Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 31 – The appearance
of non-Russian fighters in the Russian militias in the Donbas is not a
curiosity but rather a conscious Moscow policy to prevent any possibility of
fraternization between ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, something that if it
happened could undermine Moscow’s goals there, according to Andrey Okara.
Many journalists and commentators
have treated sightings of Buryats, Chechens, or other non-Russians on the
Russian side of the lines as a curiosity or even source of amusement, but in
fact, the Russian analyst says, the dispatch and use of non-Russians in Ukraine
is very much part of the Kremlin’s policy (nv.ua/opinion/okara/javascript:void%280%29;-66390.html).
Kremlin political technologists and “the
theoreticians of hybrid war from the General Staff and Ministry of Defense of the
Russian Federation have come up with a very correct (from the point of view of
the interests of the Kremlin) step.”
They have worked to ensure that on the frontlines of the fighting, those
on Moscow’s side are not ethnic Russians.
Instead, he continues, “on the side
of the Russian world, fight not ethnic Slavs but non-Slavs – Chechens, Buryats,
even Yakuts, Daghestanis and Ingush.”
Why is this happening? “Because,”
Okara writes, “ethnic Russians, even the most pro-Putin and most committed
vatniks … in an extreme situation always find a common language and point of
contact with Ukrainians.” That doesn’t happen with Buryats and Chechens, on the
one hand, and Ukrainians, on the other.
According to Okara, “there are many
occasions when Russian ‘volunteers’ phone Ukrainian ‘fighters’ and say: well,
guys, you’d best get away from here, we will be firing on you there.’ Such situations
are not rare in the opposite direction as well,” the Russian commentator says.
But again this doesn’t happen with non-Slavs.
He concludes his articles by saying
that in this way “the Russian world has donned the mask of the Horde. Or
perhaps alternatively,” it was always a horde but until now operating as the
Russian world? Or even, “the Russian world is a slightly modified and
externally Slavicized Horde?”
In the end, then, Okara too treats
this as more an occasion for levity than as something serious. But there are
three reasons for thinking that to the extent his analysis of Russian
intentions in using non-Slavic fighters is correct, this is likely to be a very
serious development indeed.
First, and most immediately, it
suggests real command and control problems in the LNR and DNR forces, that
junior officers and men and possibly more senior ones as well are acting on the
basis of the oft-expressed view that the Ukrainians they are fighting are not a
separate nation but members of the same people as themselves.
If the ethnic Russian militants are
acting in that way, this could make it more not less difficult for the Donbas
regimes to advance and make it more not less probable that Moscow will
ultimately have to intervene even more massively with regular troops if it
wants to push Ukrainian forces back.
Second, it means that the Kremlin
has some real doubts about the loyalty of precisely the ethnic group in whose
name it claims to act, the ethnic Russians. If it feels compelled to use
non-Russians as a kind of modern janissary force, such a policy will infuriate some
Russians – and especially military commanders -- even as it may lead non-Russians
to make demands.
And third, over time, any
fraternization between Russian fighters and Ukrainian forces could lead to the
spread of ideas of the Ukrainian revolution first to these fighters and then
back into Russia itself when these fighters return home, perhaps the Kremlin’s
worst nightmare of all in the current situation.
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