WASHINGTON, DC -- Since Vladimir Putin launched his war against Ukraine back in February, speculation has run rampant about the Russian president’s objectives.
While objectives change in the course of any war, Putin himself has admitted that the invasion of Crimea was a strategic decision that, therefore, had strategic objectives in mind.
Those objectives also relate to the current fighting in the Donbas region (encompassing Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces).
As such, Russia’s conduct repudiates the speculation in Washington that Russia’s Ukraine policy is something of an improvisation.
Rather, U.S. policymakers would be well-served in trying to figure out the factors driving Putin’s decision-making, both at home and abroad.
For example, few observers gave grasped that one core legitimating factor of the Russian state, in all of its historical guises, is that it is the sole heir of Kievan Rus, medieval Russia, whose original center was the present-day Ukrainian capital of Kiev.
In this narrative, Ukraine merely plays the role of Russia’s errant “younger brother,” and its claims to independence are dismissed out of hand.
If Ukraine made a decisive break with Russia and opted for affiliation with the West, its example would more than simply stimulate demands for reform within Russia; it would serve to undermine Putin’s claims to be the legitimate heir to Russian Orthodoxy and history.
Inasmuch as religion and history are now major props of an increasingly repressive and fascist-like Russian state, this delegitimization would seriously compromise the foundation of Putin’s political project.
Moreover, few have noted that the addition of several million “ethnic Russians” also strengthens the Slavic component in a declining Slavic majority and helps stave off the pressure of a growing Islamic population — at least for a while.
Thus, imperial territorial gains serve multiple domestic purposes.
Simultaneously, there are multiple foreign policy goals that reinforce Russia’s perception of itself as a great and rising global power.
First, there is the clear intention, as spelled out by Putin himself as long ago as 2008, to dismember Ukraine, reclaim much of its territory as “Novorossiia” (new Russia) and create a contiguous Russian state all the way to the Transdniester region of Moldova.
Doing so would satisfy Russia’s determination to destroy any possibility of an independent Ukraine, as well as teach other post-Soviet states a lesson about the high costs of resisting the Kremlin.
But Moscow wants more than simple territorial expansion.
The ultimate strategic prize coveted by Putin and company is nothing less than the reorganization of European security along new lines.
The invasion of Crimea, the overflights of Europe and flights close to the United States, along with nuclear threats and continuing aggression in Ukraine, all bespeak a determination to demonstrate the European Union’s — and especially NATO’s — impotence.
Essentially, Putin wants to return Europe to a Cold War-like bipolarity between Moscow and the United States, even as his government conducts subversion across Europe to hollow out and undo the twin processes of European integration and democratization.
This objective invariably means war, because Ukraine, Poland and other post-Soviet states are ready and willing to resist a new Russian imperial despotism.
These objectives require a resolute Western response.
The state of siege already engendered in Europe by Putin’s actions is a function of the lackluster and weak way in which Western powers have reacted to Moscow’s aggression.
Formulating a strategy to roll back Russian objectives remains an imperative for the United States and its allies.
For if we do not heed this demand now, we will be forced to do so later at still greater cost, measured in the lives and treasure of Western nations — and in prospects for independence and democracy in the “post-Soviet space.”
Tuesday 30 December 2014
Russia’s Body Count Is Rising In Ukraine, Despite Army Officials’ Denials
MOSCOW, Russia -- Anton Tumanov gave up his life for his country, but his country won’t say where and it won’t say how.
His mother knows.
She knows that Mr. Tumanov, 20, a junior sergeant in the Russian army, was killed in eastern Ukraine, torn apart in a rocket attack on Aug 13.
Yelena Tumanova, 41, learned these bare facts about her son’s death from one of his comrades, who saw him get hit and scooped up his body.
“What I don’t understand is what he died for,” she says.
“Why couldn’t we let people in Ukraine sort things out for themselves?”
As the year draws to a close, the Kremlin continues to insist that not a single Russian soldier has entered Ukraine to join the pro-Moscow separatist militia who have been fighting government forces since April.
Earlier this month, Vladimir Putin, the president, said that all Russian combatants in Ukraine’s Donbas region were volunteer militiamen answering “a call of the heart.”
The story of Mr. Tumanov and the shadowy deaths of scores of other Russian servicemen since this summer belie that claim.
Rights activists have recorded cases of at least 40 serving soldiers suspected of dying in the conflict, and many believe the figure is in the hundreds, but prosecutors refuse to investigate their deaths.
Denied any legal status by the lies and obfuscation that muffle their stories, these men and their families have been left in limbo.
They are casualties of an undeclared war.
Officially, Mr. Tumanov died while “carrying out responsibilities of military service” at an unnamed “point of temporary deployment of military unit 27777″, part of the army’s 18th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, whose permanent base is in Kalinovskaya, Chechnya.
His death certificate records that he died from an “explosion injury”, receiving “multiple shrapnel wounds to the lower limbs” that resulted in “acute, massive blood loss.”
The certificate leaves unticked a box saying the cause of his injuries was “military hostilities”, preferring instead “origin not established.”
