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RUSSIA continues it's aggression against Ukraine, actually beginning it's invasion on 22 AUG 14 after weeks of bombing runs and air to ground missile strikes along with missile, heavy artillery and mortar strikes against Ukrainian military forces in Ukraine. putin plans on seizing at least the Russian majority areas of Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian rebels, this invasion by his "relief" convoy is to stop the losses of territory they control. Kiev is gaining ground against the rebels and have a chance to restore government control over the entire nation. This doesn't fit into putin's anschluss agenda and he will continue the fight until Russian forces control the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, thus securing a land link to Russian occupied Ukrainian Crimea. The West, distracted by isil in Iraq and Syria ( how quickly we have forgotten the horror of MH 17 ), continues to feign outrage over putin's naked aggression, might impose more economic sanctions against Moscow, but unless they, along with the U.N., take the steps to isolate Russia politically and economically, it is likely we will see the end of an independent and sovereign Ukraine. From +Foreign Policy and +PBS NewsHour .....
A White Shining Lie
Putin's 'humanitarian' convoy is simply a pretext for the war the Kremlin's been planning for months.
Leave it to Vladimir Putin to make relief sound
menacing. "All excuses for dragging out the delivery ... are exhausted,"
the Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Aug. 22, as more than 200 white-painted Russian
Kamaz "aid" trucks entered Ukrainian territory without the permission
of Kiev. "The Russian side has taken the decision to act. Our column with
humanitarian cargo is starting to move in the direction of Luhansk."
"The Russian side has taken the decision to act" ranks right up there in minatory sentences with "We need to talk" -- except, of course, the time for talking here is long since past. Also noteworthy is the suddenness with which this fuck-‘em-drive-on pronouncement was delivered, just a day after the Russian Foreign Ministry issued an almost kittenish statement about how everyone was finally getting along: "We welcome the final agreement concerning all variables involved in the urgent delivery of Russian humanitarian relief aid to southeastern Ukraine using the Izvarino-Luhansk route," it read.
What a coincidence that there's been a total
breakdown in communications and comity in just 24 hours.
As for the convoy, it bears emphasizing that only
34 trucks have been inspected by Ukrainian customs, and all were found to
be much lighter in load than they needed to be. According the State Border Guard Service of
Ukraine, "The total weight [of the 34 inspected trucks] was 268,020 kg.
Vehicles were loaded to two-thirds of their capacity."
There's also the niggling question of what's in the majority of the Kamazes, which no one, apart from the Russians themselves, has ever set foot in. The entire convoy had sat at the Izvarino border crossing for the better part of a week, ostensibly waiting for all sides to agree to the terms of its entry into eastern Ukraine -- but more than enough time to allow reporters to witness that the only additional materials delivered to the area were military in nature. Last week, the Guardian's Shaun Walker and the Telegraph's Roland Oliphant spotted a column of Russian armored personnel carriers drive right through the border overnight but without making much of a pretense of trying to hide themselves. (Here's a photograph, courtesy of Polish news station TVN24's Wojciech Bojanowski, of the punctured border fence through which these vehicles drove.)
Perhaps because it now realizes that lending its imprimatur in any way to a Russian convoy is a public-relations land mine, the International Committee of the Red Cross sent out a series of urgent tweets today distancing itself entirely from this fiasco. "We are not accompanying the convoy due to the instability of the situation with security," ran one, in Russian. However, Raisa Lukutsova, the head of Russia's national Red Cross Society, was quoted by Interfax saying that she fully supported Moscow's decision to dispatch the convoy. New photographs published by RT Ruptly, one of the Kremlin's friendly propaganda news agencies, show at least one white minivan trailing a Kamaz and flying the recognizable emblem of the Red Cross, which can be purposed by nonaffiliated entities for "protective" rather than "indicative" use. However, Russia is clearly exploiting the fact that the ICRC was originally party to the convoy negotiations, and making ambiguous use of a popular symbol.
(Foreign Policy attempted unsuccessfully to contact Anna K. Nelson, the Washington spokesperson for the ICRC, to clarify how Lukutsova could be at odds with the international wing of her own society. The Geneva headquarters of the ICRC also informed FP that the organization was now closed for the weekend and no media representatives were available for comment.)
NATO, ever wary of using the dreaded "I-word" to describe Moscow's shenanigans at, around, and across the Ukrainian border, instead called the convoy dispatch a "blatant breach of Russia's international commitments." NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu also confirmed today that "Russian artillery support -- both cross-border and from within Ukraine -- is being employed against the Ukrainian armed forces." Additionally, she said, "Russian airborne, air defense and special operations forces" have been active in Donbass. Russian Airborne forces played an outsize role in the near bloodless seizure of Crimea last March, and some members have allegedly been captured by the Ukrainians this week.
