Kiev Is Blowing Its Chance to Take Back East Ukraine

On the ground in Ukraine’s Wild East, it’s clear the Kiev government’s strategy is failing to establish order even as it inflames local feelings.

SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — The doctor at the psychiatric hospital didn’t miss a beat. As we left the 400-patient facility on the outskirts of the separatist-controlled town of Slovyansk he wished a colleague and me well, adding, "Be careful, there are a lot of crazy people out there.”

That warning was borne out quickly with paranoid locals outside the gates of the hospital insisting the British army had taken to the field and that British soldiers are now helping the Ukrainian military in its fight against pro-Russian militants.

Two hundred meters down the road a tractor-trailer was still smoldering after sending plumes of acrid black smoke swirling across a junction in the small village of Semenovka. The vehicle had been hit in the crossfire of a two-hour battle between Ukrainian anti-terrorist units and pro-Russian separatists and the body of the young driver, covered by a yellow tarpaulin, was still lying in front of a roadside café.

"We don’t know who he is,” said 24-year-old secretary Nadin, who spoke with us on condition that we not publish her last name. "We can’t tell his family that he is dead,” she lamented.

As far as Nadin and her family are concerned, the crazy people had paid them a visit—and the crazies, in their view, are not the separatists. Theirs is a middle-class family—her father runs an advertising agency—and they, too, were caught in the midst of the firefight as bullets riddled their house, shattering windows and tearing up the siding.

Fortunately there was only one casualty at Nadin’s home: the pet parrot was pretty much obliterated by an AK47 round.

"I think after this shooting a lot of people will be afraid of our government and I think they will ask for help from Russia,” said Nadin. Her 70-year-old grandmother was in shock and kept repeating obsessively: "We had all this shooting without any warning. They should have warned us. They didn’t say anything to us.”

Six people died in the firefight—one a Ukrainian soldier—and there were seven critically wounded, according to the psychiatrists, who were pressed into service as triage doctors. Government officials say yesterday’s skirmish at Semenovka on the north side of Slovyansk was a success: Units loyal to the government in Kiev had driven away some armed separatists who had taken up positions in the gardens of the houses at the junction. 

But Nadin’s grandmother makes a valid counter-insurgency point when she asks over a cup of coffee why the Ukrainian forces shot up the place and then withdrew. "Why didn’t they stay?” she asks.

And that in a nutshell is what is questionable about the whole thrust of Kiev’s "anti-terrorist operation” in eastern Ukraine, which was resumed on Friday, two days after acting President Oleksandr Turchynov announced that the Ukrainian security forces had lost control of this industrial region with a population of more than 6 million abutting the Russian border.

The Ukrainian counter-insurgency operation seems to rely on hit-and-run tactics that aren’t denying much territory to the separatists but are inflaming local opinion and losing the battle for hearts and minds. The operation isn’t stabilizing the region or helping to stem the rising lawlessness—something most people across the east are desperate to see brought to an end. In a sign of the lack of confidence in Kiev’s ability to restore law and order, two of the country’s largest banks, Privatbank and Raiffeisen Bank Aval, have temporarily closed their branches in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, saying that they can’t guarantee staff safety.

The relaunched anti-terrorist operation is focused on Slovyansk, which has become the poster town for the pro-Russian insurgency, and its larger neighbor Kramatorsk. Slovyansk serves as the main base for the militancy across the region. The strategy of the Ukrainian forces has been to surround and isolate the separatists, reduce the space in which they can operate, and drive them to retreat to the government buildings they seized in both towns.

The Kiev government claims it is making progress in this military struggle, although officials admit their forces still have to advance on the center of Slovyansk.

Over the weekend, Kiev forces captured a TV tower on a hill overlooking Slovyansk and successfully defended it from a separatist attack on Monday. According to Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, government forces have Slovyansk encircled and the noose is being tightened.

As far as Kramatorsk is concerned, in the eyes of Kiev, at least, things are also going swimmingly. Ukrainian Security Services spokeswoman Maryna Ostapenko says the operation is advancing as planned. "Now I can say that Kramatorsk is under the control of the anti-terrorist forces,” she told reporters in Kiev. For these territorial gains over four days the costs have been high: Kiev forces have lost three military helicopters, a half-dozen soldiers have been killed and more than 100 wounded, according to the government’s tally.

But the picture painted by Kiev officials doesn’t match the reality on the ground—and it is unclear whether officials are delusional or just think this is the way to win the information war.

Some analysts in Kiev, like Dmitry Tymchuk of the Center for Military and Political Research, are not convinced by the government’s version. "If they have blocked Slovyansk, I question how tight it is blocked and how effective this area is controlled now,” he told reporters. "With other areas—for example, Kramatorsk in particular—I have huge questions.”

Tymchuk is right to be skeptical, and The Daily Beast, which toured (gingerly) around Slovyansk, can answer some of his questions. The blockade is not tight. Separatist checkpoints around the town were cleared one day by Kiev forces and returned the next.

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