Anti-fascist fascism: part 3

What better way to celebrate a new Anschluss than a nice round of book-burning?

Pro-Russian demonstrators in eastern Ukraine smashed their way into public buildings and burned Ukrainian-language books on Sunday in further protests following two deadly clashes in the region last week.

That'll show those fascists and their fascist language! Fancy pronouncing Russian "g" as an "h". Totally Hitlerian, I mean Gitlerian.

In next week's episode: it's Kristallnacht against those "Nazi" Crimean Tatars.

This morning's wildcard speculation

The referendum result and the request to join Russia were predictable, but what's the betting some overexcited sycophant in the "Crimean parliament" tables a motion to rename a hapless local town "Putingrad" in gratitude to his new master?

Referendum results

The provisional figure is 95.5% in favour of union with Russia. That might go up overnight. I speculated yesterday: "Will Russia settle for something marginally realistic like 87% ... or will it go all out for a North Korean-style fantasy figure of 96% plus? I'm now inclined towards the latter." Well, Russia has indeed gone North Korean and it gives me no great pleasure to see that my estimate was pretty accurate, especially when Russian media figures like Dmitry Kiselev are now indulging in North Korean-style nuclear rhetoric and threatening to turn the US to powder.

Update: 96.77%. Wow.

Russia to move into eastern Ukraine?

At least according to Julia Ioffe  in New Republic. She says that Putin will need to do so for practical reasons, to ensure Crimea's energy and water supplies:

On Saturday, the two-week anniversary of the authorization, the Russian foreign ministry was already laying the foundations for such a seizure, saying that it was being flooded with requests from citizens across eastern Ukraine, asking the Russians for protection against the western Ukrainian fascists. 

But that’s just the pretext, not the reason. When Putin asked for and got his authorization, I wrote that, in predicting Russia’s actions these days, pessimism always wins. But, in this case, it isn’t just simple nastiness that’s going to drive this. For the first time in this manufactured crisis, Putin is going to be acting out of sheer pragmatism and necessity.

[...]

So let’s say the inevitable happens today and Crimea votes to enfold itself in the Russian Federation’s embrace. But what happens next? And what happens if, as is quite likely, Kiev cuts newly-Russian Crimea off from gas, electricity, and water, which Crimea has none of on its own? How will Moscow, the new owner, supply its latest acquisition with the necessities?

If you’re Russia, do you really want to ferry the necessities across the bay, or build an expensive bridge, or lay down expensive new pipelines? Wouldn’t you rather use pre-existing land routes (and pipelines)? Wouldn’t it just be easier to take the land just north and east of Perekop and the Swiss cheese area, now that you’ve already put in the effort to massively destabilize it? And while you’re there, wouldn’t you want to just take the entire Ukrainian east, the parts with the coal and the pipe-making plants and the industry? You know, since you already have permission?

Last night's rumoured clash between Russian and Ukrainian troops just outside Crimea's current borders might lend substance to these suspicions.

Putin and his friends might decide that, if they are going to take economic pain from Western sanctions anyway, they'll grab as much land as they can before the opposition are ready for them.

It's worth remembering the comments made after the 2008 South Ossetia War by Dmitry Rogozin*, now Russian deputy prime minister, then Russia's ambassador to NATO:

Everyone here [in Brussels] understands what we did, when we carried out such a large-scale operation and literally in three days not only shattered the Georgian army built on the money and under the leadership of the USA but stopped any opportunity for a third country to intervene quickly. This is not just a very serious military, psychological and moral victory for Russia – it is a gauntlet openly thrown down to the global leader of the modern world.

On the other hand, unlike Crimea, an invasion of eastern Ukraine would most likely be a bloodbath. So it's wait and see.

*As a diplomat Rogozin gained notoriety for his use of undiplomatic language. He is on Twitter  here. He doesn't comment much, but his latest tweet (made today) refers to Ukraine's ambassador to Moldova as a "son of a bitch".

My analysis so far

Russia has won Crimea, but lost Kyiv. Its actions have driven Ukraine further into the arms of the West. I doubt this will be acceptable to Putin. A successful, pro-Western Ukraine is possibly the biggest threat to his continued power in Russia. He will want to make Ukraine ungovernable at the very least. The 2008 war with Georgia went way beyond South Ossetia. Russian forces completely trashed Georgia's main port Poti as a way of humiliating President Saakashvili and his Western backers. Ukraine is even more of a personal issue for Putin and he may want more revenge on Kyiv.

Putin will now pump Crimea full of Russian money and Russian troops. He may try to bribe the Crimean Tatars into submission. He will try to make Crimea into a showcase to lure more regions of Ukraine into Russia's orbit. The prosperity and stability of Crimea (guaranteed by a heavy army presence) will be a contrast with the anarchy in eastern Ukraine (stirred up by Russian agents).