Nastya Stanko, a journalist for Ukraine's Hromadske TV, tweeted today in Ukrainian that eight paratroopers from Russia's 76th Pskov Airborne Division "are in a critical condition in the Luhansk regional hospital, they're not movable. Thirty have been sent off to a hospital in Rostov. It's not known what they were doing here." Earlier in the week, a BMD-2 infantry fighting vehicle, reportedly belonging to the Pskov Airborne Division, was captured by the 24th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Storm Special Forces unit in the Lugutino district, just south of Luhansk. Ukrainian journalist Roman Bochkala posted an image of the vehicle on his Facebook page, as well as that of an apparent roll call journal for the Pskov Airborne. (Russia countered, saying that this particular journal's format is five years old and no longer in use.) But this fresh evidence tracks with other BMD-2s spotted in mid-August on the Russian side of the border, about 10 kilometers from Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, a Russian town near the Izvarino crossing.
It therefore may not surprise you to learn that on Aug. 16, a presidential decree by Putin, published on the Kremlin's website, stated that "the 76th Guards Air Assault Chernigov Red Banner Division of Russian Airborne Troops have been awarded the Suvorov Award for successful fulfillment of combat assignments of the command and display of the personal staff of courage and heroism." Odd, then, that Russia has not formally acknowledged for which "combat assignments" these brave soldiers are being honored. Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry denied that any of its paratroopers' BMD-2s had been seized in Ukraine, and cast such reports as still further conspiracy theories emanating from Kiev about Russian military involvement in the separatists' war.
If one wanted to be really cynical, one could argue that the U.N. Security Council resolution, unanimously passed in July, authorizing emergency aid convoys to cross into rebel-held areas of Syria without the express permission of the Assad regime will be used as legal justification for Russia's "blatant breach" today. Hailed at the time as a much-needed act of diplomatic consensus on Syria, this resolution always seemed a little too magnanimous for Putin to sign on to. Perhaps we now know why. It's given him cover to turn around and blame the United States for abiding by "double standards" with respect to humanitarianism and state sovereignty. This would certainly chime with Moscow's accusation that, even as it pours troops, anti-aircraft systems, and armored personnel carriers into eastern Ukraine, and even as it has amassed 30,000 troops at the border, it is actually Washington and Kiev plumping for war.
Russia's drip-drip invasion was never going to be heralded with a formal declaration of war. That's not how the Russian president plays the game. In fact, the best barometer that conditions in eastern Ukraine were about to get worse -- not better -- came in the seeming willingness of Putin to parlay with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Minsk on Aug. 26. Surely that meant Russia wanted a settlement? No, it meant that Russia wanted relaxed international headlines so that it could proceed with its war policy unhindered.
Updated at 12:30 p.m. EDT with NATO statement:
Russia went ahead without Ukrainian permission to send dozens of aid trucks into eastern Ukraine on Friday. Ukraine called the move a “direct invasion.”
Russia said the trucks are carrying food, water, generators and sleeping bags for residents of Luhansk, where Ukrainian government forces are fighting pro-Russia separatists. But Ukrainian security services chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said the men driving the trucks were Russian military personnel, and the vehicles could be used to transport weapons to rebels.
He called the convoy a “direct invasion.”
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen criticized the use of the convoy as “a blatant breach of Russia’s international commitments” in a statement issued Friday. He said the development “was even more worrying as they coincide with a major escalation in Russian military involvement in Eastern Ukraine since mid-August, including the use of Russian forces. In addition, Russian artillery support — both cross-border and from within Ukraine — is being employed against the Ukrainian armed forces.”
Heavy shelling has cut off power, water and phone lines, and limited food supplies in Luhansk, according to the Associated Press.
The International Committee of the Red Cross had planned to accompany the convoy, but the group said it had not received enough security guarantees on Friday.
"The Russian side has taken the decision to act" ranks right up there in minatory sentences with "We need to talk" -- except, of course, the time for talking here is long since past. Also noteworthy is the suddenness with which this fuck-‘em-drive-on pronouncement was delivered, just a day after the Russian Foreign Ministry issued an almost kittenish statement about how everyone was finally getting along: "We welcome the final agreement concerning all variables involved in the urgent delivery of Russian humanitarian relief aid to southeastern Ukraine using the Izvarino-Luhansk route," it read.
What a coincidence that there's been a total breakdown in communications and comity in just 24 hours.
There's also the niggling question of what's in the majority of the Kamazes, which no one, apart from the Russians themselves, has ever set foot in. The entire convoy had sat at the Izvarino border crossing for the better part of a week, ostensibly waiting for all sides to agree to the terms of its entry into eastern Ukraine -- but more than enough time to allow reporters to witness that the only additional materials delivered to the area were military in nature. Last week, the Guardian's Shaun Walker and the Telegraph's Roland Oliphant spotted a column of Russian armored personnel carriers drive right through the border overnight but without making much of a pretense of trying to hide themselves. (Here's a photograph, courtesy of Polish news station TVN24's Wojciech Bojanowski, of the punctured border fence through which these vehicles drove.)
