ukraine. The second, scheduled for May 18, would determine whether the LNR should declare independence from Ukraine or join the Russian Federation should autonomy within Ukraine be rejected on the 11th. 84 The Prosecutor General's Office (GPO) deemed the rallies "separatist" in nature: "The demonstrators' speeches, insignia and federalization slogans, as well as calls to hold a local referendum, are explicitly separatist. The regional prosecutor's office sees the unrest in the Luhansk region as illegal and it entered information on them into the database of pre-trial inquiries to be controlled by the Luhansk regional prosecutor's office.” 85  A week later the LNR was officially declared, and its leaders demanded that Kiev recognize the authority of Bolotov as the new governor, provide amnesty to all protesters, codify Russian as a state language, and hold a referendum on Luhansk's status. If the Maidan government leadership did not meet these demands by 2:00 p.m. on April 29, the LNR would join with the DNR in the insurgency against the ATO. 86

The LNR's first support came from the town of Pervomaisk, which expressed its support for the rebel movement without an illegal takeover but would nevertheless see much of the fighting and be much destroyed during the war. On April 29 a demonstration of some 200 people, and then a meeting of the city council, took place in Pervomaisk. Both expressed support for the Slavyansk rebels in particular and, by implication, for resisting the establishment of Maidan regime power in Donetsk and Luhansk. A short video of the demonstration gives us a sense of the atmosphere. Some of the demonstrators seemed a bit wary of the turn of events, staying back from the stage and unsure of whether to support the resistance movement. The main speaker told the protesters that civil war was starting, that a column of the Ukrainian army was headed to Pervomaisk, and that some volunteers from Pervomaisk had gone to defend Slavyansk from the fascists and one was captured and tor tured. He said the new regime would cast shame on our land freed from the Nazis, and so the referendum should be held despite the limited time for organizing it by May 11. He also noted that the city council's deputies had nothing to fear from the movement; it would support law and order and only punish criminality. He also expressed thanks to the Rus sian people for their support. The speaker's assistant and several old women handed out St. George's ribbons, 87

The demonstration was followed by a city council meeting. A video shows a session convened on an emergency basis, with deputies called from the hall to attend immediately so a quorum of 25 deputies could be gathered and the decision taken "according to the law," as the chairman notes. The meeting adopted an appeal in support of the LNR and DNR and calling on the Maidan regime to call off its ATO and begin a dialogue. The speaker leading the demonstration spoke first and called for supporting the rebels with transportation and money. He repeated that a Pervomalsk volunteer had been captured and tortured by the Ukrainians and that Russia supports the Donbass. He closed calling for reunification with Russia to general applause.

With a quorum gathered, the council session voted unanimously in favor of the appeal, which included the following points:

• ·        -Kiev must withdraw the army from Slavyansk and Luhansk.
• ·         "To send the army to start a civil war against its own people is crime."
• ·         "The new regime calls the people of the entire southeast of the country separatists, terrorists, and saboteurs."
• ·         In order to liberate the country from [east Ukraine's residents] the government is prepared to use the army against the people in violation of both the law and constitution.
• ·         Ukraine's MVD and some politicians went even further, calling for the creation of an armed civilian formation to fight against its own people.
• ·         If the regime is interested in preserving Ukraine then it must stop the military offensive and begin a dialogue. Kiev must cancel the military operation against its own people who are only fighting for their rights in a way reflecting the way people did in western Ukraine and Kiev.
• ·         It is not right to divide the people into the title nation and a diaspora of occupiers.
• ·         They warn that a failure to compromise will lead to the destruction of not only democracy but of the state as such.
• ·         They demand amnesty for Berkut, MVD and army personnel, a guarantee that there will be no investigations of participants in protests, and the LNR-proposed oblast referendum.
• ·         Ukraine must become a state where different groups treat each other with mutual respect and not one in which one group seeks to impose its values on the rest and where every citizen feels safe and comfortable regardless of the language he considers is his native tongue, the church he attends, who are his heroes, or who he votes for.

The chair opened the floor to those who wished to speak before the vote was taken, asking that those in attendance treat each other respectfully. Two speakers called for caution and appealed for preserving order in the city and salvaging Ukraine's territorial integrity. A proposal to vote on which power was legitimate in the oblast-Maidan Kiev or the LNR was postponed. A proposal from the floor to include in the appeal or a separate document a call for a military tribunal of the Maidan Kiev authorities as "military criminals" was rejected. Another speaker stood to say that, yes, the new regime had gone outside the frame work of the law, but Donbassians should not destroy Ukraine. Then the Pervomaisk appeal was approved unanimously. Before, during or after the session, the Russian flag replaced the Ukrainian blue and yellow atop the Pervomaisk city hall building. 89

There was a similarly less violent, even orderly process in many of Luhansk's towns. By mid-May government buildings in most of the larger towns in Luhansk had been seized by INR rebels. Luhansk was taking the road paved by the DNR. By then fighting had begun in earnest in Donetsk in Kramatorsk, Slavyansk, Gorlovka and elsewhere. The first phase of the ATO/civil war began to burn. Kindling was provided by another RS operation in Odessa on May 2.

The Odessa Terrorist Pogrom

On May 2, 2014, RS and the "Odessa self-defense" hundred led a terrorist pogrom by RS and SP activists in the southern port city of Odessa. The attack grew out of fighting between pro-Maidan and anti-Maidan elements in the city center; much of it videotaped. The fighting was provoked apparently as part of the overall plan to rid the city of and intimidate "pro-separatist" elements; one RS activist was killed in the initial street fighting. The pro-Maidan RS activists then led a mob to the city's Trade Union House square. There, as numerous videotapes show, a group of anti-Maidan, pro-autonomy protesters had been occupying Kulikovo Field, the square in front of the Trade Union House, for weeks in a tent city. The RS and OSD-led crowd stormed the square, burned the tents and then set the Trade Union House on fire after the anti-Maidan protesters fled into the building for refuge. RS and other activists threw Molotov cocktails into the building, setting it ablaze, while others shot at the windows with pistols and still others entered the building and apparently killed some of those inside. As people burned inside, pro-Maidan RS and other nationalists shouted "Glory to Ukraine!" and sang the Ukrainian national anthem. Those who decided to jump from windows to save their lives were beaten after they hit the ground, often unconscious. 90  As a result of the events at the Trade Union House at least 48 anti-Maidan protesters were killed-42 of them burned alive or dying of asphyxiation in the Trade Union House-and more than 200 were injured and wounded.

 The Right Sector Web site, was effusive the about the atrocity: "May 2, 2014 is another bright page in our national history." They claimed responsibility for the Odessa pogrom, noting "about a hundred members of 'Right Sector' and patriotic-minded Odessa residents countered the rebels." Acknowledging its own losses during the early street fighting, it noted: "Yes, the men of Right Sector and other Ukrainian patriots suffered losses in killed and wounded. However, the toll of Russian terrorists were [sic] much higher, indeed the phenomenon of 'separatists' in Odessa disappeared as a factor. All this is to the merit of the public's united patriotic feeling." Most importantly, RS acknowledged that its leader "Dmitro Yarosh ignored the 'expedience' of the election campaign to coordinate the action against the Russian aggression." 91  RS celebrated its leading role in the terrorist attack twice around the time of the first anniversary as well. On May 1, 2015, the RS site announced a commemoration of the crime as an act of patriotic glory:

2 May at 14.00 at the Cathedral Square pro-Ukrainian forces will rally the city on the anniversary of the day when patriots defended peace in Ukrainian Odessa. May 2 last year, thanks to the bold and coordinated actions in Odessa, the plans of the occupiers and their supporters were frustrated. On that day we all fought and won! We remember our colleagues who have paid with their lives for the future of Odessa and Ukraine. Their feat will live in our hearts forever. The event will be a memorial service for the dead patriots rally commemorating the heroes [with] a minute of silence and the laying of flowers. Security will be provided by armed units of organizations that are part of the command. The perimeter is to be under the control of Right Sector activists "Automaidan," "RSL," and "Self Defense Odessa." We welcome all patriotic citizens of Odessa on May 2 at 14.00 on Cathedral Square. Total power! Eternal memory to those who gave their lives for Ukraine!  92

On the day of the anniversary, May 2, RS offered a motive to explain its terrorist pogrom a year earlier. A post on its Web site claimed that it acted after one Ivan Ivanov, said to be an RS member, was killed in the street clashes in the city center preceding the pogrom at the Trade Union building. RS proudly posted along with the anniversary statement one of the many videos showing RS and other ultranationalist Ukrainians attacking the anti-Maidan tent city on the square and then the Trade Union building.  93 On the same day, leading RS member Igor Mosiichuk praised the Odessa pogrom on his Facebook page, exclaiming: "I remember, and I am proud." 94 He was particularly proud to have given a rebuff to "occupiers and collaborators" and said the attack "gave an impetus to the war against separatists and occupiers in Donbass. In a 2016 French documentary, RS's Odessa organization leader also expresses his pride in the pogrom." 95

The evidence shows again that this was a well-planned action undertaken by the new Maidan regime's siloviki, Yarosh's RS, and local RS and other neofascist elements. On April 29, three days before the pogrom, National Security and Defense Council chairman and Maidan self-defense commander-in-chief Parubiy met with the so-called "Odessa self-defense" (OSD) and its leader, Nikolai Volkov (aka Sotnik Mykola), who would be involved in the pogrom. A brief videotape of an April 29 meeting between Parubiy and Mykola Volkov shows the two discussing "coordination with the police" in organizing checkpoints in and around the city and Purubiy providing bulletproof vests to "the volunteers manning the patriotic roadblocks at the entrance to Odessa.” 96  Coordination for an altogether different purpose occurred off-camera in what former Odessa MVD deputy chief Dmitrii Fuchedzhi says was nearly a four-hour meeting between Parubiy and the OSD. Pro-Maidan RS, other nationalists and soccer thugs were bused in, as were anti-Maidan soccer thugs for a soccer match to be held in Odessa that day. Parubly coordinated the recruitment of some 500 RS and hundreds from outside the city ostensibly to man new checkpoints on roads entering the city and elsewhere, according to Fuchedzhi, who was fired after the events. 97   RS and the OSD, with the assistance of the local police, were able to parlay the violence into the pogrom.

The heavy RS and neofascist presence in the city that day is well-documented. Detailed accounts by the pro-democracy, anti-Putin Ekho Moskvy's journalists in Odessa on that day state clearly that "ultras" (ultranationalists) of the RS and the Self-Defense sotniki from Kiev and Kharkov and Volkov's OSD led the violence on the pro-Maidan side and at the Trade Union House. They manipulated the members of the fan club of the local Odessa soccer team "Chernomorets." Ekho's Ilya Azar also relays the words of one pro-Maidan activist, who came in from Vinnitsa, that 2,000 "ultras" had been brought into the city for the battle. 98 Several videos reveal the RS's leading role in the events. In one video two men discuss who the people doing the burning and killing are, and one says that they are Right Sector and adds that 3,000 people were brought into the city.  99 In one video toughs are consulting with MVD officers and talking of "killing every last one of the scum." A fighter with an Apache haircut is seen openly wearing an RS red-over-black (blood and soil) shoulder patch and a bulletproof vest. 100 Another video shows, at the 2:18 mark, a pro-Maidan sotnik yelling orders for his "self-defense" fighters to get moving.  101  Another shows the neofascist mob moving into the building, and as one enters he screams: "Where are you scum?” 102

During the street fighting in the city center, one video shows a man shooting at demonstrators from behind police barricades. It emerged that 6 people were killed in the street fighting, but it has been difficult to determine on whose side most of them were fighting. The city authorities knew that large numbers of pro-Maidan activists were coming to the city to challenge a large cohort of anti-Maidan youth in the city. Yet no attempt was made to stop them at "the patriotic roadblocks at the entrance to Odessa," to make sure the two sides remained at a distance from each other, or to protect the tent city demonstrators on Kulikovo Field-most of whom were not young toughs but rather middle-aged and elderly trade union activists, communists, and pensioners. To the contrary, at noon Odessa's police chief and deputy chiefs were summoned to a meeting at the city council. The meeting lasted three hours, and they were required to turn off their mobile telephones. Thus, as the fighting broke out, the police chief was incommunicado.103

Thus, the RS, OSD and Chernomordets fighters were allowed to lead a march unhindered into the city center, with the local anti-Maidan forces in the wait. Violence quickly escalated into shooting. After the pro-Maidan mob stormed Kulikovo Field and the anti-Maidan picketers were trapped inside the burning Trade Union House, numerous videos show none other than Parubiy's Odessa contact, OSD leader and "patriotic checkpoint" organizer, the sotnik Mykola Volkov, wearing a black bulletproof vest and reporting on the situation and the number of wounded by walkie-talkie to an unidentifiable higher-up and later firing a pistol at the burning Trade Union House. 104 Videos show busloads of Odessa's police standing by and watching as the crowd is well into burning the building and throwing stones at the windows. Only after some six anti-Maidan protesters jump out of the burning building from windows above one of the side entrances-to the joyful cheers of pro-Maidan neofascists-do some police and others move to help the injured. When others are thinking of jumping, RS fighters scream: "Come on, jump you scum!” 105  It remains unclear where these victims ended up, but there are apparent eyewitness accounts saying that many more people were burned or killed inside the Trade Union House. One anti-Maidan activist, who was inside the building and was detained by police, stated upon his release that 116 people were killed inside the Trade Union house, that many were driven away to be buried, and that the RS and other fighters "finished off people" inside the building, including a mother with her two children.  106  When one views a video made by the perpetrators of the Odessa pogrom, as they tour the building in the aftermath, one suspects this is very likely true. Moving through the Trade Union House's corridors in the dark, they beat survivors, scream at people to state whether they are alive, and poke the charred corpses with their clubs, jokingly calling them "Negroes,"107

 It could be possible that only the clash in the city center was planned and that matters then spun out of control, leading to the Trade Union House pogrom. However, none of the RS and OSD perpetrators who celebrated the violence have made such a distinction between the two phases of the incident in claiming pride and responsibility for the act. Moreover, there has been a concerted attempt in Kiev and Odessa to delay and obstruct investigation, and thereby cover up, the Odessa pogrom. In the aftermath of the day's events, many of the anti-Maidan demonstrators, including those trapped in the Trade Union House but able to escape with their lives, were detained by police and later released. However, the later investigation would hit the anti-Maidan, pro-federalists much harder than the pro-Maidan neofascists.

In September 2014, Odessa Oblast's legislative assembly closed down its investigation and handed all evidence to the MVD and GPO of Ukraine in Kiev. 108  In November 2015, the Council of Europe's International Advisory Panel on Ukraine (CEIAPU) issued a report on Maidan Ukraine's investigations of the May 2, 2014, events in Odessa. It concluded that the investigations "failed to comply with requirements of the European Human Rights Convention" and "lacked independence" and "effectiveness" and "failed to show sufficient thoroughness and diligence." This was largely because the "fox was guarding the hen house." In particular, the investigation was flawed because, although evidence indicated that the MVD was in cahoots with some of those who were behind the disturbances, the MVD was in charge of several of the relevant investigations. For example, the MVD-led investigation into the 40-minute delay in the arrival of the fire department was deemed flawed, as the local fire department is subordinate to the local MVD, which in turn is subordinated to the central MVD apparatus in Kiev. Moreover, the investigations have been effectively sabotaged by being divided between the MVD and GPO and reduction of investigatory personnel. 109 The panel also expressed "serious concern over two acquittals in the case due to lack of evidence and regarded that the information provided so far was insufficient to protect the rights of the victims and next-of-kin 110  The CELAPU was critical of the fact that nearly 30 pro-federalist, anti-Maidan protesters had been charged with "participation in mass disorders," but only one pro-Maidan participant has been charged-this, on suspicion of committing murder. Thus, the CEIAPU's overall conclusion was that "substantial progress has not been made in the investigations into the violent events of 2 May 2014 in Odessa.” 111

In January 2016, the Ukrainian human rights group, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) and the "2 May Group" issued statements condemning what it called efforts by the Maidan GPO to "stymie" the investigation of the Odessa terrorist pogrom. The 2 May Group has carried out its own investigation in which it has concluded that there is some evidence that the anti-Maidan, pro-autonomy forces on Kulikovo Field were also prepared for a battle, though as the evidence shows they were not the initiators of the conflict there, and that MVD deputy chief Fuchedzhi might also have coordinated with some of them. The street fighting was more evenly balanced, according to the 2 May Group, as evidenced by the fact that of the six people killed by gunfire, three were anti-Maidan and three were pro-Maidan. The group claims it has also debunked the version of events that holds that the anti-Maidan, pro-autonomy picketeers killed in the Trade House Building were overcome by asphyxiation because of toxic gases from the inflammatory materials the victims themselves supposedly used or chemicals present in the building materials. The group asserts that all the information it gathered during its investigation and presented to the MVD, GPO, and SBU authorities has been ignored. It concludes that the Kiev Maidan authorities "will never reveal the truth."  112  Odessa's new governor is former Georgian President Saakashvili, who was appointed by Maidan Ukraine's first president, Petro Po roshenko. On his first visit to Odessa after appointing Saakashvili, Poroshenko repeated the popular pro-Maidan myth that the fire was started by its victims. Saakashvili has made no attempt to revive any investigation under the control of Odessites.

The massacre at Odessa's Trade Union House changed the calculus in Donbass, strengthening the determination to resist the Maidan regime and its neofascist elements. On the day of the Odessa pogrom, the ATO's forces assaulted Slavyansk in force. There was no turning back from the Ukrainian civil war.

The Unnecessary War

The civil war in the Donbass was a thoroughly avoidable and unnecessary one. It was the consequence of a deliberate policy adopted in Kiev not to negotiate with and to deny the anti-Maidan forces the very same tactics they, the Maidan forces, had used to seize power in Kiev and much of the rest of Ukraine. Maidan Kiev preferred to reject talks, much as its radicals did on February 21. Instead, it sent regular forces and neofascist-led volunteer battalions to the southeastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions immediately after Donbass locals refused to submit to the country's new, coup-imposed authorities in lieu of talks on autonomy for their region.

 Without an exhaustive attempt to avoid war through negotiations, Kiev was initiating a civil war against its native population. A very similar, indeed far more threatening situation had arisen in 1991 in Chechnya. The tradition of Caucasus-wide resistance to Russian rule meant there was a real danger that an uprising in Chechnya would spread to the Chechens' fraternal Vainakhs, the Ingush in Ingushetiya, as well as to Dagestan and per haps elsewhere across the North Caucasus. The so-called Chechen Republic of Ichkeriya had tens of thousands of fighters, well-armed as a result of the Russian army's dissolution, followed by the sale and abandonment of equipment to the rebels. Yet Moscow negotiated for three years before starting its antiterrorist operation in December 1994. By contrast, Kiev started its ATO almost immediately, with no attempt to negotiate with the rebels directly with full Western backing.