Putin will hope the example of Crimea will also bring the rest of Russia's "near abroad" into line, encouraging neighbouring states to join his Eurasian Union (Russia's parallel version of the EU) and Collective Security Treaty Organisation (a Russian calque of NATO).

Putin is riding high on a wave of nationalism, boosting his popularity in the short-term. He may use this short term to crack down on dissent, branding critics as unpatriotic. He can then introduce legislation limiting freedom of speech without provoking too much popular outrage. Unfortunately, once unleashed, nationalism is a difficult animal to control and it may force Putin to go further than he intended.

Russia's diplomatic relationship with the West is now severely damaged, probably irreparably. This is not Georgia 2008 – a conflict in a small, remote country that can be easily forgotten. This has been described as the worst crisis since the end of the Cold War. Obama and Kerry now look like they were duped by the "dishonest broker" Putin over Syria and his phoney talk of peace. They won't forgive him. Hilary Clinton has openly compared Putin to Hitler. Within the EU, the pro-Russian Angela Merkel is extremely unhappy that her Ostpolitik has gone west. Ex-Eastern Bloc countries like Poland and the Baltic States are saying that the credibility of NATO rests on its response to Ukraine. Western reaction may be stronger than anticipated. Russian diplomatic jugglery, such as pretending to be reasonable by offering concessions after taking Crimea, won't wash any more. So we're in for an economic staring contest with sanctions on both sides. Russia had better hope that its rhetoric about the namby-pamby, money-grubbing West is right and the West blinks first.

By abandoning its policy of non-intervention, Russia has probably lost its allure among non-Western regimes with poor human rights records. As a consistent non-interventionist, China is a much more attractive patron. Russia will now only appeal to the absolutely desperate, e.g. Syria and North Korea.

The unknown factor: Ukraine's response. The media have generally seen this crisis as Russia versus the West, ignoring the country at the centre of the debate. This is due to the incredible restraint Ukraine has shown over the past fortnight. The annexation of Crimea may test this restraint beyond endurance.

 

Wilder speculation

At the moment everything is hanging in the air. The events of the next two days will really decide what happens in the next phase of the crisis. There aren't many grounds for optimism but here's some wild (or vapid) speculation. The main hope now is that the Crimean escapade damages the Russian economy so badly that it leads to Putin's downfall. I can come up with two scenarios where this might happen (they are not necessarily mutually exclusive):

1. The West imposes tough sanctions and squeezes the oligarchs until the pips squeak. As far as I remember, Putin's deal with the oligarchs was that if they stayed out of politics he'd stay out of their business dealings. Khodorkovsky violated this pact and was punished. However, Putin's politics are now likely to do significant harm to the oligarchs' business interests so they might consider the deal is off. They could react by removing him just as Nikita Khrushchev lost his power in 1964 as a result of his ill-advised adventurism (Cuban Missile Crisis, Virgin Lands Scheme). Yet, as we have seen, Russian energy and Russian sleaze has penetrated the economies of the EU so deeply that countries such as the UK and Germany may be very reluctant to squeeze the pips hard enough. I also have no idea whether, in practical terms, the oligarchs have the capability to get rid of Putin.

2. The Russian economy suffers and ordinary people's living standards go down. This inspires Orange/Maidan-style protests. Today, the opposition mobilised 30,000 anti-war protestors in a Moscow rally. But how much support does this movement have in wider Russia? At the moment, nationalistic fervour seems the order of the day among most Russians and Putin has tightened his grip on the media. If the economy tanks, though, he may face his worst nightmare: a popular revolt.

If Putin retains his grip on power, there will be a new Cold War. No Western country can ever trust him again after Crimea. The most pessimistic scenario is - it goes without saying - fratricidal bloodshed in Ukraine followed by a Russian invasion. We aren't there yet but so far the pessimists have outscored the optimists in their predictions.

Before the referendum

Russia has just lost the vote in the UN Security Council. As predicted, China abstained. China is probably unhappy that Russia has suddenly abandoned its long-standing support for non-intervention. Beijing certainly doesn't want foreign powers interfering in its imperial possessions Tibet and East Turkestan. Admittedly, Russia's behaviour has a certain consistency: non-intervention in Syria to protect its naval base there; intervention in Ukraine to protect its naval base there. Even if Putin had to create most of the need for "protection" in Ukraine.

