You're reading: Putin Pauses In Crimea As Ukraine Mobilizes For War

After biting off a piece of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is pausing to pick his teeth.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is looking on in shocked disbelief at the audacity of the Kremlin’s bite in trampling international law. However, America and the European Union nations have offered more verbal condemnations than strong action.

Worryingly, the nationalistic fervor being whipped up in Russia also suggests that Putin’s territorial conquests may not be over until he succeeds in reconstituting parts of the former Soviet Union or ensuring that former republics such as Ukraine never develop as sovereign democracies.

At the same time, as Ukraine’s ill-prepared military is surrendering in Crimea without firing a shot, the nation’s leaders in Kyiv promise to gear up for a military fight if Russia decides to invade the mainland.

As for security steps, Ukraine’s border guards have turned away more than 3,500 Russians as of March 3 after suspecting them of trying to enter the country to stir up separatist fever.

Ukraine’s leaders, meanwhile, threatened to start requiring visas from Russians for travel to Ukraine – a measure that brought a swift reciprocal threat from Russia.

Ukraine’s government also threatened to quit the Commonwealth of Independent States, a collection of former Soviet republics.

NATO gets ‘wake-up call’

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made an ominous warning on March 19 when he said annexation of Crimea should be a “wake-up call” for European countries to bolster their own defenses to contain Russia’s imperialistic ambitions.

During a gathering in Washington, Rasmussen called the March 16 referendum in Crimea – taking place under a military invasion – as “the gravest threat to European security and stability since the end of the Cold War.”

Rasmussen said that his “major concern is that this won’t stop.”

“Crimea is one example. But I see Crimea as an element in a greater pattern, in a more long-term Russian, or at least Putin, strategy. So of course our major concern now is whether he will go beyond Crimea,” Rasmussen said.

Ukraine’s densely populated, industrial southeastern oblasts received an honorable mention by Putin in his March 18 address as historical Russian lands, raising fears that Kharkiv, Donetsk or Luhansk oblasts may be his next destinations.

The autocrat’s speech is being hailed as a masterpiece of propaganda, lies and distortions in presenting Russians as victims of historical wrongs and conspiracies, as well as misrepresenting what is happening in Ukraine.

Putin’s neo-imperialist drive has pushed his popularity rating to a five-year-record of 75.7 percent, fed by a steady stream of Kremlin propaganda and censorship in news outlets.

“After the (1917) Revolution, the Bolsheviks… included into the Ukrainian Soviet Republic significant territories of southern Russia. This was done without taking into consideration the national composition of residents, and today its modern southeast of Ukraine,” Putin said.

Ukraine’s SBU reports suspicious activity

Ukraine’s security services have been reporting an alarming number of provocateurs of all stripes in those parts over the past days and weeks.

On March 19, the Security Service of Ukraine – known as the SBU — detained three men suspected of creating a subversive group in Luhansk Oblast, which included a former police colonel. On March 16, its agents arrested a group of Russians in Zaporizhzhia Oblast who were equipped with firearms, explosives and unspecified “special technical means,” most likely spying equipment.

This followed an arrest two days earlier, on March 14, of several Russians donning black military-type uniforms without insignia armed with AKS-74 assault rifles and in possession of numerous ID cards under various names. One of the ID cards was that of an elite Russian armed forces unit commonly known as “Spetsnaz.”

In Kherson, acting Mayor Volodymyr Mykolayenko said the local Party of Regions branch – led by ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych — is planning a referendum similar to the one in Crimea, to exit Ukraine and join Russia.

In response to increasing signs of danger, Ukraine moved to put the nation’s army on full alert this week and said that the country would hold joint military exercises with the U.S. and Britain. It also activated the National Guard, in which it plans to enlist 40,000 soldiers.

But short of the exercises, the West has done little else to deter Putin’s plan, slapping several Russian lawmakers, officials and businesspeople with travel bans and asset freezes, the likes of which were mocked by a group of them who actually asked that all be put on the American blacklist, likening the move to winning a “political Oscar.” On March 20, U.S. President Barack Obama – whose response to Russia has been widely regarded as weak – threatened to add more Russian names and even one Russian bank to the sanctions list.

Still, taken together, the West’s reaction remains tepid and ineffectual in forcing Moscow to change course, with Western businesses and governments still not treating Putin as leader of an outlaw regime on par with the rulers of Iran or North Korea.

The Russian Duma, in the meantime, voted for accession of annexed Crimea to Russia on March 20, and Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Secretary Andriy Parubiy said the that the new government was drawing up plans to evacuate its troops from the peninsula and to possibly deploy them elsewhere on the mainland. But the 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea still have not gotten an order to evacuate from the peninsula.

Russian military buildup

Even as Russia threatened to increase its military presence in Crimea, Parubiy said Ukraine will appeal to the United Nations to make Crimea a demilitarized zone, which would force both Ukraine and Russia to pull troops.

While Ukraine’s impotent government appears to be floundering about in search of an effective response, its soldiers are being kidnapped, pressured and threatened in Crimea.

They feel betrayed, said Dmytro Tymchuk, a retired lieutenant colonel who organized Information Resistance, a volunteer group that fact checks defense-related information and serves as a defense communication center.

“Our military have no idea why they need to endure. They have no idea what way out they will be offered by the top commanders. And when a soldier does not know what the sense of heroism is, they cannot continue forever,” Tymchuk said.

The heroism is even harder when the first fatal casualty has already come. Ukrainian officer, Serhiy Kokurin, was killed by a sniper during a Russian raid on the base. Seven others were taken hostage on March 19, including Ukrainian fleet commander Admiral Serhiy Haiduk. The hostages were released on March 20, said Volodymyr Polyakov, adviser to the defense minister.

Meanwhile, scores of officers at several Ukrainian bases in Crimea surrendered on March 19 to heavily-armed Russian soldiers and Russian-backed militiamen who went from one base to another, breaking a truce that was supposed to have been in place until March 21. Ukrainian troops were pressured to switch sides or offered financial inducements to do so or return to mainland Ukraine.

Valeriy Chaly, deputy director of Razumkov Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Studies, said that Crimea is undergoing a massive transformation. “Crimea is being transformed into a huge military base… that can be a launching pad for aggression,” he said on March 19. Russia announced a day later that it will boost its military presence in Crimea to protect against external threats, state news agency Itar-Tass quoted Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov as saying on March 20.

“It will be necessary to develop the military infrastructure on the peninsula so that Crimea would be a worthy representative of the Russian Federation and be protected against all possible encroachments,” Borisov said.

Other Russian neighbors under threat

Many worry the aggression will not stop with Ukraine.

Russia signaled concern on March 19 at Estonia’s treatment of its large ethnic Russian minority, saying it was limited in its right to use the native tongue. Moscow has also reserved the right to intervene militarily in any nation to protect its citizens.

The small Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, also former republics of the Soviet Union like Ukraine, have expressed concern over Putin’s next moves.

Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller and deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].