Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 8 – After a media
boomlet suggesting Mikhail Babich, the recently recalled Russian ambassador to
Minsk, would replace Vladislav Surkov as the Kremlin’s point man on the
Donbass, Abkhazia and South Ossetia (charter97.org/ru/news/2019/5/8/333386/ and iarex.ru/news/66360.html), sources say
Surkov will stay where he is (nakanune.ru/articles/115120/).
The idea that Babich would replace
Surkov began to circulate even before Babich was recalled as ambassador. The
argument was, Ivan Zuyev of the Nakanune news agency says, that with the
election of Vladimir Zelensky as president of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin wanted to
take a tougher line on Kyiv and who better to do that than Babich given his actions
in Minsk?
The False Bottom telegram channel
was one of outlets to make that argument.
Another was Aleksandr Zhuchkovsky, the author of 85 Days of Slavyansk, who even suggested that Babich was working in
or at least on the Donbass while still at the Russian embassy in the Belarusian
capital.
But sources near or in the Kremlin have
told Nakanune that all this is “fake news” and that there is no truth in it at
all, Zuyev continues. He notes, however,
that journalist Konstantin Dolgov has added an additional twist: Surkov will remain as assistant to the
president and so what his real role will be in the future isn’t clear.
Darya Mitina, the former
representative of the DNR in Moscow, provides partial support for Dolgov’s
line. She points out that the curator over the Donbass republics “does not have
official status.” Thus, the allocation of responsibilities within the Russian
Presidential Administration may shift even if Surkov remains and Babich arrives.
Indeed, she suggests, Zuyev says,
that the Kremlin may change these responsibilities without making any
announcement; and outsiders won’t know who is really in charge until a long
time after the fact. To the extent that
is the case, speculation about Babich and Surkov is likely to continue.
The Donbass diplomat said that she
expects Moscow to make some personnel changes now that the elections in Ukraine
are over but that in her view, “they will involve the lower and middle ranks”
rather than the top person. There is no
basis to expect “global changes,” especially at the top.
Moscow hasn’t made a final decision
on what it will do next with regard to the DNR and LNR; and until it does,
Mitina says, it would be strange to make a significant change at the top, something that might even make it
more difficult for the Kremlin to maneuver on this issue in the future.
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