Fight Club, Donetsk
Posted by Michelle Moquin on June 18th, 2014
Good morning!
LK: This one’s for you. I believe it to be the latest from what I could find. Again, I HOPE you, your family and friends are doing okay.
From ForeignPolicy.com
Fight Club, Donetsk
Meet eastern Ukraine’s emerging warlords.
DONETSK, Ukraine — On a recent sunny afternoon in Donetsk, Vadim Kerch was holding court in a dark office in the former headquarters of Ukraine’s security service, which has been occupied since last month by a group of rebels who call themselves the Russian Orthodox Army. Kerch is one of their two commanders.
A local resident was appealing to Kerch for help. At the end of May, the man said, armed men claiming to be part of the pro-Russian uprising seized his car in the neighboring city of Makeyevka and then called him asking how much he was willing to pay for its return.
Between answering calls on his cell phone, Kerch told the supplicant to get to the point. One of the half-dozen Kalashnikov-toting rebels grouped in a loose circle around the desk spoke up, noting that at least 46 vehicles had been carjacked in Makeyevka. Finally, Kerch promised to go with the newly appointed “people’s prosecutor” later that day to get the car back.
“Today is full of bullshit rather than war,” he joked.
When pro-Russian protesters first occupied the Donetsk regional administration building in April, different rebel groups and units staked out each of the 11 floors. Since then, these motley bands have been eclipsed by three powerful, armed factions: the Russian Orthodox Army, the Vostok Battalion, and Oplot. Each is built around an influential commander who spends his time not only waging the ongoing guerrilla war against Kiev’s forces, but also dispensing harsh justice and detaining civilians, sometimes for prisoner exchanges. Each group has several hundred men, including Russian volunteers, and heavy armaments. (During a recent visit to Vostok’s base, I saw four fighting vehicles, two anti-aircraft guns, numerous rocket-propelled grenades, and surface-to-air missiles.)
Are these commanders the backbone of an emerging independent East Ukraine, or are they burgeoning warlords staking out their turf for whatever comes next?
So far, Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation” to take back eastern Ukraine has united the rebel leaders in the defense of the self-declared Donetsk and Lugansk “People’s Republics,” even though each has his own vision of the region’s political future. The rebels largely view the new Kiev government as an American puppet dominated by ultranationalists and “fascists” and have called on Russia to deploy troops.
Ukraine’s Health Ministry said last week that at least 270 people have died in eastern Ukraine since the military operation began in April, though this number has since risen to at least 330. In the bloodiest day of fighting yet, rebels killed three border guards in Mariupol on Saturday, June 14, and shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane outside Lugansk, killing all 49 servicemen on board.
But President Petro Poroshenko’s efforts toward de-escalation, including the promise of a cease-fire if rebels agree to lay down their arms, could soon test these commanders’ willingness to submit themselves to a greater authority. Their real allegiances — whether to the Russian government, a certain local oligarch, the people’s republics, or simply themselves — remain unclear.
Vostok is the most battle-ready group, led by Alexander Khodakovsky, a thoughtful man with a closely shaved head and goatee who was formerly the head of an elite special forces unit. The third major armed force inDonetsk is Oplot, a civic organization and mixed martial arts club espousing clean living and pan-Slavic nationalism that in Donetsk has been transformed into a militia under the command of Alexander Zakharchenko, a sardonic former mechanic with a potbelly and a deep tan.
But there are other emerging warlords too. Igor Girkin, who goes by the nom de guerre Strelkov and is alleged by the Ukrainian government to be a Russian intelligence agent, controls the besieged city of Sloviansk, where journalists have been abducted and two rebels from competing groups were recently executed on his orders. Last week, he arrested the “people’s mayor” of Sloviansk, Vyacheslav Ponomarev. In the next region over, the city of Lugansk and several nearby towns are under the control of the Army of the Southeast, whose founder, Valery Bolotov, recently traveled to Russia to recuperate from an assassination attempt. “Only our army is preserving the safety of Lugansk residents,” Vladimir Gromov, the head of counterintelligence in the Army of the Southeast, told me.
Several other small cities in the region are largely under the control of strongman commanders, from Igor Bezler — a former lieutenant colonel in the Russian army and also an alleged intelligence agent — in Gorlovka to a group of Russian Cossacks in Antratsyt. Bezler, who is known by the nickname “Bes” or “Demon,” recently appeared in a video in which he appeared to execute two Ukrainian intelligence agents by firing squad. (Some analysts have said the video may have been staged.)
