UKRAINIAN PHANTASMAGORIA

The situation in and around Ukraine is developing at a striking speed and, unfortunately, following a scenario far from peaceful. On the evening of 28 August, all news bulletins exploded with reports marked "breaking news": Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has announced that Russian troops have been sent to Ukraine. According to local media, Ukraine's military positions were attacked by Grad multiple rocket launchers from Russian territory and then convoys of heavy military hardware penetrated into that country's territory from populated localities in Russia's Rostov Region. Then Russian military entered Novoazovsk. A few days earlier, Ukrainian media circulated information on armoured vehicles breaking through from the side of the Russian border and mounting an offensive on Mariupol. The Security Service of Ukraine [SBU] has run a report on Russian military servicemen taken prisoner as a proof that there are Russian troops in Ukraine.     

Poroshenko cancelled his visit to Turkey and urgently called a meeting of the National Security Council. A tough reaction from the West followed instantly. French President Francois Hollande described the developments in Ukraine as "one of the worst crises in Europe since World War II". German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked Moscow for explanations on the supposed presence of Russian forces in Ukraine and added that Moscow might be in for new sanctions. 

Switzerland currently presiding in the OSCE has called an urgent meeting of the organization's permanent council. NATO representatives promptly demonstrated satellite pictures showing, according to them, the presence of Russian military hardware on Ukrainian territory. According to NATO experts, there are more than 1,000 Russian military servicemen acting in Ukraine. "The violence is encouraged by Russia. The separatists are trained by Russia, they are armed by Russia, they are funded by Russia" and Russia's activity would incur "more costs and consequences", US president Barack Obama said at a briefing in the White House and invited the Ukrainian president to Washington. Of course, different media have come down on their readers' heads with avalanches of theories. The New York Times, for example, has drawn the conclusion that "Russian forces have been trying to help the separatists break the siege of Luhansk and have been fighting to open a corridor to Donetsk from the Russian border" and seize Mariupol as an outlet to the Sea of Azov. Moreover, some media and social networks have started discussing the possibility of a separatist offensive on Kiev itself. 

The Russian side has been and continues flatly denying invasion. Even before Poroshenko's statement in his interview for "The Daily Telegraph", Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did it with all diplomatic forcefulness. After Poroshenko's statement, the Russian Defence Ministry denied the authenticity of the list of army units allegedly sent to Ukraine's regions hit by hostilities describing relevant media reports as "canard". 

However Russian media have been making no secret of the fact that, starting from 24 August, the rebels have mounted an active offensive and that there are many Russian volunteers among them. "Nothing official, no direct orders, everything is based on individuals' personal will," Russian UN spokesman Vitaliy Churkin said. Aleksandr Zakharchenko who refers to himself as the prime minister of the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), said in an interview to the Rossiya 24 TV channel that there were career officers fighting in the militia of the self-proclaimed DPR who took a leave in Russia for this purpose. Russian media themselves have started speaking about people killed in Ukraine. In particular, two members of the Russian presidential council for promoting civil society and human rights, Ella Polyakova and Sergey Krivenko, have made a statement to this effect. According to reports, on 25 August, servicemen of the 76th Pskov airborne division were buried in secrecy in the village of Vybuty in Pskov Region. On 28 August, citing Fontanka.ru, the Russian website News.ru reported on St Petersburg residents witnessing ambulances driving about the city escorted by cars of the military traffic inspectorate. However, the press service of the Western Military District has denied all that.   

It is noteworthy that the situation in the combat operations area exacerbated just before and after the Minsk summit of the Customs Union member states, the Ukrainian president and EU senior officials. The genre of the meeting was somewhat strange and one could even say phantasmagorical. One of the strange things about it was the fact that Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka repeatedly barred from European capitals and punished by sanctions was visited by European officials: EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, EU Commissioner for Energy Gunther Oettinger and EU Commissioner for Trade Karel de Gucht. 