 The avoidability and unnecessary nature of the "ATO" is evident when one examines public opinion in the Donbass in April 2014 when the war kicked off. Despite the threatening na ture of the events in Kiev and western and central Ukraine over the previous months, Don bassians were more preoccupied with protecting their regions' unique economic interests rather than being driven by ethnic communalism and separatism. 113  Although this balance in opinion would shift after a year of Kiev's ATO, at its outset Donbassians opposed secession.

 Support in Donetsk and Luhansk for independence or reunification with Russia, though much stronger than elsewhere in Ukraine, was much weaker than in Crimea. However, as the Maidan ideology became more apparent, the ATO came on the horizon, and Ukrainian neofascists slaughtered 42 pro-autonomy activists in Odessa, support for separatism, not to mention autonomy, in the Donbass grew. At the time of the OGA takeovers, large demonstrations protesting against the Maidan regime and for autonomy or independence were the rule in both oblast capitals and several other large cities in Donbass. But overall public opinion remained tentative. According to opinion polls, approximately half of the Donetsk and Luhansk populations strongly regarded the new Maidan government and acting president Turchynov as illegitimate, compared to about a third or fewer in other south eastern regions.114 According to a Ukrainian poll conducted April 8-14, 2014, a minority of Donbassians-24 percent in Luhansk and 18 percent in Donetsk-supported the OGA seizures. More substantial minorities-but minorities nevertheless-supported secession from Ukraine and reunification with Moscow: 27.5 percent in Donetsk and 30.3 percent in Luhansk. A large portion of the population remained "on the fence"-17.3 percent and 12.4 percent, respectively, answered "party yes, partly no.” 115

 But as Giuliano shows, although by late spring and early summer, popular support for the DNR and LNR reached approximately one-third of the population, even this limited sup port was not driven by a single-factor pro-Russian ethnic or linguistic sentiment. Rather, there were multiple reasons why ordinary people began to support separatism. While loyalty to Russia was a pivotal factor in the Soviet-nostalgic older generations, which rejected the USSR's collapse, more important was "a sense of betrayal by Kyiv and the rest of the country inspired by the Euromaidan events. Drivers of this sense of betrayal included: Kyiv's persecution of the Berkut special police; government failure to repudiate Ukrainian ultranationalists, which drove legitimate resentment and fear in Donbass; and the already noted attempt by Ukraine's Rada to annul the Yanukovich-era law giving the Russian language a special status in Russian-dominated areas. The Berkut hailed largely from and were a point of pride in Donbass.

 The killing of many on Maidan, their humiliation by western Ukrainians, and their persecution in the wake of Yanukovich's fall created great anger. When Berkut members arrived in Crimea and Donetsk, they were hailed as heroes, rather than as enemies, and as symbols of resistance to Maidan. The divisive function performed by Ukrainian ultranationalism should be obvious by now, but suffice it to say that Giuliano's observation of Donbass demonstrators revealed a tangible fear of neofascism as a result of Maidan nationalists' "xenophobic discourses that scapegoated ethnic Russians for Ukraine's problems" and the government's appointment of Parubiy, a former leader of a neofascist party, to head the National Security and Defense Council.

According to Giuliano, although opinion polls show that fears regarding loss of language rights had not been on the list of Donbassians' top concerns recently, that changed when the Rada tried to repeal the law and then repealed its repeal days later. Still, the original lack of salience of the language issue "indicates that politicians within the Donbass faced obstacles in their attempts to draw boundaries between ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, and between Russophone and Ukrainophone populations. This suggests that ethnocultural differences among the Donbass population did not spontaneously translate into political grievances."

There also were two key economic grievances. First was alleged discriminatory redistribution from Donbass to the rest of the country, summed up in the Donbass slogan: "Kiev maidanaet, Donbas rabotaet" (Kyiv protests [literally "maidans"] while the Donbass works"). Second, Donbassians feared negative effects on their economic welfare from potential EU membership in the form of likely austerity policies and loss of trade with Russia and the Eurasian Customs Union. 116  The upshot of this is that ethnic and linguistic differences did not predetermine or even determine by themselves an "inevitable," though perhaps probable interethnic conflict.

Putting aside the stresses put on Ukraine's internal politics by outsiders, there were ways for more subtle Ukrainian political leadership to co-opt portions of the Donbass population by way of several key compromises on issues of concern for Donbassians. If amnesty for the Berkut, reining in the most egregious neofascist ideological excesses, guarantees for the Russian language, and trade talks with Russia, the EU and EEU on Ukraine's accession to the EU in ways that protected jobs in Donbass, were put on the table instead of the ATO, the ground would have been pulled out from underneath the LNR's and DNR's weak support

Similar findings on the limits of the ethnic factor's salience can be gleaned from opinion surveys conducted in Crimea. The modest strength of the ethnic factor in motivations can be seen in contradictions between Crimeans' pro-Russian views and those on relations with Kiev. According to a 1997 opinion poll carried out in Crimea, 38 percent of the ethnic Russians and 21 percent of ethnic Ukrainians on the peninsula favored secession from Ukraine and 72 percent and 51 favored Crimea's reunification with Russia. 117  This somewhat contradictory finding suggests that Ukraine's possession of Crimea - and peace in the Donbass - could have been salvaged by Kiev's accession to the EEU. Thus, as Giuliano suggests, there was reason to be "cautiously optimistic" that the grievances held most broadly in the Donbass in April 2014 were "more amenable to dialogue and policy intervention than is generally thought.” 118 Unfortunately, Kiev chose to quickly abandon dialogue, and no Western power urged, much less pressured, the new Maidan regime to negotiate rather than erroneously and irresponsibly designating the Donbass separatists as terrorists.

The ATO and the Foreign Actors

It must be said that at this moment a few words threatening the withholding of badly needed Western economic assistance from President Obama or at least some authoritative source in Washington could have restrained Kiev's hand and led to a stronger cease-fire regime and concerted negotiations to prevent war. We know from the Nuland-Pyatt phone conversation leaked on February 7, 2014, that Washington had and, incidentally, continues to have enormous influence over the Ukrainian government's decisions, including appointments to the highest non-elected office in the land - the prime ministership. In April, Washington's and Brussels's sway over Kiev was even more extraordinary. The country was still bankrupt and was now facing a war in the east, where much of its wealth had been generated. The West was the only possible source of lending to keep the Ukrainian ship of state afloat. The issue of any future loans and aggression in the east without undertaking direct, serious talks could have been linked in messaging behind the scenes with Kiev. In stead, as with the violation of the February 21 agreement, there was no criticism of Kiev's actions.

Rather, Washington continued to cover for Kiev. For example, in her testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on May 8, Assistant Secretary of State Nuland did not mention Right Sector or the Odessa massacre. Moreover, when questioned by California representative Dana Rohrbacher about the presence of neofascists on Maidan, Nuland tried to avoid answering the question. After Rohrbacher raised the issue of February's Maidan snipers in the context of the neofascists, Nuland claimed that all such incidents were "subject to investigation.” 119 Yet, the U.S. neither investigated the incident nor petitioned an international organization to do so. This means that along with Moscow -whose Crimea intervention surely had sown panic and potential for overreaction in Kiev, Washington and Brussels-the West, in particular the Barack Obama administration, and Kiev also bear responsibility for the war, as they do for the original crisis that brought us the Ukrainian civil war and the threat of larger conflagration in Europe for the first time in 75 years.

What were the great powers occupied with as the crisis deepened? Washington and Brussels compounded their policy foibles of NATO and EU expansion that largely caused the crisis by escalating attempts to isolate Russia economically and diplomatically-precisely the kind of policy Russians suspected the West of employing under NATO and EU expansion. Washington in particular compounded policy aggressiveness with verbal taunts of Putin and at that time still false charges of Russian military intervention in Donetsk and Luhansk. The Western, especially the U.S., government and media carried out anti-Don bass and anti-Russian propaganda that rivaled Russian state television's anti-American campaign. It portrayed the Donbass revolts, much as Russian propaganda painted Maidan, as bought and paid for by Russian intelligence. 120 The West's allies in Ukraine joined in, with the SBU producing false evidence of a Russian invasion in the east (see below), with provisional government chairman Arsenil Yatsenyuk asserting that "Russia wants to start World War III"; this and similar claims received broad circulation in Western media. 121

In Moscow, aside from a few calls for negotiations, Putin reacted to the Donbass unrest not unlike his Western counterparts. He made no strong statement demanding restraint, disarmament or at least withdrawal from government buildings in Ukraine. Instead, having already massed some 40,000 troops on its border with Donbass, Moscow occupied itself with often equally outrageous propaganda measures to support the rebels, covering the crisis in one-sided fashion much like its Western counterpart. It organized a series of patriotic PR events highlighting the themes of the return of Crimea and Sevastopol to Russia and painting the entire Ukrainian provisional government as a fascist "junta," a word that was repeated ad infinitum in Russian media and would make it that much more difficult to engage said "junta" in talks.

Some ultranationalist elements in Russia began pushing the so-called "Novorossiya project “ to be sure, but Western military and media began to grossly overstate its role in Russian policy, claiming the existence of a "Putin doctrine" aiming to recreate the USSR with the Novorossiya project. Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak warned of the Novorossiya doctrine at a joint briefing with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon alter the signing of the Geneva agreement. Hagel noted: "Russia's aggression has renewed our resolve to strengthen the NATO alliance.” 122 The doctrine and project allegedly stood behind alleged Russian preparations for the annexation of not just Donbass but all of southeastern Ukraine from Kherson and Odessa in south-central Ukraine to Donbass and Kharkiv in the east-what in the 18th century St. Petersburg called "Novorossiya." Lenin had handed large swaths of "Novorossiya" to Ukraine's Bolsheviks in 1919 in order to di lute largely agrarian Ukraine with the industrial proletarian element in Novorossiya, especially Donbass with its large coal industry and miners' cohort. Novorossiya's unification with the Ukraine SSR was codified with the USSR's official formation after the civil war. However, Putin mentioned "Novorossiya" but once. That came in an off-hand comment in a4-hour televised news conference on the same day the Polish defense minister made his comments. In hours, the mention of the word had become in the West a strategic doctrine portending Russia's recreation of the USSR by force-"Putin's New Russia."125 Five months later, the Kremlin's Web site used the term again, this time in a headline for an entry on the site regarding a statement by Putin, but the word was never mentioned in Putin's statement itself. 124 To be sure, Russian media, including state media, began to use the term more broadly, but contrary to common belief, the Kremlin does not control everything said in Russian media, even in state media.

Russia's Military Intervention: Fiction and Fact

Moscow's military involvement in the Donbass uprising was negligible, perhaps nonexistent in spring 2014 beyond a likely strengthened GRU and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) presence, in addition to the usual contingent that one would expect any major power to deploy in an unstable neighboring country in which foreign competitors maintained deep involvement. Even the Maidan regime's own strategic communications and propaganda efforts rarely claimed that there was any Russian presence - volunteer or professional - in eastern Ukraine before Girkin. The first wave of the Russian volunteers in Don bass consisted of volunteers moving from Crimea after the events there, volunteers arriving directly from Russia, particularly from regions adjacent to Ukraine, and Kuban Cossacks. Nevertheless, Western governments and media joined in a rather clumsy Ukrainian strategic communications campaign to pin the Donbass uprising on Moscow, rather than acknowledge its indigenous root causes in a deeply divided and polarized Ukraine. Under the Maidan Ukraine's new SBU director Nalyvalchenko - who would be fired, as noted above, after having falsely claimed that Putin advisor Vladislav Surkov coordinated the Maidan snipers’ massacre - the agency issued all sorts of false propaganda reports in 2014-15. When many of its claims were aired, they were immediately exposed as disinformation.

FICTION

In mid-April, Ukrainian and Western government and media began claiming Russia was invading Donbass and attempts were made to "prove" this claim. The West seemed on multiple occasions to either acquiesce in disseminating clear disinformation or fall prey to Kiev's falsification of data. Thus, SBU chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko and National Security and Defense Council chairman Parubiy claimed Ukrainian intelligence had captured more than 23 Russian GRU agents. 125  They promised to produce them for public viewing, but this never happened. At the same time, acting deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration Andrei Senchenko claimed that its detention centers were crammed with arrested Russian spies introduced into the country four years earlier with false documents. 126 They were never produced in public, nor were there any trials of such spies. On April 16, a Ukrainian counterintelligence officer told media that Moscow planned to kill 100 to 200 Donbassians and blame it on Kiev in a false-flag operation as a pretext for invading Ukraine a half hour later. 127 The above claims came as the SBU falsely identified Girkin as an active rather than a retired Russian intelligence officer at the time of his ar rival in Donbass, as noted in the previous chapter. The SBU did the same with other former Russian intelligence officers, like former GRU colonel Igor Belzer, who commanded the first rebel units in Gorlovka (Horlivka) from April. Belzer had retired from the GRU and moved to Gorlovka two years earlier, according to democratic opposition journalist Pavel Kanygin. 128 Early Maidan SBU disinformation usually included falsely identified photo graphs captured from social networking sites; unidentifiable audio tapes; false claims that the uniforms and equipment used by the pro-Russian groups in Donetsk and Luhansk were Russian army standard-issue; and claims that those forces must be Russian soldiers and/or special forces because of their professional demeanor. They ignored the fact that inter views with rebels and journalists who spoke with them indicated that they were former Afghan war veterans, former Ukrainian, Russian and Soviet servicemen, former Berkut officers, local police and private security guards.

The first piece of disinformation attempted to show a significant Russian presence in Don bass already in April 2014. On April 20, 2014, a set of photos of an alleged GRU agent were provided by the SBU to NATO, Western governments, and the New York Times. The photos were ostensibly taken in Georgia, Russia, and eastern Ukraine, and purported to unmask a bearded GRU special forces operative who had been allegedly dispatched by Moscow to Georgia, and now six years later to eastern Ukraine. Three photographs allegedly showed one and the same Russian GRU agent in Russia, in 2008 Georgia, and in April 2014 Ukraine. NATO's Atlantic Council and the New York Times publicized the photographs, touting them as evidence of Russia's incursion into Donbass. 129  The SBU's "evidence" of this alleged GRU agent's presence in Ukraine was exposed immediately as a fake. 130 The New York Times and NATO's Atlantic Council were forced to back off their claims. 131  Simon Saradzhyan of Harvard's Belfer Center noted that the photo alleged to have been taken in Georgia shows Khamzat Gairbekov, commander of the Chechen Vostok (East) Battalion, controlled by Russia's GRU and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, sent to fight in Georgia in 2008, and since disbanded. 132 Moreover, the photographer of the photo taken supposedly in Russia said that the picture was actually taken in Ukraine and was used without his permission. He said the person in the photograph taken in Ukraine was not the GRU agent Gairbekov but a private Russian citizen named Alexander Mozhaev, a Cossack who had served in the Russian army in the 1990s, was wanted for murder in Russia, and came to Donbass after participating in the Crimea events. 133

At the same time, Ukraine's SBU claimed to have captured 20 GRU agents but never presented them to television cameras and never provided audio, pictures of them, or any identity papers. Weeks later the SBU reduced the number of its "captured" GRU agents to 10, and days after that to 3 in its falsified report to NATO's Atlantic Council. It seemed such incontrovertible proof of a significant GRU presence beyond the routine should have been. paraded before television cameras. This would have been a real propaganda coup against the Kremlin, but a "perp walk" never came. If it had, then it would have been incumbent upon those seeing clear evidence to acknowledge that Putin had sent forces into Ukraine to orchestrate the east Ukrainian uprisings. Presenting conclusive evidence of a clandestine Russian incursion into eastern Ukraine therefore would have helped to mobilize support for a tougher military response than did the falsified photographs. It is perhaps for this reason that the Obama White House, U.S. State Department, NATO, its Atlantic Council, U.S. European Command chief General Phillip Breedlove, and the New York Times touted this as "evidence" of Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. Only the Times retracted the "evidence" after it was exposed as false. From the Kremlin's point of view, false reports of a Russian presence in Ukraine and Western connivance in their proselytization were added to the perfidy of the Western-backed Maidan revolt and the beginning of ground and air operations against Donbass without a word of criticism or even caution from either Washington or Brussels.

False SBU reports continued through the ATO even after there was reliable evidence that some officially sponsored Russian incursions had begun in June-July 2014. In February 2015, as the Donbass rebels, with significant Russian military support, were encircling and about to rout Ukrainian forces near Debaltsevo, Ukraine's SBU passed photographs of Russian tanks allegedly in Ukraine to a U.S. senator who showed them in a presentation on the floor of the Senate, only to have them exposed as fakes. Burned already by the SBU's sloppy stratcomm, the New York Times exposed the deception by showing that the photo graphs were from the 2008 South Ossetiya war. 134 One wonders why the SBU decided to provide falsified intelligence to its allies in Washington, since Washington and Brussels (NATO and the EU) were already issuing condemnations of Russia's "invasion of Ukraine" and were publishing satellite photos of rather small columns of armored vehicles and tanks said to be evidence of tens of thousands of troops.

Western media eagerly reprinted Kiev strategic communication pieces and totally ignored the other side of the story; for example, never reporting a word about the Odessa terrorist pogrom. The Western media's connivance with their governments and their distortions of reality were condemned by anti-Putin, opposition journalist Andrei Babitskii, who was fired from U.S. government-funded RFERL for failing to follow the Western party line: "There is a large number of foreign correspondents working here [Donbass] who do not in any way support either the DNR authorities or the population that elected them. In general, they have, let's say, a hostile attitude towards the people of Donbass. This hostility is -manifested in the texts, which they publish, and in the material they film, which they remove, and no one checks them for this.... [I]t is more difficult for journalists whose views do not correspond with Kiev's official position to work here, if they let them come here at all." He described some of what was missing from the Western media's accounts about the conflict and the Donbass population: "Here they are killing the civilian population which made a different choice and does not wish to submit to a policy of Ukrainization.... They have their own interests and their own cultural identity, which the local population values, and for this the civilian population is being killed with cannons and tanks."  135 

After his June 2015 firing from his position as SBU chief, allegedly for failing to fight corruption aggressively but in reality for his department's clumsy strategic propaganda sur rounding the Maidan snipers' massacre, Nalyvaichenko persisted in making allegations about the Russian incursions into Donbass. But the earliest official Russian military or intelligence presence in Ukraine he could point to was in May 2014. This was based on information gathered from two GRU agents that Kiev's forces actually did capture in April 2015 and did parade before television cameras, unlike a year earlier. 136

In addition to the false claims, Kiev's more credible disclosures regarding an official Russian military or intelligence presence in Ukraine (outside Crimea) never claimed to show, much less did they demonstrate, such a presence existed before the April 14, 2014, start of the ATO. Thus, when the opposition Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta consulted the Ukrainian military on Kiev's and NATO's claims that there were 13,000 Russian troops fighting in Ukraine and that, according to Kiev, at least 4,500 had been killed as of February 2014, the earliest time for evidence of a Russian intervention, according to Ukraine's military, was August 2014, not June or July, much less April. Yet Kiev and NATO were claiming in June that Russia had "invaded" Ukraine. Novaya gazeta concluded that the numerical data for the number of Russian troops and Russian military casualties in Donbass trumpeted by Kiev were not realistic. 137 To this date no convincing evidence of a major Russian military intervention before August 2014 has been presented.

