Kiev’s War Losing Ground, Hearts and Minds

It has been over three weeks since the post-revolutionary regime in Kiev launched its ‘anti-terrorist operation’ with Washington’s full support. In that time, the Kyiv Post reports at least 24 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed, and dozens of civilians. The actual cost in lives to Kiev’s forces, particularly among poorly trained ultranationalist militias, is likely higher than anyone in Kiev can safely admit.

Despite numerous clashes around the large town of Slavyansk, not a single town or city seized by the rebels has been cleared and held by pro-Kiev forces after three weeks of sporadic fighting. The evidence is overwhelming that Kiev is relying on loyal but poorly trained forces to execute operations as the Ukrainian Army has largely abstained from fighting, despite losing at least five helicopters in combat.

Most humiliatingly for Kiev, Ukrainian forces proved helpless to prevent voting from taking place at a few thousand of polling places across the region last weekend as the Donbass and Lugansk Republics declared their independence from Kiev. The one town where pro-Kiev forces succeeded in stopping the counting of ballots, Mariupol near the Black Sea, was the scene of Ukrainian National Guardsmen immolating a police station where an unknown number of people inside were killed while troops broke up a peaceful Victory Day celebration with gunfire. Local eyewitnesses claim pro-Kiev forces attacked the station with armored vehicle cannon fire because the local police were cooperating with the Donbass Republic. Kiev insists its National Guard had to destroy the police station in order to save it from pro-Russian ‘terrorists’. Since that battle, militia men loyal the Donbass oligarch Rinat Akhmetov have secured Mariupol. Despite spin from Kiev, it isn’t clear today whether the miners are loyal to the central government or whether Akhemtov has cut a deal with the Donbass Republic.

While Western apologists for the new Ukrainian government such as Yale Professor Timothy Snyder insist that the fascist Maidan street fighters of Right Sector have no real power, the French magazine Paris Match identified a Right Sector commander, Andrey Denisenko, among the Kalashnikov-toting killers of two unarmed local men during last weekend’s independence referendum in the small town of Krasnoarmeysk. The UK Guardian journalist Shaun Walker reports that Kiev is sending out volunteers in militias funded by oligarchs like Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who recently threatened a Donbass politician with a $1 million bounty on his head in a leaked phone call.

In response to the bad PR from the Krasnoarmeysk murders, as well as the massacre of over 50 local autonomy activists in Odessa on May 2, the government has promised investigations. But both inquests are likely to prove a whitewash to save face for the new government’s Western backers, who seem to be losing the information war. Even The New York Times grudgingly concedes that the rebels enjoy strong support from locals in many areas. A group of pro-Kiev ‘men in black’ paramilitaries told the UK Times newspaper last week that the Donbass locals are against them.

While the presence of Russian citizens including residents of the Crimea and Cossacks among the Donbass rebels is undeniable, it has become increasingly difficult for NATO countries to affirm that they have no boots on the ground in southeast Ukraine. Aside from the recent, confirmed visit of CIA Director John Brennan to Kiev just prior to the ‘anti-terror operation’ being launched three weeks ago, the respected German magazine Der Spiegel reported this week that 400 American military contractors are fighting alongside Ukrainian forces. While there have been no confirmed sightings of American mercs yet in the Donbass, YouTube videos have emerged of troops in Ukrainian uniforms speaking fluent Italian or non-Slavic accented English to non-Russian journalists. Pro-Donbass activists have also posted a photo online of a Ukrainian soldier proudly wearing a Lithuanian-flag patch, after the new government issued a decree that would grant citizenship to Poles and Lithuanians willing to fight for Ukraine.

All of the above evidence suggests that the U.S. and NATO are supplying more than food packets to Kiev’s war effort against its rebellious citizens. When Kiev’s attacks on its rebellious provinces end, Washington will bear some responsibility for its proxies seeking a failed military solution instead of peace talks.