Mrs. Tumanova, 41, waited “five agonizing days” for her son’s body to be brought home after she received notice of his death.
A sanitary inspector, she lives with her husband and Tumanov’s two younger brothers on the second floor of a wooden house in Kozmodemyansk, a small, crumpled town by a bend in the Volga, 400 miles east of Moscow.
The sealed zinc coffin containing her son arrived on a Wednesday.
“There was a little window in the top so you could look at his face,” she recalled.
Mrs. Tumanova spoke to a major in Chechnya by telephone who confirmed the young man had perished in Ukraine, but refused to explain why he was sent there or give any details.
The order to go there, “came from above in verbal form only”, he said.
Mr. Tumanov had served as a conscript soldier after school and he decided to return to the forces as a career soldier when he couldn’t find a job.
In June he was sent to Chechnya.
“I tried to persuade him not to go because of what was happening in Ukraine,” said Mrs. Tumanova.
“But our president said that none of our soldiers would be sent there – ’it’s just Ukrainians fighting each other’ – and I believed that. So in the end I did not argue.”
Mr. Tumanov had not been in Chechnya 10 days before he and other soldiers at the base were approached and asked if they would go to Donbas to fight as volunteers.
He and his friends refused, he told his mother by telephone.
“Who wants to die?” she said.
“That was their thinking. Nobody was attacking Russia; if they had been, Anton would have been first in the queue.”
By the middle of July, things had changed.
Now 27777, his regular army unit, was dispatched to a temporary camp in the Rostov region, near the border with Ukraine, officially “for exercises.”
Soon he was telling Nastya Chernova, his fiancee, that he was going on short trips into Ukraine to accompany deliveries of arms and military vehicles to the rebels.
This was the moment when pro-Moscow militia in eastern Ukraine were on the brink of caving in to government forces, who had almost surrounded the separatist capital, Donetsk.
Over the next month, Russia would stage a major intervention, sending tanks and troops across the border to help reclaim rebel territory.
On Aug 10, Mr. Tumanov telephoned his mother and said:
“Tomorrow they are sending us to Donetsk [the rebel capital]. We’re going to help the militia.”
The next day he told her:
“We’re handing in our documents and our phones. They’ve given us two grenades and 150 rounds of ammunition each.”
Miss Chernova, a slender 17-year-old high school student, says her fiancee went against his will.
“The last time we spoke he told me he and some friends discussed running away but they were a long way from home, they didn’t have food,” she said.
Mrs. Tumanova knows what happened next from one of her son’s comrades.
The soldier gave her a handwritten description.
“On Aug 11 we were given an order to remove the identification plates from our military vehicles, change into camouflage suits and tie white rags on our arms and legs,” the soldier wrote.
“At the border we received supplies of ammunition. On the 11th and 12th we crossed on to Ukrainian territory. On Aug 13 at lunchtime our column was hit by a rocket strike, during which Anton Tumanov died.
At that moment we were in Ukraine, in Snezhnoye [a town not far from Donetsk].”
Other soldiers suggested that as many as 120 men had died when the volley of Ukrainian Grad missiles hit.
Sergei Krivenko, the head of Citizen and Army, a civil group in Moscow which helps soldiers and their families protect their rights, says activists are sure of at least 40 deaths of Russian servicemen this summer and autumn, but suspect the total may be significantly higher.
“Russia is officially not at war so there should be a criminal investigation into every death, but the authorities refuse our requests to open them,” he added.
Many relatives are too frightened to speak about their loved ones’ deaths.
Probing the deaths can be a risky business.
Lyudmila Bogatenkova, a 73-year-old representative of the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee in Stavropol, was charged with fraud after she investigated other deaths in Snezhnoye.
The St Petersburg chapter of the same group was added to Russia’s list of Foreign Agents – a blacklist of NGOs with foreign funding – after it publicized reports of scores of injured being brought to a hospital in the city.
In Kozmodemyansk, Miss Chernova cannot forget her boyfriend.
She posts poems about Mr. Tumanov on social media and remembers the moment she woke up abruptly with a bad feeling inside on the day he died.
“Anton was not a volunteer,” she says forcefully.
“He didn’t want to go to Ukraine to fight and kill people. He didn’t have that aggression inside him. He joined up to defend his country.”
Mrs. Tumanova is still waiting for an explanation.
She asked state prosecutors via a civil-rights group to investigate her son’s last days but there has been no reply.
At the town’s military commissariat, employees said they had no information about Mr. Tumanov.
A senior official at the medical centre in Rostov where his death was recorded also refused to comment.
“For me, what’s important is that our government doesn’t hide what happened,” said Mrs. Tumanova.
“Our children are nameless, like homeless tramps. If they sent our soldiers there, let them admit it. It’s too late to bring Anton back but this is just inhuman.”
His mother knows.
She knows that Mr. Tumanov, 20, a junior sergeant in the Russian army, was killed in eastern Ukraine, torn apart in a rocket attack on Aug 13.
Yelena Tumanova, 41, learned these bare facts about her son’s death from one of his comrades, who saw him get hit and scooped up his body.
“What I don’t understand is what he died for,” she says.
“Why couldn’t we let people in Ukraine sort things out for themselves?”