This reinforces the conclusion that Kiev started the war, and it is fundamentally a civil war. It is as much and, very arguably more Parubiy's war, Turchynov's war, Nalyvaichenko's war, Avakov's war, and Maidan Kiev's war than it is "Putin's war" or "Russia's war." However, what matters ultimately is not propaganda but the more concrete elements of policy. In this view, Russia deserves some of the blame for the war's escalation, its "hybrid war" or stealth occupation in Crimea having sown panic and cynical expediency among the relatively inexperienced players in Kiev.

Consequently, unrealistic strategic propaganda became a hallmark of Maidan Ukraine's secret services and media, as well as Western strategic communication both by government and media. Born of the Maidan regime's Russophobic OUN heritage, exaggerated and often absurd claims regarding Russian and Donbass intentions became the leitmotif of Ukrainian intelligence for years to come. Many were intended to reinforce the "terrorist" label the Maidan regime applied to Donbass's "vatniki." For example, one of the most absurd and clumsy propaganda efforts came in August 2015, when Western and Ukrainian media including Newsweek, Khlyva.net, and Euromaidan Press-began reporting that "sources in the SBU had uncovered an ongoing Russian effort to help the Donbass rebels build a "dirty" nuclear bomb. 138 Another came in the wake of the March 2016 Islamic State terrorist attacks in Brussels, when Ukraine's SBU chief Vasyl Grytsak said Russia was possibly behind the plot as "part of Russia's hybrid war."

FACT: WAR AND TERROR IN DONBASS

Contrary to Western strategic propaganda, there were never 40,000 or even tens of thousands of Russian troops in Donbass. Russia's and Russians' actual involvement occurred in two forms-volunteers and regular troops and came in three stages. First came, as noted above, a wave of volunteers of various types. These volunteers acted separately from a very likely additional GRU and SVR penetration into Donbass for gathering intelligence towards making assessments of the two sides' relative military capabilities to inform Kremlin contingency planning and decision-making regarding any further Russian involvement on the ground in Donbass-intelligence, military, political or otherwise. Contrary to Kiev's claims the overwhelming majority of fighters were not Russians but rather locals, as even Western journalists on the scene reported. For example, Mark Franchetti, a journalist for the British newspaper The Sunday Times, shocked a Ukrainian television audience when he reported on Savik Shuster's weekly live political talk show in June 2014 that after three weeks in Donbass he had found that the rebels were overwhelmingly local residents. A "small per centage" were volunteers from Russia. Most rebels had "no military experience" and were "normal, regular citizens who took up arms and are absolutely convinced they are defend ing their homes, as they say, from fascism."140 The Russian volunteers included remnants of the Chechen "Vostok" (East) battalion disbanded in 2008 after the Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov moved against the Yamadaey clan that controlled the detachment. 141  Anti-Putin opposition journalist Babitskii described the Donbass rebels as largely locals and the Russian volunteers as including a wide range of personal and ideological types, "Russian nationalists, monarchists, and pagans," as well as those who identified themselves with a broad "Russian world" or civilization. 142  Many of the local volunteers were former Berkut, MVD, SBU, and military personnel as well as veterans of these institutions who defected in opposition to the new Maidan regime. 143 In this earliest phase, much of the rebel weaponry came from stockpiles in seized government buildings such as SBU and MVD buildings, seized military bases, and weapons surrendered by Ukrainian troops. 144

The second phase involved the Russian state's support for the mobilization of volunteers, including former and "on leave" servicemen, to Donbass in order to reinforce the volunteers and the probable deployment of some special forces teams to train and back up the rebels. The third phase involved direct military intervention, though something less than an invasion. Limited, strategic military incursions by regular forces were used to prevent major defeats, including encirclements of the rebels on the battlefield. The Russian forces deployed-some 5,000 regular forces and another several thousand "demobilized" and volunteer fighters-rarely intervened in actual combat. They did so in large numbers but twice, and in both cases they did so to prevent the encirclement and rout of Donbass rebel forces and maintain a balanced correlation of forces on the battlefield that the Kremlin and any willing partners might parlay into cease-fires and peace talks.

The Russian Armed Forces Interventions

ILOVAISK

The first intervention in the battle of llovaisk in Donetsk Oblast from August 7 to 30, 2014, the DNR rebels were on the verge of being routed and expelled from the strategic town of Ilovaisk following weeks, even months of retreat after Girkin's units were forced to abandon Slavyansk. The Ukrainian Army maintained an overwhelming advantage in manpower and especially weaponry, testifying to the still limited support coming from Moscow. 145   Even by late August, unconvincing satellite photos from a private company showing a handful of Russian tanks on Ukrainian territory was NATO's best evidence of a "Russian invasion" and "Russian supplies of weapons" to the rebels. On August 28, 2014, NATO published photos showing no more than 9 alleged Russian military vehicles and 4 artillery pieces in Ukraine. 146   On the same day, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies found three Russian tanks in Ukraine. 147 This testifies to the limited nature of the Russian presence in Ukraine even during its first "major" incursion. Looking at the correlation of battle forces before the incursion was underway, Russian military analysts were wondering: "Is the end near" for the rebels?  148   Indeed, it seemed as though the bulk of the DNR's forces were on the verge of being destroyed. By mid-August, Kiev's forces brought the battle to the suburbs of both Donbass capitals, Donetsk and Luhansk. Seemingly miraculously the tide turned in late August, after Ukrainian army forces and neofascist-dominated volunteer battalions had taken the city center earlier in the month.

The turnaround was the result of an incursion by perhaps several thousand Russian ground forces, which reinforced-but did not spearhead-a rebel counteroffensive. On August 16, DNR leader Zakharchenko spilled the beans, announcing at a session of the DNR's parliament or Supreme Soviet that reinforcements from Russia had arrived "at the most responsible moment" and included 1,200 troops, 30 tanks, and armored personnel carriers. 149 The DNR and LNR rebels also received crucial Russian intelligence, guidance, and heavy weapons support in the form of artillery and some tanks. The Ukrainian forces were encircled inside the city and ultimately routed. Some were able to leave through a corridor of safe passage-offered by Putin demonstrating his influence among the rebels-under an agreement that, however, broke down on the ground, leading to heavy Ukrainian casual ties. Large numbers of Ukrainian forces were encircled and routed, forcing Ukrainian Presi dent Petro Poroshenko, elected in May, to agree to cease-fire talks with Putin under the mediation of Germany and France. Cease-fire talks began in Minsk, Belarus, in September days after the rout, with a Russian delegation representing the Donbass rebels. On September 5 an agreement-Minsk 1-was signed on a cease-fire and steps for a full cessation of hostility and Donbass's full return under Kievan sovereignty.

That this August 2014 saw the very first incursion by regular Russian troops is confirmed by the fact that this was the period when the first casualties among Russian servicemen in Ukraine occurred. A report by the Russian news agency RosBusinessConsulting (RBK) de tailed the origins of these first casualties among Russian servicemen fighting in Ukraine. It found that almost all of them came from five paratrooper units of the Russian Peacekeeping Forces stationed in Ulyanovsk, Russia, and for those for whom a time of arrival in Ukraine could be identified, they arrived in late August, having been told they were to be

assigned to training maneuvers in Rostov. 150 Thus, prior to late summer 2014 at llovaisk, there is no evidence of any significant direct military intervention at all by Russian regular forces. The turnaround in the fortunes of the DNR forces was the result of a well-timed, limited intervention by Russian spetsnaz and tank and/or artillery support in accordance with the so-called "hybrid warfare" model. Poorly documented Western claims of tens of thousands of Russian troops entering Ukraine again were based on false data provided by the SBU. Indeed, a February 5, 2016, report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), an international think tank unfriendly to Moscow and the Donbass rebels, acknowledged, quoting "a senior DNR security official," that Moscow "may not have as many troops here as Ukraine says, but they can move very fast and decisively.151

DEBALTSEVO

Throughout autumn 2014 the Minsk cease-fire gradually weakened. By winter, Minsk I had collapsed completely and intense fighting resumed, culminating in the battle of Debaltsevo in January and February. Its aftermath followed a similar pattern to that of Ilovaisk. In December, Ukrainian regular and volunteer forces seized the strategic Debaltsevo railway junction and were on the verge of encircling Donbass rebels. However, by mid-February, Ukrainian forces were again being encircled in a kotyol, a "salient" or near-complete encirclement, after an intervention by Russian forces with heavy weapons, including from artillery located over the border inside Russia. Again Kiev's forces were routed, forcing talks on a new cease-fire agreement in which Russia again took part, this time along with a Don bass rebel delegation, the Ukrainian side, and the European intermediaries. On February 12, the Minsk 2 accord was signed, which included a cease-fire agreement and a series of 14 more detailed measures for securing both the cease-fire and a lasting peace and political agreement between Donbass and Kiev (see below).

This time, Russian journalists were able to clearly document the mechanism of hybrid military intervention. The first reliable confirmation of Russian regular forces having been deployed came in an interview published in the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya gazeta with twenty-year-old Russian Private Dorzhi Batomunkuev, whose tank battalion was mobilized from Russia's central republic of Buryatiya to Rostov sometime around October 26, 2014, from where they would cross the Ukrainian border in early February 2015 as the Debaltsevo kotyol took shape. Batomunkuev's battalion, according to his account, was de ployed along with a spetsnaz unit from Khabarovsk that had to be cobbled together from several other units. He also witnessed the Moscow-based Kantemirskii Brigade being mobilized in a proximate echelon. Batomunkuev's battalion included 31 tanks and around 120 servicemen divided into three tank regiments with supply and communications equipment. "To every 10 tanks were joined three armored personnel carriers (APCs, in Russian BMPs), a mobile medical unit and 'Ural' trucks with ammunition." This was capped off with 300 infantrymen. All were from Buryatiya, and the majority were ethnic Buryats. The composition was a mix of conscripts and kon-traktniki (contract servicemen). The men were not told where they were going, nor were they told they were going on maneuvers. Most seemed to understand that they were going to Ukraine. Some, including one officer, refused to go, according to Batomunkuev. They crossed the border and entered Donetsk at night. Batomunkuev had little to say about the rebels, but what he said did not impress. They are "unorganized" and "strange"; they fight intensely and then suddenly stop as though "at work." Regular Ukrainian forces suffered from a similarly low level of motivation, in contrast with the neofascist volunteer battalions. The former largely tried to sneak out of the kotyol, usually at night under cover of dark. He said that 2 or 3 thousand of the approximately 8 thousand encircled forces were conscripts; the rest were not, and did not. have to come. He thus condemned them for killing women and children, which he apparently witnessed in some way. Batomunkuev also related an exchange with a Ukrainian soldier who admitted that his comrades were killing peaceful civilians and that he had done so himself. He also relayed a Ukrainian radio message they overheard: "Listen carefully, Moscow, Petersburg and Rostov freaks. We will kill you all. First we will kill you, your wives, children and we will get to your parents. We are fascists. We will not stop at anything. We will kill you, like your Chechen brothers, and cut off your heads. Remember this. We will send you home in zinc boxes in pieces." Apparently as a result of these experiences, despite the stealth mobilization and intervention, Batomunkuev considers that he "fought for a just cause." 152

Four points stand out in these accounts of the civil war. First, the interventions were stealthily prepared and executed. Second, they appeared to be limited in force strength and forced by the need for key strategic interventions when a turning point on the battlefield threatening the rebels is most imminent. Third, the tendency to bring units in from the east could create a reliance on ethnic minority-dominated units like Batomunkuev's, which could exacerbate ethnic divisions within the army and the country. There is little record of poor relations between Russians and Buryats, so this approach could create a new problem for Moscow. Fourth, the nature of the mobilization, lacking in any motivational propaganda or preparation for the troops, as Batomunkuev reports, will limit the effectiveness of such interventions to some degree and could create other problems, such as defections.

These points suggest three political implications. First, Putin seems to be using these interventions not just to affect the correlation of forces on the battlefield, but also to force Kiev to the bargaining table. Second, although it does not appear to be the case with Batomunkuey, who says he supports Putin and the war, the effort to cover up the mobilization and intervention is bound to fail in the long run and could have explosive political ramifications for the Kremlin down the road. Third, Putin might or might not be engaging in effective propaganda when he taunts Kiev that its army is being defeated by "miners and fac tory workers," but the course of the fighting shows that the DNR and LNR forces are not able to stand on their own. At least twice - at llovaisk and Debaltsevo - DNR and LNR rebel forces proved incapable of defending themselves from a concerted Ukrainian offensive. That might have changed with supplies and training gaining apace, but Moscow likely still has little confidence in the rebel forces. The ICG report mentioned above notes that as of early 2016 or at least in 2015 DNR officials were saying that "units capable of responding swiftly to any sign of military emergency are now positioned around Donetsk city and other parts of the oblast and have "almost certainly" taken part in armed clashes since the February 2015 cease-fire. 155 It also claims that Russia maintains tight control over the DNR and LNR authorities and troops, appointing "curators" (kuratory) to oversee civilian rebel leaders and Russian commanders from the battalion level up in the rebel military. 154

Putin knows the West will not risk a larger war by officially supplying Kiev with lethal weapons. However, the danger grows that the most anti-Russian NATO member-states on Russia's border-Poland and the Baltic states-will learn Putin's hybrid warfare and themselves stealthily provide fighters and lethal weapons to Kiev. There are already volunteers from all over the West fighting on Kiev's side. These stresses will grow should the Minsk cease-fire and peace process break down.

The Volunteer Battalions and the Neofascists

The Maidan regime came to be based on two pillars: elements from among the previous government's state-tied oligarchs-in particular Maidan's first elected president, Petro Poroshenko, and his appointee as governor of Dnepropetrovsk, Ihor Kolomoiskii - and the ultranationalist/neofascist forces. Thus, the ideologically Ukrainian nationalist elements, with the formal exception of Right Sector, were embedded inside the Ukraine's weak state in the persons of top power ministries or siloviki, especially Chairman of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) Parubly, SHU Chairman Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, and Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov. Parubly, co-founder of the neo-Nazi Social National Party in the 1990s and commander of EuroMaidans' self-defense forces, later on joined the more moderate but still considerably national chauvinist "Fatherland" (Batkyvshina) party. Nalyvaichenko headed the SBU in 2006-2010 when the SBU archival ser vice became the brain center for the dissemination of pro-Bandera, neofascist revisions of Ukrainian history. Avakov has been caught in repeated lies about events in Ukraine, including the Maidan snipers' massacre and the Odessa pogrom discussed below. Their appointments to the council was a reward to the far-right groups that seized power in Kiev in Feb ruary in place of the more democratic elements on Maidan. Indeed, the tenor of the Maidan regime's siloviki was best expressed in the offer to RS leader Yarosh to take the post of deputy NSDC chief, which he turned down. Under Parubiy's oversight of the entire bloc of siloviki departments (military, intelligence, police, prosecutors), Avakov created a network of paramilitary groups or "volunteer battalions" loosely tied-or not, in many cases to the Defense and Interior Ministries and the newly created National Guard.

On April 13, 2014, Avakov announced that the MVD was introducing "a number of structural innovations, answering to the challengers of today's times." Specifically, the MVD was creating "special units" for every oblast in the country from among "the patriots of the country" and would number 12,000 fighters in total. This would account for 20 percent of the some 60,000 troops sent to put down anti-Maidan revolts in Donbass. He also mentioned two battalions by name, "Dnepr" and "Vostok," and promised battalions for Donetsk, Kherson, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Nikolaev, and Odessa as well. 155  By June, Avakov listed in one social network posting some 30 such battalions, numbering already some 3,000 fighters, with a projected total cadre now of 5,660,150 Two weeks later he indicated which volunteer battalions were subordinated to the Defense Ministry's National Guard and which were subordinated to his MVD. Among the latter were those that would prove to be two of the most notorious battalions-Azov and Dnepr-1. Avakov also criticized the members of the volunteer battalions who a day earlier had attempted to storm the Rada in an attempt to "complete" the nationalist revolution under cover of protest against the management of the ATO-a harbinger of things to come. 157

The volunteer battalions of "the country's patriots" were recruited largely from the ranks of the ultranationalist and neofascist organizations such as Yarosh's Right Sector, Belits kiy's Social National Assembly, Tyahnybok's SP, and other smaller such groups. For example, the MVD formed the "Sich" volunteer battalion exclusively form SP members. 158  Moreover, Avakov's list of battalions did not include the completely autonomous RS battalions under its volunteer corps DUK, which by April 2016 still had not been subordinated to state organs of coercion and enjoyed impunity when committing war crimes, terrorist attacks, and other crimes. The most prominent volunteer battalions were those of the Azov, Aidar, Donbass, and the RS DUK corps. More than Ukraine's regular army forces, these battalions or their members would be responsible for most of the atrocities, war crimes and terrorist attacks committed at the front in eastern Ukraine during the ATO's peak, as well as later in the rear in places like Odessa, Makachevo, and Kiev itself.

Right Sector's DUK Battalions

As of summer 2015 RS's DUK battalions numbered at least 2,000 fighters, with 700 permanently deployed at the front, according to Yarosh in an early 2016 interview after his departure from RS. In summer 2015, DUK's commander Andrey Skoropadskii noted there were 19 DUK battalions and 2 smaller "tactical groups." The battalions numbered some times fewer than 100, sometimes more than 300. The Fifth and Eighth Battalions and the two tactical groups were the only units permanently stationed at the front and therefore were probably larger. The others were based and apparently recruited from particular oblasts. In addition, each battalion had a reserve that appears to be at least as large as the active force. For example, Yarosh mentioned that the Fifth included 200 permanent fight ers and 637 total. The Eighth included 317 fighters, but Yarosh does not indicate whether this figure encompasses permanent or the entire cohort of fighters. Thus, these figures suggest an overall force of some 6,000 as of summer 2015, with perhaps a smaller number at the beginning of the ATO in spring 2014. RS has four training bases, one near the front in Pesky and another in Dnepropetrovsk. Maidan-appointed governor of Dnepropetrovsk and banking and energy oligarch Thor Kolomoiskii financed RS, its DUK battalions and other battalions, such as Dnepropetrovsk's Dnepr battalions. 159 Yarosh himself would be one of the first RS members involved in combat, beginning with his involvement in the in famous Easter attack that became Kiev's apparent pretext for abandoning the April 17, 2014, Geneva cease-fire agreement.