A symbolic moment in the transition from hodgepodge groups of men with clubs to a few heavily armed militias came at the end of May, when members of the Vostok Battalion kicked all rebels who were not members of the self-appointed government out of the Donetsk administration building. Many saw the tense showdown as a move by Vostok to establish itself as the premier power in Donetsk, but Khodakovsky said the “show of force” was a side effect. The real goal, he said, was to punish looters who had stolen alcohol and other goods from a supermarket that was abandoned during heavy fighting at the airport that killed at least 50 of Khodakovsky’s men, including 31 Russian citizens.
A rash of marauding that has hit eastern Ukraine in recent weeks has positioned militia commanders as the ultimate arbiters in their locales. Strelkov even ordered the shooting of two of his men for “looting, armed robbery, kidnapping, [and] leaving battle positions,” according to an execution order posted online that appeared to be stamped and signed by Strelkov.
These days, eastern Ukraine’s countryside is largely a lawless territory dotted with checkpoints run by pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian government forces, while the cities have retained a sense of order. But all three Donetsk militia commanders told me that criminality is on the rise.
“We catch several looters every day,” Zakharchenko, Oplot’s commander, told me. “They steal cars, rob people on the street, steal from stores, and commit other provocations.” Most police have declared fealty to the new People’s Republic and are powerless next to the heavily armed militants around the region. The regional head of police resigned after speaking with pro-Russian protesters who stormed his headquarters shortly after the start of the uprising in April.
Kerch said law enforcement officers have been “demoralized” by the rebel movement. “The police are used to working with criminals, but now there are many people with machine guns in the city, and far from all of those who started taking part in this movement think about their homeland first and foremost,” he said. “Donetsk People’s Republic bandits who weren’t around before now wear the symbols and masks and rob people.”
To crack down on such actions, rebel militias have conducted day and night patrols, sometimes working with police and volunteers. In Donetsk, violators are not shot, Khodakovsky said, though they may be publicly humiliated, such as two men in a recently published video who were forced to sweep sidewalks wearing signs saying, “I’m a thief.” But Kerch said executions could be warranted in wartime.
The outbreak of kidnappings and detentions in rebel-held areas, however, reveals the darker side of vigilante justice, including that meted out by rebel commanders. Reports by the United Nations, theOrganization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and Human Rights Watch have suggested that the number of abductions in eastern Ukraine is growing. Journalists, local citizens, and OSCE monitors have been held hostage. The local rights organization Prosvita recently estimated that 200 people are being detained illegally, a number that Kerch confirmed. Zakharchenko said Oplot alone is holding 40 to 50 prisoners.
An electoral commission member from Donetsk, who wished to remain anonymous, said he and three friends were seized three days before the May 25 presidential election and held for six days in the basement of the security services building where the Russian Orthodox Army is headquartered. They were interrogated, beaten, and tortured with electroshocks. Their captors shot live bullets into the wall next to them. The electoral commission member was later hospitalized with a ruptured eardrum, a basal skull fracture, and a kidney contusion, he said. Although the man was blindfolded, he said his main interrogator had a strong Russian accent. Another 20 to 30 people were being held in the basement with him.
Kerch said he was holding prisoners, including two “looters” who had stolen the man’s car in Makeyevka, but declined to comment further. (Kerch said he had returned the car to its owner.) He said the Russian Orthodox Army is “actively searching” for Kiev agents.
The Russian Orthodox Army also seized Nikolai Yakubovich, a local pro-Kiev activist and advisor to Ukraine’s security council, and exchanged him for rebel prisoners. In a video filmed during his captivity, one of Yakubovich’s eyes is bruised shut and he shows signs of other injuries.
Dmitry Verzilov, an electoral commission member and district council member in Donetsk, said he himself was seized for several hours when he went to speak to rebel leaders about the hostage problem. He was thrown in the basement of the Donetsk administration building, where he says he counted 83 prisoners. A Donetsk People’s Republic spokesperson denied that prisoners were being held in the basement of the administration building.
In another hint of the growing lawlessness, Maxim Petrukhin, an aide to Donetsk People’s Republic chairman Denis Pushilin, was gunned down by a passing car in the city center in broad daylight on Sunday. Pushilin said “Kiev agents” were likely to blame.
Donetsk People’s Republic leaders have said each militia will oversee certain areas of law enforcement and military operations. But the commanders say there is no clear separation of duties yet, and all remain a law to themselves, with their alliances hard to guess. All three major Donetsk units were suspected of working with local oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and an ally of former President Viktor Yanukovych, after their fighters stopped an angry crowd from storming his residence and guarded it for days after. The militia leaders said their men were simply trying to prevent mass disorder.
