Here's another update from RFE/RL's news desk:
The Donbas Battalion, a volunteer paramilitary unit in Ukraine's National Guard, denies reports that it has captured 46 Chechen mercenaries fighting alongside pro-Russian insurgents in eastern Ukraine.
The battalion's press service published a statement on Facebook rejecting a claim made by one of its members that 46 Chechen militants had surrendered to the battalion near the town of Horlivka.
There has been no official comment from either Moscow or Grozny.
The Ukrainian Army earlier reported that fighters loyal to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov had asked to be allowed out of Ukraine.
Kadyrov has denied sending troops to eastern Ukraine, where the army is waging what it calls an "antiterrorist operation" against separatist insurgents.
(unian.net, rus.newsru.ua, and 24tv.ua)
Aha, Bits of President Putin's speech from yesterday are now running WITH AUDIO on Rossiya 24
— Daniel Sandford (@BBCDanielS) August 15, 2014
Andrew Bowen has written a thought-provoking article for "The Interpreter" magazine on how Russia is striving to establish its military in the vanguard of Moscow's new approach to foreign policy:
During Soviet times the military was as much a part of the communist party as it was an organ of the state, both ideologically primed to “ensure progress in the international class struggle…”
And now the Russian military stands as the vanguard of Russia’s new foreign policy. One that is led by an increasingly ideological Putin, whose vision of what Russia is and should be can be understood as a celebration of what Russia is, and what it is not—cosmopolitan and Western.
To be sure the pragmatic Putin is still there, he is just more heavily influence by his ideological Dr. Jekyll that is operating under a very different rational paradigm that we in the West would operate by. As NYU Professor Mark Galeotti and I wrote in Foreign Policy,
“Putin is not a lunatic or even a fanatic. Instead, just as there are believers who become pragmatists in office, he has made the unusual reverse journey. Putin has come to see his role and Russia’s destiny as great, unique, and inextricably connected. Even if this is merely an empire of, and in, his mind — with hazy boundaries and dubious intellectual underpinnings — this is the construct with which the rest of the world will have to deal, so long as Putin remains in the Kremlin.”
This ideological Putin is also a more forceful iteration that is increasingly comfortable using Russia’s military to massage, intimidate and even outright invade its neighbors to re-assert its dominance and to defend Putin’s conception of Russia’s exceptionalism, and most importantly, its sovereignty.
Yet this sovereignty is not just of Russia’s borders, it is also the Russian identity, free from the perversions and influence of the West. It is a celebration and a call to defend what makes Russia different and unique.
This protection of sovereignty has to be supported not just by ideology but by Russia’s military. And since 2008 its prowess has increased dramatically. It has increased not just its capabilities but its strategic thinking, and has been buoyed by a massive modernization program designed to create a modern military from the hulking shell that emerged from the carnivorous 1990’s and its long conflict in Chechnya. And much as Gorbachev tried to reform the USSR by turning guns into butter, Putin is increasingly turning butter into guns.
Russia now has the capability to field not just elite “little green men” that seized Crimea, but also large regular units that are both well organized and equipped to—increasingly—modern standards, with the ability to operate independently.
Yet despite these improvements, Russia’s military remains one of regional dominance and not global power projection.
Read the entire article here
Got to check out more convoy trucks this morning. A lot of them mostly empty like this one pic.twitter.com/9qM7bYliv9
— Courtney Weaver (@courtneymoscow) August 15, 2014
Here is another mostly empty one. Rus emergency services said they wanted reserve trucks if some break down 1/2 pic.twitter.com/4tO1gGOcrN
— Courtney Weaver (@courtneymoscow) August 15, 2014
Seems more like the trucks were hastily packed/ not enough time for all to be filled completely 2/2
— Courtney Weaver (@courtneymoscow) August 15, 2014
The Verkhovna Rada is fast becoming a more prolific boxing venue than Madison Square Garden. The latest bout of fisticuffs involved populist Radical Party deputy Oleh Lyashko, who took a "standing count" after walking into a sweet hook punch from independent deputy Oleksandr Shevchenko. Lyashko had been berating his parliamentary colleague for ignoring the plight of soldiers fighting in the Ukraine's east. ""Look at this pot-bellied fatty," he shouted. "You need to go to Donbas." (Reuters video)
#Russia'n humanitary #convoy stopped at #Finland's border at "Raatteen tie" in year 1940. Convoy's goal was Oulu. pic.twitter.com/rXj2qEHAoM
— Juhani Kaukoranta (@jukaukor) August 14, 2014
A huge Lenin toppled in Mariupol. http://t.co/XZNCiIT4QN
— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) August 15, 2014
Separatists's tactic of inviting the Ukrainian army to shoot at residential areas - reportage from Luhansk http://t.co/cbEz5R5QFq
— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) August 15, 2014
They've been keeping journalists away from the aid convoy this morning. But now there'll be an official press tour. pic.twitter.com/c8yCpvA3DW
— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) August 15, 2014
Putin, apparently, is willing to let bygones be bygones w/ Crimean Tatars: http://t.co/yLqql4IAy2
— Robert Coalson (@CoalsonR) August 15, 2014