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Raising and Losing Children in the Donbas War

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by Daria Platonova

The Gorlovka Madonna, depicting mother and child as the innocent casualties of war (Image credit: ОЧИЩЕНИЕ/VK)

Child suffering is a largely neglected aspect of the war in Donbas. According to a recent UNICEF report, of the 3.4 million people in need of humanitarian support in eastern Ukraine, sixty per cent are women and children. Andriy Parubiy, speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, reported that 68 children had been killed and 186 wounded since 2014. Another report cites 199 dead and 500 wounded children, with approximately 10 thousand children living in the conflict’s ‘grey zone’ and being endangered daily.

Yet, analysts and reporters rather focus on ceasefire violations, the ‘Normandy format’ of the peace talks, or the so-called ‘special status’ granted to non-government-controlled areas of the region. In fact, in an interview with Hromadske.tv, the Ukrainian Internet television station, a father of two children affected by the conflict said, ‘I have no idea what the state thinks. I have never heard the word “children” from them’.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is responsible for monitoring the conflict’s ceasefires since 2014. It frequently reports on injuries sustained by children in both government and non-government-controlled areas. For example, a report from October 2019 reads: “The [OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM)] followed up on reports of a boy injured from the explosion of a hand grenade in Sontseve (non-government-controlled, 55km south-east of Donetsk) on 12 October. On 14 October, at Donetsk Regional Clinical Trauma Hospital, medical staff told the SMM that a nine-year-old boy had been admitted on 12 October with an injury to his left hand caused by detonation, as result of which he had to have four fingers amputated.” The report also cites five children having been injured from a hand grenade on 28 September in Chornohorivka (formerly Krasna Zoria), a non-government-controlled area 51km south-west of Luhansk.

The Eastern-Ukrainian Centre for Civic Initiatives has been monitoring child participation in governmental and non-governmental armed formations across the region. Over a period of three months in 2016, based on open sources and interviews, the monitoring group registered 41 individual cases of recruitment of children into armed formations.

The case of the deaths of 23-year old Kristina and her daughter, 10-month old Kira, during the bombardment of the public square in Horlivka (also known by its Russian name Gorlovka) on 27 July 2014 has received the most attention. Since then, pictures of “Gorlovka Madonna” have been circulating on both Ukrainian and Russian social media (more so on the latter). Kristina’s mother Natalia gave an extensive interview to the Ukrainian Internet newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda on 9 June 2016. She is understandably angry at the cynicism displayed by both sides in the conflict in using her daughter’s death to promote their ideological agendas. Below I have translated excerpts from her interview.

‘We could not believe; nobody believed, that they would bomb us in broad daylight… [Natalia was urging her daughter Kristina to leave for Kyiv]. On 27 July, the town was simply blasted. Shells were exploding. “Grad”/”Hrad” (a multiple rocket launcher used by both the Ukrainian government and Donetsk People’s Republic formations) was shelling the town centre. According to the official estimates, more than twenty people died next to my children. I then read about a woman in a report: she simply covered her child. Her husband stayed alive, but she died. I learnt about this later. But at the time, I simply refused to believe what was going on.

[Recalling the experience of searching for Kristina and Kira during the bombardment] I was gripped by terror; I was looking for my children. I was running to the square, shouting and crying for them. I then ran into the bomb shelter looking for them. The people inside were then not letting me out from there. I don’t know how long I remained there, possibly two hours. There was no light. The place was not ready for the shelling. I was shouting: Where are my children? Kira and Kristina?”. Somebody forced me to sit down on a bench asking me whom I was looking for. I said “a girl with a baggy and a small child”. They promised me to find out. Then they sent a paramedic to me who injected something into me and said: “you are making everybody stressed out here”.

Then someone came to me and said: “your children are alright; the baby has a scratch on her hand”. They lied. I calmed down a bit but couldn’t sleep. They were letting people out from the bomb shelter; I ran into another one. And there I saw… children were lying after operations; there were paramedics, holding their drip bags. There were very few children. I could not see Kira or Kristina there. I then ran to the accident and emergency point asking about my children. They said they brought someone in but by a different surname. I was shaking, the paramedic shouting. And then someone said to me “they are in the mortuary.”