Their ties to the Kremlin are also unclear. Mark Galeotti, a professor of global affairs at New York University and an expert on Russian security services, says that Khodakovsky was known as an officer of the “more close to Moscow variety” in Ukraine’s special forces, where Russian agents were notoriously pervasive. Gromov in Lugansk was recently photographed in Moscow with Russian nationalist MP Vladimir Zhirinovsky. But the three Donetsk commanders denied direct links with the Kremlin and said they had obtained their weapons from captured military installations.
Kiev has accused Russia of sending men and weapons into eastern Ukraine, including a pair of tanks that it said had come across the border on June 12. Rebels said they had seized the tanks from a military warehouse. (I saw three tanks flying a Russian flag outside Donetsk later that day.)
If the rebellion’s military leaders are receiving money from Russia, it is most likely from nationalist oligarchs such as Konstantin Malofeev, who previously employed both Sloviansk commander Strelkov and Donetsk People’s Republic Prime Minister Alexander Borodai at his firm, according to reporting by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazetaand well-known journalist Oleg Kashin. Malofeev also funded a separatist leader in Crimea, Kashin reported.
The Donetsk militia chiefs say they are loyal to the Donetsk People’s Republic, though those ties seem informal and in some cases tenuous. ”There’s no Donetsk People’s Republic; this is all just some project that I don’t understand,” Khodakovsky said. “I didn’t vote in the referendum [on independence]. I didn’t vote for this. I just faced a choice: to be with my own people or to be against my own people. Russia is my country. I served there. My relatives live there.”
Their end goal is also vague: Zakharchenko said he would be able to lay down his weapons when “no tanks or fighting vehicles are pointing their barrels at me.” But for now they remain united in a conflict against what they see as an unjust, aggressive government in Kiev. “A Russian man invented this in World War II,” Zakharchenko said, gesturing to a huge Simonov anti-tank rifle pointing out of a window next to his office below a Soviet-built television tower, “and Russian men are still using it to defend their homeland.”
Although Poroshenko has pledged amnesty for rebels who agree to lay down their arms, he specifically excluded those who have committed grievous crimes. Given that Borodai and Pushilin were slapped last week with charges of terrorism and attempting to overthrow the government, militia leaders can more likely expect prosecution than amnesty if Kiev retakes the east. Their actions have also divided the local populace, a majority of which opposes the rebels’ tactics. If the stalemate continues or if eastern Ukraine successfully separates from the rest of the country, will these men eventually relinquish their power and risk their personal safety? Or will they begin fighting among themselves?
“If we put down our weapons by agreement, there are always people who don’t want to do so because they’ve gotten used to the power that weapons give them,” says Khodakovsky, the Vostok Battalion’s commander. “We will have to detain them and force them to.”
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Peace & Love.
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Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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June 18th, 2014 at 9:23 am
The russians are destroying my country. There are always bad men who look for a reason to be as mean as they can to anyone for ego or profit. Putin is ever ready to exploit this situation.
June 18th, 2014 at 9:35 am
Hafa Adai, I know many of you are very upset because your mail to others on the island is being returned as “Undeliverable.”
Christopher Warren the USPS Officer-In-Charge, says that he will try to help make us understand the new rule changes for addressing envelopes to islanders now that manual sorting stopped as of this past February and mail is now being sorted using computerized sorting machines.
Warren said, “What we had issues with were reading the addresses. I’d say 80 to 90% of the problem with the addresses were additions to the addresses, which are neighborhood names, building names, especially how they positioned the order of number in the addresses. As far as your addresses go, the village part won’t cause your mail to be kicked out. It’s what’s on the street line and zip code attached to that street line.”
Warren believes working closely together with GovGuam and the mayors would prevent issues from arising in the future.
He plans to set up educational seminars to inform mayors and GovGuam offices on how to correctly input an address and give examples of neighborhood names or building names that were causing confusing with the sorting machines.
June 18th, 2014 at 9:41 am
Thanks Michelle for posting this. Our country is being used as a pawn by Putin to show the rest of the world how important Russia is.
Who will stand up to this ego manic? Obama would, if he didn’t have America’s political bigots to fight.
But now we have to suffer any bully or criminal who has Putin’s military support’s whims. We are virtually prisoner and victims in our own homes.
Women are being raped and ransomed back to their families only to be kidnapped and raped again and re sold back to their families.
What can we do?