AZOV

The "Azov" battalion is directly subordinated to the MVD and thus to Avakov. Avakov ap pointed the notorious neofascist SNA leader, Andriy Biletskiy, as Azov's commander, revealing the neofascist sympathies of the Maidan regime's top law enforcement official. According to Azov's political commissar (zampolit) Oleg Odnorozhenko, the battalion was founded on May 4, 2014, from members of "patriotic organizations" after discussions with the MVD and Defense Ministry. However, the battalion movement had already emerged, according to Odnorozhenko, in March-that is, before the declaration of the ATO. It began from the grassroots as a movement of ultranationalists and neofascists from groups like RS

and SP, calling itself the "little black men a counterplay on the idiom "polite little green men" used for the unmarked Russian special forces that spread out across Crimea at that time. In April, the little black men began to seek official status under the ATO's volunteer battalions, 100 Since the SNA was a founding group of Right Sector, it is no surprise that Azov includes many RS recruits. 161  Azov's battle insignia is the SNA's flag logo, the altered German Nazi "Wolfsangel”. 162

Azov has been the beneficiary of funding from both oligarch Igor Kolomoiskii and the ultranationalist Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko.16  By April 2015, Azov was attempting to reach the threshold of 1,200 fighters who had undergone requisite training which would qualify it to receive heavy weaponry. 164 Azov units were dispersed in smaller groups across the Donbass front but established a base in Mariupol on the Sea of Azov adjacent to the Black Sea. Azov, along with RS and the SP, occasionally holds joint Nazi-like torchlight marches through Kiev and other cities. For example, on October 14, 2014, in the wake of the first Minsk cease-fire agreement (Minsk 1), they held a march throughout Kiev threatening the new Maidan regime with a new truly "nationalist revolution." 165

The Azov battalion's general reputation and alleged war atrocities would prompt the U.S. Congress in June 2015 to adopt an amendment that ostensibly forbade U.S. advisors training the Ukrainian army and National Guard from training members of the Azov 100 Battalion Anton Gerashchenko, advisor to MVD chief Avakov, responded to the U.S. Congress's move by saying there was an "anti-Ukrainian lobby" in Congress. 167 Although perhaps a good first step, this measure could not suffice either to deal with the possible training of Azov or other neo-Nazis in Ukraine or to address the Maidan regime's overall neofascist challenge. Indeed, the next month Azov sergeant Ivan Kharkiv confirmed that U.S. military advisors had been and still were training Azov fighters, and a U.S. official stated that any screening would not be for ideology but for human rights violations. 168

AIDAR

Even the pro-Maidan Kyiv Post has designated Aidar "an ultranationalist organization."169 Thus, Aidar's top commander Serhiy Melnychuk would be elected to the Rada in October 2014 from Lyashko's ultranationalist Radical Party, where he was third on the party list. 170 In September 2014 an Amnesty International report detailed war crimes committed by members of the Aidar Battalion in north Luhansk region between April and August 2014. 171 Aidar was so outside any form of control that regular army officers frequently complained about Aidar's "marauding and violence" against Luhansk locals. After being routed on June 17-18, 2014, Melnychuk claimed there were traitors inside the ATO's command structures informing the Donbass rebels of ATO battle plans, 22 Aidar's fighters who were almost all formerly on the Maidan and hailed from Luhansk, Dometsk, Kiev, western Ukraine, and even Russia and Canada-had little training and were initially poorly armed, 123 By June 2014, there already was talk of disbanding it. 174 Yet at the same time, the EuroMaidan's media organs were publishing sympathetic pieces about Aidar. 17 

In early March 2015, Aidar was reorganized into a 'storming battalion" and more directly subordinated to the Defense Ministry, but by this time the battalion had already moved into open criminal activity, providing cover for a local organized crime group in Luhansk. 176  In late March, Aidar's commander Melnychuk was being investigated by the GPO for kidnapping the director of the alcohol company Ukrainian Spirits (UkrSpirt).177 On March 31, 2015, after several egregious Aidar human rights violations that month in Luhansk, Kiev's governor in the region, Gennadii Moskal, who had repeatedly reported Aidar's crimes, sent a public appeal to the Defense Ministry, forcing an investigation, 178  In July 2015, on the defensive, Aidar and RS held a joint march in Kiev protesting a ceasefire negotiated between Kiev, Donbass, Moscow, and the EU. 179

DONBASS-1

The Donbass battalions were formed by and subordinated to the MVD. Like the Dnepr battalions, there were several. The most well-known was Donbass-1 (from here on simply Donbass), originally made up almost predominantly of Donbass residents. Its commander was an ostensible Donetsk native, Semyon Semyonchenko, Donbass closely cooperated with neofascist groups both at the front militarily and in the rear politically. Yarosh and other RS members fought alongside or under the banner of the Donbass battalion, which was based in Severodonetsk, where Aidar's filtration camp was located. 10 In December 2014, Amnesty International criticized the Donbass, Aidar and Dnepro battalions as well as RS for cooperating in blocking humanitarian aid to Donbass's war-stricken residents organized by Donbass coal oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. 181

Although Semyonchenko was awarded the Bohdan Khmelnitskiy Medal after being wounded at the front in August 2014, he and his battalion quickly fell out of favor with the authorities. He repeatedly charged the authorities with military incompetence and expediency in relation to the lives of battalion volunteers, 182 On the eve of then newly elected President Petro Poroshenko's pivotal June 30, 2014, meeting with Parubiy, Avakov, and the powerful NSDC that would decide whether or not to extend a truce in Donbass that Poroshenko had initiated a week earlier, Semyonchenko and members of Donbass led a several thousand-strong demonstration in Kiev backed by the Aidar and Dnepr battalions as well as RS and the SP. 183  Both Semyonchenko and RS leader Yarosh threatened to march volunteer battalions to Kiev and overthrow the oligarchic regime in favor of a truly nationalist revolution. 184  The demonstrators demanded that Poroshenko end the truce, declare martial law, and destroy the easter rebels or they would remove the president from power "like Yanukovich." They beat up a journalist and tossed stun grenades, seriously injuring several demonstrators. One demonstrator claimed he saw MVD officers hand the stun grenades to members of Avakov's Kiev-based paramilitary group "17+ Sotny," who threw the grenades. Although Avakov condemned the violence the next day, no one was ever ar rested. 185

After the war resumed, Semyonchenko was seriously wounded on August 19, 2014, during the pivotal battle of Ilovaisk. According to his official biography, he interrupted treatment of his wounds to return to the front, helping to lead the Donbass battalion, largely decimated, out of encirclement. Famous for appearing in public always wearing a "balaklava," or full head mask or covering, Semyonchenko built intrigue around himself. On 1 September 2014 he unmasked in public. 186 His official autobiography, published for his successful run for parliament in October 2014 on the Self-Help (Samopomich) Party's slate, revealed -that he was born in Sevastopol and was an ethnic Russian. 187  Although there originally were no charges about Donbass's conduct at the front of the kind leveled against Azov and Aidar, in late January 2016 Semyonchenko was stripped of his officer's rank by the National Guard, and in February prosecutors announced they had opened an investigation into Semyonchenko for illegal deprivation of freedom (abduction), exceeding his authority, and the use of falsified documents 188 Other ultranationalist parties contributed to other battalions. For example, many members of Lyashko's Radical Party were recruited into the Shakhtersk Battalion. 189

The oligarchs played a key role in forming and maintaining the volunteer battalions and their neofascist cohort. The crucible of war forged what would otherwise prove to be a difficult alliance of oligarchs and neofascists that predominated within the new regime. The RS, Azov, Aidar, and Donbass battalions were financed by pro-Maidan oligarch and Poroshenko-appointed Dnepropetrovsk Governor Ihor Kolomoiskii. The Dnepr 1, 2 and 3 battalions were both financed by and placed under the direct control of Kolomoiskii, as stated by his deputy governor Gennadii Korban, who was close to Yarosh and RS.190   The neofascists' service to the Maidan regime during the ATO led to the promotion of some into high-ranking government positions. Indeed, this is precisely what Radical Party leader Lyushko demanded as the battalions were being formed, proposing offices such as judges and pros ecutors for volunteers after the war. 191   Thus, RS's Yarosh, Azov's Biletskiy, Aidar's Melnychuk, and Donbass's Semyonchenko all found places on nationalist parties' lists, and/or their campaigns were funded by oligarchs like Kolomoiskit. Thus they all were elected to the Rada in October 2014. The same month Avakov appointed SNA member and Azov deputy commander Vadim Troyan as Kiev Oblast's MVD chief and in March 2016 promoted him to the post of first deputy chief of the new National Police. Troyan was captured in a photograph giving the Nazi salute with several Azov members. 192  Before the war Troyan worked in a company led by a close Avakov associate. 193

Maidan regime officials strongly defended their use of neo-Nazis in their ATO operations. Like Avakov, his advisor Anton Gerashchenko emphasized: "The most important thing is their spirit and their desire to make Ukraine free and independent. A person who takes a weapon in his hands and goes to defend his motherland is a hero. And his political views are his own affair.” 194   However, a good portion of the Maidan regime's attitude towards such "patriots" had less to do with tolerance of, and more to do with enthusiasm for, the neofascists in the battalions. Years before the SP was in power, mired in street violence and aggressive speeches, SP leader Tyahnybok's chief political advisor Yurii Mikhal'chyshyn envisioned the developing scenario. Known for praising the Holocaust as "a bright episode in European civilization" and founding the Joseph Goebbels Political Research Center, he declared in 2011: "Our Banderite army will cross the Dnipro and throw that blue-ass gang, which today usurps the power, out of Ukraine.... That will make those Asiatic dogs shut their ugly mouths."195 Thus, the Maidan regime's use of neofascist and criminal elements in the volunteer battalions-part of the regime's founding, formative experience, along with events such as the Maidan snipers' massacre-would have a deleterious effect on Ukraine's already shaky foundations for the rule of law.

War Crimes

International monitoring organizations that have investigated the conduct of the Donbass war have concluded that both sides in equal measure have violated civil rights and com mitted war crimes. Since Western readers will be less familiar with the violations commit ted by the Ukrainian armed forces, including the volunteer battalions, I focus more on those. In this regard, it should also be borne in mind that those forces are responsible for most of the dead and wounded among Donbass's civilians, given the simple fact that Kiev's, forces are the attacking force, targeting villages and cities where the rebels live, take cover, and are mounting a defensive resistance to Kiev's attempt to bring Donbass under the control of the new Maidan regime. In September 2014, after the battle of Ilovaisk and the signing of Minsk 1 marked the end of the first phase of the civil war, Amnesty International's General Secretary stated: "All sides in this conflict have shown disregard for civilian lives and are blatantly violating their international obligations. The United Nations Human Rights Council's (UNHRC) 12th report on the human rights situation in Ukraine, covering the period from August 16 to November 15, 2015, concluded that the population in the areas controlled by the DNR and LNR continue to be subjected to "serious human rights violations... with new allegations of killings, torture and ill-treatment, illegal detention and forced labor" received by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU). Local residents "remain without any effective protection of their rights," and "Iplaces of detention maintained by the armed groups [are] virtually inaccessible for independent oversight" by international organizations, including the HRMMU. Similarly, the same report noted that the Ukrainian government's efforts in the combat zone are "accompanied by allegations of enforced disappearances, arbitrary and incommunicado detention as well as torture and ill treatment of people suspected of trespassing against territorial integrity or terrorism or believed to be supporters of the 'Donetsk people's republic' and 'Luhansk people's republic." SBU elements appeared to enjoy "a high degree of impunity, with rare investigations into allegations involving them." 197

Examples of Donbass rebels' violations of human rights support the aforementioned re ports' characterization of the types of violations occurring. Suffice it to say that Girkin Strelkov, upon his return to Russia after being replaced as DNR rebel forces' commander, acknowledged that he had personally executed four people during his "tenure" there: "Two among the military for looting, one local for looting, and one for killing a serviceman." 198  Thus, Russia is now in a position of harboring someone who has committed a capital crime on the territory of a foreign state. Numerous Ukrainian, Russian, and Western media reports of abductions, detentions and torture by the rebels confirmed reports of the kind cited above by AI and the UN.

The July 17, 2014, shootdown of the Malaysian MH17 civilian airliner, very likely by the DNR resistance, was clearly accidental, judging by the audiotape Kiev produced and claimed proves the rebels' role. 199  The rebels mistook the plane for a military transport, of which they had shot down at least two in recent months. The accidental nature of this atrocity makes it less germane to the issue of insurgent war crimes and perniciousness. However, if the Russians supplied the rebels with the "Buk" zenith-missile air defense system that apparently shot down the plane, then Moscow would take on more culpability, not only for the escalation and sheer irresponsibility of supplying such weapons to inexperienced fighters, but for any ensuing intensification of fighting and bad blood. However, it is more likely that the Donbass rebels had seized at least one Buk system from captured Ukrainian forces. Indeed, just three days before the MH17 shoot down, the Donbass rebels shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane, which they claimed they accomplished using a captured and repaired Buk. Moreover, the resistance claimed they shot down Ukrainian air force jets on July 11 and 12.  200  Russian media reports and confirmation by Ukraine's ATO spokesman, Aleksei Dmytrashkovskil, on June 29 indicated that in the course of seizing a Ukrainian air defense base in Donetsk that day, DNR rebels indeed captured at least one "Buk" system as well as a "Kupol" air defense system, which can locate targets up to 150 km away. 201  As a result, according to quoted DNR rebels, "an open sky over Donhass has been secured."

It is likely that the volunteer battalions were responsible for most of the war crimes com mitted by the pro-Maidan forces. Numerous war crimes and other violations of human rights committed by the neofascist-dominated volunteer battalions were reported by international and other human rights organizations as well as Russian, Ukrainian, and Western media. In September 2014, for example, Amnesty International (AI) reported Aidar for re peated human rights abuses in north Luhansk. It noted that battalion members "have been involved in widespread abuses, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions. Typically, victims are accused of being "separatists" and then abducted to a filtration center in Severodonetsk, where they are beaten and otherwise abused. The Aidar commander in the area threatened researchers, warning them: "It's not Europe. It's a bit different.... There is a war here. The law has changed, procedures have been simplified.... If I choose to, I can have you arrested right now, put a bag over your head and lock you up in a cellar for 30 days on suspicion of aiding separatists." The report also noted that although Aidar was supposed to be subordinated to the Defense Ministry, there is no control over the battalion's members, who act with complete impunity.  202   The Al report was published days after Kiev-based Pravilnoe TV reported it had confirmed in part a gruesome Russian television report that two separatist fighters had been beheaded or at least had their heads sent to their mothers. Pravilnoe TV reported that it had spoken with one of the victims' mothers, who confirmed that her son was a Donetsk rebel who was captured during combat and that she had received her son's head in a wooden box by post. She blamed the nationalist volunteers for her son's death. 203

Throughout August 2014, Aidar's human rights abuses were appearing repeatedly in the daily reports of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (OSCE SMM Ukraine). One such incident was described as follows:

At a meeting arranged by the chief of police in Starobilsk (97 km north of Luhansk city) on 20 August, a man claimed that he had been severely beaten the previous day in Polovynkyne (88 km north of Luhansk) by members of a Ukrain Jan volunteer battalion. He said members of the 24th Aidar Battalion-already at the center of accusations of human rights abuses in the northern Luhansk region (see SMM daily reports of 8 August, 11 August, 14 August)-after detaining him at a checkpoint, had accused him of separatism and had threatened to kill him, unless his wife paid over USD 10,000. She did so, whereupon he was released the same day, he said. The SMM observed that the man's head was heavily swollen, bloody and bruised and that he had bruises and smaller wounds on his arms and legs.  204

As noted earlier, Kiev's governor in the districts of Luhansk not under rebel control, Gennadii Moskal, reported repeatedly on Aidar crimes. Two such descriptions appeared in a Ukrainian media report. The first concerned a shootout initiated by Aidar with the pro Maidan "Ternopil" volunteer battalion in the center of the city of Lisichansk. The second was a March 16, 2015, Incident when three drunken Aldar fighters broke into an apartment in Lisichansk, smashed the head of the father of the family with a rifle, and beat him repeatedly after he fell to the floor. They then went onto the street and opened fire on the building, shooting its exterior walls and windows for ten minutes and throwing the district into a panic.   205  Aidar was also involved in stealing from Russian Orthodox churches and kidnapping, extorting or otherwise terrorizing officials on the model of its closely associated Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko. 206 In July 2014, Aidar fighters abducted the deputy mayor of the town of Schastya, accusing him of financing titushki, who the day before had broken into his home and stolen items. His whereabouts were unknown for at least a week. The next day, they entered a city council meeting and claimed the deputy mayor had turned himself in to Aidar and that the director of a local enterprise was also wanted onsuspicion of assisting the rebels.  207  In August 2015, Aidar fighters took hostage the village council of Runovshinsk in Poltava Oblast.   208

Another notorious but lesser known battalion was "Tornado," formed by and in theory like Azov and Aidar-subordinated to the MVD. On August 18, Ukrainian prosecutors accused members of the battalion of committing numerous and systematic beatings, rapes, murders and robberies, causing RS and other neofascist groups to come out in its support. Tornado's commander Ruslan Onischenko had several prior convictions; despite or because of this, he was put in command of Tornado's 150 men and sent to Donbass. Indeed, Radical Party leader Lyashko was urging at the time the sending of even more criminal offenders to the front, since criminals supposedly fight better.  209   In print and on television, Ukraine's chief military prosecutor Anatolii Matios detailed the crimes, including: unlawful deprivation of liberty without any legal or other grounds; torture, including but not limited to electric shock to body parts; rape of male prisoners; the murder of one after such torture; and recording videos of these crimes. Matios read the following description on Ukrainian television: "The fighters had prisoners tortured by means of an object similar to a power generator. The prisoners were held in the basement, stripped naked, placed on a concrete wall and doused with water. Then they were touched with live wires to various body parts, such as at the temple, the genitals and the testicles." According to a statement of a former prisoner, prisoners were forced under threat of death to rape another pris oner. Two Tornado fighters were also said to have been planning to shoot Kiev Oblast's police chief. 210   Matios held MVD chief Avakov partially responsible, saying he "could have saved many lives if the Interior Ministry made the right personnel decisions." Moreover, a warning was ignored when SBU agents arrested Tornado fighters in November 2014 in Kiev, far from the front. On June 18, 2015, military police disarmed Tornado's 170 fighters, arresting several including Onishchenko. 211   Just months prior, Onishechnko was a national hero, awarded a medal by Patriarch Filaret, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.   212

