Turn a deaf ear on what is now being narrated about Russia’s war around the clock on TV.
What was imposed in Ukraine through Dec. 26, following Russia’s attack in the Black Sea on Nov. 25, is not the state of martial law in its genuine essence.
Why? Because its provisions make it absolutely senseless and useless for the country’s defense. To a much greater degree, it looks serving certain political goals rather than Ukraine’s national security.
Let’s start from scratch.
Why do democracies resort to martial law in the darkest days of their history as they, for instance, face an existential threat of foreign invasion?
The answer is rather simple: In order to provide their wartime authorities with the full amount of instruments for gaining maximum possible war effort.
There are two critical aspects in it.
Firstly, a nation’s civilian and military leadership take the exceptional power to curtail basic constitutional rights and liberties, such as suffrage, freedom of press, speech, political activities, protests, and movement in the whole country or in its certain areas. A curfew is imposed too, along with a special security regime for important infrastructure sites. Citizens of the adversary nation can be forcedly relocated and interned.
In other words, the social life is taken in tight grips of manual control — all to ensure preserving public order in the country that faces the gathering storm of war.
Secondly, martial law also entities the wartime authorities to quickly extract additional economic resources from society. They particularly can expropriate private or communal properties, and take full control of enterprises of all forms of ownership, and impose civilian conscription of labor, or obligate businesses and individuals to provide housing for troops.
Every single bit of the society’s economic potential should be used for enforcing clamorous defense right here and now.
In usual peacetime, such an infringement of the state upon civil liberties and private property would be qualified as acts of purely lawless totalitarian reign. But martial law legitimizes these temporal dictatorial powers as a necessary evil for exceptional circumstances as the enemy stands at the gates.
Specific provisions of martial law somewhat differ from country to country, but its basic logic — public order and resources for wartime effort — remain the same. Because without these two aspects, it immediately loses its practical sense. And that is what actually happened in the very moment when martial law was enacted in 10 regions of Ukraine on Nov. 28.
The ultimate list of imposed measures killed its practical sense on the very spot.
In the fearful night after Russia’s Nov. 25 attack in the Black Sea, the chairman of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council Olexandr Turchynov blew up the country’s already boiling media space by announcing that he, as stated by legislation, would suggest to the president to proclaim martial law — for the first time in Ukraine’s history.
The war cabinet gathered at midnight in the limelight of the shocked nation. Poroshenko, speaking harshly and sternly, announced his strong will: To make this historical step. He officially approached the parliament to impose martial law for 60 days.
He, however, immediately assured that no civil rights and liberties would be restricted and no wartime censorship in media would be imposed. This was presented as a generous attempt to accumulate the nation’s defense amid the skyrocketing threat of Russia’s new invasion, but without hurting democracy and everyday life of Ukrainians.
After an enormously fierce debate in the Verkhovna Rada late on Nov. 25, Poroshenko quite easily agreed to cut the martial law duration to only 30 days and to impose it only in 10 regions. Moreover, as an answer to devastating criticism regarding possible cancellation or postponement of presidential elections (at which Poroshenko’s chances look rather grim), the parliament, at Poroshenko’s suggestion, ruled to hold the vote on March 31, 2019, without any delays.
Critics denouncing him for attempting to usurp absolute power through declaring martial law — in the fifth year of war — were humiliated.
The final version of the martial law decree approved by the Rada, however, did have a provision regarding possible curtailing of some of the constitutional rights in liberties. But, in multiple interviews to Ukrainian and Western media outlets, Poroshenko repeatedly assured that this option would be enacted only in case of all-out Russian military invasion and that this was his “principle position.”
So, starting from 2 p.m. November 28, most part of the country officially went on the war footing.
But the following days brought almost nothing of what you would expect from the country facing a real threat of general war against a dominant military power like Russia.
Neither general nor partial mobilization was launched. Although the Armed Forces were turned to increased alert, and certain National Guard unit was subordinated to the General Staff, the army brigades were not switched to wartime establishment, while the manning level of most of them reaches no more than 50 percent of their standard lineups.
The General Staff did not opt to establish military governments in the 10 oblasts, through which, in compliance with martial law legislation, the command would execute their wartime powers. As Deputy Chief of Staff Major General Rodion Tymoshenko explained on Nov. 28, there were no reasons for this.
Moreover, there was no decision to install any additional defense works in along the Donbas front line or elsewhere in the country. The military also reassured that all civilian properties would remain untouched as usual — the presidential decree simply falls short of authorizing the expropriation of economic resources for wartime needs.
The country’s security agencies like the National Police or the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, were ordered to switch to increased vigilance in the affected 10 oblasts and tighten the security of critical facilities throughout the country.
A police officer serving in Mariupol, an Azov Sea port city at the tip of the war’s spear, told the Kyiv Post that the wartime security regime in the city, with 500,000 residents located 800 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, is ensured by holding the police headquarters under an increased protection of personnel armed with automatic rifles, a total ban on alcohol among police servicepersons, and cancellation of all vacations for the period of martial law.
Other than that, the law enforcers keep drawing their everyday duties as usual.
Vocal measures were limited to calling several hundreds of the army’s first-wave operational reservists for up to 20 days of drills, with a promise to bring the weekend soldiers back home by Christmas time. Also, in early December, some of the country’s elite airborne troops were relocated closer to the border with Russia, and the defense of the Kherson Oblast bordering occupied Crimea was also reinforced.