Later, endless phone calls began. People were telling me to go to the mortuary. I still refused to believe. In the mortuary, the paramedic showed me my girls. “You are lucky”, she said. I couldn’t understand why I was lucky. When they use “Grad”, people are simply being torn into pieces. But my girls still had their faces intact. And they said that’s why I was lucky…. On 27 July, when all of this happened, I still had to make a few phone calls. Kristina then said to me “while you are calling, we will go out. We will catch up with you later”. I was then looking out of the window and calling everyone asking to take us out [from Horlivka]. [Kristina and Kira] crossed the road, walked down to the square. I then finally reached someone who promised to take us to Slavianogorsk. We had to wait. I then called Kristina to tell her the good news. And I heard how she said to Kira “we are going to leave with grandma tomorrow”. That was her last phrase…”.

Natalia blames the governments of Ukraine, Donetsk People’s Republic and Russian Federation for not investigating the deaths of Kristina and Kira in the bombardment. The case has since been taken up by the European Court of Human Rights. The experience of children and their parents in the Donbas highlights the horrifying aspects of the ongoing war and the general humanitarian catastrophe that has engulfed the region since 2014.

Daria is a PhD student at King’s College London. Her research focuses on violence and the unfolding of conflict across several regions in eastern Ukraine, 2013 – 2014. She also leads one of the Causes of War seminars in the War Studies Department. Prior to joining King’s, she worked as a teacher. She graduated with a degree in History from the University of Cambridge in 2011. Her broader interests include European history, war studies, and interdisciplinary methods.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Donbas Conflict in Ukraine

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by Daria Platonova

5 June 2019

Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskiy was elected President of Ukraine in May 2019 (The National Interest)

Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s[1] election to the presidency in Ukraine[2] has taken everyone by surprise. A former comedy actor and producer, Zelenskiy is widely seen as someone “outside the system,” despite having connections to the Ukrainian oligarchs. In the few interviews that he granted prior to the election, he acknowledged that the conflict in the Donbas is the most serious problem facing Ukraine. In this article, I discuss Zelenskiy’s views on how to resolve the conflict and his options.

During the presidential campaign, Zelenskiy appealed to the softer, compassionate side of his voters and detractors by saying that he did not want Ukrainians to continue dying in the Donbas, therefore a ceasefire and the return of all prisoners of war to Ukraine is essential. In the televised debate with the outgoing President Petro Poroshenko on 19 April 2019, he blamed Poroshenko for the massive loss of life in Iloviask (August 2014) and Debaltseve (February 2015), when the Ukrainian forces were repulsed by the separatist and Russian state forces. In his inauguration speech on 20 May, Zelenskiy reiterated these ideas. It can be argued that this appeal to the “war weariness” of Ukrainians has won Zelenskiy so many votes, especially in the east.

In relation to more concrete proposals, Zelenskiy’s position has been more vague. Contrary to the political premise of the Minsk Agreements, Zelenskiy has ruled out an autonomous status for the separatist republics within Ukraine. He argues that Ukraine should re-establish its sovereignty over the entire territory of the Donbas and Crimea, he supports the idea of a peacekeeping force in the Donbas, and proposes “reformatting” the Minsk Agreements, which presupposes the inclusion of the US and Great Britain in the negotiations. To Ukrainian commentators, these proposals are not radically different from those made by the previous administration. Moreover, they are somewhat contradictory, in that, on one hand, Zelenskiy wants a dialogue with Russia and the separatists and, on the other, he wants to “fight until the end” to regain what belongs to Ukraine.

Several developments have taken place since Zelenskiy’s victory. His stance towards Russia has somewhat hardened. For example, he reacted vitriolically towards Vladimir Putin’s decree to simplify the issuance of Russian passports to the residents of separatist-controlled parts of Ukraine, pointing out flaws in the current Russian regime. As of now, he refuses to launch direct talks with Russia. At the same time, it is significant that, despite the pressure from international representatives, such as the US Special Representative in Ukraine Kurt Volker, Zelenskiy has not spoken of complete disarmament and elimination of the local separatist administrations in Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. He however continues to believe that the separatists are “not independent actors”.

When considering Zelenskiy’s options as to resolving the conflict, we must take into account that, despite the seeming simplicity of how the conflict has been reported (low-intensity fighting, both Russia and Ukraine alternately depicted as aggressors and fighters for sovereignty/freedom), the developments in and around the conflict zones have reached an unprecedented complexity. The rebellious republics have amassed significant resources – even if many are imported from Russia, especially military hardware - and demonstrated considerable legislative and state-building capacity. They are now deeply entrenched, while the republics’ people are not at all eager to be integrated back into Ukraine.[3] The republics’ leaders are highly sceptical about Zelenskiy’s proposals. If we recall the situation back in May 2014 when “launching a direct dialogue with the separatists” was one of Poroshenko’s campaign promises, and he failed to follow it through, even if the nascent break away states were still in their infancy and their military capacity was small, we can expect that Zelenskiy is unlikely to suddenly start talking to the separatists directly.