As the year draws to a close, the Kremlin continues to insist that not a single Russian soldier has entered Ukraine to join the pro-Moscow separatist militia who have been fighting government forces since April.
Earlier this month, Vladimir Putin, the president, said that all Russian combatants in Ukraine’s Donbas region were volunteer militiamen answering “a call of the heart.”
The story of Mr. Tumanov and the shadowy deaths of scores of other Russian servicemen since this summer belie that claim.
Rights activists have recorded cases of at least 40 serving soldiers suspected of dying in the conflict, and many believe the figure is in the hundreds, but prosecutors refuse to investigate their deaths.
Denied any legal status by the lies and obfuscation that muffle their stories, these men and their families have been left in limbo.
They are casualties of an undeclared war.
Officially, Mr. Tumanov died while “carrying out responsibilities of military service” at an unnamed “point of temporary deployment of military unit 27777″, part of the army’s 18th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, whose permanent base is in Kalinovskaya, Chechnya.
His death certificate records that he died from an “explosion injury”, receiving “multiple shrapnel wounds to the lower limbs” that resulted in “acute, massive blood loss.”
The certificate leaves unticked a box saying the cause of his injuries was “military hostilities”, preferring instead “origin not established.”
Mrs. Tumanova, 41, waited “five agonizing days” for her son’s body to be brought home after she received notice of his death.
A sanitary inspector, she lives with her husband and Tumanov’s two younger brothers on the second floor of a wooden house in Kozmodemyansk, a small, crumpled town by a bend in the Volga, 400 miles east of Moscow.
The sealed zinc coffin containing her son arrived on a Wednesday.
“There was a little window in the top so you could look at his face,” she recalled.
Mrs. Tumanova spoke to a major in Chechnya by telephone who confirmed the young man had perished in Ukraine, but refused to explain why he was sent there or give any details.
The order to go there, “came from above in verbal form only”, he said.
Mr. Tumanov had served as a conscript soldier after school and he decided to return to the forces as a career soldier when he couldn’t find a job.
In June he was sent to Chechnya.
“I tried to persuade him not to go because of what was happening in Ukraine,” said Mrs. Tumanova.
“But our president said that none of our soldiers would be sent there – ’it’s just Ukrainians fighting each other’ – and I believed that. So in the end I did not argue.”
Mr. Tumanov had not been in Chechnya 10 days before he and other soldiers at the base were approached and asked if they would go to Donbas to fight as volunteers.
He and his friends refused, he told his mother by telephone.
“Who wants to die?” she said.
“That was their thinking. Nobody was attacking Russia; if they had been, Anton would have been first in the queue.”
By the middle of July, things had changed.
Now 27777, his regular army unit, was dispatched to a temporary camp in the Rostov region, near the border with Ukraine, officially “for exercises.”
Soon he was telling Nastya Chernova, his fiancee, that he was going on short trips into Ukraine to accompany deliveries of arms and military vehicles to the rebels.
This was the moment when pro-Moscow militia in eastern Ukraine were on the brink of caving in to government forces, who had almost surrounded the separatist capital, Donetsk.
Over the next month, Russia would stage a major intervention, sending tanks and troops across the border to help reclaim rebel territory.
On Aug 10, Mr. Tumanov telephoned his mother and said:
“Tomorrow they are sending us to Donetsk [the rebel capital]. We’re going to help the militia.”
The next day he told her:
“We’re handing in our documents and our phones. They’ve given us two grenades and 150 rounds of ammunition each.”
Miss Chernova, a slender 17-year-old high school student, says her fiancee went against his will.
“The last time we spoke he told me he and some friends discussed running away but they were a long way from home, they didn’t have food,” she said.
Mrs. Tumanova knows what happened next from one of her son’s comrades.
The soldier gave her a handwritten description.
“On Aug 11 we were given an order to remove the identification plates from our military vehicles, change into camouflage suits and tie white rags on our arms and legs,” the soldier wrote.
“At the border we received supplies of ammunition. On the 11th and 12th we crossed on to Ukrainian territory. On Aug 13 at lunchtime our column was hit by a rocket strike, during which Anton Tumanov died.
At that moment we were in Ukraine, in Snezhnoye [a town not far from Donetsk].”
Other soldiers suggested that as many as 120 men had died when the volley of Ukrainian Grad missiles hit.
Sergei Krivenko, the head of Citizen and Army, a civil group in Moscow which helps soldiers and their families protect their rights, says activists are sure of at least 40 deaths of Russian servicemen this summer and autumn, but suspect the total may be significantly higher.
“Russia is officially not at war so there should be a criminal investigation into every death, but the authorities refuse our requests to open them,” he added.
Many relatives are too frightened to speak about their loved ones’ deaths.
Probing the deaths can be a risky business.
Lyudmila Bogatenkova, a 73-year-old representative of the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee in Stavropol, was charged with fraud after she investigated other deaths in Snezhnoye.
The St Petersburg chapter of the same group was added to Russia’s list of Foreign Agents – a blacklist of NGOs with foreign funding – after it publicized reports of scores of injured being brought to a hospital in the city.