Perhaps because it now realizes that lending its imprimatur in any way to a Russian convoy is a public-relations land mine, the International Committee of the Red Cross sent out a series of urgent tweets today distancing itself entirely from this fiasco. "We are not accompanying the convoy due to the instability of the situation with security," ran one, in Russian. However, Raisa Lukutsova, the head of Russia's national Red Cross Society, was quoted by Interfax saying that she fully supported Moscow's decision to dispatch the convoy. New photographs published by RT Ruptly, one of the Kremlin's friendly propaganda news agencies, show at least one white minivan trailing a Kamaz and flying the recognizable emblem of the Red Cross, which can be purposed by nonaffiliated entities for "protective" rather than "indicative" use. However, Russia is clearly exploiting the fact that the ICRC was originally party to the convoy negotiations, and making ambiguous use of a popular symbol.
(Foreign Policy attempted unsuccessfully to contact Anna K. Nelson, the Washington spokesperson for the ICRC, to clarify how Lukutsova could be at odds with the international wing of her own society. The Geneva headquarters of the ICRC also informed FP that the organization was now closed for the weekend and no media representatives were available for comment.)
NATO, ever wary of using the dreaded "I-word" to describe Moscow's shenanigans at, around, and across the Ukrainian border, instead called the convoy dispatch a "blatant breach of Russia's international commitments." NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu also confirmed today that "Russian artillery support -- both cross-border and from within Ukraine -- is being employed against the Ukrainian armed forces." Additionally, she said, "Russian airborne, air defense and special operations forces" have been active in Donbass. Russian Airborne forces played an outsize role in the near bloodless seizure of Crimea last March, and some members have allegedly been captured by the Ukrainians this week.
Nastya Stanko, a journalist for Ukraine's Hromadske TV, tweeted today in Ukrainian that eight paratroopers from Russia's 76th Pskov Airborne Division "are in a critical condition in the Luhansk regional hospital, they're not movable. Thirty have been sent off to a hospital in Rostov. It's not known what they were doing here." Earlier in the week, a BMD-2 infantry fighting vehicle, reportedly belonging to the Pskov Airborne Division, was captured by the 24th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Storm Special Forces unit in the Lugutino district, just south of Luhansk. Ukrainian journalist Roman Bochkala posted an image of the vehicle on his Facebook page, as well as that of an apparent roll call journal for the Pskov Airborne. (Russia countered, saying that this particular journal's format is five years old and no longer in use.) But this fresh evidence tracks with other BMD-2s spotted in mid-August on the Russian side of the border, about 10 kilometers from Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, a Russian town near the Izvarino crossing.
It therefore may not surprise you to learn that on Aug. 16, a presidential decree by Putin, published on the Kremlin's website, stated that "the 76th Guards Air Assault Chernigov Red Banner Division of Russian Airborne Troops have been awarded the Suvorov Award for successful fulfillment of combat assignments of the command and display of the personal staff of courage and heroism." Odd, then, that Russia has not formally acknowledged for which "combat assignments" these brave soldiers are being honored. Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry denied that any of its paratroopers' BMD-2s had been seized in Ukraine, and cast such reports as still further conspiracy theories emanating from Kiev about Russian military involvement in the separatists' war.
If one wanted to be really cynical, one could argue that the U.N. Security Council resolution, unanimously passed in July, authorizing emergency aid convoys to cross into rebel-held areas of Syria without the express permission of the Assad regime will be used as legal justification for Russia's "blatant breach" today. Hailed at the time as a much-needed act of diplomatic consensus on Syria, this resolution always seemed a little too magnanimous for Putin to sign on to. Perhaps we now know why. It's given him cover to turn around and blame the United States for abiding by "double standards" with respect to humanitarianism and state sovereignty. This would certainly chime with Moscow's accusation that, even as it pours troops, anti-aircraft systems, and armored personnel carriers into eastern Ukraine, and even as it has amassed 30,000 troops at the border, it is actually Washington and Kiev plumping for war.
Russia's drip-drip invasion was never going to be heralded with a formal declaration of war. That's not how the Russian president plays the game. In fact, the best barometer that conditions in eastern Ukraine were about to get worse -- not better -- came in the seeming willingness of Putin to parlay with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Minsk on Aug. 26. Surely that meant Russia wanted a settlement? No, it meant that Russia wanted relaxed international headlines so that it could proceed with its war policy unhindered.
ANDREY KRONBERG/AFP/Getty Images
The Chaos Convoy
The Red Cross has no idea what 280 Russian trucks making their way to the Ukrainian border are carrying. Is Putin's "humanitarian" mission a Trojan horse?
A convoy of 280 Russian Kamaz military
vehicles -- all painted a nice, soothing white, absent any license plates, and
brandishing flags of the Red Cross -- are en route from the Moscow suburbs to a relatively peaceful border crossing
just north of Kharkiv, Ukraine. If the Russian state-controlled media is to be
believed, they are collectively transporting around 2,000 tons of baby food,
grain, bottled water, sleeping bags, sugar, and medicine to a war-ravaged nation
next door.