Secondly, the understanding of how to follow the Minsk Agreements and whether they actually work differs between Russia and Ukraine. One suspects that both sides misinterpret the agreements deliberately because they see to take advantage of the current situation and promote their own agendas. All these years, Russia has kept insisting – as do the separatist leaders – that Ukraine must stop its “punitive operation,” in the Donbas and grant it a special status within Ukraine. This is Russia’s main objective. Ukraine insists that Russia must stop supporting the republics militarily and free the territories of the Donbas. Amid the flurry of diplomatic talks at many levels along these lines, both sides continue attacking each other positions and people continue to die. It seems that, for Ukraine under Poroshenko, the Donbas conflict turned into an opportunity to build a powerful military force and disassociate itself from Russia completely. Therefore, the separatists had a point when they argued that Poroshenko sought to use the conflict to “salvage his regime”. For Russia, the Donbas is a military and state-building project, a testing ground for new military technology and an attempt to exert its influence on the politics in Ukraine. Ukrainians therefore are right when they say that Putin is using the conflict to keep up his regime.

Zelenskiy therefore is likely to continue relying on diplomatic talks. Perhaps, he would be less insistent on the major international players’ roles in resolving the conflict as Poroshenko was. Zelenskiy’s most recent decision to put the conflict resolution to an all-Ukrainian referendum indicates a move in this direction. In line with the “human side” of his campaign promises, he would try to contain the violence in the conflict zone and avoid a full-fledged war with Russia. When Poroshenko became president in 2014, straight after his victory, the most vicious fighting followed in Donetsk Airport. According to some reports, Poroshenko ordered an offensive aimed at retaking the airport, even before he was sworn. He then was caught up in the unenviable cycle of “action-response,” as the separatists built their armies and Russia provided them with support. Zelenskiy is much luckier in this respect in that no significant fighting followed his victory. He is therefore unlikely to suddenly ramp up the military effort in the Donbas.

Daria is a PhD student at King’s College London. Her research focuses on the political protests and conflict in eastern Ukraine, 2013 - 2014. She led one of the Causes of War seminars in the War Studies Department in 2017. Prior to joining King’s, she worked as a teacher. She graduated with a degree in History from the University of Cambridge in 2011. Her broader interests include European history, war studies, and interdisciplinary methods.

[1] The spelling is consistent with the English spelling as it appears in Kyiv Post, the major English-language news and opinion outlet in Ukraine.

[2] Zelenskiy won a landslide victory across the majority of Ukrainian regions, except in Lviv in the West of Ukraine, with 73.22% of the vote. Petro Poroshenko won 24.45%.

[3] See also comments on Vkontakte social media pages and my sporadic conversations with some people from Donetsk online.

Strife Feature – Elites and activists in Donetsk before the armed conflict

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By Daria Platonova

Pro-Russian militia at a rally in Donbass, in May 2014 (Credit Image: Evgeniy Maloletka/ AP)

 

The causes of war in eastern Ukraine (or between the Ukrainian government and Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic) have been interpreted in a wide variety of ways. Two main interpretations emerge: endogenous, that is an interpretation seeking indigenous roots of the conflict, and exogenous, that is looking at the role of Russia. In her recent book, Anna Matveeva, argues that one of the causes of the war was the peculiar behaviour of the local elites in Donetsk and Luhansk region. This article seeks to give some empirical grounding to this idea in a theoretically-attuned way by looking at some statements and actions of the local elites in Donetsk preceding the violent events of April 2014. I also look at how these actions and statements were interpreted by one of the key pro-Russian activists, Pavel Gubarev, who headed the pro-Russian protest for a short period of time.