Right Sector fighters also have committed atrocities. In May 2015 a RS fighter cut off the forefingers of at least one rebel fighter he caught in eastern Ukraine after battle. Internet photos posted by the RS fighters showed "prisoners," and some showed stumps of severed fingers and fresh wounds. RS commander Ilya Bogdanov claimed the perpetrator was "working for Putin,' he wrote on Facebook." Al's Tatjana Masur stated at the time, according to Der Spiegel, that "there is no evidence of systematic abuse by the Ukrainian side: "But there are such cases and they are spreading."  213

It is also likely that the Ukrainian regular army has been using the neofascists' propensity for extreme violence, pushing them forward in combat as the initial shock troops against the armed rebels and civilian vatniki. The tactics, as described by the New York Times, ap pear to use regular army artillery in softening the target, "followed by chaotic, violent as saults by the battalions.  214   At the same time, the Ukrainian army and even some of the more heavily armed but poorly trained neofascist battalions were using heavy weapons, including unguided Grad rockets, against civilian-populated areas for months. In July 2014, Human Rights Watch released a report condemning this Kiev practice.  215   Like many such attacks on civilians, the bloody aftermath of one of the most horrific Ukrainian air force attacks on June 2, 2014, in which at least six civilians were killed in the center of Luhansk, can be seen in a video.216 The Ukrainian air force indiscriminately bombs from the air as well, as numerous videos demonstrate.   217

There is also evidence that both sides have used cluster bombs and incendiary munitions, with the Ukrainian army and volunteer battalions often targeting civilians and the Donbass rebels targeting Kiev's forces. In October 2014, HRW issued a report stating: "There is particularly strong evidence that Ukrainian government forces were responsible for several cluster munition attacks on central Donetsk in early October." Although IIRW also mentioned the rebels had used such weapons, a key distinction is that the Ukrainian army is accused of targeting civilians in city centers, while the "probable" use by the rebels targeted Ukrainian troops. 218  A HRW report on the use of cluster weapons in January and February 2015 found that at a minimum two of seven and likely four of seven villages hit by such weapons were targeted from areas controlled by pro-Maidan forces. 219   IRW has also detected possible use of incendiary weapons banned by international law against civilians in Donbass villages. However, it was unable to confirm which side used the weapons, but did request Germany to pressure Kiev to stop using inaccurate weapons against civilians in Donbass.220

Minsk 2

As noted above, Minsk I broke down, leading to Dehaltsevo and a "Minsk 2" agreement signed by Kiev, this time with representatives of the DNR and LNR on February 12, 2015, under the auspices of Russia and the EU. As of this writing it is fifteen months since Minsk 2's signing. The cease-fire has largely held, but adherence to the agreement hangs by a thread. Both the cease-fire and the withdrawal were achieved quickly in March in compliance with the agreement. Both sides have occasionally broken the cease-fire with small scale fighting, but it has largely held. Crucially for the lives of Donbassians, the withdrawal of troops and weapons was implemented by both sides. The parties regularly dispute which side is failing to fulfill its obligations under the agreement, with Washington and Brussels accusing Russia of failing to pressure the Donbass signatories to abide by the agreement. But in fact, Moscow has been rather rigorous in getting the DNR and LNR to abide by their obligations, which in many ways are fewer than Kiev's.

The agreement's first three points deal with the cease-fire and the withdrawal of Kiev and Donbass forces from the line of contact.  221   The already cited 2016 ICG report indeed acknowledged that as regards Moscow's enforcement of the rebels' compliance with the cease-fire, the former has "mostly done rigorously," such that: "Separatist officials and officers regularly complain that if their fighters respond to Ukrainian fire, [Russian) kurators threaten reduction or reduction of military supplies.  222   From Moscow's point of view, Minsk 2's text refers only to Ukrainian and rebel forces, with no mention of Russian troops.) Therefore, the aforementioned ICG and others' claims of a continuous Russian military presence in Donbass, if true, would not be in violation of the letter of the relevant first three clauses in the agreement.

From the fourth clause in Minsk 2's text, a series of difficult obligations are placed on Kiev and its very divided Maidan regime (see Chapter 10). The fourth point stipulates: "On the first day following the withdrawal a dialogue between Kiev and Donbass representatives] is to begin with respect to the modalities of the local elections in accordance with Ukrainian legislation and the Law of Ukraine 'On the temporary order of local government in certain areas of the Donetsk and the Lugansk regions, as well as with respect to the future operation of these areas on the basis of the Law Kiev did not fulfill this pivotal step-the first in the agreement with a specific deadline. A full year after the agreement and nearly a full year since the cease-fire and subsequent troop pullback, Kiev has refused to engage a dialogue with the Donbass rebel regions' representatives: (1) either on the modalities related to conducting elections in the Donbass, or (2) on the Ukrainian law to be adopted according to Minsk 2 "On the temporary order of local government in certain areas of the Donetsk and the Lugansk regions," or (3) "with respect to the future operation of these areas on the basis of the Law," or, for that matter, (1) on any other subject related to the cri sis. Thus, Kiev was the first to violate Minsk 2's "letter" and has remained in violation of it since the second day after the implementation of the mutual troop pullbacks in March 2015.

Moreover, this means that Kiev is in violation of Minsk 2's fifth point or article, which reads: "Immediately, and not later than 30 days from the date of signing of this document, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is to adopt a resolution with the specification of the territory covered by the special regime provided for in the Law of Ukraine 'On the temporary order of local government in certain areas of the Donetsk and the Lugansk regions, such territory] to be based on the line set out in the Minsk Memorandum of September 19, 2014. The stipulation that Kiev consult-i.e, negotiate-in dialogue with Donbass representatives on the law "On the temporary order of local government, etc., is reiterated in Minsk 2's article 12. Instead of dialogue on the temporary local government law, on March 17, 2015, the Verkhovna Rada passed unilaterally a corresponding resolution, having failed to consult with the Donbass rebels' representatives in a "dialogue.

Minsk 2's article 11 requires Kiev to adopt a new constitution "with entry into force by the end of 2015... which shall incorporate decentralization as a key element (taking into account the characteristics of certain areas of the Donetsk and the Luhansk regions, to be agreed upon with the representatives of these areas), as well as, before the end of 2015, adoption of permanent legislation with respect to the special status of certain areas of the Donetsk and the Luhansk regions in accordance with the measures specified in the Note." Minsk 2's "Note" mandates that the new constitution and any corresponding laws for de centralization provide for: (1) "linguistic self-determination" (to allow Donbass and perhaps other regions to use minority languages such as Russian); (2) participation of local governments in appointing the heads of prosecutorial bodies and the courts in certain areas of Donbass (Donetsk and Luhansk); the possibility for the central executive authorities to conclude agreements with authorities in the Donbass on economic, social and cultural development in certain regions; the establishment of a People's Militia by order of local councils for maintaining public order in Donbass; and several other clauses. Neither a new constitution nor a law on decentralization and the other issues listed in the Note had been adopted by Kiev as of early April 2016.

Neither has Kiev lifted the blockade to the separatist Donbass regions, reopened Ukrainian banking in those regions, nor issued the across-the-board amnesty for the rebels as re quired by the agreement. Thus, from March 17, 2015, Kiev has been in violation of no fewer than seven articles and nine obligations it signed on to under the Minsk 2 accord. On the other side, Russia has still not handed control over the border to Kiev, but this violation followed Kiev's first violations. Again, there likely are military, intelligence and other advisors working on the Donbass side, but this issue does not fall under the scope of the agreement and remains unenforceable without the reassertion of Kiev's sovereignty over the breakaway territories.

Both Kiev and Donbass have exchanged prisoners on an equal, negotiated basis. Both Kiev and Donbass occasionally violate the ceasefire, but both have generally complied with the withdrawal of heavy weaponry to the distance from the front line imposed by the agreement. Except the timeframes mentioned above for the ceasefire and withdrawal of weapons, none of the other points in Minsk 2 were assigned time frames or deadlines, so violations of them are more difficult to identify. So, in sum, Kiev was significantly more in violation of the agreement than the Donbass rebels and/or Moscow from its early 2015 failure to enter a dialogue and begin constitutional changes with Donbass, and remained so with no constitutional reforms passed as of early April 2016.

Conclusion

Moscow did not instigate the rebellion in Donbass and did not intend to use it to annex Donbass or to destabilize Ukraine as part of some "Putin master plan" for territorial expansion. Moscow does not seek to revise the international order. Putin's decision - making from Yanukovich's hesitation in signing the EU AA through the Donbass civil war- has been reactive and defensive in the sense of trying to take advantage of the situation to mitigate previous losses. Moscow has had less control over events than the West and Kiev, and its primary goals were to avoid the loss of Crimea's Black Sea Fleet naval base and the coercive reintegration of the Donbass under Kiev's sovereignty. Regarding the latter issue, Moscow has tried with little avail to get the Maidan government in Kiev to negotiate directly with the DNR/LNR rebels in order to cease the civil war, secure some decree of power-sharing or autonomy for the Donbass, and bring an end to Western sanctions against Russia, Crimea, and Donbass. Thus, Moscow has used its influence over the rebels and carefully deployed and calibrated military power in order to bring both parties to the negotiating table in Minsk.

Perhaps the main cause of Ukraine's failure to fulfill its obligations under Minsk 2 is the deep political paralysis in Kiev. That paralysis is driven by the ultranationalist and neofascist wings of the Ukrainian polity, which are robust and gaining strength under the stress of continued economic collapse, social dislocation, and state-supported ideological radicalization. President Poroshenko-like his forefather Viktor Yuschenko (Ukraine's president from 2004 to 2010)-would play into the hands of the ultranationalist groups like RS and the SP by rehabilitating the World War II-era neofascist OUN and UPA, hailing their members as the heroes of Maidan Ukraine's national myth along with the RS and SP. Such neofascists, who led the civil war and were responsible for so many "excesses, including war crimes and terrorism, at the front, would threaten the cease-fire, the rule of law, and the new hybrid Maidan regime itself.

“Ukraine Over the Edge - Russia, the West and the “;New Cold War”, Gordon M. Hahn, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, 2018, pp. 341- 404

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Notas

 

1. Pyatt, "Making Good on the Promise of the Maidan."

2. Keith Gessen, "Why not kill them all?" London Review of Books, September 11, 2014, www.lrh.co.uk/v36/n17/keith-gessen/why-not-kill-them-all.

3 Alexander Dyukov, "There is no Intolerance for Nazism in Ukraine," Grupa Informatsii za zlochinami proti osobi, August 4, 2014, http://gcp.eu/publikacit alexander-dyukov-there-no-intolerance-nazism ukraine/language-en and Marina Baltacheva, "Ukraina postratdala of fashizma chuzhogo, seichas on svoi," Dekuya gazeta, August 1, 2014, www.vz.ru/politics/2014/8/1/698299.html.

4. "Kolorady vs Ukropy: Kakie slova podarili Ukraine Maidan voina, Korrespondent, June 6, 2014, http://korrespondent.net/ukraine/politics/3374179-kolorady-vs-ukropy-kakye-slova-podaryly-ukrayne maidan-y-voina.

5. Tatyana Shcherbatchyuk, "10 sliv fraz, scho uviyshly do vzhitku Vinnichan 2014-ogo roku," Vlasno.info, January 10, 2015, http://vlasno.info/suspilstvo/7/tochka-zoru/item/1073-10-sliv-i-frazshcho-uviishly-do-vzhytku vinnychan-2014-ho-roku.

6. See the video at "Oplot vatnikov Sevastopol nado sravnyat' so zemlei-Krymskaya aktivistka," Odnoklassniki.ru, February 21, 2015, http://ok.ru/video/6937118113, last accessed on March 8, 2016.

7. See, for example, "Kiev. "Moskaliv na nozhi' Marsh v chest' dlya rozhdeniya S. Bandery." YouTube, January 1, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=epwfd5P8u91, last accessed on March 8, 2016; "Kherson fakelnoe shestvic 21 02 15 (Moskaly na nozhi)," Ring Videos, February 21, 2015, www.bing.com/videas/search?q=Москалів+на нож%D "Shturm Rady nazvaly repetitsiei budushikh bubntov, Vesti Ukraina, October 15, 2014, http://vesti ukr.com/strana/73361-shturm-rady-nazvali-repeticiej-buduwih-buntov. Follow this search string link for a series of demonstrations in Ukraine using the "Russians on the knife" chant: www.hing.com/vid eos/search?q-� �оскалів+на-н�%B

Such manifestations were prevalent before 2014 but less so. See for example, "RUSSIA & UKRAINE Get moskaliv na nozhi," YouTube, September 29, 2011, www.youtube.com/watchN-ISGqIV6STwl, last accessed on March 8, 2016.

8. See, for example, "Vatnik. Otkuda vzaylos' Kto ne skachet, tot Moskal," Krasview, March 1, 2016, http://krasview.ru/video/655732-Vatnik-otkuda vzyalos Kto ne skachet tot Moskal, last accessed on March 8, 2016 and "Studgorodok KNY im. Shevchenko 09.04.14 Khto ne skache, toi moskal." Moskalivna nozhi," YouTube, April 8, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBrgaFH02UE, last accessed on March 8. 2016

9. "Maskaly na nozhi," You Tube, April 20, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch-tyXToXTNDpe, last ac cessed on May 17, 2014.

10. Dyukov, "There is no Intolerance for Nazism in Ukraine," and "Ukrainskii zhurnalist predlozhil ubit 1,5 min zhitelei Donbassa," Delovaya gazeta, August 1, 2014, www.vz.ru/news/2014/8/1/698288.html

11, Dmytro Korchinsky's comments on Ukraine's channel "112, June 17, 2015 at "Na ukrainskom TV privali k somlaniyu kontslagerei diya zhitelei Donbassa, YouTube, June 17, 2015, www.you tube com watch? HSV StoPet, last accessed April 5, 2016.

12. The complete relevant sections read: "We will commemorate the heroes by cleaning our land from the evil" "We how our heads to the heroes who lost their lives for the sake of their country, to prevent the war from coming into the house of each of us They lost their lives because they defended men and women, children and the elderly who found themselves in a situation facing a threat to be killed by invaders and sponsored by the inhumans, First, we will commemorate the heroes by wiping out those who killed them and then by cleaning our land from the evil. See "My uvichnimo pam'yat geroiv, ochis tivshi nashu zemlya vid nichisti, Arsenii Yatsenyuku spyvchutti ridnim i blizkim zagiblikh voiniv u Eu gans'ku," Ukrainian Embassy in the United States of America, June 15, 2014 http usa.mfa.gov.ua/ua/press-center/news/24185 mi-uvichnimo-pamjaty-gerojiv-ochistivshi-nashu mlyu-vid-nechistiarsenij-jacenyuk-u-spivchutti-ridnim-i-blizykim-zagiblih-vojiniv-u-lugansyku and "Rosiyski ZMI pidozryuyut' Yatsenyuka v natsists kikh vislovlyuvannyakh, Rakurs, June 18, 2014, http://ua.racurs.ua/news/29502-rosiyski-zmi-pidozruut-yacenuka-v-nacystskyh-vyslovluvannyah.

13, Shcherbatchyuk, "10 sliv fraz, scho uviyshly do vzhitku Vinnichan 2014-ogo roku."

14. "Interview: The Benefits of a Partitioned Ukraine," RFERL, February 20, 2014, www.rferl.org/con tent/ukraine-split-partition-/25270988.html.

15. Pietro Sarkisian, "Equalization and Dehumanization in Eastern Ukraine," Reconsidering Russia, March 7, 2015, http://reconsideringrussia.org/2015/03/07/equalization-and-dehumanization-in-cast ern-ukraine/. For an attempt by Motyl to equate the Donbass with American Southern racists, see Alex ander Motyl, "Ukraine's Donbas is Like America's Deep South," Huffington Post, January 5, 2015, www.huffingtonpost.com/alexander-motyl/alexander-motyl b 6414802.html.

16. Carl Bildt, "Eurasia versus Europe in the streets of Kiev. Tonight...." Twitter, December 10, 2013, https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/410661410599751680.

17. "Saakashvili: Ukraina zashishaet Yevropu at tataro-mongolskogo iga, Novyi region, November 15,2014, http://nr2.com.ua/News/Kiev and regions/Saakashvili-Ukraina-zashchishchaet-Evropu-ottataro-mongolskogo-iga-84741.html.

18. Dyukov, "There is no Intolerance for Nazism in Ukraine," and Baltacheva, "Ukraina postradala otfashizma chuzhogo, seichas on svo.""

19. "Pravyi Sektor vzyal shturmom Verkhovnyi Sud Ukrainy-Chrezvychainyie novosti-07.04," YouTube, April 7, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=jitMYO-xCc8, last accessed on March 7, 2016.

20. Gessen, "Why not kill them all?"

21. "Violent video: Ukraine TV boss beaten up by far right Svoboda MPs," Euronews, March 19, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-F5GeBpZSVHY, last accessed on March 10, 2016,

22. "Gubernator Khersonskoi oblasti zayavil ob otstavke pod ugrozol nozha," From-ua.com, March 4, 2014, http://from-ua.com/news/302378-gubernator-hersonskoi-oblasti-zayavil-ob-otstavke pod-ugro8tUP7 Home48SPOKL5M2AltGrCiriEndInszoi-nozha.html.

23. "Pravyi Sektor na sessli v Vasil'kove. Regionaly otkazasilis' pet' gimn Ukrainy???" YouTube, February 25, 2014. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fKlq8E1CE

24. "Hammer-wielding nationalists storm town council meeting in Kiev suburbs (VIDEOS)," Russia Today, March 4, 2014, www.rt.com/news/nationalists-storm-council-meeting-701/.

25. For Donetsk, see "Massovaya boinya v Donetske slabonervnym ne smotret, YouTube, March 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-kMY-9PjwS28, last accessed on March 14, 2016. For Kharkiv, see "Boitsy "Pravogo Sektora na kolenyakh prosyat prosheniya pered kharkovchanami," YouTube, March 2, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-VINJOLEbmRO, last accessed on March 14, 2016..

26. Svetlana Gamova, "V Tiraspole zhdut napadeniya s yuga Ukrainy," Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 7,2014, www.ng.ru/cis/2014-08-07/1 tiraspol.html.

27. See, for example, Lyasho attacking pro-Yanukovych Kharkiv Governor at "Lyashko nabil mordu Dobkinu, YouTube, May 24, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v-CaHT780Qbpo, last accessed on March 10, 2016. See Lyashko pushing a security guard around at "Lyashko ustroil potasovku s okhran  nikom na Bankovoi. Polnaya versiya (04-04-2013), YouTube, April 5, 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v-XIPfht-Cpqk, last accessed on March 10, 2016.

