Ukrainian special forces take back Kramatorsk airport 

The special force units Alfa (SBU) and Omega (military) led the operation, with airborne infantry in APCs backing them up. The assault had been preceded by overflights by a fighter jet, a twin turboprop (recon?) and helicopters. Four helicopters landed special forces troopers on the airfield, apparently followed by reinforcements on the ground. There were reports of gunfire but the official results are: no casualties either side, “many” separatists taken into custody. Based on cartiges found on site, the separatists were armed with Kalashnikovs and sniper rifles. Not all were captured. As the official statement put it: “Many of the terrorists chose to evacuate the vicinity when they saw the special forces troopers landing on the airfield.” 

This is a positive development not just because the Ukrainians took something back from the Russians but because (1) they took their time and did the operation right (2) they seem to have done it with overwhelming force viz. the separatists (3) they are avoiding casualties and (4) of all the Ukrainian installations the Russians have grabbed, an airport is the facility that would allow them to move troops in fastest. The strategy seems to be isolate separatists who have helpfully collected themelves together into a nice tight group in an city hall or police station, surround them, and blot them out with as little violence as possible. The head of Ukraine’s anti-terrorist operation told reporters “this is our first clear victory…but it is just the begining.” 

He also said Russia is still sending thugs into Donetsk province to stir up trouble; about 150 on Monday and 300 on Tuesday. Even if the Ukrainians win, stamping out Putin’s people is going to take time.

Beyond that we have:

German gas

Germany starts pumping natural gas to Ukraine. This is the first time any EU member has moved to help the Ukrainians viz. Russia’s exhorbinant gas prices. Kiev is in talks with Budapest and Bratislava for similar deals and if the Germans are willing to undercut Gazprom to sell natural gas to Ukraine, I bet the Slovakians and Hungarians will as well. 

Germany Chancellor Angel Merkel had a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Berlin says they “view the situation in Ukraine differently”. Germany has clearly muted its criticism of Russian as compared to the Poles or the Americans, and for many the jury is out on whether Berlin is willing to draw a line in the sand against Russia. I think Germany’s (well, the energy company RWE’s) decision to sell gas to Ukraine is typical German diplomacy: speak politely and your actions do the real talking.

Foreign money

Not a lot of people have noticed, but since the start of the week the US gave Ukraine a 1 billion dollar loan guaranee and the World Bank 750 million dollars. This is enough to stave off default for the short term anyway.

Monkeying with Ukraine’s money

Ukrainian police on Tuesday arrested five Crimea residents carrying the equivalent of $200,000, roughly, to pay for more disturbances in the East. The arrest is nice but the real good news is that we have a better window on Putin’s tactics. After subverting Crimea the idea is to use Crimeans to subvert the Donbass. Anyone who has been to those places knows that’s an inherently stupid idea because Donbass people are pretty much the most homogeneous and shoulder-to-shoulder Ukrainians you can find, and few things irritate them more than outsiders telling them how to live. That’s why the Kiev’s language policy is so hated there. 

Ukraine media reports that a big reason for the precipitous fall of the hryvna, is that Russian banks working in Ukraine have been buying dollars like crazy, to try and destroy the value of Ukraine’s currency. Although this is of course bad news for Ukrainian importers, the information will push awareness of Putin’s uncivilized behavior into a place that so far has pretty much been cool with him: international financial markets. Traders in London and NYC and Singapore are perfectly happy to watch some tinpot dictator invade this place or that as long as they make money, but a major state intervening in a foreign currency market is far, far beyond the pale. According to the reports there were 14 banks involved, and Ukraine just banned them from trading foreign currencies in the country. So here’s your market tip for the day: hold onto your hryvnas, they’re going to strengthen!

I’m sure the Kremlin planners thought it was a good idea. But just as the other day’s Russian bomber flyover of the US destroyer in the Black Sea will draw the negative attention of the defense establishment, Russia’s mucking around with Ukraine’s currency is going to get the very unpleasant attention of Wall Street. When the West comes out with its list of blacklisted Russian businesses, those banks will be at the top of the list. And if ALL of Russia’s major banks were involved in the scam, and ALL of them get blacklisted…maybe the Russians will have to go to the Iranians to do international transactions, 

Ukrainians raising militia in all sorts of places

Admittedly, this in part is just because of frustration with about 10 days’ of seeming inaction by the national government on east Ukraine. This isn’t completely fair, in fact it appears Kiev was disogranized sure but also moving to contain the problem by making deals with the West, sacking incompetent bosses and moving troops and so forth. Still, Ukrainian media is reporting militia units have sprung up pretty much in every province around Donetsk province. The most picturesque report came from  .    

