Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 20 – Even as
observers try to keep track of the shifting lines of the front in Donetsk and at
the airport there, a more frightening form of conflict is spreading across Ukraine
– a partisan-style war in other parts of that country that will give Moscow
additional leverage on Kyiv while complicating Ukraine’s response to Russian
aggression.
“A partisan war is going on full
steam” in Ukraine, Russian commentator Ruslan Gorevoy says in an article on the
“Versiya” portal yesterday. The number of its victims is still relatively
small, allowing Kyiv to claim that it isn’t a serious problem, but clearly it
is growing and likely to grow further in the coming months (versia.ru/articles/2015/jan/19/vyshli_iz_lesa).
In some places, the Ukrainian
authorities can’t hide its spread, he continues, noting that in Odessa, the
local police have been unable to cope with the anti-Kyiv partisans and have had
to request additional forces from the National Guard. Such requests, Gorevoy suggests, are likely
to grow and overwhelm Ukraine’s capacity to cope.
According to him, “the potential for
partisan units today is extremely high.”
Rostislav Ishchenko, who works as a political analyst for Russian state
television, says that “Russia will be able to imitate the liberation of Ukraine
by the armed forces of Novorossiya,” if the military capability” the partisan
underground elsewhere is even “50 percent” of what its leaders claim.
At present, partisan commanders say
there are about 10,000 fighters in their ranks in Odessa oblast, 12,000 to
15,000 in Kharkhiv oblast, and “no less than 5,000” in Zaporozhye. Few believe
them, but then few in Kyiv or Moscow believed in the claims of the Donetsk and
Luhansk leaders only a few months ago.
Recently,
he reports, Vladimir Shabliyenko, a press spokesman for the Ukrainian interior
ministry in Odessa, acknowledged that “it would be naïve to suppose that the
problem of ‘partisan activity’ is wholly invented,” especially since Ukrainian
militia patrols are not strong enough by themselves to counter it.
Although some in the ranks of the
partisan detachments are ordinary citizens, Gorevoy says, most of the
pro-Moscow fighters are former law enforcement or military personnel who
support the Russian side and do not want to fight in the Donbas. They bring their weapons and military skills
with them.
The partisans say, Gorevoy
continues, that they do not accept military aid from Moscow lest that detract
from Russia’s assistance to the fighters in the Donbas or open the way for
criticism of Russia internationally. But of course, that is what the Donbas
fighters have said as well and what one would expect such people to say even
now.
The first anti-Maidan partisan detachments
were formed almost a year ago, but they have grown in number, size and
sophistication since then, and neither the militia nor the Ukrainian security
services have had great success in countering them and preventing attacks on
military convoys and government institutions, according to Odessa journalist
Yury Tkachyov.
“Ought one to expect an increase in
partisan activity in Ukraine in the immediate future?” Gorevoy asks
rhetorically. The answer, he says, is an unqualified yes. Ishchenko suggested
that the partisans are organizing now to go on the attack in the spring across
all of southeastern Ukraine.”
According to the analyst, “up until
now, the value of the actions of the partisans has been more in the information
and propaganda areas than in the military one,” but that will change as the
battles in Donetsk and Luhansk intensify. Indeed, Ishchenko says, “the
partisans could become the moving force for the liberation of Ukraine from the
Kyiv junta.”
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