Catherine Ashton, the only one in the company who did not speak Russian, chose not to come up with any initiatives. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the most neutral of all, had to carry the can for the rest. He called to stop the confrontation of sanctions hitting common people and suggested setting up an international headquarters for economic support to Ukraine and a fund for rebuilding Donbass. At first Russian President Vladimir Putin kept strictly to the agenda. He once mentioned the negative aspects of Ukraine's EU association for Russia's economy and promised once again to impose Russia-EU trade rules for Ukraine. The Kremlin's chief also spoke on the gas issue which is currently in a deadlock despite the approach of winter. As regards the situation in the southeast, Putin said that his state could not advise Kiev, Donetsk and Luhansk on how they should make peace because this is "an internal affair of Ukraine itself". Thus Moscow's stance was emphasized with utter clarity: Russia is not a side in the civil war in Ukraine. It is a different matter that the Western states absolutely disbelieve these words and the sanction clouds keep gathering over Russia's head. The weather failed to clear up in Minsk.

Still we cannot say that the meeting was a total failure: the situation heated up even more after it and a negative result is still a result. By the way, a few hours after Poroshenko's statement on Russian invasion, Putin's official website admitted to achievements of independence supporters in south-eastern Ukraine and urged them to open a humanitarian corridor for encircled Ukrainian servicemen. The Ukrainian Security Council issued a statement in response saying that the call for corridors to let Ukrainian military out only proves that the militia are "controlled directly from the Kremlin". 

It is also notable that the hostilities in Ukraine did not interfere with active political life in Kiev. Some Ukrainian media are presenting news on the launch of the parliamentary campaign as though it were not about a country in a deep crisis but about a mayoral election in some sleepy Swiss township. Yes, indeed, the long-suffering Supreme Council has been dissolved again: Poroshenko terminated its tenure and fixed new parliament polls for 26 October 2014. According to him, this decision is backed by 80 per cent of citizens because the present lawmakers "cannot keep up with their historical pace". Poroshenko is sure that election is the best method of lustration and the best option is to start the purge just from parliament. "Most of these particular lawmakers approved the dictatorial laws that took the lives of the Heavenly Hundred. This implies both criminal and political responsibility," Poroshenko said.

Nonetheless, members of the current composition of parliament will keep working earnestly until a new parliament has been elected and, paradoxically enough, it is they that are going to ratify the EU Association Agreement, the one that caused the pro-EU Maydan protests and which is presented just as the most important historic choice in Ukraine's modern history… 

Now in general there are now few things known for certain in Ukraine. Thus for instance, it is not quite clear how the votes will be distributed in parliament given that most probably there will be no voting in Crimea and Donbass. Or how true is the news about Ukrainian military servicemen deserting en masse? It was reported, for example, that the 400-strong 5th territorial defence battalion of Prykarpattya (Carpathian Region) left the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone and went home with its arms and hardware. 

Meanwhile angry citizens, many of whom are relatives of power wielders sent to fight in the southeast, are beginning to rally outside the presidential administration and the General Staff building. The protesters demand that Defence Minister Valeriy Heletey should step down, that aid should be sent to soldiers without delay and stopping the ATO. One can even hear calls to launch a new Maydan. Discussing odds-on favourites against this background looks odd or phantasmagorical again… Yet nonetheless, in observers' opinion, Ukraine's electorate can be divided into groups supporting: radical (Right Sector, Freedom and Radical Party led by Oleh Lyashko), moderately patriotic (Poroshenko, Solidarity party) and relative opposition (Yulia

 Tymoshenko's Fatherland) forces. In all likelihood, the Party of Regions and the Communists will not be present in the new parliament.

Meanwhile the phantasmagoria continues. According to updates, the death toll in the armed conflict in Ukraine has nearly reached 2,600 people. This has been announced in a report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). It is clear that these are just official data and the real number of casualties is much higher.