Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

The Ukraine crisis still has a long way to play out, but certain assumptions can be made with confidence.

The first is that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s minimum goal is to ensure a non-aligned federated Ukraine, and that he is serious about this fight for which he has elite-level support.  He also has popular support, which he is finding no problem in rallying to his nationalist flag.

For instance, in an analysis published on 2 June, the excellent BBC Monitoring Service noted that Russian state TV's portrayal of the conflict in Ukraine is coming increasingly to resemble its coverage at the time of the war in Georgia in 2008, with presenters and pundits repeatedly accusing Kiev of genocide.

On 1 June, for example, in what was clearly a significant escalation in the rhetoric being used by the Russian media to describe the fighting between government forces and separatists in east Ukraine, star news anchor Dmitriy Kiselev used the word "genocide" no fewer than six times in official channel Rossiya 1's primetime Vesti Nedeli (News of the Week).

In Vesti Nedeli's headline sequence, which showed gory images of dead bodies strewn across a road, Kiselev announced: "War crimes, genocide; shelling of schools and hospitals; women, children and old people held hostage.”  He then told viewers that "genocide" is a word that is "absolutely applicable to the Ukrainian military's actions against people in the towns and cities of east Ukraine".

"Genocide?  Yes, genocide," Kiselev continued, as he spoke about Kiev's "heartless, indiscriminate annihilation" with a studio caption reading "Genocide" displayed prominently behind him.  Kiselev also branded several of Ukraine's leaders, including President-elect Petro Poroshenko, as "war criminals".

Accusations of "genocide" against Kiev also featured in a talk show on Rossiya 1 on 1 June hosted by Vladimir Solovyev, who according to a recent poll is Russia's most respected journalist.  At the top of the show, Solovyev told viewers that the Ukrainian authorities were deliberately targeting "residential districts, hospitals, schools and kindergartens" in the east of the country.  He wound up the discussion by referring to the "tragedy of the genocide" there.  Solovyev's studio guests joined in the attacks, with prominent Russian MP Sergey Mironov saying Poroshenko was ready to carry out "genocide against his own people".

Rossiya 1 also claimed that it had learnt from "sources" that 2,000 was the "allowable number of victims" of Kiev's military operation agreed at a meeting between Poroshenko and US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt.  Rossiya 1 implied that Washington was dictating the actions of the Ukrainian government.

Further examples were provided by primetime TV news on Russia's three main TV channels on 3 June, which was nearly all about Ukraine.  The message, once again illustrated with graphic bloody images, was that civilians are suffering terribly in the east of the country.  Furthermore, it was pointed out, not only is the West ignoring the humanitarian situation there but US President Barack Obama is proposing to build up forces in Europe.

All three channels - state-controlled Channel One, official state channel Rossiya 1 and Gazprom-Media's NTV - reported on the aftermath of Ukrainian air strikes on the Luhansk regional administration building on 2 June, which left eight civilians dead, and Ukrainian forces' attacks on Slovyansk and Donetsk.  The terror of civilians and the threats they face were illustrated as follows:

- Graphic amateur video of bloodied corpses and a woman sitting on the ground covered in blood in Luhansk after the 2 June air strikes were shown on all channels; the images were repeated later in the Rossiya 1 bulletin;

- Old people and children were among the dead and injured in Slovyansk after the town came under fire (Channel One); a 90-year-old "babushka" was said to be unconscious with multiple injuries;

- Women were shown running to an air raid shelter in Luhansk (Rossiya 1), and women were shown taking refuge with children in a cellar (Channel One);

- The Ukrainian air force was said to have used S-8KO missiles, a kind of cluster bomb that is banned by international conventions (Rossiya 1 and NTV);

All three channels said that Kiev's plan was to cleanse the east of the country of separatists before the inauguration of President-elect Petro Poroshenko on 7 June.

All three channels also reported that Ella Pamfilova, Russia's human rights ombudsman, had met President Putin and told him that she was amazed how Western human rights organizations were "deaf and dumb" to the humanitarian situation in Ukraine and the influx of refugees into Russia.  Putin was reported to have promised to act on her proposals to help.

Both Channel One and Rossiya 1 reported on people said to be Ukrainian refugees in Russia.  Channel One in particular showed happy, relieved families, no longer afraid.  "Everywhere they are received with an open heart, people try to help with whatever they can," the presenter said.

The West, and the US in particular, was portrayed as indifferent to and/or partly responsible for the humanitarian suffering because:

- Western countries rejected Russia's draft UN Security Council resolution on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine (NTV);

- the increased military activity in east Ukraine coincided with the arrival of US Assistant Defence Secretary Derek Chollet in Kiev, all channels reported, thereby suggesting that Washington was complicit;

- President Obama - "Nobel peace prize laureate", to quote Channel One - was shown visiting Warsaw saying the US had plans to boost its military presence in Europe; both Channel One and Rossiya 1 cited opinion polls suggesting that Obama and his administration were misguided and unpopular.

A poll conducted by the independent Levada Centre between 23 and 26 May suggested that just over 30% of Russians would back an invasion of east Ukraine, and Russian state TV's recent coverage of the conflict is hardly likely to have caused that number to decrease.

The wider calculations

The second assumption that can be asserted with reasonable confidence is that the overall international equation currently favours Russia.  As last week’s Shangri-La security conference in Singapore so clearly demonstrated, the biggest challenge for the United States is the rise of China, and meeting that challenge successfully will require a co-operative relationship with Moscow, as will the continuing challenges of the Middle East and the challenges that will emerge in Central Asia following the final US withdrawal from Afghanistan.  And Russia, of course, has been hinting none too subtly that this necessary co-operation is not unconditional.

At an international security conference held in Moscow from 20-23 May, for instance, overt linkage was made between the crisis in Ukraine and the instability in the Middle East.

The conference was attended by top Russian political and security officials, including the defence minister and his deputy, the foreign minister and his deputy, and the chief of staff, and they put forward the thesis that the West had initiated the ‘colour revolutions’ in order to bring down existing regimes and to create a zone of instability around Russia.

The officials then linked the events in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, and Syria, and they alleged Western subversion in all cases with the end result being the weakening of sovereign states to the point of dissolution and the strengthening of terrorist elements.  Ukraine was seen as another link in this chain of subversion.

One experienced Israeli observer noted: “Regardless of the debate on the validity of this approach [linking events in Ukraine with the Middle East], its presentation at the conference should be seen as a message to the West that Russia is considering a change in its policy, by switching to a proactive policy in the international arena beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union.”  This observer added: “Russia is making it clear that the Middle East could be an area of confrontation with the United States, in order to challenge and harm US interests and to establish Russia’s standing as a global power.”

But the calculations for the Western powers are not easy.  Quite apart from Western aversion to Russian revanchism, the US feels that in order to maintain its superpower credibility in Asia and the Middle East the Obama administration needs to counter the impression of weakness with which it is now imbued.  The judgement in Washington is that this requires playing relatively tough with Putin over Ukraine, not least by committing greater resources to the defence of Eastern Europe, as it has this week.

The other main problem is that the European Union, with its relative prosperity and benign politics, will continue to exert a magnetic influence over Ukraine and other peripheral areas of the former Soviet Union.  This is genuine and cannot be wished away by the Kremlin.

On the other hand, there are indications that Putin is ready to compromise over Ukraine (neutral and federated would do it), and there are influential Western leaders who, despite their distaste for the ways of Putin’s Kremlin, understand the importance of keeping in with Moscow given the growing challenges from China and in the Middle East and in post-Afghanistan Central Asia.  Despite the tough talk from the G7 summit this week, our assessment is that this is the view that will prevail in time.  JdeC.