In Kozmodemyansk, Miss Chernova cannot forget her boyfriend.
She posts poems about Mr. Tumanov on social media and remembers the moment she woke up abruptly with a bad feeling inside on the day he died.
“Anton was not a volunteer,” she says forcefully.
“He didn’t want to go to Ukraine to fight and kill people. He didn’t have that aggression inside him. He joined up to defend his country.”
Mrs. Tumanova is still waiting for an explanation.
She asked state prosecutors via a civil-rights group to investigate her son’s last days but there has been no reply.
At the town’s military commissariat, employees said they had no information about Mr. Tumanov.
A senior official at the medical centre in Rostov where his death was recorded also refused to comment.
“For me, what’s important is that our government doesn’t hide what happened,” said Mrs. Tumanova.
“Our children are nameless, like homeless tramps. If they sent our soldiers there, let them admit it. It’s too late to bring Anton back but this is just inhuman.”
Ukraine's Facebook Warriors
KIEV, Ukraine -- At an army checkpoint near the occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, Lt. Col. Natalia Semeniuk approached a convoy of two minibuses that had just arrived from Kiev.
Slung over her shoulder was an AK-47 assault rifle.
Clumps of long, brown hair poked out from beneath the beanie she wore to guard against the cold, which had dropped to about minus-20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Colonel Semeniuk was meeting with Anna Sandalova, a former public relations executive and a founder of Help the Army of Ukraine, a foundation that uses Facebook to raise money to buy equipment for Ukraine’s desperately underfunded army.
Ms. Sandalova has become something of a star in her country, especially to its soldiers.
She supplies them with everything from body armor to night-vision goggles, to sleeping bags and food.
Since her group was established in March, it has raised over $1.3 million, Ms. Sandalova told me, for the fight against the pro-Russian separatists who have occupied large parts of eastern Ukraine.
An overwhelming majority of the money is crowdfunded from the Ukrainian people through Facebook.
The process is simple: Ms. Sandalova liaises with army divisions fighting in the field.
They tell her what they need and she posts their requests to Facebook.
People donate via bank transfer into the foundation’s account, and Ms. Sandalova and her colleagues then drive the goods to eastern Ukraine personally.
That day, the minibuses were filled to bursting.
Clad in body armor and a helmet, Ms. Sandalova followed Colonel Semeniuk to a Ukrainian Army camp in the forest near Donetsk to make her first delivery.
Canvas tents dotted the area, erected among thickets of trees covered with snow.
Soldiers huddled together, talking and smoking.
Some helped unload several mobile shower units.
Dozens of these volunteer groups have sprung up as the fighting has intensified.
“It’s all about networks,” Ms. Sandalova explained.
“Facebook is perfect for our needs because it allows us as individuals to become greater than the sum of our parts. It allows us to form communities that can achieve things that would otherwise be impossible for civilians.”
Ms. Sandalova makes deliveries to soldiers in various divisions throughout the war zone and the reaction is always the same: delight.
She has a policy of kissing soldiers who are single.
At a camp near the front lines, a soldier in his early 20s went bright red when Ms. Sandalova kissed him roundly on the cheek to roars of approval from his comrades.
After two days, the minibuses were empty.
Ms. Sandalova is modest about her role.
“It’s the power of social media,” she said simply.
She’s not wrong.
Ask a Ukrainian where to find the most reliable source of military news and most likely they’ll point you not to the Ministry of Defense website but to “Information Resistance,” a widely read analytical review, also on Facebook.
Want to know what contracts the government is taking bids on?
Easy, check out the Facebook page of the civil society group “Reanimation Package of Reforms.”
The Euromaidan revolution that overthrew President Viktor F. Yanukovych in February galvanized Ukraine’s people.
It showed them what they could do.
Civil society, not government, now leads the way, especially when it combines with social media, which is tailor-made for the post-Soviet space, where institutions have atrophied from years of Communist rule.
All you need is a laptop and a Facebook account, and you can take action.
Crucially, everything Ms. Sandalova does is quick.
Using official government channels requires various permissions, which often takes time that simply isn’t available when people are at war.
“We are not a government department facing endless bureaucracy,” she said.
“We just don’t have these problems.”
And stultifying bureaucracy is the least of the government’s problems.
The catalyst for the Euromaidan revolution may have been Yanukovych’s failure to sign the European Union association agreement, but its root cause was popular disgust at two decades of ubiquitous corruption.
It is hard to overestimate the scale of the problem.
In its 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index, the independent research organization Transparency International ranked Ukraine 144th, tied with the Central African Republic and below Kazakhstan.
Nowhere is corruption more prevalent than in the military.
The Ukrainian Army is the state in miniature.
It emerged, like the country, from the Soviet Union in 1991 — huge, but bloated and rotting inside.
Corruption has stymied progress since independence.
According to the English-language Ukrainian newspaper The Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s military budget for 2014 was about 3.4 percent of gross domestic product, and much disappears into the pockets of corrupt officials.
Promotion through the ranks is dependent not on ability but on bribery; soldiers are trained not in the art of war, but of theft.
Parts, weapons, even uniforms are all up for sale.