Of course, if you believe the Russian media, eastern Ukraine's desperate state of affairs has nothing to do with the fact that for the last several months Moscow has underwritten, encouraged, and armed disparate factions of pro-Russian separatists -- many of them Russian nationals, intelligence agents, and even soldiers posting to Instagram photos of themselves driving Russian anti-aircraft missile systems.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the organization tasked with coordinating all aid shipments into Lugansk and Donetsk, claims that it has no idea what the hell is in those Kamaz trucks, nor has it licensed them to go anywhere near Ukraine. And yet the vehicles are nevertheless driving toward Ukraine flying the Red Cross's recognizable pendant.
Laurent Corbaz, the head of ICRC's operations for Europe and Central Asia, issued a press statement today claiming that his organization is in the dark about what Russia is really up to. "We of course have heard of this Russian initiative," he said, "and we have realized that this was in agreement with the Russian authorities and the Ukrainian authorities that such a convoy should be a possibility, provided that ICRC could be on board. We said that we could be onboard but we needed to have some clarification first regarding the modalities, practical steps that have to be implemented prior to launch such an operation."
In other words, Putin's cooked up another game of guess-the-strategy, which has met every expectation in befuddling and distracting an international news cycle.
Clearly, the ICRC is not thrilled about being enlisted in a highly controversial and obfuscatory relief scheme fewer than 48 hours after
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen publicly stated there was a "high probability" that Russia would
invade Ukraine under "the guise of a humanitarian operation." Russia still has
some 20,000 troops at the Ukraine border -- 45,000 if you count the garrisons it
has in illegally annexed Crimea, which Kiev certainly does. Troops, armored personnel
carriers, and transport trucks are also on the move in the Belarusian city of
Vitebsk, and as my colleague Pierre Vaux wrote in the Daily Beast, Ukraine recently withdrew its forces
from some 60 miles of borderland, leaving it wide open to Russian incursion from
multiple directions.
It also bears noting that on the night of
Aug. 8, Moscow tried and failed
to have another one of its "humanitarian convoys," this one accompanied by
Russian military, penetrate Ukraine's frontier, stopping just short of it in what one
high-ranking Ukrainian official dubbed "nearly a real disaster, nearly an invasion." It
was only Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's swift "diplomatic work," in the
words of his deputy chief of staff, Valeriy Chaly,
that turned the Russians around. A spokesperson for the Russian Foreign
Ministry dismissed the story as one of Kiev's "fairy tales." It seemed
nonfictional enough to Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, however, who
tweeted: "Why would Russia try to deliver 'humanitarian
assistance' to UA in the dead of night? If it's legitimate, shouldn't she
proudly display it?"
Russian propaganda can often be a Talmudic exercise, but sometimes the Kremlin makes exegesis fairly straightforward. Its agitprop in the last week shows that its seeming metamorphosis from the Clausewitz of proxy warfare into the Florence Nightingale of unsolicited relief is indeed a ruse hinting at something wicked on the way. Many anti-Kremlin Russian bloggers think so, which is why this photograph of the Kamaz trucks topped with Trojan horses is now being circulated on Twitter.
As I reported for Foreign Policy last week, on Aug. 6, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a joint press conference with his Kazakh counterpart that the ICRC had "supported" the idea of a Russian-led humanitarian mission to the blighted regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, and that the organization would "develop ... the practical aspects of the implementation of this initiative."*
Then on Aug. 11, an entire diplomatic fandango ensued, following by much contradictory reporting, about the nature of some agreed-upon plan to deliver aid to Ukraine -- with Washington, Kiev, and Brussels all more or less saying the same thing, and Russia saying something entirely different. "The president noted that Russia, working together with International Red Cross officials, is sending a humanitarian convoy to Ukraine," ran the Russian Presidential Office's read-out of Vladimir Putin's phone call with European Commission President José Manuel Barroso. Except that Barroso made no mention of any convoy, and the European Commission's own read-out of this conversation reiterated the European Union's firm stance "against any unilateral military actions in Ukraine, under any pretext, including humanitarian."
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, weighed in, acknowledging that there was to be a multilateral aid effort that would "include an international component and, in particular, humanitarian assistance provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United States, the EU, and Russia." A senior official in Ukraine's presidential administration elaborated to the Kyiv Post's Christopher Miller: "Russia will have a formal part in the convoy, but there will be no Russian [military] forces, no soldiers." This appeared to indicate that Poroshenko and Putin had in fact struck a deal, albeit one that each interpreted in his own way.
The ICRC acknowledged receipt of the Lavrov initiative on Aug. 8, but it did not mention any organizational support for the initiative, as the Russian foreign minister stated on Aug. 6.* When the ICRC on Aug. 11 commented on the Russian "initiative," it was only to insist upon its own leadership as aid coordinator and to emphasize that nothing concrete or definitive had yet to be decided: "[T]he ICRC should receive without undue delay from the authorities of the Russian Federation all necessary details concerning the aid, including the volume and type of items, and requirements for transport and storage," an organizational statement read. "All parties must also guarantee the security of ICRC staff and vehicles, for the entire duration of the operation, in view of the fact that the organization does not accept armed escorts."