28. Oleg Lyashko, Facebook, May 23, 2014, https://m.facebook.com/story.php? story_fbid-646486682086599&id-100001758206922.

29. The pro-Maidan Kiev Post later removed the incriminating video. See "Militia backed by presidential candidate Lyashko takes credit for assassination of Russian-backed separatist (VIDEO)," Kyiv Post, May 23, 2014, www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/militia-backed-by-presidential-candidate-lyashko takes-credit-for-murder-of-russian-backed-separatists-349093.html. See also Richard Balmforth and Natalia Zinets, "Ukraine's 'pitchfork' populist could be wild card in new line-up," Reuters, October 19, 2014, www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSKCN0180A520141019 and Charles McPhedran, "Thug Politics," Foreign Policy.com, October 9, 2014, www.foreignpolicy.com/arti cles/2014/10/09/thug politics kiev oleh lyashko radical ukraine. For the video, see "Lyashko Mocks Detained Defense Chief Donetsk. 07.05.2014, YouTube, May 8, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLI

30. See the video at "Lyashko segodnya v Slavyanske: Zhestkie razborki s merom Slavtanska!!!," YouTube, July 9, 2014. www.youtube.com/watch?v-gdr6M--9SZM.

31. Balmforth and Zinets, "Ukraine's 'pitchfork' populist could be wild card in new line-up."

32. Christopher J. Miller, "Vigilante' Ukrainian lawmaker Lyashko gets slammed by Amnesty Interna tional report," Kyiv Post, August 6, 2014, www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine/amnesty-interna tional-criticizes vigilante-ukrainian-lawmaker-lyashko-359586.html.

33. Miller, "Vigilante Ukrainian lawmaker Lyashko," HK10NM2End

34. Arsen Avakov, "Losh i pravda," Ekho Moskvy, June 17, 2014, http://echo.msk.ru/blog/echomsk/1342014-echo/.

35. Miller, "Vigilante Ukrainian lawmaker Lyashko."

36. See, for example, "Pravyi Sektor na sessii v Vasil'kove. Regionaly otkazasilis' pet' gimn Ukrainy???" YouTube, February 25, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-9K1q8IEICE, last accessed on March 12, 2016 and "Arest separatista DNR Batal'on Dnepr 05.08.14." YouTube, August 5, 2014, www.you tube.com/watch?v-UXnNDb1710k &feature-youtu.be, last accessed on March 12, 2016

32 "Yanukovich uvolil konaduyshchego Sukhoputnymi voiskami, Ukrainskaya pravda, January 17, 2014,www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/01/17/7009861/

33. Jan Cienski, "Oligarch tries to stamp Kiev authority on restive east," Financial Times, March 6, 2014," www.ft.com/cms/s/427c7de-a558-11e3-8070-00144feab7de.html; "The End of the Beginning?" The Economist, March 8, 2014, www.economist.com/news/briefing/21598744-having-occupied-crimea-rus sa-stirring-up-trouble-eastern-ukraine-end.

34. Arsen Avakov, "Lazhi pravda," Ekho Moskvy, June 17, 2014, http://echo.msk.ru/blog/echomsk/1342014-echo.

35, Miller, "Vigilante Ukrainian lawmaker Lyashko."

36. See, for example, "Pravyi Sektor na sessii v Vasil'kove. Regionaly otkazasilis pet" gimn Ukrainy???" YouTube, February 25, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-9IKIq8(EICE, last accessed on March 12, 2016 and "Arest separatista DNR. Batal'on Dnepr 05.08.14," You Tube, August 5, 2014, www.you tube.com/watch?v=UXnNDb]7r0k &feature=youtu.be, last accessed on March 12, 2016.

37. "Yanukovich uvolil konaduyshchego Sukhopatnymi volskami," Ukrainskaya pravda, January 17, 2014 www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/01/17/7009861/

38. Jan Cienski, "Oligarch tries to stamp Kiev authority on restive cast," Financial Times, March 6, 2014," www.ft.com/cms/s/c427c7de-a558-11e3-8070-00144feab7de.html; "The End of the Beginning?" The Economist, March 8, 2014, www.economist.com/news/briefing/21598744-having-occupied-crimea-rus sia-stirring-up-trouble-eastern-ukraine-end.

39. "SMI: Nad bespokoinymi regionami letayut ukrainskie istrebiteli." Ukrainskaya pravda, April 7, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/7/7021640/ and Gessen, "Why not kill them all?"

40. "Kak v Donetske, zakhvatyvali OGA-Chrezvychainyie novosti, 07.04, YouTube, April 7, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch-C12ewZOOKAM; "Kak prorossiiskie separatisty segodnya zakhvatyvali zdanie Donetskoi OGA (VIDEO)," Munitsipal 'naya gazeta, April 6, 2014, http://mungar.net/main/11622 kak-prorossiyskie-separatisty-segodnya-zahvatyvali-zdanie-doneckoy-oga-video.htm; and "Spetsnaz osvobodil zakhvachennoe separatistumi zdanie SBU v Donetske, Ukrainskaya pravda, April 16, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/7/7021678/; "Voskresnyi shturm DonOGA v fotografiyakh," Novosti Donbassa, April 6, 2014, http://novosti.dn.ua/details/221959/; "Separatisty vystavali ultimatum: referendum o vkhozhdenii Donetsloi oblasti v sostav RF." Novosti Donbassa, April 6, 2014, http://no vosti.dn.ua/details/221961: "Ukraine: Pro-Russians storm offices in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, BBC, April 7, 2014, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26910210; "Ukraine Crisis: Protesters declare Donetsk republic, BBC, April 7, 2014, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26919928.

41. "Voskresnyi shturm DonOGA v fotografiyakh."

42. "Ukraine: Pro-Russians storm offices in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv": "Ukraine Crisis: Protesters de clare Donetsk 'republic": "Kak v Donetske, zakhvatyvali OGA-Chrezvychainyie novosti, 07.04": "Kak promssliskie separatisty segodnya zakhvatyvali zdanie Donetskoi OGA (VIDEO)"; and "Spetsnaz osvo bodil zakhvachennoe separatistami zdanie SBU v Donetske.

43. Alec Labn, "Pro-Russian occupiers of Ukrainian security service building voice defiance," The Gourd ian, April 10, 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apt/10/luhansk-protesters-occupy-security headquarters.

44. "Ukraine: Pro-Russians storm offices in Donetak, Luhansk, Kharkiv"; "Ukraine Crisis: Protesters de clare Donetsk 'republic": "Kak v Donetske, zakhvatyvali OGA-Chrezvychainyie novosti, 07.04": "Kak prorossiiskie separatisty segodnya zakhvatyvali zdanie Donetskoi OGA (VIDEO)", and "Spetsnaz osvo bodil zakhvachennoe separatistami zdanie SBU v Donetske."

43. Alec Lahn, "Pro-Russian occupiers of Ukrainian security service building voice defiance," The Guard ian, April 10, 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apt/10/luhansk-protesters-occupy securityheadquarters

44. "Ukraine: Pro-Russians storm offices in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv": "Ukraine Crisis: Protesters de clare Donetsk 'republic"", "Kak v Donetske, zakhvatyvall OGA-Chrezvychainyie novosti, 07.04"; "Kak

45. “Lugansk vo vlasti separatistov: kak zakhvatyvaly OGA, militsiyu, prokuraturu i sud”, HigMir.net, April 29, 2014, http://news.bigmir.net/ukraine/812829-Lugansk-vo-vlasti-separatistov-kak-zahvaty vali-OGA-miliciju-prokuraturu-i-sud.

46. For Kharkiv (Kharkov), see "V Khar'kove osvobodili OGA, no popytalis' zakhvatit televyshku," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 7, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/7/7021681/. For Nikolaev, see "V Nikolaev stolknulis' storonniki Maidana i separtisty. Lyubitelei Putina zastavili uiti, Ukrainskaya pravda, April 7, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/7/7021682/

47. "Trebovaniya Larganskikh boevikov pochti takie, kak u Rossil," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 7, 2014. www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/7/7021654/; Alan Yuhas and Tom McCarthy, "Crisis in east Ukraine: a city-by-city guide to the spreading conflict," The Guardian, April 16, 2014, www.theguard ian.com/world/2014/apr/16/crisis-cast-ukraine-city-by-city-guide-map.

48. "Kto oni, narodnyie gubernatory: Kharkov vozglavil avtoslesar,' Luhansk-desantnik," Komsomolskaya pravda, April 23, 2014, www.kp.by/daily/26224.3/3106364/

49. "Trebovaniya Luganskikh boevikov pochti takie, kak u Rossii."

50 The crowd of several thousand surrounds the SBU building, later chanting "Russia! Russia!" Those closest to the building simply push their way past the several-deep police line without even the use of sticks, clubs or other implements, and some climb to the roof of the entrance vestibule and break win dows to enter on the second floor. Some break windows by throwing bricks, tiles and stones; others ap pear to have started the fire which engulfs the entrance. The whole affair looks like winter 2013-14 in Kiev, minus the firearms, See "06.04.2014 Zakhvat zdaniya SBU v Luganske, YouTube, April 6, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-albTEa4SSbY, last accessed on March 25, 2016.

51. Turchynov: Protiv voaruzhenykh separatistov provedut antiterroristicheskie operatsi, Ukrain skaya pravda, April 7, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/7/7021616/

52. "Protiv separatistov mogut primenit' spetssredstva i spetsnaz," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 7, 2014. www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/7/7021674/

53. "Turchinov nazval rukovoditelya antiterroristicheskogo tsentra," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 7, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/7/7021653/ and "Turchynov: Protiv vooruzhenykh separatistovprovedut antiterroristicheskie operatsil."

54. Laura Smith-Spark and Kellie Morgan, "Ukraine unrest will be resolved by force or talks within 48 hours, minister says, CNN, April 10, 2014, http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/09/world/europe/ukraine crisis/index.html.

55. "Turchynov prikazal vzyat pod gosokhranu zdanie Donetsloi OGA, Ukrainskaya pravda, April 9, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/9/7021915/

56. "Turchynov gotov osvobodit' separtistov, bez kriminala, esli oni slozhat oruzhie," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 10, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/10/7021944/

57 "Ukraine Crisis: Protesters declare Donetsk 'republic"

58. "SBU-Yanukovicha kontroliruet rossiiskaya voennaya razvedka, Ukrainskaya pravda, April 16, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/16/7022681/

59. Alec Lahn, "East Ukraine protesters joined by miners on the harricades," The Guardian, April 12, 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/12/east-ukraine-protesters-miners-donetsk-russia.

60. Roland Oliphant, "Fears of full-scale Russian invasion as eastern Ukraine cities toppled," Telegraph (UK), April 12, 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10763008/Fears-of-full scale-Russian-invasion-as-eastern-Ukraine-cities-toppled.html; "Donetsskii 'Berkut' pereshel na storonu mitinguyushikh," LifeNews, April 12, 2014, http://lifenews.ru/news/131113; and "Armed pro Russian extremists launch coordinated attacks in Donetsk Oblast, Seize regional police headquarters, set up checkpoints (UPDATE)," Kyiv Post, April 12, 2014, www.kyivpost.com/article/con tent/ukraine/armed-pro-russian-extremists-seize-police-stations-in-donetsks-slavyansk-shaktarysk fail-to-take-donetsk-prosecutors-office-343195.html.

61. "Kak zakhvatyvali OGA i prokuraturu v Luganske," BBC Russian Service, April 14, 2014, www.bbc.com/ukrainian/multimedia russian/2014/04/140430 ru gallery lugansk.

62. "Zdanie Donetskogo gorsovetazakhvatili aktivisty Kharkovskoi organizatsii 'Oplot," TASS, April 16, 2014, http://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1125050.

63. Gabriel Baczynska, "Separatists in Ukraine's Donetsk vow to take full control of region," Reuters, April 14, 2014, www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-donetsk-idUSBREA3D1A320140414.

64. See the photos at "Mesyats okkupatsii. Slavyansk," LB.ua, May 12, 2014, http://lb.ua/news/2014/05/12/266103 dim donbassa.html.

65. "Mesyats okkupatsii. Slavyansk."

66. "V Slavyanske nachalas' Antiterroristicheskaya operatsiya-Avakov, Ukrainskaya pravda, April 13, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/13/7022234/

67. "Mesyats okkupatsii. Slavyansk" and "Ukraine Army Launches 'Anti-Terror' Operation," Sky News, April 14, 2014, http://news.sky.com/story/1241376/ukraine-army-launches-anti-terror-operation.

68. "Mesyats okkupatsii. Slavyansk."

69. "Ukraine Army Launches 'Anti-Terror' Operation."

70, "Geneva Statement on Ukraine," EU External Action Service, April 17, 2014,www.ceas.europa.eu/statements/docs/2014/140417_01_en.pd 

71. Julian Borger and Alec Luhn, "Ukraine crisis: Geneva talks agreement on defusing conflict," The Guardian, April 17, 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/17/ukraine-crisis-agreement-us-rus sia-eu.

72. Yekaterina Stulen, "Boets 'Pravogo sektora' vzorval sebya i dvukh 'zelenikh chelovechkov, Vesti Ukraina, April 17, 2014, http://vesti-ukr.com/donbass/48168-boec-pravogo-sektora-vzorval-sebja-l dvuh-zelenyh-chelovechkov.

73. See the SBU statement at "Shchodo zbroinoi provokatsii u Paskhal'nu nich bilya m. Slov yarsk Slu zhbu bezopeks Ukrainy, April 20, 2014, www.sbu.gov.ua/shu/control/uk/publish/article? art id-124389&cat id-39574. See also "SHU: Separatistys rossiiskimy diversantami instsenirovali na padenie na blokpost Slavyanska," Gordonuu.com, April 20, 2014, http://gordonua.com/news/separat ism shu separatisty-s-rossiyskimi-diversantami-inscenirovali vneshnee-napadenie-na-blokpost-slavy anska-19184.html.

74. "V SNBO raskritikovali Izhivyie soobshcheniya Rossiiskoi pressy o perestrelke v Slavyanske," TSN.ru. April 20, 2014, http://ru.tsn.ua/politika/v-snbo-raskritikovali-Izhivye-soobscheniya-rossiyskoy-pressyo-perestrelke-v-slavyanske-361755.html.

75. Aleksandr Vasovic and Alissa De Carbonnell, "Deadly gun attack in eastern Ukraine shakes fragile Geneva accord," Reuters, April 20, 2014, www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis idUSBREASA18520140420.

76. "Pravyi sector otritsaet svoyu prichastnost k perestrelke v Slavyanske," Korrespondent, April 20, 2014, http://korrespondent.net/ukraine/politics/3352145-pravyi-sektor-otrytsact-svoui-prychastnostk-perestrelke-v-slavianske.

77. "Pravyl sector otritsaet svoyu prichastnost k perestrelke v Slavyanske."

78. Vasovic and De Carbonnell, "Deadly gun attack in eastern Ukraine shakes fragile Geneva accord."

79. "Dmitro Yarosh: nam she Krim povertati," BBC (Ukrainian), February 11, 2015, www.bbc.com/ukrainian/politics/2015/02/150211 yarosh interview vs and Yurii Butusov, "Dmitro Yarosh: Pershil nastupatel'nyi biy viyny vibuvsya 20 kvytnya 2014-go-dobrovoltsy atakovali blokpost pid Slovyans'kom," Censor.net, April 22, 2016, http://censor.net.ua/resonance/385673/dmitro yarosh pershiyi nastupalniyi byi_vyini_vd buvsya 20 kvtnya 2014go dobrovolts atakovali blokpost.

80. Butusov, "Dmitro Yarosh: Pershii nastupatel'nyi bly viyny vibuvsya 20 kvytnya 2014-go-dobrovoltsy atakovali blokpost pid Slovyans'kom."

81. "Drugim zagiblim, znaidenim razom iz deputatom Gorlivskoi mis'kradi Ribakom, buv stident KPIrektor," Interfaks, April 25, 2014, http://ua.interfax.com.ua/news/general/202342.html.

82. "DUK 5-1 Okremii Batalion," VKontakte, October 12, 2014, http://archive.is/4a5bM, cited in Ivan Katchanovski, "January 26 at 2:43," Facebook, January 26, 2016, www.facebook.com/ivan.katchanovski/posts/1165670110129540.

83. "Ukhvala imenem Ukraini-Sprava No. 757/42824/15-k"; "Ukhvala imenem Ukraini-Sprava No. 757/47700/15-k; and "V Slavyanske Pravyi sektor atakoval blokpost, pogibli troe zhitelei, YouTube, April 8, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v- 913bp6M14ag; all cited in Katchanovski, "January 26 at 2:43,"

84. "Luhansk prosecutors launch probes into federalization support rallies," Interfax-Ukraine, April 21, 2014, http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/201534.html and "V Luganske separatisty reshili provestidva referenduma," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 21, 2014,  www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/21/7023176/

85. “Lubansk prosecutors launch probes into federalization support rallies."

86. “Latest from the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine-based on information received up until 28 April 2014, 19:00 (Kyiv time)," Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, April 28, 2014, www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/118153 and "Federalization supporters in Luhansk proclaim people's re public, Tass, 28 April 2014, http://tass.ru/en/world/729768.

87. “29/04/2014 Pervomaisk Luganskaya oblast, YouTube, posted by Aleksandr Anikin, April 29, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-NYnQKnwwew!, last accessed on March 25, 2016.

88. "Srochno! Sessiya Pervomaisk Liganskaya Oblast' 29.04.2014," YouTube, posted by Aleksandr Ani kin, April 29, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-NYnQKnwwew, last accessed March 26, 2016.

89. “29.04.14 Lugansk Pervomaisk pod Rossiiskom flagom," YouTube, posted by InfoVoina, April 29, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcUil Mi6y4, last accessed on March 25, 2016.