The Congressional Research Service reported that in 2014, the European Union announced an 11.1-billion-euro ($15.5-billion) aid package for Ukraine, while Congress approved $1 billion in loan guarantees to go with over $184 million in aid to the Ukrainian government for “political and economic reforms.”
Much of this money will be stolen, even more wasted.
The international strategy is wrong.
Ukrainian civil society in all its forms is increasingly doing what the state cannot.
Where the state fails to deliver, the people make up the difference; where it is slow and flabby, they are quick and lean.
The United States and the European Union should set aside greater aid, funding and expertise that bypasses Ukraine’s sclerotic and corrupt government and goes directly to the country’s major civil society groups.
Ukraine is fighting a war in which 21st-century means have emerged that often enable networks of citizens, empowered by social media, to outperform the state.
The lesson from the ground is clear:
To defeat the separatists, fund Ukraine’s people, not just its government.
Slung over her shoulder was an AK-47 assault rifle.
Clumps of long, brown hair poked out from beneath the beanie she wore to guard against the cold, which had dropped to about minus-20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Colonel Semeniuk was meeting with Anna Sandalova, a former public relations executive and a founder of Help the Army of Ukraine, a foundation that uses Facebook to raise money to buy equipment for Ukraine’s desperately underfunded army.
Ms. Sandalova has become something of a star in her country, especially to its soldiers.
She supplies them with everything from body armor to night-vision goggles, to sleeping bags and food.
Since her group was established in March, it has raised over $1.3 million, Ms. Sandalova told me, for the fight against the pro-Russian separatists who have occupied large parts of eastern Ukraine.
An overwhelming majority of the money is crowdfunded from the Ukrainian people through Facebook.
The process is simple: Ms. Sandalova liaises with army divisions fighting in the field.
They tell her what they need and she posts their requests to Facebook.
People donate via bank transfer into the foundation’s account, and Ms. Sandalova and her colleagues then drive the goods to eastern Ukraine personally.
That day, the minibuses were filled to bursting.
Clad in body armor and a helmet, Ms. Sandalova followed Colonel Semeniuk to a Ukrainian Army camp in the forest near Donetsk to make her first delivery.
Canvas tents dotted the area, erected among thickets of trees covered with snow.
Soldiers huddled together, talking and smoking.
Some helped unload several mobile shower units.
Dozens of these volunteer groups have sprung up as the fighting has intensified.
“It’s all about networks,” Ms. Sandalova explained.
“Facebook is perfect for our needs because it allows us as individuals to become greater than the sum of our parts. It allows us to form communities that can achieve things that would otherwise be impossible for civilians.”
Ms. Sandalova makes deliveries to soldiers in various divisions throughout the war zone and the reaction is always the same: delight.
She has a policy of kissing soldiers who are single.
At a camp near the front lines, a soldier in his early 20s went bright red when Ms. Sandalova kissed him roundly on the cheek to roars of approval from his comrades.
After two days, the minibuses were empty.
Ms. Sandalova is modest about her role.
“It’s the power of social media,” she said simply.
She’s not wrong.
Ask a Ukrainian where to find the most reliable source of military news and most likely they’ll point you not to the Ministry of Defense website but to “Information Resistance,” a widely read analytical review, also on Facebook.
Want to know what contracts the government is taking bids on?
Easy, check out the Facebook page of the civil society group “Reanimation Package of Reforms.”
The Euromaidan revolution that overthrew President Viktor F. Yanukovych in February galvanized Ukraine’s people.
It showed them what they could do.
Civil society, not government, now leads the way, especially when it combines with social media, which is tailor-made for the post-Soviet space, where institutions have atrophied from years of Communist rule.
All you need is a laptop and a Facebook account, and you can take action.
Crucially, everything Ms. Sandalova does is quick.
Using official government channels requires various permissions, which often takes time that simply isn’t available when people are at war.
“We are not a government department facing endless bureaucracy,” she said.
“We just don’t have these problems.”
And stultifying bureaucracy is the least of the government’s problems.
The catalyst for the Euromaidan revolution may have been Yanukovych’s failure to sign the European Union association agreement, but its root cause was popular disgust at two decades of ubiquitous corruption.
It is hard to overestimate the scale of the problem.
In its 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index, the independent research organization Transparency International ranked Ukraine 144th, tied with the Central African Republic and below Kazakhstan.
Nowhere is corruption more prevalent than in the military.
The Ukrainian Army is the state in miniature.
It emerged, like the country, from the Soviet Union in 1991 — huge, but bloated and rotting inside.
Corruption has stymied progress since independence.
According to the English-language Ukrainian newspaper The Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s military budget for 2014 was about 3.4 percent of gross domestic product, and much disappears into the pockets of corrupt officials.
Promotion through the ranks is dependent not on ability but on bribery; soldiers are trained not in the art of war, but of theft.
Parts, weapons, even uniforms are all up for sale.
The Congressional Research Service reported that in 2014, the European Union announced an 11.1-billion-euro ($15.5-billion) aid package for Ukraine, while Congress approved $1 billion in loan guarantees to go with over $184 million in aid to the Ukrainian government for “political and economic reforms.”