Theories of conflict[1] predict that the local elites are key to mobilisation and act as catalysts in the protest evolving into a civil war. They do so by engaging in manipulating arising emotions and channelling to protect their hold on power. The research, particularly on ethnic conflicts, demonstrates that elites construct ethnic appeals and manipulate ancient hatreds in order to mobilise people along ethnic lines.[2] Kalyvas argues that, in a situation resembling security dilemma, elites will use popular emotions of fear to their own ends.[3]

What we witnessed in the Donbas however was a rather confusing and erratic behaviour of the elites at best, sending mixed signals to the population. On the 22nd of February 2014 immediately after Yanukovych left Kyiv and even before Turchynov was elected the speaker, the deputies of all levels from south-eastern Ukrainian regions, Crimea, and Simferopol, organised an urgent congress in Kharkiv. Andriy Shishatsky, the governor of Donetsk oblast, governors of four Russian regions,[4] and some Russian representatives, such as Aleksey Pushkov, were present. During the congress, they voiced their opposition to “fascism”, called for unity of Ukraine, refused to comply with the orders coming from Kyiv, and announced the creation of the alternative power base, passing all the reins of power to the local councils and administrations.[5] The participants at the congress were immediately labelled as separatists by the Ukrainian press.[6]

After this “brave” congress however, the vast majority of the local elites moved to recognise the new government. On the 23rd of February 2014, Shishatsky issued a statement in which he described his meeting with Rinat Akhmetov (the richest oligarch in Ukraine and the owner of the major industrial enterprises in the Donbas) and “other respected people” of Donetsk. The governor posted a message on the website of the regional administration stating that “all of them see the future, our common future in indivisible, integral, and independent Ukraine.”[7] On the following day, Shishatsky stated that he recognised the Rada as the only legitimate power body in the country.[8] On the 25th of February 2014, Donetsk mayor Oleksandr Luk’yanchenko stated at a press conference that he recognised the Verkhovna Rada as the only legitimate government body in the country, effectively swearing allegiance to the new government, as did Shishatsky.[9]

What explains this kind of behaviour? It is quite probable that, due to the change of government, at first, the elites were gripped by fear, both for their lives and for their status. Barbalet writes on the elite fear: “elites may fear that their privileged position is threatened when the system they dominate undergoes a relative shift in power relations 149”. Party of Regions, the dominant party in south-eastern Ukraine, in particular, had grounds for fear, both due to the major exodus of their colleagues - by the 23rd of February 2014 more than 76 MPs were lost by the party[10] - and direct threats to their livelihoods and security emanating from the radical groups in Kyiv. Kharkiv mayor Hennadyi Kernes, for example, claimed to have been threatened with violence personally.[11] Oleg Tsarev described at length the extreme pressure the deputies were put under during the Verkhovna Rada voting: “I called my friend Vitaly Grushevski. He did not respond. Then I called his aide, who told me that Grushevski has been beaten up next to the Parliament. They have taken voting cards from some deputies and started voting on their behalf. It is possible that some deputies from whom the cards have been taken are locked up somewhere in the Rada. There is no Symonenko (Communist Party of Ukraine –DP), nor many other deputies, who were beaten up earlier, in the Rada. But now somebody is calling me and pretending to be Mikhail Chechetov, with a voice which does not sound like his at all, telling me that I should leave Ukraine urgently. Otherwise, I will be arrested. I told him… that I am not going to leave Ukraine.”[12]

 

The Party of Regions’ logo

 

After this initial spell of helplessness, the local elites seem to have engaged in bargaining with the central government in order to protect their hold on power. Throughout the pre-war period, they would engage in federalisation referendum talks with the government and appeasement of the radical groups, which to many experts and journalists, was an indication of their desire to protect their power.

Not only gripped by fear and the desire to stay in power, after the flight of Yanukovych, many party members engaged in soul-searching, which continued throughout the pre-war period and precluded them from becoming good intermediaries between the region and the central government. During the Donetsk city council meeting on the 28th of February 2014, Nikolai Levchenko,[13] who later became the head of Party of Regions in Donetsk and a very important influence on the situation in Donetsk, was also sending extremely confusing signals to activists and the rest of the audience. He claimed that “today the leaders of the opposition parties find themselves in government as a result of pressure from the street (“stikhiino”)”. He was expecting armed units to come from the Maidan to the regions to attack and burglar homes. “It is true that the government is now in the hands of nationalist radicals”, he stated, “we have no rights”. At the same time, Levchenko revealed that he voted for Yatseniuk for the purpose of safety, due to the power vacuum in the country. Party of Regions, he said, as an opposition party, had the right to protection, according to the European Convention on Human Rights. Significantly, Levchenko endorsed Pavel Gubarev by saying that “he is 90% right”.[14] For the bulk of his speech, Levchenko blamed the fugitive government for what had happened in the country. He also said the party was misled and betrayed by Yanukovych, and that he felt guilty for having supported the president, whom no one could control any more after he assumed power in 2010.