Which raises a number of interesting questions, chief among them being:
Who's driving those Kamaz trucks, if not
Russian soldiers?
A clue may have been furnished by a post
on Russia's popular VKontakte social media platform by Semyon Borisov, who described himself as a
serviceman in Russia's 1117th Air Defense Regiment of the 2nd Guards of the
Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division, whose regiment is located in the Moscow suburb
of Kalininets. In 1991, this division took part in the abortive military coup
to oust Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev; one of its tanks, from a unit that
defected to the other side, was famously stood upon by Boris Yeltsin
to deliver his barnstorming speech in front of the White House. So it didn't go
unnoticed when Borisov posted, as my team at the Interpreter translated: "Today we loaded humanitarian aid into
Kamazes for Ukraine. Water, medicines, canned food, baby food, sleeping bags,
electrical generators, and various equipment (field kitchens and so on). There
were about 300 trucks, all military Kamazes; they were painted white in a few
days." (Borisov's post was subsequently removed from VKontakte, without
explanation, but a screen capture of the original is still available here.)
Indeed, this video, which was uploaded to YouTube on Aug. 10 -- a day before the Putin-Barroso phone call -- shows lines of white Kamaz trucks bearing the slogan "medical service," arrayed on a military base. (Smaller, ambulance-looking vehicles were also displayed with the Red Cross symbol.) Curiously, the license plates have yet to be removed. Some of the trucks are parked next to a mobile radar tower for the S-300 missile system, one of Russia's most sophisticated long-range anti-aircraft weapons, which it once threatened to sell to Iran and has just announced it won't be delivering to Syria. In front of the trucks stand Russian troops wearing uniforms which read "Military Auto Inspection." A rail yard is also visible just beyond the base, along with white apartment buildings that would seem to track with Google Street View pictures of present-day Kalininets. Later, Russia's state-owned TV 1 news channel carried a report showing the Kamaz convoy traveling through the Tula region and reaching Voronezh, where they were stopping to spend the night. This broadcast also clearly showed more Red Cross flags, this time atop the Kamazes, and the flags are even referred to as those of the ICRC by the news anchor.
Southern Russia, too, has seen a fair share of activity in the last two days. Russian journalist Savik Shuster noticed that another sophisticated anti-aircraft system, the 9K33 Osa (aka SA-8 Gecko), is being transported to Taganrog in the Rostov region. According to the independent Russian media outlet RosBiznesKonsalting (RBC.ru), another 15 Kamaz trucks arrived in Rostov, near the Ukrainian border, where they were apparently being readied for dispatch to the Donbass region of Ukraine. "[T]he Russian Interior Ministry and Emercom will be responsible for the delivery of the convoy," RBC.ru reported. Emercom stands for Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry, which is responsible for responding to natural disasters such as forest fires. But it's curious that the ministry's office for the South Region in Rostov denied to RBC.ru that it was doing anything with respect to humanitarian aid. The regional government, it said, was in charge of all prospective supply runs to Ukraine.
As we can see from the photos filed by Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti, the trucks in the convoy have no identifying marks or registration numbers on the vehicles. Russian media has also been confusing about the provenance of the convoy, even as it reports the trucks leaving from areas that have military garrisons. The Defense Ministry's TV Zvezda, for instance, reported the convoy as being under the command of Emercom, although all the ministry's vehicles have license plates and a distinctive paint job -- and they don't turn their vehicles white for humanitarian missions. The site Vesti 24 also cited Emercom and even shows scenes of the loading of trucks. Yet on Emercom's website, there is no press release about this highly publicized convoy covered by all the major networks supposedly involving them.
Despite the confusion and apparent subterfuge, the Ukrainian government appeared to be amenable to receiving what's in those 280 Kamazes, provided, however, that not a single tire hits Ukrainian soil. "This cargo will be reloaded onto other transport vehicles (at the border) by the Red Cross," Poroshenko's aide Chaly told journalists today in Kiev. "We will not allow any escort by the emergencies ministry of Russia or by the military (onto Ukrainian territory). Everything will be under the control of the Ukrainian side."
Maybe. But once again, the Russian Foreign Ministry has its own spin on what was agreed. Lavrov told ITAR-TASS that the reloading condition had now been dropped by Kiev, owing to the inconvenience and cost of taking 2,000 tons of materials off one set of trucks only to put them onto another. Ukraine has yet to confirm if that's true, but it seems clear that Russian trucks are planning to drive through into Ukraine with a cargo that only Moscow can identify.
So is a Putinist provocation in the offing? Both BuzzFeed's Max Seddon and radio station Ekho Moskvy's editor-in-chief, Alexey Venediktov, suggested that Russia might be planning a Gaza flotilla-style fiasco -- whereby Ukraine violently blocks or interdicts the convoy it doesn't want penetrating its border, presumably to furnish a pretext for Moscow to launch all-out war. Or perhaps Putin has instructed one of his favored separatist militias to fire on the convoy and blame Kiev, a false-flag incident which would surely draw the same prefabricated response from the Kremlin. In any case, the Kamazes don't have to be carrying weapons or military equipment to cause a fuss: Just reaching their destination tomorrow may do that in itself.
