Taras Kuzio
Russia’s hybrid war as international corporate raiding
The escalating
hostilities around Donetsk airport, already dubbed Europe’s new Stalingrad,
could lead to the first
full-scale war between European countries since World War II. In
the event that the fighting
escalates, Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president, has prepared a decree that would institute
a state of emergency as a prelude to moving
from an anti-terrorist operation to a state of
war. Eighty per cent of
Ukrainians already believe their county
is at war
with Russia.
Grigory Karasin,
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said this
week
it would be “the biggest,
even strategic mistake of the
Ukrainian authorities to bank on
a military solution to the crisis”
and warned: “This may lead
to irreversible consequences for Ukrainian statehood.”
The depth of the
international crisis can be seen
in the gulf
that exists between western countries that believe Ukraine has a right to
defend its territorial integrity and a Russia that
refuses to recognize it.
Russia’s hybrid or non-linear
war is an
international extension of the corporate
raiding that has become prevalent
in its domestic
environment, where there is little
rule of law.
Six years ago, Russia was described as a “mafia state” and recent
developments point even more to
this conclusion.
Massive corporate raiding of Ukrainian state
and private assets has followed Russia’s annexation of the Crimea.
As Mark Galleotti,
an expert on transnational crime and security, argued in an article for Vice,
organized crime is closely intertwined
with the separatist fighters.
Russia’s hybrid war introduces
virtuality to its conduct of
international affairs that is an
extension of its virtual domestic
politics. Deep levels of cynicism,
doublespeak and duplicity underpin fake parties, virtual
elections (like those held in
the Soviet Union) and surrogate
proxy forces.
Since signing the Minsk
peace accords in September, Russia
has built up separatist forces
in Ukraine as civilian and
military casualties have continued to mount. While
Moscow blames Ukraine for undermining
the peace process, the EU says Russia has violated its OSCE commitments and
separatists have taken control of
an additional 500 square kilometres of territory since
September.
The BBC and other news
outlets have shown Russian marines
fighting at Donetsk airport, as Moscow continues
to strenuously deny that its
forces are present in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement supporting separatist claims that the
Minsk accords provided for their
control over Donetsk airport.
Russia’s duplicitous hybrid war is arming
the separatists to the teeth,
sending its troops to lead
their attacks on Ukrainian forces
and training insurgents for attacks throughout Ukraine. This week,
a bomb in Kharkiv caused 20 casualties and in Zaporizhhya a train was derailed
as it was
crossing a bridge. Russia is warning
Ukrainians of the consequences of defending their
territorial integrity; a policy Russia demanded
be upheld in Chechnya and
Kosovo.
Russia’s approach has three
pitfalls.
First, Russia cannot hope
to defeat Ukraine using limited
numbers of its troops in
a hybrid war. At the same
time, if Moscow were to
commit tens of thousands of
troops it could no longer
hide their presence and further
western sanctions would follow. Ukrainian
officials estimate that there are
8,000 Russian troops on Ukrainian territory
with more moving across the border.
Second, the rate of
growth of Russian casualties, as in the
1980s when Soviet casualties in Afghanistan
were growing at a slower pace,
will eventually lead to political
instability. Russian casualties continue to rapidly grow,
as witnessed byoverflowing morgues in the
Donetsk region and casualty figures collected
by Russian NGOs and independent
bloggers. Oleg Yarchuk has
calculated in detail Russian casualties of 5,665 dead, 2,759 wounded and 2,834 missing in action in
less than a year’s combat.
Third, Russia’s hugely popular annexation of the Crimea
and hybrid war in the
Donbas has opened up a Pandora’s
box of extreme
Russian nationalism. If Vladimir Putin,
Russia’s president, were to back
away from his hybrid war
some of these
Russian nationalists could return to
Russia with their weapons and
seek to effect
regime change. This could be
dangerous if Russia’s socio-economic situation continues to deteriorate as the oil
price falls.
Extreme right-wingers from the
Russian Party of National Unity,
cossacks, monarchists who desire the
restoration of the tsar and
empire, Orthodox Holy Warriors and
Stalinists provide an eclectic and
combustible mix of volunteers in
the Donbas, a region that until
2014 had been without manifestations of Russian nationalism
and voted for the Communists
and the oligarchic
Party of Regions. These volunteers see the Donbas conflict
in apocalyptic terms as a “holy war”.
These Russian extremist groups share three
similarities. They believe Putin is
too “soft” and Russia should
fight openly, not in a hybrid
war, and annex the Donbas.
They are Ukrainophobes who believe the Ukrainian
nation does not exist; an
analogy in the 1930s would be that of
Germany’s Nazis looking at Austria.
Finally, they are anti-western and see the
Euromaidan Ukrainians as “puppets” in
the hands of Washington and
Brussels.
The Russian-led renewal of separatist
attacks in the Donbas has
revealed just how naïve was the attempt
by Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy
chief, to scale down sanctions
by exchanging values for interests.
Meanwhile, the arrest of five Russians in France shows
to what degree
the conflict in Ukraine can
spread to other parts of
Europe.
Taras Kuzio is a research
associate at the Centre for
Political and Regional Studies, Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies,
University of Alberta and non-resident fellow at the Center
for Transatlantic Relations, School of Advanced International
Relations, Johns Hopkins University.
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2015/01/21/guest-post-russias-hybrid-war-as-international-corporate-raiding/?
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