June 18th, 2014 at 9:50 am
Thank you Michelle for all you did to help us with the Washington “Redskins” insensitivity to our complaints. It seems that white america will never care about the insults or physical harm they cause to OTW american.
But pressure from people like you on our behalf has benefits. This was one of them.
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The United States Patent and Trademark Office has canceled six federal trademark registrations for the name of the Washington Redskins, ruling that the name is “disparaging to Native Americans” and thus cannot be trademarked under federal law that prohibits the protection of offensive or disparaging language.
The U.S. PTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board issued a ruling in the case, brought against the team by plaintiff Amanda Blackhorse, Wednesday morning.
“We decide, based on the evidence properly before us, that these registrations must be cancelled because they were disparaging to Native Americans at the respective times they were registered,” the board wrote in its opinion, which is here. A brief explanation of how the Board reached its decision is here.
“The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board agreed with our clients that the team’s name and trademarks disparage Native Americans. The Board ruled that the Trademark Office should never have registered these trademarks in the first place,” Jesse Witten, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, said in a press release. “We presented a wide variety of evidence – including dictionary definitions and other reference works, newspaper clippings, movie clips, scholarly articles, expert linguist testimony, and evidence of the historic opposition by Native American groups – to demonstrate that the word ‘redskin’ is an ethnic slur.”
“I am extremely happy that the [Board] ruled in our favor,” Blackhorse said in a statement. “It is a great victory for Native Americans and for all Americans. We filed our petition eight years ago and it has been a tough battle ever since.
I hope this ruling brings us a step closer to that inevitable day when the name of the Washington football team will be changed. The team’s name is racist and derogatory. I’ve said it before and I will say it again – if people wouldn’t dare call a Native American a ‘redskin’ because they know it is offensive, how can an NFL football team have this name?”
The Trial and Appeals Board rescinded the team’s trademark protections in a 1999 ruling that was part of a case filed in 1992. A federal court later overturned the ruling on appeal due to a technicality that the plaintiffs say has been fixed in this most recent case.
The team will appeal the case, according to a statement from its attorney, and it will be able to keep its trademark protection during appeal. Further, losing the trademark would not force the team to change its name — as the PTO pointed out in its fact sheet about the case, the Trial and Appeal Board “does not have jurisdiction in a cancellation proceeding to require that a party cease use of a mark, but only to determine whether a mark may continue to be registered.”
The absence of federal trademark protection, however, could limit the team’s legal protections to state and common laws when others use their name, so others can’t just start marketing new “Redskins” merchandise. Still, it could potentially cost the team — and, because of the NFL’s revenue-sharing model, other NFL teams — money.
In the previous case, the team’s attorneys argued that losing trademark protections and the exclusive right to their brand would cause “every imaginable loss you can think of.” For that reason, targeting the trademark has long been thought of by opponents of the team’s name as the easiest avenue to changing it.
The team is confident that it will prevail on appeal.
“We’ve seen this story before. And just like last time, today’s ruling will have no effect at all on the team’s ownership of and right to use the Redskins name and logo,” team attorney Bob Raskopf said in the statement. “We are confident we will prevail once again, and that the Trial and Appeal Board’s divided ruling will be overturned on appeal. This case is no different than an earlier case.”
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Finally an American court said to the whiteboy, screw your racist ass, you don’t get to disparage this OTW group through us.
June 18th, 2014 at 11:10 am
I agree with you Katie#4. I feel I must say that if a republican administration was in the White House, this ruling would never have come down this way.
We whites stubbornly hold on to our “right” to disparage other races. Rest assured Obama will be criticized for this decision.
June 18th, 2014 at 11:14 am
Kadie#4, don’t be too happy just yet. The federal court is full of racist bigots appointed by republicans who are chomping at the bit to overturn this ruling on a technicality if they can’t just strike it down.
White america is both insensitive to other races and determined to assert their “superiority” by disparaging OTWs at every opportunity.
June 18th, 2014 at 11:16 am
You political correct idiots. Maybe they should change it to DC Niggers. The place is full of them.
June 18th, 2014 at 11:19 am
Sometimes I can not understand this race. “…if people wouldn’t dare call a Native American a ‘redskin’ because they know it is offensive, how can an NFL football team have this name?”
One would think that their white fans would be against this blatant offensive racist name. But like in Germany when they were burning the Jews, the whites sit back and silently gloat that they are white and feel superior.
June 18th, 2014 at 11:38 am
George,WN#7, aside from you just being sick. Of course if I lost my wife to a black man I could be as bitter too, maybe. So I’ll try to walk in your shoes. The term “politically correct” was coined for the same reason “race card” was.