*Update, Aug. 13, 2014: The ICRC wrote in an Aug. 13 email to Foreign Policy that the three ICRC personnel detained by separatists were released after several hours on July 31. An earlier version of this article said that the personnel's whereabouts were unknown. The reference to the detained personnel has been deleted in light of this new information. (Return to reading.)
*Correction, Aug. 13, 2014: The ICRC acknowledged receipt of the Russian initiative on Aug. 8. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the ICRC acknowledged receipt on Aug. 11. (Return to reading.)
Hari Sreenivasan has the story.
HARI SREENIVASAN: After more than a week of waiting, a stream of white trucks crossed the Ukrainian border without the Kiev government’s approval. Russian officials said the trucks carried only food, water, generators, and sleeping bags.
ALEXANDER LUKASHEVICH, Spokesman, Russian Foreign Ministry (through interpreter): We can’t tolerate this kind of outrageous situation. All pretexts to postpone the aid delivery to the people in the area of humanitarian catastrophe are over. The Russian side has decided to act. We warn of any attempts to disrupt the purely humanitarian mission that has been prepared long ago.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The Ukrainian government said it wouldn’t use force to stop the trucks, but it condemned the Russian move.
VALENTYN NALYVAICHENKO, Security Service of Ukraine (through interpreter): We call it this way: This is a direct invasion. These are military vehicles. These are military men with fake documents. This is why this situation is so dangerous.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The convoy headed for Luhansk, a rebel-held city under siege by Ukrainian government forces. The first trucks arrived there by midday, and many appeared half-empty.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that proved Russia is lying about the real purpose of the convoy.
ARSENIY YATSENYUK, Prime Minister, Ukraine (through interpreter): Here is their motivation: They are now waiting for several trucks of the so-called humanitarian aid convoy to be simply bombed, and bombed by the Russians themselves, so that they can tell the whole world, this is a junta who wages war on its own people.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The Ukrainians further charged the trucks would transport weapons and carry away the bodies of Russians killed in the fighting. International criticism also poured in.
Rear Admiral John Kirby spoke at the Pentagon.
REAR ADM. JOHN KIRBY, Pentagon Press Secretary: This is a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity by Russia. Russia must remove its vehicles and its personnel from the territory of Ukraine immediately.
HARI SREENIVASAN: NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen added his voice, saying: “This is a blatant breach of Russia’s international commitments and can only deepen the crisis in the region.”
At the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, discussed possible steps for a cease-fire in Ukraine. Merkel travels to Kiev tomorrow
Of course, if you believe the Russian media, eastern Ukraine's desperate state of affairs has nothing to do with the fact that for the last several months Moscow has underwritten, encouraged, and armed disparate factions of pro-Russian separatists -- many of them Russian nationals, intelligence agents, and even soldiers posting to Instagram photos of themselves driving Russian anti-aircraft missile systems.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the organization tasked with coordinating all aid shipments into Lugansk and Donetsk, claims that it has no idea what the hell is in those Kamaz trucks, nor has it licensed them to go anywhere near Ukraine. And yet the vehicles are nevertheless driving toward Ukraine flying the Red Cross's recognizable pendant.
Laurent Corbaz, the head of ICRC's operations for Europe and Central Asia, issued a press statement today claiming that his organization is in the dark about what Russia is really up to. "We of course have heard of this Russian initiative," he said, "and we have realized that this was in agreement with the Russian authorities and the Ukrainian authorities that such a convoy should be a possibility, provided that ICRC could be on board. We said that we could be onboard but we needed to have some clarification first regarding the modalities, practical steps that have to be implemented prior to launch such an operation."
In other words, Putin's cooked up another game of guess-the-strategy, which has met every expectation in befuddling and distracting an international news cycle.
Clearly, the ICRC is not thrilled about being enlisted in a highly controversial and obfuscatory relief scheme fewer than 48 hours after
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen publicly stated there was a "high probability" that Russia would invade Ukraine under "the guise of a humanitarian operation."
Russian propaganda can often be a Talmudic exercise, but sometimes the Kremlin makes exegesis fairly straightforward. Its agitprop in the last week shows that its seeming metamorphosis from the Clausewitz of proxy warfare into the Florence Nightingale of unsolicited relief is indeed a ruse hinting at something wicked on the way. Many anti-Kremlin Russian bloggers think so, which is why this photograph of the Kamaz trucks topped with Trojan horses is now being circulated on Twitter.
As I reported for Foreign Policy last week, on Aug. 6, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a joint press conference with his Kazakh counterpart that the ICRC had "supported" the idea of a Russian-led humanitarian mission to the blighted regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, and that the organization would "develop ... the practical aspects of the implementation of this initiative."*
Then on Aug. 11, an entire diplomatic fandango ensued, following by much contradictory reporting, about the nature of some agreed-upon plan to deliver aid to Ukraine -- with Washington, Kiev, and Brussels all more or less saying the same thing, and Russia saying something entirely different. "The president noted that Russia, working together with International Red Cross officials, is sending a humanitarian convoy to Ukraine," ran the Russian Presidential Office's read-out of Vladimir Putin's phone call with European Commission President José Manuel Barroso. Except that Barroso made no mention of any convoy, and the European Commission's own read-out of this conversation reiterated the European Union's firm stance "against any unilateral military actions in Ukraine, under any pretext, including humanitarian."