This erratic behaviour of the elites, with their endorsement of both the new government and pro-Russian activists, seems to have been increasingly irrelevant to the pro-Russian movements. These pro-Russian movements, particularly Pavel Gubarev, seem to have decided to take matters into their own hands which contributed to the final outcome, that is the violent confrontation. Gubarev, for example, later claimed to have provided key intelligence and resources to Igor Strelkov, who started the insurgency in Slavyansk. Below I illustrate how Gubarev came to the realisation that he could not rely on the local elites.

Many people felt they were left to fend for themselves[15] and the word “people” (“narod”) increasingly gained currency on social media. There were many comments on the Kharkiv mayor Kernes and governor Dobkin, who were extremely quick to find a compromise with the new elites in Kyiv, with the words, such as abandoned (“kinuli”) or rat out (“slili”) in describing their attitude towards the people. An extremely popular pro-Russian blogger Boris Rozhin commented on the congress of the 22nd of February 2014 as a “total abandonment (“sliv”) of the people by the elites”. Reflecting back on the events of 2014, Mustafa Nayyem, a prominent Ukrainian journalist, said he believed neither Kernes nor Levchenko cared much for the people, with Kernes being able to “survive under any regime”.[16]

 

The Donbass People’s Militia, formed by Pavel Gubarev

 

Significantly, despite Levchenko’s endorsement of Gubarev, the latter was adamant that he would not negotiate with the elites and local oligarchs. It must be said that Gubarev had already held strong anti-elite sentiments prior to the emergence of his Narodnoe Opolchenie. In fact he reveals that the reason why he called his movement “people’s” was “because we came out of people, and not at the whim of some oligarch”.[17] He further states that “… we were dreaming of creating a new Russian state, free from oligarchs and corruption”.[18] As a result of his brief stint as a local official, he emerged bitter and enraged at the powerlessness of the local councils and pervasive corruption. On a number of occasions in his book he called Party of Regions a “pseudo-elite”.[19] During the Donetsk city council meeting on the 28th of February, Gubarev complained that the Party of Regions “suffocated and swallowed constructive opposition in the south-east, ratted out all competing political groups. Now the people of Donetsk come to the meetings not to support you but against the banderites/ banderovtsy. You have nobody to support you. And, if someone from the Maidan comes with lustration, there will be no one to defend you.”[20] Gubarev described the congress of the 22nd of February as “toothless and meaningless; it became certain that the “elite” (inverted commas in the original) decided not to confront [the winners of the Maidan].”[21] He regretted that “in Kharkiv, the pro-Russian activists cooperated with Kernes. Our colleagues in other regions made a big mistake by cooperating with the local elites which betrayed them immediately”.[22] His very first post on the Narodnoe Opolchenie on the 24th of February brimmed with vitriolic language directed at the Party of Regions. He described Shishatsky’s behaviour by using a slang word “slilsya” which means approximately “to get cold feet”. He also called the local elite “rygi”, which denotes someone cynical and without any values. To Gubarev, both Shishatsky and the local elites deserved such names as they willingly submitted to the new authorities.[23]

Conclusion

In conclusion, gripped by fear, soul-searching, and the desire to remain in power, the elites displayed a highly erratic behaviour first engaging in the “separatist” congress on the 22nd February 2014 and then swearing the allegiance to the new government. They retained this kind of behaviour into March and early April, with some of them intermittently pressing for federalisation and others being highly reticent on the issue. This behaviour had two effects: firstly, it demoralised the elites themselves, and, secondly, it disillusioned the people, which increasingly felt they were left to fend for themselves. Gubarev and others discovered that they could not rely on the local elites and had to take initiative into their own hands.

Daria is a PhD student at King’s College London and a Senior Editor at Strife. Her research focuses on violence and the unfolding of conflict across several regions in eastern Ukraine, 2013 – 2014. She also leads one of the Causes of War seminars at the War Studies Department. Prior to joining King’s, she worked as a teacher. She graduated with a degree in History from the University of Cambridge in 2011. Her broader interests include European history, war studies, and interdisciplinary methods.

Notes:

[1] Stuart Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: the Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (Cornell University Press: London, 2001); Emil Souleimanov, Understanding Ethnopolitical Conflict: Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia Wars Reconsidered (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2013); V. Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Cornell University Press: London, 2004).

[2] Souleimanov, Understanding Ethnopolitical Conflict.

[3] Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge University Press: New York, 2006).

[4] Southeast congress delegates urge peace, unity in Ukraine, oppose “fascism”, 22 February 2014, BBC Monitoring Newsfile.

