The Russian Challenge

The Russian Challenge
A War of Narratives and Arms
undermine the integrity of communications systems and
destroy records. 114 Thus, when Igor Girkin (alias Strelkov),
the first defence minister of the so-called Donetsk People’s
Republic (DPR), states that ‘if our detachment hadn’t
crossed the border, everything in short [i.e. the resistance]
would have collapsed’, he possibly inflates his own
importance. 115 The state confronting him had effectively
suffered a stroke.
The direct intervention of Russian regular
forces in August, and the loss of nearly 1,000
Ukrainian troops in Ilovaysk, were a brutal
reminder that Ukraine is not fighting an
internal war.
Among the initial leaders of the insurgency in eastern
Ukraine, only one, Pavel Gubarev, is a Ukrainian citizen.
Girkin, a former FSB (Federal Security Service) colonel
with combat experience in Chechnya, was first deployed
in Crimea and, at the conclusion of that operation, crossed
into Donetsk along with several hundred other ‘tourists’
from Russia. The conflict he claims to have started is the
linear descendant of irregular wars fought on the fringes of
the Tsarist and Soviet empires. These were untidy, covert
and vicious wars, prosecuted as much by informal militias
and networks as by conventional armies. They blurred the
distinction between internal and interstate conflict, and
they were designed to do just that. Combatants in today’s
‘hybrid war’ are, accordingly, a motley assortment of
serving officers in the FSB and GRU (military intelligence),
remnants of Ukraine’s former Berkut ‘special’ police, the
private security forces of oligarchs, Cossacks, Chechen
fighters, adventurers and criminals. In the words of
a militia officer in October 2014, ‘mostly we have nut
jobs’. 116 Finance in this ‘network war’ is as opaque as it
is in Russia’s ‘network state’. 117
Hybrid wars are also prosecuted by ‘masking’ and makebelieve.
118 The Russian ‘humanitarian convoys’ organized
in summer 2014 first appeared in the 1999 Kosovo conflict
under the banner of the Ministry of Emergency Situations,
then headed by the current minister of defence, Sergey
Shoygu. The maskirovka [disguise] was exposed when the
first convoy, stopped on the Ukraine–Romania border, was
found to contain military and dual-purpose equipment.
At least one of the convoys inspected by the OSCE in 2014
contained empty vehicles that then proceeded to remove
industrial machinery from occupied areas, arguably offsetting
the value of the humanitarian goods brought into them. 119
In May 2014 (two months before his own dismissal),
Girkin lamented that the people of Donetsk were not
supporting him:
I admit that I never expected that in the entire oblast, one
cannot find even a thousand men ready to risk their lives even
for their own city. … Amongst the volunteers, the majority are
men over 40 who acquired their upbringing in the USSR. But
where are they, the young, healthy lads? Perhaps in the brigades
of gangsters who, enjoying the absence of authority, have
thrown themselves into plunder and pillage in all cities and
right across the oblast. 120
By then, the separatists had lost the impact of surprise, and
Ukraine had recovered its bearings. The Ukrainian counteroffensive
between May and July, which regained control
of 23 of the 36 districts seized by the rebels, demonstrated
support for the state and foreclosed military collapse. Yet
it also induced the Kremlin to raise its game. The direct
intervention of Russian regular forces in August, and the loss
of nearly 1,000 Ukrainian troops in Ilovaysk, were a brutal
reminder that Ukraine is not fighting an internal war. 121
Reconstitution of Ukraine’s offensive capacity in the ensuing
months provoked a still more dramatic Russian escalation
on 19 January 2015, which brought onto the field not only
fresh forces but munitions, weapons systems and electronic
warfare capabilities that were entirely new to the conflict.
114
Taras Kuzio, ‘Yanukovych Authorizes the Return of Russia’s FSB to the Crimea’, 24 May 2010, http://www.moldova.org/yanukovych-authorizes-the-return-ofrussias-fsb-to-the-crimea-209210-eng/.
On Russia’s role in 2013–14, the author consulted senior security officials in March 2014. See also ‘Diplomatic Journal: Pavel
Felgenhauer on the Defence of Russia’s Perimeter’, 22 March 2015, http://rus.delfi.ee/daily/diplomaatia/zhurnal-diplomatiya-pavel-felgengauer-o-zaschite-perimetrarossii?id=71061427;
and Poroshenko, 26 March 2015, http://korrespondent.net/ukraine/3496170-poroshenko-ranshe-sbu-na-80-sostoiala-yz-ahentov-fsb.
115
‘Strelkov Said that It Was He Who Began the War in Ukraine’ [Strelkov soobshchil, chto eto on nachal voynu na Ukraine], BBC Russian Service, 20 November 2014.
116
Cited in Eastern Ukraine: A Dangerous Winter, International Crisis Group, Europe Report No. 235, 18 December 2014, p. 13.
117
On what is also termed ‘ambiguous’ and ‘network’ war, see Roger McDermott, ‘Russia’s Information-Centric Warfare Strategy: Redefining the Battlespace’,
Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vol. 11, issue 123, 8 July 2014 (Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation); and for a somewhat different view, see Keir Giles, HCDC, p. 46,
Q154–195. On Putin’s ‘network state’ see Vadim Kononenko and Arkady Moshes, Russia as a Network State: What Works in Russia When State Institutions Do Not
(London: Palgrave, 2011).
118
The term maskirovka describes technical and tactical measures designed to make arms and actions appear to be different from what they are.
119
‘Lugansk Factory Transports Equipment to Russia and Starts Production There’, http://finance.bigmir.net/news/companies/50185-Luganskij-zavod-vyvezoborudovanie-v-Rossiju-i-zapuskaet-tam-proizvodstvo---SMI,
27 August 2014, and