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, weighed in, acknowledging that there was to be a multilateral aid effort that would "include an international component and, in particular, humanitarian assistance provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United States, the EU, and Russia." A senior official in Ukraine's presidential administration elaborated to the Kyiv Post's Christopher Miller: "Russia will have a formal part in the convoy, but there will be no Russian [military] forces, no soldiers." This appeared to indicate that Poroshenko and Putin had in fact struck a deal, albeit one that each interpreted in his own way.
The ICRC acknowledged receipt of the Lavrov initiative on Aug. 8, but it did not mention any organizational support for the initiative, as the Russian foreign minister stated on Aug. 6.* When the ICRC on Aug. 11 commented on the Russian "initiative," it was only to insist upon its own leadership as aid coordinator and to emphasize that nothing concrete or definitive had yet to be decided: "[T]he ICRC should receive without undue delay from the authorities of the Russian Federation all necessary details concerning the aid, including the volume and type of items, and requirements for transport and storage," an organizational statement read. "All parties must also guarantee the security of ICRC staff and vehicles, for the entire duration of the operation, in view of the fact that the organization does not accept armed escorts."
Which raises a number of interesting questions, chief among them being:
Who's driving those Kamaz trucks, if not Russian soldiers?
Indeed, this video, which was uploaded to YouTube on Aug. 10 -- a day before the Putin-Barroso phone call -- shows lines of white Kamaz trucks bearing the slogan "medical service," arrayed on a military base. (Smaller, ambulance-looking vehicles were also displayed with the Red Cross symbol.) Curiously, the license plates have yet to be removed. Some of the trucks are parked next to a mobile radar tower for the S-300 missile system, one of Russia's most sophisticated long-range anti-aircraft weapons, which it once threatened to sell to Iran and has just announced it won't be delivering to Syria. In front of the trucks stand Russian troops wearing uniforms which read "Military Auto Inspection." A rail yard is also visible just beyond the base, along with white apartment buildings that would seem to track with Google Street View pictures of present-day Kalininets. Later, Russia's state-owned TV 1 news channel carried a report showing the Kamaz convoy traveling through the Tula region and reaching Voronezh, where they were stopping to spend the night. This broadcast also clearly showed more Red Cross flags, this time atop the Kamazes, and the flags are even referred to as those of the ICRC by the news anchor.
Southern Russia, too, has seen a fair share of activity in the last two days. Russian journalist Savik Shuster noticed that another sophisticated anti-aircraft system, the 9K33 Osa (aka SA-8 Gecko), is being transported to Taganrog in the Rostov region. According to the independent Russian media outlet RosBiznesKonsalting (RBC.ru), another 15 Kamaz trucks arrived in Rostov, near the Ukrainian border, where they were apparently being readied for dispatch to the Donbass region of Ukraine. "[T]he Russian Interior Ministry and Emercom will be responsible for the delivery of the convoy," RBC.ru reported. Emercom stands for Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry, which is responsible for responding to natural disasters such as forest fires. But it's curious that the ministry's office for the South Region in Rostov denied to RBC.ru that it was doing anything with respect to humanitarian aid. The regional government, it said, was in charge of all prospective supply runs to Ukraine.
As we can see from the photos filed by Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti, the trucks in the convoy have no identifying marks or registration numbers on the vehicles. Russian media has also been confusing about the provenance of the convoy, even as it reports the trucks leaving from areas that have military garrisons. The Defense Ministry's TV Zvezda, for instance, reported the convoy as being under the command of Emercom, although all the ministry's vehicles have license plates and a distinctive paint job -- and they don't turn their vehicles white for humanitarian missions. The site Vesti 24 also cited Emercom and even shows scenes of the loading of trucks. Yet on Emercom's website, there is no press release about this highly publicized convoy covered by all the major networks supposedly involving them.
Despite the confusion and apparent subterfuge, the Ukrainian government appeared to be amenable to receiving what's in those 280 Kamazes, provided, however, that not a single tire hits Ukrainian soil. "This cargo will be reloaded onto other transport vehicles (at the border) by the Red Cross," Poroshenko's aide Chaly told journalists today in Kiev. "We will not allow any escort by the emergencies ministry of Russia or by the military (onto Ukrainian territory). Everything will be under the control of the Ukrainian side."
Maybe. But once again, the Russian Foreign Ministry has its own spin on what was agreed. Lavrov told ITAR-TASS that the reloading condition had now been dropped by Kiev, owing to the inconvenience and cost of taking 2,000 tons of materials off one set of trucks only to put them onto another. Ukraine has yet to confirm if that's true, but it seems clear that Russian trucks are planning to drive through into Ukraine with a cargo that only Moscow can identify.
