The Kremlin’s plans, while still obviously secret, are very likely outlined in part in a policy document (http://www.unian.info/politics/1048525-novaya-gaze…) leaked by Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper, in February 2015. The unknown authors of the document, writing even before the fall of the regime in Kyiv of President Viktor Yanukovych, state that Russia should play along with the “centrifugal forces” that they saw as inevitably leading to the breakup of Ukraine, “with a view to initiate the accession of its eastern regions to Russia, in one form or another.”
The document identifies the Republic of Crimea, and Kharkiv, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk “and to a lesser extent Kherson and Odesa regions,” as prime Ukrainian oblasts in which to encourage separatism.
The document is interesting as much for what it gets wrong, as for the propaganda points and political tactics it recommends — many of which the Kremlin in fact went on to use against Ukraine. Girkin, who sparked the “insurgency” in the east by seizing Ukrainian local government, police and security service offices in Donetsk Oblast (and possibly in Luhansk Oblast as well), was never able to move on to the neighboring oblasts of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhzhya, far less further afield, because of the lack of support in the population of eastern Ukraine for separatism (a Pew poll (http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/05/08/despite-concer…) from spring 2014, found that 70 percent of the population in eastern Ukraine said they wanted the country to remain united.)
Novorossiya no more
This lack of enthusiasm for the “Russkiy Mir” or Russian world in Ukraine soon become obvious to the men carrying out what Putin later described as “military tasks” for the Kremlin in the Donbas: Girkin complained on more than one occasion about the unwillingness of locals to join the armed groups that seized control from the local authorities in the east. Indeed, as the Ukrainian military advances of August 2014 threatened to cause the collapse of the fake insurgency, it was only the intervention en masse of Russian regular troops, including cross-border shelling by Russian forces of Ukrainian forces, that halted Ukrainian offensive in its tracks and forced Kyiv to the negotiating table in Minsk.
But after Minsk the Kremlin’s “Novorossiya” project was in tatters, and Moscow was left with only around a third of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts under the control of its military and political proxy forces. Moreover, this territory was itself split into two entities – the “Luhansk People’s Republic” and the “Donetsk People’s Republic.” Efforts to unite the two Russian proxy statelets into a Confederation of Novorossiya soon descended into bickering between the two statelets and had been put on indefinite hold by May 2015. Putin stopped even mentioning “Novorossiya” from September 2014, when the first Minsk peace agreement was negotiated.
Only in military matters was some degree of unity achieved: the armed forces of the self-proclaimed republics are nominally combined in the United Armed Forces of Novorossiya (the military project was retained even though the political project has been scrapped). These units are themselves thought to be taking orders from senior officers in Russia’s military.
More belligerent
However, the fighters of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” have proved far more belligerent than those of the “Luhansk People’s Republic.” The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is tasked under the Minsk agreements with monitoring the non-existent cease-fire in the Donbas and the pullback of heavy weaponry from the front (also practically non-existent, at least on the side of the armed groups in the Donbas) has consistently noted more breaches of the cease-fire by the “Donetsk People’s Republic” forces than by those of the “Luhansk People’s Republic.”
While the more intense fighting in Donetsk Oblast could be due to purely military factors, such as the need to secure better defensive positions or areas from which to launch a future offensive (and both sides could be doing this), there are indications that the higher level of fighting on the borders of the “Dontesk People’s Republic” could have a political dimension.
Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” has repeatedly stated his intention to extend the area under his forces’ control to the borders of Donetsk oblast. He has also repeatedly dismissed the Minsk agreement as a failure. He seems not in the mood to negotiate, but to fight.
In contrast, the leadership of the “Luhansk People’s Republic” under its head – a corpulent anti-Semite called Igor Plotnitskiy — has been far less aggressive militarily, but also politically. It is the lesser of the two “republics” in terms of its land area, population (estimated 1.57 million, compared to 1.87 million in the “Donetsk People’s Republic”) and its economy (GDP before the war was $3,066 per capita, compared to $4,733 in Donetsk Oblast.)
Driving a wedge
This disparity between the “republics,” including the fact that they have separate governing structures, is a weakness in the Kremlin’s occupation plan that the Ukrainian authorities have the potential to exploit – if they themselves can overcome the political obstacles to entering negotiations with “terrorist groups.”
Yet opening direct negotiations with the pseudo-authorities in the occupied part of Luhansk Oblast, while potentially damaging politically to Kyiv in the short term, could yield future benefits. The pseudo-authorities in both statelets crave some form of recognition from Kyiv, and entering into talks with Plotnitskiy, but not Zakharchenko, would represent the first strike to a wedge driven between them. The talks themselves, while still unlikely to achieve much of substance, would be a baby-step forward in the Minsk process, and at the very least serve the useful purpose of deflecting some Kremlin propaganda that it is Kyiv that it is dragging its feet on peace.
And there is even the potential, though admittedly very slight, opportunity of further progress. If the pseudo-authorities in the occupied part of Luhansk Oblast could be persuaded to allow the OSCE to fulfill its mandate under the Minsk agreements — monitoring the ceasefire and the pullback of heavy weapons – the violence on the front line in Luhansk could be reduced.
This would be a second strike to the wedge between the statelets. The immediate benefits of this would be obvious to the civilian population, and progress might be made on winning back some of the hearts and minds of the majority in the oblast who formerly favored remaining in Ukraine.
Further incentives
As a further incentive to cooperation, Kyiv could then propose reopening some of the border checkpoints in Luhansk to allow freer movement of the civilian population. Then, in return for allowing a wider, and perhaps even armed, OSCE policing mission in the occupied part of Luhansk, Kyiv could restart the payment of some social benefits to the civilian population, if sufficient security guarantees could be provided – another way to win back hearts and minds.
Still further incentives might even include an amnesty on charges of separatism for the leaders of the pseudo-authorities in occupied Luhansk, though this would again require political courage from Kyiv.
All this assumes, of course, that there is no effort by the Kremlin to stop such progress militarily. It would open up the unlikely but intriguing possibility of Russian-backed armed groups staging a coup of the pseudo-authorities in Luhansk if Moscow thought the political leaders were making too much progress in reconciling with Ukraine, while Donetsk remained isolated. Even more fancifully, might the armed groups in occupied Donetsk consider “invading” their neighboring statelet in order to prop up a front line they felt had been weakened by Luhansk’s cooperation with the OSCE under Minsk? In short: there is the possibility to drive a wedge not only between the statelets, but also between their political and military leaderships.
Such scenarios are of course extremely unlikely, but any effort, however slight, by Kyiv to drive a wedge between Russia’s proxy statelets would at least break the current stalemate on Minsk, and weaken the Kremlin’s position. It would also wrest back the initiative for Ukraine in eastern Ukraine, where the Kremlin has been calling all the shots since the outset of the war it started.
It is an idea Ukrainian diplomacy should explore.
