Tomorrow at the European Council in Brussels I will speak to Europe's leaders on Ukraine
— Петро Порошенко (@poroshenko) August 29, 2014
Historian Anne Applebaum has been hypothesizing (quite chillingly) for Slate about where the Ukraine conflict could be headed:
Over and over again—throughout the entirety of my adult life, or so it feels—I have been shown Polish photographs from the beautiful summer of 1939: The children playing in the sunshine, the fashionable women on Krakow streets. I have even seen a picture of a family wedding that took place in June 1939, in the garden of a Polish country house I now own. All of these pictures convey a sense of doom, for we know what happened next. September 1939 brought invasion from both east and west, occupation, chaos, destruction, genocide. Most of the people who attended that June wedding were soon dead or in exile. None of them ever returned to the house.
In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine.
In retrospect, all of them now look naive. Instead of celebrating weddings, they should have dropped everything, mobilized, prepared for total war while it was still possible. And now I have to ask: Should Ukrainians, in the summer of 2014, do the same? Should central Europeans join them?
I realize that this question sounds hysterical, and foolishly apocalyptic, to American or Western European readers. But hear me out, if only because this is a conversation many people in the eastern half of Europe are having right now. In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine. The Russian Academy of Sciences recently announced it will publish a history of Novorossiya this autumn, presumably tracing its origins back to Catherine the Great. Various maps of Novorossiya are said to be circulating in Moscow. Some include Kharkov and Dnipropetrovsk, cities that are still hundreds of miles away from the fighting. Some place Novorossiya along the coast, so that it connects Russia to Crimea and eventually to Transnistria, the Russian-occupied province of Moldova. Even if it starts out as an unrecognized rump state—Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “states” that Russia carved out of Georgia, are the models here—Novorossiya can grow larger over time.
Russian soldiers will have to create this state—how many of them depends upon how hard Ukraine fights, and who helps them—but eventually Russia will need more than soldiers to hold this territory. Novorossiya will not be stable as long as it is inhabited by Ukrainians who want it to stay Ukrainian. There is a familiar solution to this, too. A few days ago, Alexander Dugin, an extreme nationalist whose views have helped shape those of the Russian president, issued an extraordinary statement. “Ukraine must be cleansed of idiots,” he wrote—and then called for the “genocide” of the “race of bastards.”
Read the entire article here
Dozens of cars lined up at checkpoint to leave Mariupol in southeast #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/flKgQXojiF
— Kristina Jovanovski (@kjovano) August 29, 2014
.@tvrain: 200 army conscripts in Russian region bordering Ukraine being "forced to sign contracts". Assumption in order to fight in Ukr
— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) August 29, 2014
Here's an interesting piece of diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing, as reported by our news desk:
Poland's air navigation authority has confirmed that it has denied permission for a plane carrying Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to fly through Polish airspace while attempting to return to Moscow from a visit to Slovakia.
The agency said it denied permission for the flight because the plane had, for unknown reasons, changed its status from a civilian flight to a military flight.
It said Shoiugu's plane was cleared to fly through Polish airspace after its status was changed back to that of a civilian flight.
Russian media reports said the minister’s plane turned around and landed back in Slovakia’s capital Bratislava, where it refueled.
Russia's First Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov called the brief ban a "crude violation of the norms and ethics" of conduct between states.
The move comes amid strong criticism from Poland of Russia's military role in support of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, which have prompted increased deployments by NATO of air and armored forces in Poland and the Baltic States.
(Reuters, AP, AFP, RIA-Novosti)
State of emergencies declared in many Russ regions, "bc of Ukr refugees". Often scaremongering - regions like Kirov only have couple hundred
— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) August 29, 2014
Glenn Kates piece on the reaction in Russia to Moscow's incursion in Ukraine has been reprinted by "The Guardian" and is now their most-viewed article:
In early spring, Vladimir Putin deployed soldiers without insignia into the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea to ensure a quick annexation of the territory.
After a month of denying their very existence, the Russian president nonchalantly acknowledged that the thousands of well-armed fighters, who had previously been cheekily referred to as "little green men," were in fact Russian troops.
Decried in the West, Russians gave the move near unanimous support. A territory was won through military might -- and an overwhelming referendum vote that has not been recognized in the West -- but without a fight.
But now, as Moscow reinvigorates a flailing pro-Russian separatist insurgency with a barely concealed incursion into southeastern Ukraine, indications are that Russian military men are dying. And as captured Russian paratroopers are paraded on Ukrainian television and servicemen are buried in secrecy, some Russians are asking a seemingly simple question:
"Are we at war?"
Read the entire article here
Luhansk rebel commander Mozgovoy speaks at a conference in Yalta, Crimea: "We'll listen to Putin's advice, but we'll act as we please".
— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) August 29, 2014
2 more #Russia soldiers captured in #Ukraine, say were told were going on exercises, crossed into Ukraine near Rostov http://t.co/U5hIoSWJRS
— Olexiy Solohubenko (@OS1954) August 29, 2014