You're reading: Kremlin Terrorism

What Ukrainians and the rest of the world see as Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin sees as Novorossiya, or New Russia.

That Novorossiya is Ukrainian is a historical injustice, Putin said, in his hours-long live television question-and-answer session on April 17.

“I will remind you, using the terminology of the czarist times, this is Novorossiya: Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Mykolayiv, Odesa were not part of Ukraine in czarist times. These are territories that were passed on to Ukraine in the 1920s by the Soviet government.” Putin said. “Why did they do it? God only knows.”

After comments like these and others dismissing Ukraine’s sovereignty, is there any wonder why Ukrainians fear they will soon face a full-scale military invasion from the east?



Pro-Russian supporters stand on top of a barricade near the local police station captured by insurgents in Sloviansk on April 13.

Ukraine, of course, has another term for what is going on: Kremlin-sponsored terrorism.
“Russia has started exporting terrorism to Ukraine. It seems that only one country in the world, Russia, does not see that its sabotage groups are committing terrorist acts in Ukraine,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told the Cabinet of Ministers on April 16. “Conduction of all these terrorist operations by Russian secret services is not just unacceptable, it is an international crime.”

Putin has already done a considerable amount to correct what he sees as an injustice. Crimea, invaded by Russian troops on Feb. 27 and officially annexed by Russia on March 18, was the start. But this seems to be only the first step in his plan, no matter what diplomatic concessions his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, made on April 17 in Geneva.

“The issue is to defend the lawful rights of Russians and Russian-speaking citizens in the south and east of Ukraine,” Putin said. “These territories are gone, but the people remain.”

Many fear that Putin do everything possible to destabilize Ukraine, and may even promote the breakup of the entire nation. The evidence to back up these concerns is becoming more overwhelming by the day.
Taras Berezovets, a political analyst and founder of BERTA Communications, says Putin’s return to jingoistic, warrior-like rhetoric is “new proof that he has in his head an imperial project.”

In his speech, Putin belatedly admitted that his army backed separatists in Crimea. A similar scenario is unfolding in Donetsk and Luhansk regions at the moment.

About a dozen cities in Donetsk Oblast, home to 10 percent of Ukraine’s 45 milliion people, are at least partially controlled by Kremlin-backed separatist troops led by Russia’s well-trained, well-equipped and well-financed special forces. They have used live shields of women and children to fend off potential attacks by Ukrainian troops since the government announced the launch of its anti-terrorist operation early in the week.



Russian military and Kremlin-backed militias are on the march in Ukraine’s eastern oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, with 15 percent of the nation’s population, after having annexed Crimea, or 5 percent of the nation.

On April 16 in Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast’s second-largest city, an unarmed teenager was left guarding the only entrance to the barricade around city hall, made up of tires and sandbags. Mariupol’s City Hall had been taken by pro-Russian protesters the previous day.

Inside the building, the unemployed Vyacheslav Sobolev, 45, talks about why that happened. “We have only one demand – a referendum. Let the people vote for Russia or Ukraine. Personally, I want to join Russia, but if people decide differently, so be it,” he says.

His sentiment is echoed by many in the region who feel the current government does not represent their interests. Dangerously for the new government, some of those people with separatist views are in Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and even its military.

In Kramatorsk, for example, when 10 armed men took over a tower that retransmits television channels, the police did not bother to show up. The day before, an airborne brigade in the city of Slovyansk gave up their weapons to Russian separatists and switched sides. On April 17, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov called them traitors who will bear full responsibility on.

The Ukrainian army, already short of trained soldiers and reliable equipment, lost six armored personnel vehicles to the separatists in Kramatorsk on April 16. They were a part of the anti-terrorist operation, but had taken the wrong route that day, said Viktoria Siumar, deputy chief of the National Security and Defense Council.

Many Ukrainians, including senior government officials, express privately their fears that should Putin’s divisive plan for Ukraine succeed, there could be two Ukrainian armies fighting against each other in the east and south of the country – in other words, civil war.
Odesa may be the next hot spot.



On April 6, Russian-backed separatists began popping up throughout eastern Ukraine. Since then, pro-Russian insurgents have seized government buildings and Ukrainian military equipment in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

A separatist group, called Anti-Maidan in opposition to the EuroMaidan Revolution that toppled Viktor Yanukovych as president on Feb. 22, proclaimed an independent republic in the region online and said the power only “belongs to the residents of the region.”

The government disagreed, and moved to strengthen defenses there, while pro-Kyiv activists set up six checkpoints on the roads leading into the region to prevent a Donetsk-style scenario where major roads were taken over by separatists.

The Kyiv government also fears attacks, and has been inspecting bomb shelters around the city that were built by the Soviets during the Cold War era. Volodymyr Bondarenko, the capital’s administrator, said “all necessary measures are being implemented aimed at preventing terrorist attacks at strategic facilities of vital importance for Kyiv.”

In the meantime, Ukraine’s parliament appealed to Turchynov to consider restoring army drafts in Ukraine, as well as military training at schools and universities. It was canceled last year, when Ukraine moved to adopt a contract-based army.

The army, however, remains dirt-poor after years of looting. Arkadiy Stuzhuk, head of Defense MInistry’s supplies department, said it only has 30-40 percent of the equipment it needs. The shortage of bullet-proof vests and helmets is one of the biggest problems.

He said regular Ukrainians have donated Hr 100 million to the army in recent weeks, of which Hr 51.8 million has already been used to buy supplies.

Apart from attempts to strengthen its own army, Ukraine has moved to weaken the ability of Russian agents to penetrate its territory. Thousands of people have been stopped at the border, and the Security Service of Ukraine has captured some 40 Russian military intelligence officers.

The government has also banned most Russian male nationals, aged 16 to 60, from entering Ukraine unless they have documents proving they have relatives, or business in Ukraine, Russia’s Aeroflot airline announced on April 17. The same rules now apply to Ukrainian nationals registered on the Crimean peninsula.

The government has also moved to cut off some of the financing for separatist groups in the east. In the last 45 days, according to the Security Service of Ukraine, one unnamed Russian bank alone illegally converted some $3.75 million in cash, allegedly to facilitate the Kremlin-backed separatist movement in eastern Ukraine.

The SBU is investigating the bank for violating the law on “crime and terrorist financing.”

Moreover, the general prosecutor’s office has launched a criminal investigation into 14 banks that allegedly helped finance separatism, including Sberbank, a state-owned Russian bank and that nation’s largest lender. The bank’s payment cards were carried by the captured Russian intelligence agents.
In a statement released on April 17, the Russian bank’s local subsidiary denied the accusation stating that “Sberbank of Russia is a Ukrainian commercial bank that operates strictly under Ukrainian law. The bank does not have any relation to the situation.” Other Russian banks operating in Ukraine made similar, fervent denials.

The State Border Guard Service has also reported detaining Russian and Ukrainian individuals carrying cash on several occasions that was allegedly meant to finance separatist activities, according to the agency. On April 17 alone three Ukrainians were detained for carrying almost Hr 5 million in cash from Crimea to Dnipropetrovsk, hidden between double walls of a suitcase.