Much of this money will be stolen, even more wasted.
The international strategy is wrong.
Ukrainian civil society in all its forms is increasingly doing what the state cannot.
Where the state fails to deliver, the people make up the difference; where it is slow and flabby, they are quick and lean.
The United States and the European Union should set aside greater aid, funding and expertise that bypasses Ukraine’s sclerotic and corrupt government and goes directly to the country’s major civil society groups.
Ukraine is fighting a war in which 21st-century means have emerged that often enable networks of citizens, empowered by social media, to outperform the state.
The lesson from the ground is clear:
To defeat the separatists, fund Ukraine’s people, not just its government.
Ukraine's Parliament Approves 2015 Budget
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's parliament backed a budget for 2015 on Monday that it had been under pressure to approve to secure the next tranche of financial aid under a $17 billion International Monetary Fund loan package, the Interfax news agency reported.
Before the budget vote in the early hours of the morning, deputies approved a series of austerity laws, including an amendment to impose additional duties on imports, that Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk warned could prove unpopular with Ukraine's foreign trade partners.
Foreign currency reserves have more than halved since the beginning of the year to a 10-year low, due to gas debt repayments to Russia and efforts to support its struggling currency, the hryvnia.
Yatseniuk said the budget could still be amended following talks with Ukraine's Western backers.
"A series of articles will change depending on what we agree with international lenders," Interfax quoted him as telling parliament.
He said these discussions would start on Jan. 7.
Voting was delayed as deputies debated the merits of the law amendments required for the budget, with some arguing they unfairly increase prices for Ukrainians, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet as the economy teeters on the edge of bankruptcy.
Ukraine's remaining foreign currency reserves stand at just under $10 billion, barely sufficient to cover two months of imports.
One new law will add 10 percent duty to taxes on food imports and an extra 5 percent on other imports excluding strategic imports such as gas.
"Problems could arise with our trade partners," Yatseniuk told parliament, advising that the law should only come into effect once the government had consulted on it with international partners.
He said one of the main focuses of the new budget was defense and security spending, which will amount to 90 billion hryvnia ($5.7 billion).
A year of revolution and war with pro-Russian separatists has pushed the hryvnia to record lows and crippled the economy, which is forecast to shrink 4.3 percent next year.
This month, Kiev said it needed the IMF to expand its bailout program due to the worsened economic outlook, but the Fund and Ukraine's other Western backers have made it clear any further financial assistance will hinge on Kiev's ability to implement the long-promised reforms.
Before the budget vote in the early hours of the morning, deputies approved a series of austerity laws, including an amendment to impose additional duties on imports, that Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk warned could prove unpopular with Ukraine's foreign trade partners.
Foreign currency reserves have more than halved since the beginning of the year to a 10-year low, due to gas debt repayments to Russia and efforts to support its struggling currency, the hryvnia.
Yatseniuk said the budget could still be amended following talks with Ukraine's Western backers.
"A series of articles will change depending on what we agree with international lenders," Interfax quoted him as telling parliament.
He said these discussions would start on Jan. 7.
Voting was delayed as deputies debated the merits of the law amendments required for the budget, with some arguing they unfairly increase prices for Ukrainians, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet as the economy teeters on the edge of bankruptcy.
Ukraine's remaining foreign currency reserves stand at just under $10 billion, barely sufficient to cover two months of imports.
One new law will add 10 percent duty to taxes on food imports and an extra 5 percent on other imports excluding strategic imports such as gas.
"Problems could arise with our trade partners," Yatseniuk told parliament, advising that the law should only come into effect once the government had consulted on it with international partners.
He said one of the main focuses of the new budget was defense and security spending, which will amount to 90 billion hryvnia ($5.7 billion).
A year of revolution and war with pro-Russian separatists has pushed the hryvnia to record lows and crippled the economy, which is forecast to shrink 4.3 percent next year.
This month, Kiev said it needed the IMF to expand its bailout program due to the worsened economic outlook, but the Fund and Ukraine's other Western backers have made it clear any further financial assistance will hinge on Kiev's ability to implement the long-promised reforms.
Sunday 7 December 2014
IMF To Visit Kiev For Bailout Talks
KIEV, Ukraine -- An International Monetary Fund mission will visit Kiev from Dec. 9 to 18 for talks with the new government regarding a $17 billion bailout program, the IMF's Ukraine representative Jerome Vacher said on Saturday.
The IMF program was agreed in April to shore up the ex-Soviet state's foreign currency reserves and support the economy, which was blighted by years of corruption and economic mismanagement and is now struggling with the extra costs of fighting a separatist rebellion in its eastern territories.
Kiev had expected that the next loan tranche, worth $2.7 billion, would come before the end of the year, but the IMF waited for a new government to be formed to hold talks on the payment.
"An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission led by Nikolay Gueorguiev will be working in Kiev during December 9-18 ... the mission will begin policy discussions with the Ukrainian authorities in the context of the Fund-supported economic reform program," Vacher said in a statement.
Parliament elected a new government on Tuesday that includes three non-Ukrainian technocrats - seen as a bid by Kiev to prove its commitment to reforming an economy strangled by red tape and corruption.
New Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko, who held various economic positions in the U.S. State Department before moving to work in Ukraine over 20 years ago, said on Wednesday the government wanted to meet the Fund as a matter of urgency.
In September the Fund warned that if Ukraine's conflict with the separatists runs into next year, the country may need as much as $19 billion in extra aid.
Clashes in east Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatist rebels are fighting Kiev government troops, have continued despite the signing of a ceasefire three months ago, and the death toll has risen to more than 4,300 since mid-April.
Ukraine has so far received two tranches under the IMF program, worth a total of $4.6 billion, but the country's foreign currency reserves are at a ten-year low due to gas debt repayments to Russia and efforts to support the struggling hryvnia currency.
The IMF program was agreed in April to shore up the ex-Soviet state's foreign currency reserves and support the economy, which was blighted by years of corruption and economic mismanagement and is now struggling with the extra costs of fighting a separatist rebellion in its eastern territories.
Kiev had expected that the next loan tranche, worth $2.7 billion, would come before the end of the year, but the IMF waited for a new government to be formed to hold talks on the payment.
"An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission led by Nikolay Gueorguiev will be working in Kiev during December 9-18 ... the mission will begin policy discussions with the Ukrainian authorities in the context of the Fund-supported economic reform program," Vacher said in a statement.
Parliament elected a new government on Tuesday that includes three non-Ukrainian technocrats - seen as a bid by Kiev to prove its commitment to reforming an economy strangled by red tape and corruption.
New Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko, who held various economic positions in the U.S. State Department before moving to work in Ukraine over 20 years ago, said on Wednesday the government wanted to meet the Fund as a matter of urgency.
In September the Fund warned that if Ukraine's conflict with the separatists runs into next year, the country may need as much as $19 billion in extra aid.
Clashes in east Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatist rebels are fighting Kiev government troops, have continued despite the signing of a ceasefire three months ago, and the death toll has risen to more than 4,300 since mid-April.
Ukraine has so far received two tranches under the IMF program, worth a total of $4.6 billion, but the country's foreign currency reserves are at a ten-year low due to gas debt repayments to Russia and efforts to support the struggling hryvnia currency.
Ukraine’s Foreign-Currency Reserves Dip Below $10 Billion
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s central bank reported foreign-currency reserves at their lowest for almost a decade, underscoring the country’s precarious financial state as the Group of Seven considers a new multibillion-dollar rescue package.
The slide to just under $10 billion adds to the pressure on Ukraine’s newly appointed government, already grappling with Russian-backed separatists in two eastern regions as well as withering economic output and a coal shortage that contributed to rolling blackouts this past week.
It also presents a dilemma for the West, which has been reluctant to hand over more cash without clearer evidence that Ukraine will deliver on pledges to overhaul its bureaucratic and corruption-plagued economy.
Discussions on a new loan package—which could amount to some $4 billion—have picked up in recent days as Kiev’s financial situation has worsened, with the incoming German presidency of the G-7 playing an important role in marshalling backing, according to several officials familiar with the discussions.
Finance ministry officials from most G-7 countries discussed the issue at a meeting on Thursday, one of the officials said.
Talks were still at an early stage and it wasn't clear how quickly any package could go.
According to the officials, the plan would have half of the money coming from the European Union and the other $2 billion from the rest of the G-7, which includes the U.S., Japan and Canada as well as four EU members.
EU finance ministers are expected to discuss Ukraine’s financing needs at a meeting on Tuesday. Ukraine has already requested a €2 billion ($2.5 billion) balance of payments loan for 2015, which EU officials have said is probably too much.
The 28-nation bloc has already committed to lend Kiev €1.6 billion, most of which has already been disbursed.
The U.S. has made clear that any additional financing must be in conjunction with the $17 billion IMF lending and economic policy-overhaul program approved in April.
Ukraine needs to pass a tight budget for next year, among other overhauls, to land the next IMF tranche of nearly $3 billion.
EU officials said this week the IMF has estimated that Ukraine may need up to $15 billion in extra financing needs through the first quarter of 2016, as the toll of the conflict in the east weighs on government finances and economic growth.
Horse-trading over a new cabinet after elections in October delayed the formation of a new government in Kiev until Tuesday.
The new, U.S.-born finance minister has said a budget will be ready by Dec. 20.
An IMF mission is set to return to Ukraine on Tuesday for further talks on releasing funds, the IMF said.
“Ukraine is currently in a pretty critical condition—and desperately in need of IMF life support,” Standard Bank analyst Timothy Ash wrote in a note.
Ukraine’s central bank said Friday its reserves dropped 21% to $9.97 billion in November from the previous month, after paying off some debt for natural gas deliveries owed to Russia, and servicing other debts.
Reserves are now at their lowest since December 2004, when they stood at $9.71 billion.
Analysts said the reserves now cover a little over one month of imports, while the IMF recommends reserves equivalent to at least three months of imports.
The national bank spokeswoman said reserves were “enough to cover all current liabilities.”
Olena Bilan, chief economist at Dragon Capital brokerage in Kiev, said the IMF and other sources will need to bolster the loan package with an additional $12 billion.