The Crimea referendum will go ahead as planned, UN or no UN (of course, Russia has the sterling support of Syria and North Korea). And the result will be "yes". The only unknown quantity is what the percentage will be. Will Russia settle for something marginally realistic like 87% (assuming the Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians boycott the poll en masse) or will it go all out for a North Korean-style fantasy figure of 96% plus. I'm now inclined towards the latter. If Russia expects people to buy its barefaced lying about the presence of its ineptly disguised army in Crimea, then it is capable of putting out any propaganda it likes without a blush, however incredible it may seem.

The really grim question is whether, once it has Crimea in the bag, Russia will go on to carve out another chunk of east Ukraine.

More anti-fascist fascism

From the EU Observer:

The Russian government has invited some of Europe's far-right parties to observe this weekend's referendum in Crimea. 

The leader of France’s National Front party, Marine Le Pen, told press at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday (12 March) that her executive has not yet decided whether to go.  

The Austrian Freedom party, a National Front ally, also got an invitation.

No comment necessary.

Twitter feeds I've been following

Everything's relatively quiet at the moment, but the following English-language Twitter feeds have provided useful comments and links about the Ukraine crisis:

Ben Judah (British journalist, causing a stir with his attacks on "Londongrad")

Maxim Eristavi (local freelancer, travels around Ukraine)

Miriam Elder (Foreign Editor at Buzzfeed, Russian specialist)

Oliver Bullough (another British [?] journalist and Putin-sceptic)

Lawrence Freedman (Professor of War Studies, posts on Putin's strategy)

Darth Putin (fake Putin twitter feed, black comedy)

I'll add more later...

Anti-fascist fascism

Putin has a habit of demonstrating his anti-fascism in strikingly fascist ways. (Of course, when Putin talks of anti-fascism he is simply reheating Soviet rhetoric, e.g. the Berlin Wall was an "anti-fascist barrier").

As far as I’m aware, the anti-fascist smear campaign was first mobilised against Ukraine after the 2004 Orange Revolution panicked Putin into fearing similar protests might arise in Russia. To stop "the kidz" being perverted by such evil Orange ways, Putin had his minions create the Youth Democratic Anti-Fascist Movement, better known as "Nashi" (Ours). Nashi emerged from a previous experiment in adolescent management, Walking Together. In 2002 Walking Together had publicly destroyed copies of the Russian satirist Vladimir Sorokin's novel Blue Lard, throwing the torn-up books into a huge toilet erected outside the Bolshoi Theatre. This helped earn them the nickname "Putinjugend".

Putin’s own PR machine seems to have taken a couple of leaves from Mussolini’s book. Few politicians have shown such a penchant for being photographed topless (unless you count Cicciolina), with two notable exceptions:

In August 2007, the Kremlin’s official website featured a photograph of Putin fishing – topless – during a trip to the Republic of Tuva. Comparable images are extremely rare. Prior to this instance, photographs showing a country’s leading political figure naked from the waist up had appeared in the media on only two occasions: in 1937, Italy’s fascist government published a photo of a shirtless Mussolini; in 1966, the Chinese press released pictures showing Mao swimming in the Yangtze River as part of a campaign to show that the Chairman remained vigorous and capable of leading China. (Helena Goscilo Putin as Celebrity and Cultural Icon)

Another of Putin’s favourite publicity stunts is close encounters with big cats, most famously his (faked) run-in with a Siberian tiger . This is some old footage of a shirtless Mussolini playing with a toothless lion cub.

 

Sunday

Not much to report on so far today. The intimidation of foreign journalists ahead of the referendum in Crimea is escalating. By next weekend the vote will be as transparent as mud. The Cossacks and other irregulars (i.e. pro-Putin thugs) have developed a taste for beating opponents with whips. I first noticed this when they attacked Pussy Riot in Sochi last month. Is this deliberate neo-tsarist symbolism? Bring back the knout ?  Maybe they've been watching Battleship Potemkin for some tips on how their ancestors handled these things. Sevastopol Steps.

There's more historical symbolism in the rival protests in Simferopol (pic). The pro-Ukrainian side have gathered round a statue of Taras Shevchenko. The pro-Russian crowd's totem is the Lenin monument. A poet versus a dictator.

Putin's theatre of the absurd continues

I can't help the feeling Putin is trying to join the great East European tradition of absurdist theatre (Eugene Ionesco, Slawomir Mrozek, Vaclav Havel et al.). Denying the "self-defence forces" were Russian troops was a stroke of post-modern genius.

Now BBC News is reporting that Russian FM is claiming the Ukraine crisis was "created artificially for purely geopolitical reasons". Which is true, but not in the way he means.