The State Border Guards were also told to selectively close the entrance to the country for all Russian male citizen aged between 16 and 60, and, as of Dec. 10, they had over 980 Russians rebuffed.
As Poroshenko had promised, the martial law measures did not target the country’s banking system, or its affairs with the International Monetary Fund, or businesses. The government did not even resolve to cancel any cultural events in the 10 oblasts.
That is basically the whole story.
Many people not interested in reading news would not even notice this state of martial law in their cities unless someone told them about it.
In this form, this curtailed martial law completely fails to bring about the two things it is needed for: Providing the defense and security bodies with exceptional powers and letting them absorb civilian assets.
The president’s policy does simply envisage enacting these instruments. And the rest of the things made after Nov. 28 could have been done without imposing martial law.
The life in the country goes on as usual. The army keeps holding routine drills of various scale, 40,000 troops keep upholding the 400-kilometer frontline in the Donbas, the Verkhovna Rada continues its sessions, Ukraine and Russia keep trading and having transport communications, and the Russian embassy keeps waving its tricolor on Povitryoflotskiy avenue in Kyiv.
It simply made no principal difference.
Meanwhile, Poroshenko is enjoying himself.
In his very own usual style, he goes above and beyond to squeeze every single drop of self-promotion and publicity out of the tensions of unprecedented martial law. He jumps out of every bit of TV news around the clock, screened chairing the wartime cabinet and making disturbing speeches on war and peace with a menacing look.
Amid the media splash of martial law in media, he tripled his much-beloved practice of being demonstrated to the audience in camouflage, visiting and ribbon-cutting all more or less tangible military maneuvers, and being ostentatiously pictured in front of troops and machinery.
Top Western media are fighting for a minute of his audience again, he is in the very focus of attention in and beyond Ukraine, and he is saying things that Ukrainians want to hear from him in this dark hour of Russia’s aggression.
He enjoys presenting himself in as a strong wartime leader, a Ukrainian Churchill, who is potent of making hard and sharp decisions, and also as a generous champion of democracy and comfort of Ukrainians.
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko (C) gets pictured with a company of paratroopers at an airfield of Ozerne on Dec. 6, 2018. (Mikhail Palinchak)
After a period when his presidential campaign adversaries, such as incredibly populistic former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, gained popularity at a dangerously exponential rate, he switched the country’s limelight from his, say at least, debatable successes in economy to an area in which Poroshenko feels most comfortable — war.
He often loses his sense of proportion and resorts to demagogy stating that this limited martial law will ‘ensure legal protection of Ukrainian soldiers’, that only dictators curtail civil liberties during this period, and that it will boost Ukraine’s defense and security.
In his own fashion of making highly melodramatic and eye-filling though totally contentless steps, he, however, never explains how these 30 days of ridiculously curtailed, toothless, listless, and very comfortable martial law would help prepare the country for a general war with Russia, the world’s second military power.
All of the things that have been done and planned for this period, could be easily done without the Nov. 26 comedy show at the Verkhovna Rada. Without even a hint of martial law, Ukraine’s leadership has conducted as many as six waves of mobilization in the heat of fighting 2014-2016 and, in particular, adopted a general 1.5 percent tax for war needs.
This was all done thanks to introducing “the special period” invented from scratch to avoid the need to incept martial law to legalize army’s operations in legislative peacetime.
In the days when hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers were slaughtered by invading Russian regular troops near Ilovaisk, when Russian artillery shelled Ukrainian infantry from beyond the state border near Zelenopillia, when a Russian Buk missile downed MH-17 flight, when thousands of Russian troops were about to encircle Ukrainian forces defending Debalstseve, Poroshenko did not accomplish his direct constitutional obligation.
He fiercely opposed it all these years of Russia’s war in Donbas. Was the president waiting for the Russians to attack openly under their own colors in the sea?
In his multiple interviews, he, however, insists that the essential features of martial law, such as mobilization, will be enacted in case of Russia’s all-out invasion. According to him, Russia has currently concentrated nearly 80,000 troops, 1,400 artillery pieces, 900 tanks, 2,300 light armored vehicles, over 500 planes and 300 helicopters near the Ukrainian border, and also in occupied Crimea and Donbas.
In the Black, the Azov, and the Aegean seas, Russia now has over 80 warships and 8 submarines, he said on Dec. 1.
Beyond that Russia’s immense military buildup against Ukraine is not fresh news for several years in a row, the question remains the same: How will this toothless martial law help Ukraine in a possible battle of the century, aside from increasing Poroshenko’s nasty ratings four months before the elections?
Besides, in this “I will call to the colors when Russians come” approach there’s another big problem. In case of the worst-case scenario, Ukraine would need to declare general mobilization and actually switch its economy and society to wartime footing prior to an invasion, not after it.
In a 21st century general war against Russia, the timeline would be counted in hours, not even days or weeks. And Kyiv, the country’s political and industrial center just 120 kilometers from the border with Russia’s ally Belarus, will most certainly become the primary target.
As Poroshenko himself believes, this limited martial law is good enough to “show that the enemy will pay a heavy price” for the attack, and if it does not happen, it will mean that his decision has prevented it.
However, his toothless and demonstrative moves against the backdrop of the very real military threat of Russia rather look like boasting with camouflage and warlike rhetorics that nonetheless falls short of one little thing — the actual will to defend the nation he heads.