90. Perhaps the most comprehensive compilation, more than four hours of raw footage beginning from the street fighting in the city center, can be found at "Odessa. Tragediya 2-ogo maya 2014 goda. Ot nachal i do... kontsa," YouTube, December 19, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRXHVS VIIM, last accessed on March 27, 2016. For a similarly long, raw video beginning after the city street fighting from the storm of Kulikovo Field, see "Odessa dom profsoyuzov POLNOE VIDEO," YouTube, May 2, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-s9AMiLBIliw, last accessed on March 28, 2016. A good collection of links to videos and other material can be found at "Ne 46, a 189 chelovek unichtozheno v Odesse 2 maya...." Stikhi.ru, May 5, 2014, www.stihi.ru/2014/05/05/5404, last accessed on March 27, 2016. An early journal istic account with photographs and video is available at "Massovyie besporyadki v Odesse. Khronika so byti, Ekho Moskvy, May 2, 2014, http://echo.msk.ru/blog/echomsk/1312248-echo/, last accessed on March 28, 2016. For an eyewitness account just after the events by one of the people trapped in the building, see "04.05.2014, Odessa Osvobozhdennyi iz GorUVD activist antimaidana," YouTube, May 4, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-w7DLMvs Hmcl, last accessed on May 28, 2016. Several documentary films seek to sort out the facts and contain much of the same footage. See Ulrich Heyden, German docu mentary film "Lauffleuer," at "lauffleuer-Rassledovanie zlodeyanii Odesse 2 maya 2014 (Nemetskii s subtitrami na russkom yazyke)," YouTube, March 13, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ6WD fAxILM&feature=youtu.be, last accessed on March 27, 2016, and Paul Moreira, French documentary film Ukraine-Les Masques De La Revolution, at The Daily Motion, February 2, 2016, www.dailymo tion.com/video/x3pxmfe ukraine-les-masques-de-la-revolution tv, last accessed on March 27, 2016.

91. Eugene Trofymenko, "ATO Po-narodnomu, Abo chomu ne Vladimir Putin ne vviv viyska," Pravyisektor.info, May 2, 2014, http://pravyysektor.info/articles/ato-po-narodnomu-abo-chomu-ne-vladimir putin-ne-vviv-vijska/, archived at http://archive.is/y12mT, last accessed on March 27, 2016.

92. "Anons richnytsi 2 travyna v Odesi," Pravyysektor.info, May 1, 2015, http://pravyysektor.info/news/anons-richnytsi-2-travnya-v-odesi/.

93. "Odesa, 2 travyna 2014, ho roku zhadaymo-video," Pravyysektor.info, May 2, 2015, http://pravyysektor.info/news/odesa-2-travnya-2014-ho-roku-zhadajmo-video/.

94. Aleksandr Garmatenko, "Na traumnom mitinge v Odesse skandirovali 'Ne zabudem, ne prostim," Vesti Ukraina, May 2, 2015 http://vesti-ukr.com/odessa/98618-na-kulikovom-pole-proshel-traumnyjmuting

95, Paul Moreira, Ukraine-Lex Masques De La Revolution.

96. "Andrei Parubiy podaril dobrovol'tsam odesskoi samoborony sovremennyie bronezhilety." YouTube. April 29, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=81VTTa8wegQ.

97. See the interview with Fuchedzhi at "Byvshii zamnachalnik odesskoi militsii Dmitrii Fechudzhi rass kazalo sobytiyakh v Odesse 2 maya," ITV (Russia), May 22, 2014, www.itv.ru/news/world/259433

98, Ilya Azar, "Zdes' polmaidana, chego esho zhdat?" Ekho Moskvy, May 5, 2014, http://echo.msk.ru/blog/azar 1/1313892-echo/. See also "Massovyje besporyadki v Odesse. Khronika sobytil."

99. "Eto moi narod?" YouTube, May 2, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-IVXm9nnY-AQst-412, last accessed on March 28, 2016.

100. "Odessa, 02.05.2014. Kill Them All!!!" YouTube, May 4, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-5E12kk FM3nQ, last accessed on March 28, 2016.

101. "Odessa beginning pravy sector flags inside," YouTube, May 7, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-SHOйxp8961&feature=youtu.be, last accessed on March 28, 2016.

102. "Odessa pravy sector inside the customs house," May 7, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?VaCVxP QApk&feature=youtu.be, last accessed on March 28, 2016.

103. Marina Perevozkina, "Ubistva c Dome Profsoyuzov planirovali zarance: sensatsionnoe rassledovanie," Moskovskii komsomolets, April 8, 2015, www.mk.ru/politics/2015/04/08/pervoe-chto-ya-uznal-orusskikh-oni-zapuskayut-sobak-v-kosmos.html.

104. "Sotnik Mykola strelyavshii po Itydyam 2 maya v Odesse umer v bol'nitse," YouTube, May 6, 2014. www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Cn1006jwc, last accessed on March 28, 2016. See also "Eto moi narod?," YouTube, May 2, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-IVXm9nnY-AQrt-412, last accessed on March 28. 2016

105. Odessa police stand by and watch, see from 15:53 into the previously cited YouTube video "Eto moi narod?”

106. 04.05.2014, Odessa Osvobozhdennyi iz GorUVD activist antimaidana."

107. "Odessa 2 maya. Polnaya khronologiya (ch. 1-6) bloger ubiitsa #Odessa holocaust chronology (18+), YouTube, May 21, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-n2sH81qEGR4, last accessed on March 28, 2016.

108. "Odesskie deputaty raspustili kommissiyu po rassledovaniyu tragedii v Dome profsoyuzov," Ekho Moskvy, September 5, 2014, http://echo.msk.ru/news/1393878-echo.html.

109. See the press release at "Investigation of May 2014 events in Odesa failed to comply with requirements of European Human Right Convention, says International Advisory Panel's report," Council of Europe Press Release-DC15S(2015), Council of Europe, November 4, 2015, https://wed.coe.int/View DocJsp Ref-DC-PR155(2015)& Language-lanEnglish & Ver-original&Site DC&BackColorInter het-1SCA75&Back Colorintranet FSCATS&BackColorLogged-A9RACE. For the CEIAPU report, see Bricing on the Events in Odessa, Ukraine on 2 May 2014, Council of Europe International Advisory Panel, November 4, 2015, www.coe.int/en/web/portal/international-advisory panel/-/asset publisher/EPe GGDryBe content/the-lap-and-the-events-in-odessa-on-2-may-2014 and http://coe.kiev.ua lap/news/2014/09/12-09-2014-en.html, pp. 46-51..

110, Briefing on the Events in Odessa, pp. 55 and 62.

111. Briefing on the Events in Odessa, pp. 63-64.

112. "Odesskaya tragediya: Po itogam 20 mesyatsev rassledovaniya," 2 May Group Blogspot, January 14, 2016, http://2maygroup.blogspot.ca/2016/01/20.html#more; "Pidsumki slidstva shodo masovikh zavonushen' v Odesi 2 travnya 2014 roku. YKMTs, 14-01-2016, YouTube, January 14, 2016, www.you tube.com/watch-miCCGaepGFw; and Halya Coynash, "Clear Signs of Sabotage' in Odessa 2 May In vestigation," Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 16, 2016, http://khpg.org/en/index.php? id-1452811753.

113. Galiano, "The Origins of Separatism: Popular Grievances in Donetsk and Luhansk," and "Dumki da poglyadi xhiteliv pivdenno-skhidnikh oblastei Ukraini: kviten' 2014."

114. "Mneniya i vzglyadi zhitelei yugo-vostoka Ukrainy: Aprel 2014," Zn.ua, April 18, 2014, http://zn.ua/UKRAINE/mneniya-i-vzglyady-zhiteley-yugo-vostoka-ukrainy-aprel-2014-143598 html.

115. "The Views and Opinion of South-Eastern Regions Residents of Ukraine, April 2014, KIIS, April 20, 2014, www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat-reports&id-302&page-1&y-2014&m-4.

116. Giuliano, "The Origins of Separatism: Popular Grievances in Donetsk and Luhansk."

117. Solchanyk, Ukraine and Russia: The Post-Soviet Transition, p. 117.

118 Giuliano, "The Origins of Separatism: Popular Grievances in Donetsk and Luhansk."

119. "Hearing: Russia's Destabilization of Ukraine," United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, May 8, 2014, http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/hearing/hearing-russia-s-destabilization-ukraine. For the relevant excerpt, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TpZa40MFVk. See also http://nsnbc.me/2014/05/09/house-grilled-nuland-us-cooperation-neo-nazis-ukraine/.

120, Smith-Spark and Morgan, "Ukraine unrest will be resolved by force or talks within 48 hours, minister says."

121. "Russia "Wants to Start World War III: Ukrainian PM Yatsenyuk," NBC News, April 25, 2014, www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/russia-wants-start-world-war-iii-ukrainian-pm-yatsenyukn89481.

122. Ben Watson, "Poland Fears Russia's 'New Russia' Doctrine," DefenseOne.com, April 17, 2014, www.defenseone.com/threats/2014/04/poland-fears-putins-new-russia-doctrine/82750/?oref-d skybox

123. Putin said: "The question is to ensure the rights and interests of the Russian southeast. It's New Russia. Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Odessa were not part of Ukraine in ezarist times; they were trans ferred in 1920, Why? God knows. Then, for various reasons, these areas were gone, and the people stayed there. We need to encourage them to find a solution." David M. Herszenhorn, "What is Putin's "New Russia"?" New York Times, April 19, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/world/europe/what-is putins-new-russia.html?r-0.

124. "Prezident Rossi Vladimir Putin obratilsya k opolcheniyu Novorossii," Kremlin.ru, August 29, 2014, www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/16506.

125, "V Ukraine zaderzhany 23 rossiiskikh shpiona-SMI," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 16, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/16/7022677/

126. "Senchenko utverzhdaet, chto SIZO zabity' rossiiskoi agenturoi," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 14, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/14/7022433/

127 "Kontrrazvedka: Rossiya sobiraetsya ubit 100-200 lyudei v vvesti v Ukrainu voiska," Ukruinskaya pravda, April 16, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/16/7022667).

128. "Igry Stelkov," Makeeva, TV Dozhd, April 30, 2014, https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/makeeva/ma keeva igry strelkov-367809/

129. Andrew Higgins, Michael R. Gordon, and Andrew E. Kramer, "Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Russia," New York Times, April 20, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/world/europe/pho Tos-link-masked-men-in-cast-ukraine-to-russia.html?_r-1.

130. From the photos it was immediately clear that they were anything but; they were hazy and could very well be showing two different men. Moreover, it seemed strange that a special forces agent would consistently wear a telltale beard in a clandestine operation rather than shave it off or shorten it so as to avoid detection, given the ubiquity of mobile phone cameras and CCTV nowadays. See my post and another by Harvard University Kennedy School of Government scholar Sergei Saradzhyan in Johnson's Russia List, No. 94, April 24, 2014, http://russialist.org/russia-ukraine-irl-2014-94-contents-with-links thursday-24-april-2014/

131. Michael R. Gordon and Andrew E. Kramer, "Scrutiny of Photos Said to Tie Russian Units to Ukraine," New York Times, April 22, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/world/europe/scrutiny-over photos-said-to-tie-russia-units-to-ukraine.html? action-click&contentCollection-Europe &module RelatedCoverage &region-Marginalia &pgtype-article.

132. Sergei Saradzhyan, "No Smoking Spetsnaz Gun in E. Ukraine or Why Khamzat of GRU's Vostok Wouldn't Pose As Donetsk Native," Saradzhyan: From the Global Tank-Live Journal, April 22, 2014, http://saradzhyan.livejournal.com/34407.html.

133, Simon Shuster, "Exclusive: Meet the Pro-Russian Separatists of Eastern Ukraine, Time, April 23, 2014, http://time.com/74405/exclusive-pro-russian-separatists-eastern-ukraine/.

134. Robert Mackey, "Shifting Ukrainian Fact from Ukrainian Fiction," New York Times, February 13, 2015, http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/14/world/europe/sifting-ukrainian-fact-from-ukrainian-fiction.html?referrer&r 1.

135, Babitskil made his name during the Chechen wars exposing the brutality and war crimes commit ted by Russian troops and was hailed in the West for doing so. He was kidnapped by Russian intelligence and "exchanged" for Russian soldiers, after which time he left Russia and eventually ended up working for RFERI. Andrei Babitskii, "Andrei Babitskii: "Ni odnu iz storon konflikta ne priemlyu," Slon.ru, July 20, 2015, https://slon.ru/posts/54216.

156. Mark Snowiss, "Ex-Ukrainian Spy Chief: Russian Camps Spreading Chaos," Voice of America, July 24, 2015, www.voanews.com/content/ex-ukrainian-spy-chief-russian-camps-spreading chaos/2877981.html.

157. The article "War. Feedback" consists of a response from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry to Novaya gazeta queries on this and other issues the paper sent to the ministry. The paper then subjected the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's claims to analysis by a Russian General Staff expert and one of its own military experts. Ivan Zhilin, "Voina. Obratnaya svyaz, Novaya gazeta, No. 21, March 2, 2015, www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/67467.html.

138. See Maxim Tucker, "Ukraine Says Pro-Russia Rebels Are Building a Dirty Bomb," Newsweek, July 31, 2015, www.newsweek.com/2015/08/14/ukraine-says-rebels-are-building-dirty-bomb-358885.html; Maxim Tucker, "Ukraine Rebels Building 'Dirty Bomb' with Russian Scientists," The Times, August 1, 2015, www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article1514313.ece; Paul Goble, "Moscow mulling nuclear provocation' against Ukraine, Kyiv analyst says," Window on Eurasia, August 4, 2015, http://russialist.org/moscow-mulling-nuclear-provocation-against-ukraine-kyiv-analyst-says/; Euro maidun Press, August 4, 2015 http://euromaidanpress.com in Johnson's Russia List, Issue No. 150, Au gust 5, 2015, Item #28, http://russialist.org/moscow-mulling-nuclear-provocation-against-ukraine kyiv-analyst-says/; and Sergei Kilmenko, "Pochemu ugrozu yadernogo udara so storony Rossii nuzhno rassmatrival' ser'tzno," Khlyva.net, August 3, 2015, http://hvylya.net/analytics/geopolitics/pochemu ugrozu-yadernogo-udara-so-storonyl-rossii-po-ukraine-nuzhno-rassmatrivat-serezno.html.

139. "Gritsak ob'yasnil, chto on imel v vidu pod 'rossiiskim sledom' v teraktakh," Ukrainskaya pravda, March 23, 2016, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2016/03/23/7103081/and "Glava SBU: Ne udivlyus, esli vzryvy v Bryussele-element gibridnoi voiny RF, Ukrainskaya Pravda, March 22, 2016, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2016/03/22/7102893/

140, See "Die Wahrheit über den Krieg in Donbass/Ukraine-Mark Franchetti-Sunday Times Deutsch, YouTube, June 17, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v- W1x7xms YArs. For a rough English translation of some of Franchetti's remarks on the broadcast taken from a Russian news report on the Ukrainian talk show's proceedings, see "British journalist Mark Franchetti describes reality in Ukraine," YouTube, June 17, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-4BVPtiwdrll, last accessed on April 1, 2016.

141. Alice Speri, "Yes, There Are Chechen Fighters in Ukraine, and Nobody Knows Who Sent Them There, Vice News, May 28, 2014, https://news.vice.com/article/yes-there-are-chechen-fighters-in ukraine-and-nobody-knows-who-sent-them-there.

142. Babitskii, "Andreii Babitskii: 'Ni odnu iz storon konflikta ne priemlyu."

143. For examples of defections, in addition to those from the Berkut mentioned previously, see "Peskov uveryact: Nikakikh rossiiskikh voisk na vostoke Ukrainy net." Ukrainskaya pravda, April 15, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/15/7022542/; "Podpolkovnik RF' v Gorlovke okazalsya mestnym kriminal'nym avtoritetom-SMI," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 15, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/15/7022553/; and "Oborets: Na Donetchine neizvestbyje ubili okolo 10 separatistov," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 15, 2014,www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/15/7022442/

144. See, for example, "Minoborony priznalo, chto separatisty zakhvatili shest BMD," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 16, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/16/7022679/; "Kramators'k: separatisty vidpustily zablokovanikh vyis'kovyikh, ale zmusili rozzbroitisya." Radio Svoboda, April 16, 2014, www.radiosvoboda.org/content/article/25351998.html; "Ukrainskie boennyie sdali separatistam oruzhie v Kramatorske," Ukrainskaya pravda, April 16, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/04/16/7022729/

145. For a detailed account of the imbalance in the correlation of forces in Kiev's favor, especially in weaponry, see Yevgenii Pozhidaev, "Voina i oruzheinyi disbalans v Novorossii-konets blizok?," Reg num.ru, July 31, 2014, http://regnum.ru/news/polit/1831327.html.

146. "New Satellite Imagery Exposes Russian Combat Troops Inside Ukraine," The U.S. Mission to NATO, August 28, 2014, http://usnato.tumblr.com/post/96003086125/new-satellite-imagery-exposes russian-combat.

147. See Shena Shankar, "UK Institute Says There Is Proof Russia Is Sending Battle Tanks Into Eastern Ukraine," International Business Times, August 28, 2014, www.ibtimes.com/uk-institute-says-there proof-russia-sending-battle-tanks-eastern-ukraine-1671906.

148. Pozhidaev, "Voina i oruzheinyi disbalans v Novorossii-konets blizok?"

149, Maksim Sokolov, "Rassledovanie RBK: otkuda na Ukraine rossiiskie soldaty," RBC.ru, October 2, 2014, www.rbc.ru/politics/02/10/2014/542c0dcfcbb20f5d06c1d87a.

150. According to a Ukrainian volunteer battalion commander interviewed for the RBK report, several of some 20 Russian servicemen taken prisoner were killed by "friendly" artillery fire during some of the Ukrainians' hectic escape from encirclement. Sokolov, "Rassledovanie RBK: otkuda na Ukraine rossi iskie soldaty."

151. "Russia and the Separatists of Eastern Ukraine," International Crisis Group, No. 79, February 5, 2016, www.crisisgroup.org/-/media/Files/europe/ukraine/b079-russia-and-the-separatists-in-castern ukraine.pdf, p. 8.

152, Batomunkuey's group did not fare well. On February 19 he was severely burned when his tank was hit by an artillery shell fired from a Ukrainian tank. His commander was similarly wounded some time around February 12-14. Yelena Kostyuchenko, "My vse znali, na chto idem i chto mozhet byt, Novaya gazeta, No. 22, March 4, 2015, www.novayagazeta.ru/society/67490.html.

153. “Russia and the Separatists of Eastern Ukraine," p. 8.

154. "Russia and the Separatists of Eastern Ukraine, pp. 3-4, 6, 9, 12 and 15.

155. "MVD sobiraetsya organizovat spetspodrazdeleniya iz patriotov v vostochnyk oblastyakh," L.B.00. April 13, 2014, http://lb.ua/news/2014/04/13/262987 mvd sobiraetsya organizovat.html.

156. Avakov, "Lozhi pravda."

157. "Avakov rasskazalo spetsrazdeleniyakh-uchastnikakh ATO," Vesti Ukraina, July 2, 2014. http://vesti.ua/kiev/59203-avakov-rasskazal-o-specpodrazdelenijah-uchastnikah-ato.