So is a Putinist provocation in the offing? Both BuzzFeed's Max Seddon and radio station Ekho Moskvy's editor-in-chief, Alexey Venediktov, suggested that Russia might be planning a Gaza flotilla-style fiasco -- whereby Ukraine violently blocks or interdicts the convoy it doesn't want penetrating its border, presumably to furnish a pretext for Moscow to launch all-out war. Or perhaps Putin has instructed one of his favored separatist militias to fire on the convoy and blame Kiev, a false-flag incident which would surely draw the same prefabricated response from the Kremlin. In any case, the Kamazes don't have to be carrying weapons or military equipment to cause a fuss: Just reaching their destination tomorrow may do that in itself.
*Update, Aug. 13, 2014: The ICRC wrote in an Aug. 13 email to Foreign Policy that the three ICRC personnel detained by separatists were released after several hours on July 31. An earlier version of this article said that the personnel's whereabouts were unknown. The reference to the detained personnel has been deleted in light of this new information. (Return to reading.)
*Correction, Aug. 13, 2014: The ICRC acknowledged receipt of the Russian initiative on Aug. 8. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the ICRC acknowledged receipt on Aug. 11. (Return to reading.)
REUTERS/Nikita Paukov
In
our news wrap Friday, a stream of Russian trucks crossed the Ukrainian
border without Kiev’s approval under the claim of sending humanitarian
aid to separatists and after more than a week of waiting. Ukraine’s
government has charged that Russia is lying about the purpose.
TRANSCRIPT
JUDY WOODRUFF: The tensions between Ukraine and Russia spiked today when a Russian convoy rolled across the frontier. The move drew widespread condemnation.Hari Sreenivasan has the story.
HARI SREENIVASAN: After more than a week of waiting, a stream of white trucks crossed the Ukrainian border without the Kiev government’s approval. Russian officials said the trucks carried only food, water, generators, and sleeping bags.
ALEXANDER LUKASHEVICH, Spokesman, Russian Foreign Ministry (through interpreter): We can’t tolerate this kind of outrageous situation. All pretexts to postpone the aid delivery to the people in the area of humanitarian catastrophe are over. The Russian side has decided to act. We warn of any attempts to disrupt the purely humanitarian mission that has been prepared long ago.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The Ukrainian government said it wouldn’t use force to stop the trucks, but it condemned the Russian move.
VALENTYN NALYVAICHENKO, Security Service of Ukraine (through interpreter): We call it this way: This is a direct invasion. These are military vehicles. These are military men with fake documents. This is why this situation is so dangerous.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The convoy headed for Luhansk, a rebel-held city under siege by Ukrainian government forces. The first trucks arrived there by midday, and many appeared half-empty.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that proved Russia is lying about the real purpose of the convoy.
ARSENIY YATSENYUK, Prime Minister, Ukraine (through interpreter): Here is their motivation: They are now waiting for several trucks of the so-called humanitarian aid convoy to be simply bombed, and bombed by the Russians themselves, so that they can tell the whole world, this is a junta who wages war on its own people.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The Ukrainians further charged the trucks would transport weapons and carry away the bodies of Russians killed in the fighting. International criticism also poured in.
Rear Admiral John Kirby spoke at the Pentagon.
REAR ADM. JOHN KIRBY, Pentagon Press Secretary: This is a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity by Russia. Russia must remove its vehicles and its personnel from the territory of Ukraine immediately.
HARI SREENIVASAN: NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen added his voice, saying: “This is a blatant breach of Russia’s international commitments and can only deepen the crisis in the region.”
At the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, discussed possible steps for a cease-fire in Ukraine. Merkel travels to Kiev tomorrow
Ukraine calls Russian aid convoy a ‘direct invasion’
Trucks
part of a Russian humanitarian convoy are parked near a checkpoint at
the Ukrainian border in the Rostov region on Aug. 20. Photo by Dmitry
Serebryakov/AFP/Getty Images
Russia went ahead without Ukrainian permission to send dozens of aid trucks into eastern Ukraine on Friday. Ukraine called the move a “direct invasion.”
Russia said the trucks are carrying food, water, generators and sleeping bags for residents of Luhansk, where Ukrainian government forces are fighting pro-Russia separatists. But Ukrainian security services chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said the men driving the trucks were Russian military personnel, and the vehicles could be used to transport weapons to rebels.
He called the convoy a “direct invasion.”
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen criticized the use of the convoy as “a blatant breach of Russia’s international commitments” in a statement issued Friday. He said the development “was even more worrying as they coincide with a major escalation in Russian military involvement in Eastern Ukraine since mid-August, including the use of Russian forces. In addition, Russian artillery support — both cross-border and from within Ukraine — is being employed against the Ukrainian armed forces.”
Heavy shelling has cut off power, water and phone lines, and limited food supplies in Luhansk, according to the Associated Press.
The International Committee of the Red Cross had planned to accompany the convoy, but the group said it had not received enough security guarantees on Friday.
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