Ukraine’s latest financial troubles come amid an electricity shortage that has resulted in rolling power cutoffs since Monday by the national energy company, Ukrenergo.
Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn said Friday that a power unit at a nuclear plant that has been offline since the end of last month will start working again Friday evening.
But Ukrenergo statistics show there will still be a shortfall in electricity, in part because of a coal shortage as many of Ukraine’s mines are in an area controlled by the separatists.
There has been a fresh push in recent days to halt the deadly fighting that has persisted in various hot spots despite a Sept. 5 cease-fire.
Six Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the last 24 hours and 13 wounded, a security spokesman in Kiev said Friday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Ukraine and separatists were close to agreeing on a demarcation line that could help cement the cease-fire.
“Now those talks…are intended to agree a demarcation line in such a way that the sides really respect it,” Lavrov told reporters in Basel, Switzerland.
“It isn’t easy, but I think that they are close to agreement.”
The talks are taking place in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian and Russian officers and representatives of the militants. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said this past week that Ukrainian forces would observe a “day of silence” in the east on Tuesday.
It is unclear whether the initiative has been agreed with the militants, although some rebel officials say they are not opposed to the idea.
The slide to just under $10 billion adds to the pressure on Ukraine’s newly appointed government, already grappling with Russian-backed separatists in two eastern regions as well as withering economic output and a coal shortage that contributed to rolling blackouts this past week.
It also presents a dilemma for the West, which has been reluctant to hand over more cash without clearer evidence that Ukraine will deliver on pledges to overhaul its bureaucratic and corruption-plagued economy.
Discussions on a new loan package—which could amount to some $4 billion—have picked up in recent days as Kiev’s financial situation has worsened, with the incoming German presidency of the G-7 playing an important role in marshalling backing, according to several officials familiar with the discussions.
Finance ministry officials from most G-7 countries discussed the issue at a meeting on Thursday, one of the officials said.
Talks were still at an early stage and it wasn't clear how quickly any package could go.
According to the officials, the plan would have half of the money coming from the European Union and the other $2 billion from the rest of the G-7, which includes the U.S., Japan and Canada as well as four EU members.
EU finance ministers are expected to discuss Ukraine’s financing needs at a meeting on Tuesday. Ukraine has already requested a €2 billion ($2.5 billion) balance of payments loan for 2015, which EU officials have said is probably too much.
The 28-nation bloc has already committed to lend Kiev €1.6 billion, most of which has already been disbursed.
The U.S. has made clear that any additional financing must be in conjunction with the $17 billion IMF lending and economic policy-overhaul program approved in April.
Ukraine needs to pass a tight budget for next year, among other overhauls, to land the next IMF tranche of nearly $3 billion.
EU officials said this week the IMF has estimated that Ukraine may need up to $15 billion in extra financing needs through the first quarter of 2016, as the toll of the conflict in the east weighs on government finances and economic growth.
Horse-trading over a new cabinet after elections in October delayed the formation of a new government in Kiev until Tuesday.
The new, U.S.-born finance minister has said a budget will be ready by Dec. 20.
An IMF mission is set to return to Ukraine on Tuesday for further talks on releasing funds, the IMF said.
“Ukraine is currently in a pretty critical condition—and desperately in need of IMF life support,” Standard Bank analyst Timothy Ash wrote in a note.
Ukraine’s central bank said Friday its reserves dropped 21% to $9.97 billion in November from the previous month, after paying off some debt for natural gas deliveries owed to Russia, and servicing other debts.
Reserves are now at their lowest since December 2004, when they stood at $9.71 billion.
Analysts said the reserves now cover a little over one month of imports, while the IMF recommends reserves equivalent to at least three months of imports.
The national bank spokeswoman said reserves were “enough to cover all current liabilities.”
Olena Bilan, chief economist at Dragon Capital brokerage in Kiev, said the IMF and other sources will need to bolster the loan package with an additional $12 billion.
Ukraine’s latest financial troubles come amid an electricity shortage that has resulted in rolling power cutoffs since Monday by the national energy company, Ukrenergo.
Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn said Friday that a power unit at a nuclear plant that has been offline since the end of last month will start working again Friday evening.
But Ukrenergo statistics show there will still be a shortfall in electricity, in part because of a coal shortage as many of Ukraine’s mines are in an area controlled by the separatists.
There has been a fresh push in recent days to halt the deadly fighting that has persisted in various hot spots despite a Sept. 5 cease-fire.
Six Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the last 24 hours and 13 wounded, a security spokesman in Kiev said Friday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Ukraine and separatists were close to agreeing on a demarcation line that could help cement the cease-fire.
“Now those talks…are intended to agree a demarcation line in such a way that the sides really respect it,” Lavrov told reporters in Basel, Switzerland.
“It isn’t easy, but I think that they are close to agreement.”
The talks are taking place in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian and Russian officers and representatives of the militants. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said this past week that Ukrainian forces would observe a “day of silence” in the east on Tuesday.
It is unclear whether the initiative has been agreed with the militants, although some rebel officials say they are not opposed to the idea.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)