Putin's theatre must be aimed at a purely domestic audience, like the Sochi Olympics (if he intended the games to improve Russia's international image then he's just flushed $50 billion down the drain). No one else around the world is buying the pretence. At the moment, only Assad of Syria has offered support. I presume even Pacific minnows like Nauru and Tuvalu will want to avoid the adverse publicity that would come with selling their UN votes to endorse something so brazen. A few states might confirm the results of the annexation referendum next weekend but I doubt it will be with any great enthusiasm. However, this is playing really well with Russian nationalism. It's like Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia (Putin is much closer to Mussolini than Hitler): the international condemnation is worth suffering because of the boost in domestic support.

(On the other hand, maybe Putin with his "KGB mentality" really does think the revolution in Kyiv was staged by Western intelligence agencies and this justfies him pulling the same trick in Crimea. It's just unfortunate for him that the Crimeans were so sluggish at following his script and he had to create his own "spontaneous uprising").

This weekend's links

(I'll probably continue to update this list as the weekend goes on)

Legal opinions

Opinio Juris blog post from Alexander Cooley, Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University in New York ("A highly choreographed political theater between Simferopol and Moscow has crossed over into pantomime")

BBC News: Opinion page by Marc Weller, Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge (Russia's Crimea move is illegal)

Paramilitaries

Channel 4 (UK) : footage of paramilitaries beating up journalists in Crimea

Belarus reaction

Earlier this morning I read an article in Belarus Digest: "Belarus Refuses to Support Russia's Invasion of Ukraine." It was available here, but this is now "Page Not Found". Computer glitch or political censorship? I have no idea.

Although Belarus is firmly within the Great Russian sphere of influence, Lukashenka has not always toed Moscow's line. He has never recognised the independence of Abkhazia or South Ossetia, for example.

On the other hand, Putin probably does not care unduly. Unlike Ukraine, with its dangerous Orange and Euromaidan revolutions, Belarus has never offered a threat to Putinism by providing a viable alternative political path. Quite the contrary. Belarus is the dystopian role model nobody in the rest of the former Soviet Union wants to follow.

Still, it's worth keeping an eye on the reactions of Belarus and Kazakhstan - both countries with large ethnic Russian populations and no NATO membership.

The situation on Saturday

Putin probably has Crimea in the bag, at least politically. On March 16 there will be a referendum which will almost certainly vote in favour of union with Russia.

The tricky part for Putin will be removing the Ukrainian forces still in Crimea. It is unlikely Kyiv will accept Russian annexation. So far, the Ukrainian soldiers under siege have shown admirable restraint and have not responded with violence to the provocations by the militias and "self-defence forces". Ukraine has learned the lesson of the 2008 South Ossetia War when Georgia's armed forces gave Putin the excuse to take military action and drive them out of the region.

Putin will gradually build up the Russian military presence in Crimea in the hope the Ukrainians will back down in the face of overwhelming odds (last time I looked there were already supposed to be 20,000 Russian soldiers in the peninsula). Last night, a small band of Russian troops tested Ukrainian resolve and attempted to take over a base. They failed, but we can probably expect more such experiments over the coming days (or, more likely, nights).

If the Ukrainians still hold their bases after the annexation referendum passes, Putin can declare they are now the real "occupying forces". He may allow them an honourable way out by letting them leave with their weapons. Or he may push for unconditional surrender. It depends on how much he wants to humiliate Kyiv for its insubordination to the Great Russian World Order.

However, the real wild card - and the biggest danger - in the Crimea at the moment is not the Ukrainian and Russian regular soldiers but the pro-Russian militias. They are there to give the Crimean coup the appearance of a popular uprising. They are also useful for beating up journalists and pro-Ukrainian protesters as well as threatening potential outside monitors such as the UN and the OSCE. They will ensure that the referendum avoids detailed international scrutiny.

Some of the militiamen are locals, but many have obviously been brought in from Russia and elsewhere. There are supposed to be Russian Cossacks and Serbian "Chetniks" present, for example. I remember reading in Thomas de Waal's book The Caucasus: An Introduction, which covers the wars in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh, that the worst atrocities were carried out by such "tourist" irregulars. Local people were at least aware that they would have to live with their neighbours after the conflict was over. The danger came from outside volunteers bussed in to join the fighting - young men pumped up with nationalist sentiment, with little training or discipline and no sense of responsibility. Basically, football hooligans with Kalashnikovs. For example, in Nagorno-Karabakh the Khojali Massacre of 1992 was blamed on the undisciplined behaviour of the "Arabo" and "Aramo" Armenian paramilitary units. It's also worth investigating the biography of Shamil Basayev, who began his guerrilla career as part of the Russian-backed "Abkhazia Brigade" and ended it as Moscow's Number One Chechen terrorist leader.

Putin may think he has these militiamen under the thumb of the regular - if badly disguised - Russian army. But they have a way of making their own rules and a brutal talent for aggravating ethnic conflict. So far, there has been thuggery but no deaths in Crimea. This could change with the click of a trigger.