158. "Avakov sozdal batal'on iz aktivistov Svobody," Vesti Ukraina, June 13, 2014, http://vestiukr.com/donbass/56-407-avakov-sozdal-batalon-iz-aktivistov svobody",

159., Roman Chernyshov, "Yarosh: Ya pereotsenil organizatsionnye vozmozhnosti Pravogo sektora," Ligu net, February 1, 2016, http://news.liga.net/interview/politics/8764969-yarosh ya pereotsenil orga nizatsionnye vozmozhnosti pravogo sektora.htm and Valeriya Kondratova, "Skol'ko battalionov u Pra vogo sektora," Liga.net, July 14, 2015, http://news.liga.net/articles/politics/6174219 skolko batalonov u pravogo sektora.htm.

160. "Donets'kil dialog na Gromads'komu 19 serpnya," YouTube, August 19, 2014, posted by Gromads'ke Tellbachennya, www.youtube.com/watch?v-URFT6vVaEl&list=UU20Gvjllwani KeZR3JtE-UQ, last accessed April 4, 2016.

161. "Ukraine segodnya Chto proiskhodit?," Program Arena sobytii, Online TV, June 26, 2014, www.on linety.ru/video/1670/?autostart-1.

162. See the Nazi insignia being used by Azov at "Andriy Biletskiy pro zvil'nennya Mariupolya," You Tube, June 13, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v-llu3HanE178, last accessed April 4, 2016; "Shestvia Azova i Pravogo sektora po Kievu," YouTube, October 14, 2014, uploaded by Pavel Sheremet, www.you tube.com/watch?v-LeTHHuqAf10 &feature=youtu.be; www.youtube.com/watch?v-AljBrgx WF8M&ebc-ANуPxKpXOG CNqrTT38UgQ4S7BH5rQcUoXvwzuplFHT3LEbn8STOELJ3awAKImojqrSp neaXuDEK9ToxMoFje9EYDudWnQCONA, last accessed on April 4, 2016.

163. Taras Kozub, "Lyashko otkazalsya idti pod krylo Kolomoisogo," Vesti Ukraina, August 4, 2014, http://vesti.ua/strana/63937-ljashko-otkazalsja-idti-pod-krylo-kolomojskogo.

164. Nolan Peterson, "A Ukrainian national Guard Unit Trains to Fight to the Death, Newsweek, April 21, 2015, www.newsweek.com/ukrainian-national-guard-unit-trains-fight-death-323891.

165. See a brief videos of the march at "Shestvia Azova i Pravogo sektora po Kievu."

166. Parry, "U.S. House Admits Nazi Role in Ukraine."

167. ”ochemu SSHA Otkryli Front Protiv Bataliona Azov," Vesti Ukraina, June 15, 2015, http://vesti-ukr.com/strana/103513-pochemu-ssha-otkryli-front-protiv-batalona-azov.

168. "Is America Training Neonazis in Ukraine?" The Daily Beast, July 4, 2015, www.thedaily beast.com/articles/2015/07/04/is-the-u-s-training-neo-nazis-in-ukraine.html. There are many more neo-fascist elements in the Ukrainian army and National Guard than those of the Azov Battalion. Some ultranationals or neo-fascists never served in the Aziw or other volunteer hattalions and may never serve in either those or regolar units. Some are former members of those battalions, and identifying who is a former, present or future member will be impossible to determine. Thus, Congress's measure euld be a measure to cover up the training of neo-fascists in the Ukrainian army and National Guard Akin to our training "moderate" revolutionaries and "moderate jihadists" in Syria, this policy would lead to a similarly sad result: more violence in Ukraine. Moreover, the Congress's move seemed at odds with the claims of Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the D.C. think tank community, academia, and mass media that there are no neo-fascists in Ukraine.

169. Anastasia Vlasova, "Volunteer Aidar Battalion Fights on Front Lines," Kyiv Post, July 21, 2014, www.kyspost.com/multimedia/photo/volunteer-aidar-battalion-fights-on-front-lines-in-luhansk oblast-357129.html.

170. "Pornly Spisok Novoobranikh Narodnikh Deputativ," TSN, November 12, 2014, http://tsn.ua/vybory-v-rady2014/povniy-spisok-novoobranih-narodnih-deputativ-391270.html and "Ukraine Votes on Oct. 26 To Elect New Parliament," Kyiv Post, October 24, 2014, www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine ukraine-votes-on-oct-26-to-elect-new-parliament-369193.html.

171. "Ukraine: Abuses and War Crimes by the Aidar Volunteer Battalion in North Luhansk Region," Amnesty International, September 8, 2014, www.amnesty.org/en/documents/EUR50/040/2014/en/

172 "Komandir Aidara' zayavil ob izmene rukovodstva," Vesti Ukraina, June 24, 2014, http://video.vesti-ukr.com/donbass/1675-komandir-ajdara-obvinil-rukovodstvo-ato-v-izmene.

173. Vlasova, "Volunteer Aidar Battalion Fights on Front Lines"; Anastasia Stanko, "Batal'on 'Aidar' zh det prikaz, chtoby nachat' osvobozhdenie Ukrainy," Ukrainskaya pravda, June 15, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/photo-video/2014/06/15/7029129/; and Mark Mackinnon, "Bypassing official channels, Canada's Ukrainian diaspora finances and fights a war against Russia," The Globe and Mail, February 26 and 28, 2015, www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/ukraine-canadas-unofficialwat/article23208129/

174. "Kombat zayavil o rasformirovanii batal'ona 'Aidar," Vesti Ukraina, June 23, 2014, http://vesti ukr.com/donbass/57948-kombat-zajavil-o-rasformirovanii-batalona-ajdar and Taras Kozub, "Aidar' ne rasformiruyut, Vesti Ukraina, August 6, 2014, http://vesti.ua/donbass/64394-ajdar-ne-rasformirujut.

175, Galina Titish and Dmitro Laryn, "Aidar, Poperedu inshikh," Ukrainskaya pravda, July 22, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2014/07/22/7032645/ and "Aidar Battalion: On the front lines," Euromaidan Press, July 24, 2014, http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/07/24/aidar-battalion-in-the-front lines/

176. pereformirovalo 'Aidar' v shturmovoi batal'on, Vesti Ukraina, March 2, 2015, http://vesti-ukr.com/donbass/90843-minoborony-pereformirovalo ajdar-v-24-j-shturmovoj-batalon.

177. "GPU otkryla delo protiv kombata Adaira' Mel'nychuk, Vesti Ukraina, March 30, 2015, http://vesti ukr.com/strana/94354-gpu-otkryla-delo-protiv-kombata-ajdara-melnichuka.

178. "Minoborony naznachilo rassledovanie v otnoshenii 'Aidar," Vesti Ukraina, March 31, 2015, http://vesti-ukr.com/donbass/94544-minoborony-naznachilo-rassledovanie-votnoshenii-ajdara.

179 "Ukrame: Aldar Battalion and Right Sector demand end to ceasefire in F. Ukraine, YouTube, July 3, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch/N-(ISNL.ekWP 4.

180 "Praviy sector-rozvidka boem pid Karlivkoyu 10.07.2014, YouTube, July 11, 2014, uploaded by Olena Bilonerska, www.youtube.com/watch?v-SadSxC-zgdest-177, last accessed on April 5, 2016.

181. "Eastern Ukraine: Humanitarian disaster looms as food aid blocked," Amnesty International, December 24, 2014, www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/12/eastern-ukraine-humanitarian-disasterlooms-food-aid-blocked.

182. "Kombat Donbassa-Geleteiyu: 'Nuzhen nemedlennyi udar rezervami na Ilovaisk," Censor.net, Au gust 25, 2014, http://censor.net.ua/news/299601/kombat donbassa geleteyu nujen nemedlennyyi udar rezer vami na ilovayisk

183. Tatyana Stanovaya, "Pyat prichin neizbezhnosti voiny, ili Chto Poroshenko delal prashlym ve cherom," Slon.ru, July 4, 2014, http://slon.ru/russia/pyat_prichin neizbezhnosti voyny ili chto porosh enko delal proshlym vecherom-1121407.xhtml? utm_source-slon&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign-20140704.

184, "Marsh Svyatoslava u stolnomu gradi-anons," Praviy sektor, July 1, 2014, http://pravyysektor.info/news/marsh-svyatoslava-u-stolnomu-hradi-anons/.

185. Olga Omelyanchuk, "Pod Kabminom nachali vzryvat' granaty," Vesti Ukraina, July 1, 2014, http://vesti.ua/kiev/59088-pod-kabminom-vzorvali-granaty.

186. "Kombat "Donbassa' Semenchenko snyal balaklavu," Korrespondent, September 1, 2014, http://korrespondent.net/ukraine/3412892-kombat-donbassa-semenchenko-snial-balaklavu.

187. Semen Semenchenko, "Biografiya," Samopomich.ua, September 2, 2014, http://samopomich.ua/wpcontent/uploads/2014/09/02 Semenchenko.pdf.

188. "Semenchenko kommetrioval lishenie ego ofitserskogo zvaniya," Vesti Ukraina, January 29, 2016, http://vesti-ukr.com/strana/134017-semenchenko-prokommentiroval-lishenie-ego-oficerskogo-zvanija and Vesti Ukraina, February 2016.

189. Miller, "Vigilante' Ukrainian lawmaker Lyashko gets slammed by Amnesty International report."

190. "V Depropetrovske formiruyut iz patriotov elitnyi battalion spetsnaznacheniya," Ukraine Inform, April 14, 2014, dnepropetrovske formiruyut iz patri otov elitniy batalon spetsnaznacheniya 1623696.html, "Kolomoiskii sozdaet spetznaz," LB.ua, April 14, 2014, http://lb.ua/news/2014/04/14/263031 kolomoyskiy sozdaet spetsnaz.html; and "Yarosh: Ya pereotsenil organizatsionnye vozmozhnosti Pravogo sektora."

191, Miller, "Vigilante Ukrainian lawmaker Lyashko gets slammed by Amnesty International report"

192. Pochemu SSHA Otkryli Front Protiv Bataliona Azov" and "SMI: Troyan soglasilsya stat pervym zamom Dekanoidze, Ukrainskaya pravda, March 2, 2016, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2016/03/2/7100934/

193. Oleg Bazar and Yevgenii Shvets, "Vadim Troyan: 'My ponimali: sdadim Mariupol-proigraem voinu. Bua, December 2, 2014, http://society.lb.ua/life/2014/12/02/287807 vadim troyan mi ponimali sdadim.html.

194. Tom Parfitt, "Ukraine crisis: the neo-Nazi brigade fighting pro-Russian separatists," The Daily Telegraph (London), August 11, 2014.

195. Pers Anders Rudling. "The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right. The Case of VO Svoboda," in Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson, eds., Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text (New York and London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 228-55, at p. 241, http://defendinghistory.com/wp-content/up loads/2013/01/PA-Rudling-on-Return-of-Ukrainian-Far-Right-2013.pdf.

196. "Ukraine: Mounting evidence of war crimes and Russian involvement," Amnesty International, September 7, 2014, www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/09/-ukraine-mounting-evidence-war crimes-and-russian-involvement/.

197. "UN Human Rights Council: Human Rights situation in Ukraine," Human Rights Council, December 9, 2015, www.hrw.org/news/2015/12/09/un-human-rights-council-human-rights-situation-ukraine and "Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine, August 16 to November 15, 2015, UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, December 2015, www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/AA/12thOHCHRreportUkraine.pdf.

198. "Former Commander of Pro-Russian Separatists Says He Executed People Based on Stalin-Era Laws," RFERI, January 19, 2016, www.rferl.mobi/a/ukraine-girkin-strelkov-executions-stalin era/27497491.html.

199. The audio tape makes clear that those speaking are not happy about the incident, calling it "blin." "AUDIO RECORDING of Malaysian MH-17 SHOOTDOWN of Russian Rebel Forces in Ukraine." YouTube, July 17, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-ZJnD1wgofYM, last accessed on April 6, 2016.

200. "Opolchentsy soobshili, iz chego sbili ukrainskii An-26, Vzglad.ru, July 14, 2014,http://v2.ru/news/2014/7/14/695525.html.

 201. "V chastichno zakhvacennoi v/ch v Donetske nakhiditsya ZRK 'Buk,"" Vesti Ukraina, June 29, 2014, http://vesti-ukr.com/danbass/58829-v-chastichno-zahvachennoj-v-ch-v-donecke-nahoditsja-zrk-buk and "MOLNIYA: chistoe nebo nad Donetskom-spetsnaz DNR zakhvatil garnison raketnykh voisk PVO," Russkaya vesna, June 29, 2014, http://rusvesna.su/news/1404041521. Interviewed by Ukrainskaya pravda, Dmytrashkovskii said the several Buk systems on the captured base were not in working order, but when asked if they could be repaired, he said: "I don't think they need them." "Boeviki chastichno zakhvatili voennuyu chast PVO," Ukrainskaya pravda, June 29, 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/06/29/7030482/

202. "Ukraine: Abuses and War Crimes by the Aidar Volunteer Battalion in North Luhansk Region."

203. Damien Sharkov, "Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing ISIS-Style War Crimes," Newsweek, September 10, 2014, www.newsweek.com/evidence-war-crimes-committed-ukrainian-nationalistvolunteers-grows-2696047rx-us

204. See "Latest from OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine based on information re ceived as of 18:00 (Kyrv time), August 21, 2014, OSCE, August 22, 2014, http://www.osce.org/node/122920

205. "Minoborony naznachilo rassledovanie v otnoshenil Aidar.""

206. In December 2014, for example, Aldar fighters posed as Ukrainian counter intelligence and confis cated from a church 50,000 griven, a monitoring camera, and a cell phone. "Moskal" rasskazal podrob nosti ogrableniya tserkvi 'boitsom' 'Aidara, Vesti Ukraina, March 4, 2014, http://vesti-ukr.com/don bass/91253-moskal-rasskazal-podrobnosti ograblenija-cerkvi bojcom-ajdara.

207. Tatyana Dibovaya, "Aidarovtsy' obvinyayut zaderzhannogo zammera Schastya v finansirovanie titushek, Vesti Ukraina, July 15, 2014, http://vesti-ukr.com/donbass/61180-zaderzhannogo-zammjeraschastja-ajdarovey-obvinjajut-v-finansirovanii-titushek.

208. "Boitsy Aidara' zakhvatili sel'sovet v Poltavskoj oblasti, Vesti Ukraina, August 13, 2015, http://vesti-ukr.com/strana/110910-bojcy-ajdara-zahvatili-selsovet-v-poltavskoj oblasti.

209. Bidder, "Kampf gegen separatisten: Ukrainische Freischarler sollen Graueltaten begangen haben" and Hahn, "One Day in the Life of Ukrainian Democracy," Gordonhahn.com Russian and Eurasian Politics, June 21, 2015, http://gordonhahn.com/2015/06/21/one-day-in-the-life-of-ukrainian-democracy/

210. Anatoli Matios, "Prestupleniya "Tornado': Privyazali cheloveka k sportivnomu snaryadu i isnasilovali, Vesti Ukraina, June 19, 2015, http://112.ua/mnenie/prestupleniya-tornado-privyazali-cheloveka-k-sportivnomu-snaryadu-i-iznasilovali-18-238616.html; "Matios v prymom efire rasskazal urhasy o zverstvakh batal'ona "Tornado," Vesti Ukraina, June 20, 2015, http://vesti-ukr.com/donbass/104244-matios-v-prjamom-jefire-rasskazal-uzhasy-o-zverstvah-batalona-tornado; and Benjamin Bidder, "Kampl gegen separatisten: Ukrainische Freischarler sollen Graueltaten begangen haben," Der Spiegel, July 29, 2015, www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ukraine-prozess-gegen-pro-ukrainischer kaempfer-a-1045801.html. For a partial English translation of Der Spiegel's account, see Hahn, "One Day in the Life of Ukrainian Democracy."

211. "Boitsy Tomado zaderzhany za pytki i gruppovoe iznasilovanie-Matios," 112.ua, June 17, 2015, http://112.ua/ato/boycy-tornado-zaderzhany-za-pytki-i-gruppovoe-iznasilovanie-matios-238141.html; "Ukrainian military commander arrested over torture, rape-and unit dishanded," Russia Today, June 18, 2015, https://www.rt.com/news/268105-ukraine-tornado-torture-rape/.

212. Bidder, "Kampf gegen separatisten: Ukrainische Freischarler sollen Graueltaten begangen haben" Hahn, "One Day in the Life of Ukrainian Democracy."

213. Bidder, "Kampf gegen separatisten", and Hahn, "One Day in the Life of Ukrainian Democracy."

214. Andrew E. Kramer, "Ukraine Strategy Bets on Restraint by Russia," New York Times, August 9, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/world/europe/ukraine.html?r-0.

215."Ukraine Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians," Human Rights Watch, July 24, 2014, https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/24/ukraine-unguided-rockets-killing-civilians.

216. "Bombing of the city of Lugansk the Ukrainian jet on June 2, 2014, YouTube, June 4, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch-T8IG xm6Gbo, last accessed on April 5, 2016.

217. "Why? Entire E. Ukraine village bombed by airstrike, 5 yr-old among dead," YouTube, July 3, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v-fxAdc9JRA00.

218. "Ukraine: Widespread Use of Cluster Munitions," Human Rights Watch, October 20, 2014, www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-cluster-munitions; Andrew Roth, "Ukraine Used Cluster Bomhs, Evidence Indicates," New York Times, October 21, 2014, www.ny times.com/2014/10/21/world/ukraine-used-cluster-bombs-report-charges.html?google edi tors picks true; and Nicolas Miletitch, "Surgeons in Ukraine's rebel Donetsk confirm cluster bomb us age, AFP, October 21, 2014.

219. "Ukraine: More Civilians Killed in Cluster Munition Attacks," Human Rights Watch, March 19, 2015, www.hrw.org/news/2015/03/19/ukraine-more-civilians-killed-cluster-munition-attacks.

220. HRW Calls on Germany to Pressure Ukraine on Civilian Casualties," Voice of America, January 6, 2015, www.voanews.com/content/hrw-calls-on-germany-to-pressure-ukraine-on-civilian-casual ties/2587203.html and "Incendiary Weapons: Recent use and Growing Opposition," Human Rights. Watch, November 201www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/supporting resources/incendiary weapons re cent use and growing opposition nov2014_final.pdf, pp. 6-7.

221. "Minsk agreement on Ukraine crisis: text in full," The Guardian, February 12, 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11408266/Minsk-agreement-on-Ukraine-crisis-text-in-full.html.

222. "Russia and the Separatists of Eastern Ukraine," International Crisis Group, p. 9.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Ukraine Over the Edge - Russia, the West and the “;New Cold War” GORDON M. HAHN

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina

2018, pp. 341- 404