[5] https://www.rt.com/news/thousands-gather-eastern-ukraine-252/ ; http://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/20140222160422.shtml

[6] http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/02/22/7015646/ ; http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/02/22/7015652/; http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/02/22/7015713/

[7] http://novosti.dn.ua/news/201855-akhmetov-potreboval-prekratyt-razgovory-o-separatyzme-gubernator; Akhmetov sees future of Ukraine in unity and integrity - Donetsk governor 23 February 2014 Interfax: Russia & CIS General Newswire

[8] Ukraine’s Donetsk governor says parliament only legitimate power body, 24 February 2014, BBC Monitoring Ukraine & Baltics.

[9] “Donetsk Mayor Recognises Verkhovna Rada’s Legitimacy”, Interfax: Russian & CIS General Newswire, 25 February 2014.

[10] Ukrainian former ruling party loses 76 MPs since November, 23 February 2014, 12:49 BBC Monitoring Ukraine & Baltics

[11] https://www.rt.com/news/thousands-gather-eastern-ukraine-252/

[12] http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2014/02/22/

[13] http://novosti.dn.ua/news/202213-regyonaly-golosovaly-za-yacenyuka-chtoby-on-ykh-zashhytyl-rasskazal-levchenko ; Full video here http://novosti.dn.ua/news/202169-sessyya-doneckogo-gorsoveta-v-pryamom-ehfyre-vydeo

[14] http://novosti.dn.ua/news/203827-nykolay-levchenko-ne-odobryaet-deystvyya-gubareva

[15] Anna Matveeva, “No Moscow stooges: identity polarisation and guerrilla movements in Donbass” in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 24 February 2016, p.1 – 26.

[16] Interview with Mustafa Nayyom, Ukrainian House, London, 15th of October 2016.

[17] Pavel Gubarev, Fakel Novorossii (Moscow 2016), p. 87.

[18] Ibid., p. 31

[19] Ibid., p. 79.

[20] Ibid., p. 93.

[21] Ibid., p. 81.

[22] Ibid., p. 31.

[23] https://vk.com/polkdonbassa

 

Image Source: https://medium.com/@Hromadske/donbass-europes-latest-frozen-conflict-38e91aedb4a9

Donbas Reintegration Law: What Impact on the Minsk Agreements?

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By Daria Platonova

The contemporary definition of Donbas refers to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine (Credit Image: Al Jazeera)

 

The low-scale conflict in Ukraine, now in its fourth year, threatens to become a hot war as Ukraine passes a new law titled “Donbas reintegration law”. The law vests the President with new unprecedented rights, widens the prerogatives of the army in the non-government controlled areas of Ukraine and, crucially, calls Russia the aggressor country entirely responsible for the conflict. The law naturally provoked the ire of the Russian government while for Ukrainian opposition politicians as well as Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR or DNR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR or LNR) authorities, the law “spells death” to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The article aims to provide an analysis of the law by looking at different perspectives on it.[1]

Main propositions

On 18th January 2018, the Ukrainian Rada (Parliament) adopted the Donbas reintegration law or the law “On the special aspects of the state policy on securing the state sovereignty of Ukraine in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions” (No. 7163).[2] 280 MPs voted in support of the legislation. The Opposition Bloc members and some independent MPs voted against it.[3]

The law is meant to change the modality of the conduct of military operations in the non-government controlled areas of Ukraine.[4] Russia is now called “an occupying state” or an “aggressor country” (the Preamble; Article 7), which is the main leitmotif of the law. Constant references are made to “measures to ensure national security and defence, and repulse and deter the armed aggression of the Russian Federation in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts” (Article 5.3; Article 10).[5] In the preamble to the October bill, Russia is said to have “initiated, organised and supported terrorist activities in Ukraine; it continues an armed aggression against Ukraine and temporarily occupies parts of its territory”. Similarly, in the preamble to the December bill, it says “the armed aggression of the Russian Federation began with unannounced and covert invasions (or operations) on the territory of Ukraine … as well as through organisation and support of terrorist activities”. According to the law, the Russian Federation carries responsibility for moral and physical damage inflicted on the citizens of the “occupied” territories (Article 2). Those who take part in the Russian aggression, or are involved in cooperation with the occupation administrations, are criminally liable for acts that violate the laws of Ukraine and the norms of the international humanitarian law (Article 2).