The bigots want to put the disparaged on the defensive. Being sensitive to the feelings of others has nothing to do with politics unless the politician is a bigot and pretending not to be to get the votes of those he is a bigot towards or those who would frown on such behavior.
You say not using the N word is being politically correct, When in reality using it is being mean, racist, and insensitive to the feeling of blacks. Of course you know that because that is precisely why you use it.
Those that accept the term “politically correct” as a means of describing those who object are hypocritical cowards because they want to use it to, but don’t have the stones, hence they support you doing it with that pretense of seeing the other side of the issue.
The majority of whites in this country are either racists, or so tolerant of the practice as to insure that those who are devout racists will have very little resistence to their acting out.
If you are black and in a stand your ground state, take offense and shoot the bastard that calls you the N word I have. I felt threatened by it and I stood my ground. I’m not giving you legal advice, but I think it is safe to say kill the fuck so that the only you are left to testify as to the whats and ifs.
If you doubt that suggestion, remember all the white boys that got off murdering blacks did just that. Zimmerman comes to mind. I say to the whiteboy that calls me that, “smile when you say it so that your corpse will have a smile on it when your kin view the body.”
June 18th, 2014 at 11:42 am
Today’s post show how badly the world needs common sense and sensitivity to the feelings of others.
June 18th, 2014 at 11:45 am
I can’t imagine why the owner of the Redskins is willing to spend millions of dollars to continue offending the American Indian. Unless he knows that his white fans are behind him.
What that says about the white race, I’ll leave up to each of you.
June 18th, 2014 at 11:52 am
Did anyone notice that not among “7 Things That Convinced The U.S. Patent Office To Cancel The Redskins Trademark” http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2014/06/18/3450434/7-things-that-convinced-the-us-patent-office-to-cancel-the-redskins-trademark/
was “letters of protest from white americans.”
Race is powerful to a race that has nothing to hang its pride on but the lies it claims is the true History of this country and the fact that without the advantage of legislated perks, they would be insignificant in the scheme of things.
So keep telling yourself that you are better because of the color of your skin UNTIL the demographics in this country change. Oh, how you will sing a different tune then.
June 18th, 2014 at 11:58 am
Alycedale#9, you are talking about white privilege. We earned that when we started this nation.
June 18th, 2014 at 12:02 pm
I am a white Redskins fan. Looking at Sonja#12′s link has convinced me that I was wrong to support keeping that name. It is obvious that it has always been disparaging to our Native Americans and it should stop.
I am also dismayed at the amount of money being spent to continue defending the right to use it.
June 18th, 2014 at 12:04 pm
Sonja#12, I can’t believe the decision wasn’t unanimous. I suppose some whites just can’t wrap their heads around causing others to experience angst because of the actions of their race.
June 18th, 2014 at 12:06 pm
Can you now understand why aliens wouldn’t want to reveal themselves? Earthlings can’t get along with each other. Aliens wouldn’t have a chance to be accepted.
June 18th, 2014 at 12:12 pm
Hafa adai:
Island folk better check their credit card statements more closely. The debit and credit card security breach earlier this month was the largest Bank Pacific President Philip Flores says he’s seen on Guam, with more than a thousand accounts believed to be affected island wide. Flores told PNC this wave seems to be past us as most charges were made immediately after the data was stolen.
The Secret Service is still investigating the breach according to Flores the common factor in the affected accounts was payments to the Guam Waterworks Authority. Many of the fraudulent charges were also made to an online gaming company.
According to Flores its common for data stolen over online networks to be sold and he says account holders should monitor their account activity on a regular basis.
“It won’t just be through a data breach similar to this one. It could be if you’re putting your card into a gasoline pump. It could be if you’re putting card into an ATM,” Flores told PNC. “Always be concerned about your personal data.”
Flores says if you do find suspicious activity in your account you should report it to your bank immediately. In this latest case most account holders were reimbursed by the company the fraudulent charges were made to and if they weren’t Flores says their bank would have taken care of the expense for them.
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Michelle, it has been difficult getting on your blog. I see the gangs still here and kicking as lively as ever. Too bad that applies to George,WN or should that be George,wb (whiteboy)? Or just howlie?
June 18th, 2014 at 3:24 pm
Peter, your last sentence, that’s priceless, howlie works!
I was wondering what happened to you and Anna lately.
Hafa Adai
June 20th, 2014 at 9:02 am
[…] Peter of Guam: :). Yep, we’re still here. Nice to see you here too. Hafa adai. […]