The US and Ukraine have been asserting that Russian troops are secretly in Eastern Ukraine. The one thing missing is physical evidence that would tie them. Now, Interpreter has posted two pictures that they say is of Russian troops in East Ukraine. The original Twitter post is here.
The Twitter poster posted together two pictures of Russian troops. One picture, he says, is from 2008. The other, from inside Ukraine, is from 2014. One of the people from both the 2008 and 2014 photos is the same person. The uniforms from both pictures are the same. The only thing missing is the insignia in the 2014 photo. Likely, the goal of these people is to seize police stations and government buildings, give weapons to "self-defense" forces, and hold these buildings.
These pictures require more discussion. Also, more physical evidence is needed so that Russia cannot plausibly deny that their troops are in Ukraine trying to seize control of East Ukraine. Photos can be manipulated just like any other piece of propaganda. The one thing we want to avoid is making the same mistake that we did with Iraq; in that scenario, we supposedly had a "slam dunk" case for war. It turns out Iraq had no more WMD's or chemical weapons.
General Phillip Breedlove, on his blog, shows some pictures of Russian troops operating in Crimea. The uniforms they are wearing are the same ones that the ones in the Twitter picture are wearing. One soldier in Breedlove's blog admitted that they were told to take off their insignias.
If Putin is seeking to invade Eastern Ukraine, there are two possible pretexts for war. The first is the unpaid debt that he says Ukraine owes to Russia over gas. In his strongest language yet, he says:
“The drama of the situation lies in the fact the lowest prices were in effect at the beginning of this year and Ukrainian partners stopped paying even at those prices,” Putin said at a session of the Security Council. “April 7 marked a yet another date for payments under the gas contract for March 2014 and they didn’t pay us a single dollar or ruble of the $ 540 million they were supposed to pay.”
“That’s an absolutely unacceptable situation,” he said.
As for the other pretext, Russia has always seen themselves as a "big brother" protector of Ethnic Russians. Putin, as far back as 2008, did not even see Ukraine as a country and the present situation where
certain members of the police and special forces are refusing to obey orders from Kiev "proves" that their government is not legitimate; therefore, Ethnic Russians must be "protected."
Responding to TASS, Interpreter notes:
ITAR-TASS makes several interesting decisions here. The Alfa anti-riot police are the infamous units that the Ukrainian Interior Ministry has said shot protesters in Maidan during February's uprising. Regardless, while there have been reports of police defecting today, we cannot independently verify this specific claim at this time.
In response,
the US is readying a new round of sanctions against Russia.
Behind the scenes, there’s shock and alarm inside the Obama administration about the recent actions by Russian forces. A senior administration official told The Daily Beast Sunday that the thinking inside the administration had been to wait until this Thursday before moving forward with any new sanctions. That’s the day U.S., EU, Russian, and Ukrainian governments are scheduled to meet in Geneva.
But given the new violence, the Obama administration has now moved to ready sanctions as early as Tuesday, the official said, cautioning that no final decision has been made. State Department, White House, and Treasury Department officials have been reaching out to their European counterparts over the weekend to persuade them to join a new sanctions regime. The E.U. Foreign Ministers will meet in Brussels Monday.
The Obama administration is reevaluating the situation on daily basis, revising their previous assumption that Russia would not interfere so blatantly in Eastern Ukraine ahead of the upcoming diplomatic conference.
The US has been concerned with Russian special forces infiltrating Eastern Ukraine since February.
U.S. intelligence officials now say Russia’s Spetsnaz are expanding into eastern and southern Ukraine, as well. The intelligence report from February assessed that Russian provocateurs would look to instigate low-level street brawls or “skirmishes” in eastern and southern Ukraine. The report also predicted that Russia’s shadow warriors would seek to pay off Ukrainians to attend pro-Russian rallies and in general fan the flames of separatism. And since then, eyewitnesses say, that’s exactly what’s happened.
One U.S. official said the U.S. military intelligence analysts suspect elements of the 45th Spetsnaz regiment of Russia’s military intelligence service known as the GRU were conducting the provocations in Ukraine. On Thursday the White House added Igor Sergun, the 57 year old chief of the GRU, along with 19 others to a list of Russian officials sanctioned for the invasion of Crimea.
“This is the use of deniable special operators under GRU control to create provocations and really these are quasi-deniable operations,” added John Schindler, a retired NSA counter-intelligence officer and specialist in Russian affairs who now teaches at the U.S. Naval War College.
Russia says that the ball is now in the West's court to avert civil war.
“The western sponsors of ‘maidan’ protesters, especially those who put their signatures under the aforesaid agreement and also the United States who is standing behind them, are obliged to bridle their fosterlings, who have gone out of control, and make them distance themselves from neo-Nazis and other extremists; stop using weapons against the Ukrainian people and immediately start a real national dialogue, in which all regions will take an equal part, in the interests of an early and fundamental constitutional reform,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
“A possibility to avert a civil war is now in the hands of the West,” the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed.
We note that Lincoln said that averting civil war was in the South's hands prior to commencing the Civil War.
James Meek, a reporter for the Guardian who has lived in Ukraine before and who would know the pulse of the ground, has this to say.
There are multiple possible interpretations of what is unfolding in eastern Ukraine. The Putinite "men in green", as they are now being called by Ukrainians, for the time being have the active support of some locals, particularly pensioners. But one essential point is beyond dispute. Nothing that has happened in Ukraine up to now justifies either military intervention by Russia or the injection of armed mercenaries and irregulars into a peaceful country.
In the wake of the revolution in Kiev that drove the corrupt president Victor Yanukovych to flee, Ukraine faced a world of problems. Not one of those problems has been made easier by Putin seizing Crimea or sponsoring insurrection in eastern Ukraine. Ever since the revolution, Putin has promoted the idea that Ukraine is in "chaos". But there was no chaos, so he made some. The only chaos in Ukraine has been caused by Russian intervention.
Putin has promoted the notion that ethnic Russians were in danger. There has never been evidence for this unless you count as brutal repression a failed attempt to revive an old law making Ukrainian the sole language for court hearings and government forms. Putin calls for greater autonomy for the south and east of Ukraine, and more rights for Russian-speakers, while doing all he can to obstruct elections that would bring them back into the political process.
In a haunting article, written during Putin's invasion of Crimea, the Ukrainian writer and ethnic Russian Yelena Styazhkina said: "Ukraine is my motherland. The Russian language is my native language. Let Pushkin save me and liberate me from sadness and anxiety. Pushkin, but not Putin."