The President is now vested with rights to set the borders of (Article 1), and to determine the nature of military operations in these territories (Article 7) on the proposal of the Ministry of Defence and on the basis of the proposals of the General Staff of the Supreme Armed Forces. Articles 8, 9 and 10 confer unprecedented levels of responsibility on the Ukrainian army, and Article 11 officially ends the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO). The army now has the right to use civilian transport, enter civilian apartments and other premises, search and detain civilians and their belongings for the purposes of “deterring the armed aggression of the Russian Federation” (Article 10). The army is said to be given oversight on the kinds of goods that are allowed to be transferred between the “occupied” and government-controlled areas. Strategic command over all combat units and other formations is assigned to Ukraine’s Armed Forces Joint Operative Headquarters, the head of which is to be nominated by the army’s Chief of General Staff and approved by the President. The law further disassociates Ukraine from the “occupied territories”, by limiting the officially recognised documents issued in the occupied territories to birth and death certificates (Article 2).

Reactions, analysis and implications

The passage of the law provoked some of the most dramatic debates in the Rada for the past years. The law was registered as urgent in October 2017. The total of 675 amendments then took several months to process, amid fierce debates,[6] and even bombing, and the final vote was scheduled for January 16th 2018. The key debates were around the inclusion of the Minsk Agreements, the exact name and nature of the Russian occupation, and the precise date when the occupation of the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk had begun. Ukrainian MPs who proposed most amendments, especially Samopomich and People’s Front parties, reason that such precision is needed in the event of law suits against Russia, which bears sole responsibility for the conflict, according to this law.

The text of the law initiated a tense debate in the Rada (Credit Image: Vestnik Kavkaza)

There are radical divisions within the Ukrainian government as to how this law can come to force and whether it should have been allowed to pass at all. The opposition is fiercely against the law. The Opposition Block[7] politicians Yury Boiko, Oleksandr Vilkul and Mikhailo Papiev proposed to cancel the voting in support of the law due to the omission of the Minsk Agreements. The leader of the social movement “Ukrainian Choice” pro-Russian Viktor Medvedchuk thinks that the law “spells death” to a peaceful resolution of the conflict in the east.

So do the people of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic. For them and politicians such as Denis Pushlin, the new law means war,[8] which, strangely, concurs with some opinions expressed in the staunchly pro-Ukrainian Ukrainskaia Pravda newspaper. The separatists read Ukrainian armed aggression into this law, and that it stops short of declaring war on the occupied territories. Some go as far as to claim that it is a “step to[wards] a military dictatorship” to help the ongoing Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko win the next elections. In retaliation, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Aleksandr Zakharchenko responded by proposing early elections in the republic and establishing “people’s tribunals” to sue Ukrainian combatants for “their crimes”. The former DNR Minister of Defense Igor Strelkov is now writing on the possible resumption of the Novorssiya project and the possible unification of the republics after simplification of customs procedures. Strelkov proposes to fight alone, without the help of Russia, as it is “too slow” to react, and there is a general anti-Russian feeling across a representative sample of separatist press.

In Russia, the response has been somewhat predictable, as noted by a famous pro-Russian blogger Colonel Cassad (Boris Rozhin). On the 19th of January, President of Russia Vladimir Putin met with the permanent members of the Security Council to discuss the law, and it was noted that the law will have a negative influence on the regulation of the Ukrainian conflict. Press-Secretary of the Russian President Dmitrii Peskov said that the Kremlin disagreed with the fact that Russia is called “the aggressor country” and that the law does not help regulate the conflict by omitting references to the Minsk Agreements. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement in which it declared that Poroshenko “untied the hands of the war party”.

Ukrainian opposition politicians, the Russian government and the representatives of the DNR and LNR latch onto the fact that the references to the Minsk Agreements have been removed from the latest version of the law. Their removal was the main proposition of Samopomich and People’s Front parties, with ensuing fistfights in the Rada. The law is particularly damaging to the Minsk Agreements as it omits references to Article 5 on the amnesty of the participants in the armed conflict. In fact it states that all people participating in the “occupation” of the east are criminally liable. Additionally, the Minsk Agreements do not put sole responsibility on any of the parties in the conflict, let alone one particular state, in this case Russia. The new law does. The Minsk Agreements call the DNR and LNR “certain areas of Donetsk and Lugansk oblast”, whereas the new law calls them “occupied” areas.