Separatists looking less nasty

Now that the separatist/terrorists have been holding their buildings in various places in Donetsk province for a few days or more, the Ukrainian media is getting a better look at them and frankly sometimes it’s not so much Fifth Column as it is Keystone Cops. In Slavyansk the gunmen drove up to the city airfield, told the Ukrainian troops there they better surrender or else, and the officer in charge said he had orders to use weapons to defend the airfield and he planned to obey them. The separatists left. Also in Slavyansk, local media reported separatists have robbed citizens of their cars on grounds “it’s for the revolution”, and one band broke into a store selling children’s food looted it. This is of course not the sort of operational moves that win the local population’s hearts and minds for insurgents, nor is is the sort of behavior one would expect from highly-trained Russian secret operatives. It is however fairly logical behavior for a mix of corrupt cops, mobsters and military retirees paid $500 each to attack a government building with the promise Putin would send reinforcements in the next few days, who have figured out maybe the Russian army isn’t coming, but the Ukrainian army is. Ukraine just jacked up the standard sentence for separatist acts to eight years in the slammer, which brings me nicely to my next item.

Meet Slavyansk’s charismatic and flexible mayor: Nelya Shtepa

http://www.segodnya.ua/regions/donetsk/Skandalnaya-mer-Slavyanska-pokazala-svoy-roskoshnyy-osobnyak-455315.html

Slavyansk is in the heart of the grassroots of the Regions Ukraine political party and so one of the places where former President Yanukovych could count on the strongest support. Regions Ukraine according to its enemies has long been run by about three oligarchs who use the party to control practically all industry and business in Donbass, and until recently the party’s discipline was rigid and very pro-Russian. Recently Ukrainian independent media has published evidence Yanukovych and Regions Ukraine had as its top goal support of Russian, rather than Ukrainian national interests, and some of the flakier allegations include Regions Ukraine’s total penetration by Russian spies. Who knows about that, but in any case, Regions Ukraine for years enforced its control of Ukraine’s wealthiest provinces with a network of very obedient, Soviet-analog local politicians. An excellent example is the mayor of Slavyansk, Nelya Shtepa.

Four days ago a band of retired Soviet military, cops and Russian “tourists” – all apparently led by Russian special forces troopers – showed up at Slavyansk’s main police station, shot out windows and broke in to beat up police holding the building and capture the weapons inside. Video showed up on YouTube very quickly showing men looking very much like Russian special forces officers inventorying the weapons and handing them out to separatist milita. Other masked men tore down the Ukrainian flag on the front of the police station and raised a Russian one.

Shtepa showed up in front of the police station and stated she had no gripes about the break-in and looting because, as she put it, “the people that did it were our Donbass guys.” Slavyansk is for federalization and the people that had taken over the police station were either law-abiding local citizens, or “their guests.” Ukrainian national media quickly labelled her a collaborator.

Shtepa’s critics say she has ruled Slavyansk with an iron fist and her sharpest critics allege the opulence of her home and personal outfits is suspicious, given how poor Slavyansk is and that her lifestyle seems unsupportable by her official salary. The Segodnya newspaper story in the link above is a brilliant example of why some Ukrainian local officials are disliked. The person in charge lives very well, people see it, and at the same time they see roads and homes and conditions for everyone else that would not be out of place in the 1930s.

Three days ago the leader of the armed men that had taken over the police station announced he was running the city and that Mayor Shtepa was sacked, and further, that she had left town and was driving to Crimea. 

Two days later when – perhaps coincidentally, and perhaps not – no Russian army had showed up in Slavyansk and the Ukrainian army started showing signs of surrounding Donetsk province, Ms. Shtepa spoke with TV and said everything was quiet in Slavyansk but allowed she really didn’t know who it was that had taken over the police station and, by that time, the local national intelligence building. According to her, her office’s main goal was peace and calm in the city and preparing for the upcoming Easter holiday. She of course was not in Crimea on the lam, but in Slavyansk making sure government did its job.
http://www.segodnya.ua/regions/donetsk/nelya-shtepa-o-situacii-v-slavyanske-ya-ne-znayu-chto-takoe-zelenye-chelovechki-512829.html

One day ago. on Tuesday, Ukraine’s national intelligence agency, the SBU, opened an investigation into allegations Mayor Shtepa was in fact aiding and abetting the thugs and so possibly guilty of separatism. (See above, eight years’ in a Ukrainian prison, not a nice thing to happen to a nice political lady with very specific and not cheap tastes in interior decorating), Mayor Shtepa held a press conference, declared her allegiance to Ukraine, and explained that her seeming support to the separatists and Russian agents was all a trick to preserve the lives and property of Slavyank’s citizens, which are always at the forefront of her thoughts, because she is their legally-elected mayor.

http://www.segodnya.ua/regions/donetsk/sbu-otkryla-delo-na-mera-slavyanska-za-separatizm-shtepa-govorit-hitrila-513235.html

If Ukrainian troops take control of Slavyansk – and my instinct is sooner or later they will – then the SBU agents that follow will have many, many questions for Mayor Shtepa. She may even lose her position which, if it happens, would mark a small step towards Europe for Ukraine. I’m not there and I can’t say what Mayor Shtepa is or is not guilty of, but at the very least, she is a post-Soviet/political-clan style politician. She may have the good of Slavyansk at heart but for Ukraine to become a normal country, in my opinion, it needs politicians more conventional and less flamboyant than Nelya Shtepa.

Stefan Korshak is a former Kyiv Post staff writer