The Kremlin plans to cut funding to its proxies in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas starting from 2019, several unconfirmed sources indicate.
Russian business news agency RBK reported on Sept. 15 that, according to its sources, the Russian government has decided to redirect “humanitarian aid” earlier planned to go to the Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas in 2019-2020 to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea and to Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast.
The plans were outlined in the minutes of a meeting led by Russian Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak on Sept. 1, which RBK said had come into its possession.
The statelets centered Donetsk and Luhansk are mentioned in the document as “certain territories,” which, according to RBK’s sources, is a euphemism used by Vladislav Surkov, the advisor of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, who is said to be the Kremlin’s point man on Russia’s war on Ukraine in the Donbas.
The euphemism for the Kremlin’s proxy statelets in the Donbas is used so that they are not named directly in official Russian government documents, a Russian government official told RBK, although the news agency did not name that official.
Meanwhile, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that the Kremlin’s Donbas statelets would get less aid from Russia, saying on Sept. 15 that there would be redistribution but not cuts in some areas. “It is a matter of bringing things to order,” he said.
According to the meeting minutes, the Russian government plans to provide up to an additional 3 billion dollars for infrastructure projects in Crimea and Kaliningrad Oblast.
The document, however, doesn’t clarify what amount of this sum was previously planned to be allocated to the Donbas, RBK said.
Germany’s Bild newspaper published an investigation in 2016 that said that Russia spends some 1 billion euros per year on public service salaries and pensions to support some 3 million residents in the Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas.
“The money is transported by heavily guarded military convoys from the three big train stations into the cities and villages of the occupied Donbass,” according to Bild.
Oleksandr Tyrchynov, the secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, told the media in 2016 that Kremlin pays some $6 billion per year to fund its Donbas proxies, half of which is spent on defense.
Yuriy Hrymchak, the deputy minister for the temporarily occupied territories, also said that according to his information the Kremlin was planning to stop the financing of the separatist-held Donbas areas.
“They (Russians) have started transferring some of the most valuable military equipment. Some of the leaders (of the statelets) are now looking for new housing somewhere,” Hrymchak said in an interview with the news website Apostrof on Aug. 22.
The RBK report comes after Putin’s recent proposals to allow a United Nations peacekeeping mission into the Russian-controlled parts of Donbas, and growing rumors of upcoming changes in the leadership of the Kremlin-created statelets.
Oleksiy Matsuka, the chief editor and founder of the Novosti Donbassa website, told the Kyiv Post that based on his sources the Donetsk statelet might soon be headed by Oleksandr Bobkov, a former Ukrainian lawmaker from runaway former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s party. He would replace the current leader, Oleksandr Zakharchenko.
Vasyl Volga, who was a lawmaker for Ukraine’s Socialist Party in 2006-2007, may be made the new head of the Luhansk statelet, replacing Ihor Plotnitsky, Matsuka added.
Matsuka also said that he had information that Surkov had recently visited Russian-occupied Donetsk and had told local leaders to “prepare for reintegration” with the rest of Ukraine.
“We received information that there is an agreement to reintegrate these territories, although not under the leadership of Zakharchenko and Plotnitsky, but more appropriate people,” Matsuka said.