Human rights activists as well as DNR and LNR politicians also lament the expansion of the Presidents’ and the army’s prerogatives as to these territories. Firstly, the law confers unprecedented level of responsibility on the President. A lawyer and the coordinator of the Vostok SOS (East SOS) NGO Oleksandra Dvoretska says that the powers conferred on the President go beyond those allowed by the Constitution. The President can issue orders to the army without requiring confirmation from the Parliament. “This sets a bad precedent – it means that it is possible to overwrite powers specified by the constitution with a regular law, with just 226 votes,” Dvoretska said. Normally, to change the Constitution at least 300 lawmakers have to vote in favour. In fact, this means that the bill empowers Ukraine’s President alone (without subsequent parliamentary oversight) to decide on the use of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations, which directly contradicts Section 33, Art. 85 of the Constitution of Ukraine.

Human rights activists note that identifying Russia as liable for moral and physical damage is not going to help afflicted civilians. There are no details on the procedure of claiming compensation for such damage. Moreover, the wide range of powers given to military personnel, law enforcement officers raise human rights issues because there are no mechanisms of control. This can potentially affect the people living in the “grey areas” (that is areas not controlled by either the Ukrainian or separatist government) negatively. In general, the law is rather vague on the use of the military. The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union [UHHRU] maintains that the responsibilities and commitments of Ukraine are not specific enough. In particular, it is not clear which government is going to protect civilians: on one hand, the law vests Russia with this responsibility as the “occupying country”, on the other, it gives wide-ranging responsibilities in relation to civilians to Ukraine. With regard to the exact nature of the conflict, UHHRU proposes considering the conflict as both a non-international and an international armed conflict at the same time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the new law is not going to help settle the conflict. From a purely legalistic point of view, the law needs many further provisions and clarifications. For example, the law is unclear as to the “special status” of the occupied regions, and a special Parliamentary procedure is required to establish a martial law in such areas, if this was deemed necessary by the Ukrainian President. Overall, it is unclear what status these territories have and how any kind of status can be conferred on them. Most importantly, the law has done further significant damage to the relations between Ukraine and Russia and the relations between Ukraine and its breakaway territories. By calling Russia the “aggressor country” and placing sole responsibility on Russia for conflict, Ukrainian politicians are sure to provoke the Russian government into retaliatory measures, although, to DNR and LNR politicians, such measures are too mild. By disassociating Ukraine further from the breakaway territories, Ukrainian Rada leaves ordinary citizens particularly in the “gray areas” caught between a rock and a hard place.

 

Daria is a PhD student at King’s College London and a Senior Editor with Strife. Her research focuses on violence and the unfolding of conflict across several regions in eastern Ukraine, 2013 – 2014. Prior to joining King’s, she worked as a teacher. She graduated with a degree in History from the University of Cambridge in 2011. Her broader interests include European history, war studies, and interdisciplinary methods.

Notes:

[1] For a succinct summary of the law in Russian, see “Osobyi Poryadok Mira: Zakon o Donbasse Vstupil v Silu”, Novosti Donbassa, 25th of February 2018, http://novosti.dn.ua/article/6978-osobyy-poryadok-myra-zakon-o-donbasse-vstupyl-v-sylu , Accessed 3rd of March 2018.

[2] Also called the law on “de-occupation” by the Speaker Parubii here: “Rassmotrenie Zakonoproekta o Deokupatsii Donbassa. Utrennee Zasedanie Verkhovnoi Rady”, 16th of January 2018, Accessed 24th of February 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av9Ei1tDvwk

[3] For the English language version of the key propositions see “Rada Adopts Controversial Donbas Reintegration Law”, Kyiv Post, 18 January 2018, Accessed 23rd of February 2018 https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/rada-adopts-controversial-donbas-reintegration-law.html ; for Ukrainian, see “Rada ukhvalila zakon pro integratsiyu Donbasa”, Ukrainskaia Pravda, 18th of January 2018, Accessed 24th of February 2018 https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2018/01/18/7168749/ ; for the law itself http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/zweb2/webproc4_1?pf3511=62638. Two texts: one from October, the other from December 2017

[4] Or “against Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic”. This terminology is most likely to be used in these republics’ and Russian press while “Non-government controlled areas” is the terminology used in the Ukrainian press. See Novosti Donbassa site and Donetskaya Republika and Narodnoe Opolchenie Donbassa Vkontakte groups.

[5] For the two versions of the law, see http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/zweb2/webproc4_1?pf3511=62638 .

[6] https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2018/01/16/7168537/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g04pIkTfWmA

[7] The Party was formed on the basis of the “pro-Russian” Party of Regions and receives consistent support among the Russophile regions of Ukraine, such as Mykolaiv, Kherson and the government controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

[8] https://news-front.info/2018/02/02/denis-pushilin-o-zakone-o-reintegratsii-donbassa/

 

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