Syria military escalation won’t affect Donbas fighting, Volker says

The U.S. government doesn’t believe the escalated fighting
in Syria will repeat itself in the war-torn Donbas region of Ukraine, said U.S.
Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, as reported by the 1+1 television network
on Apr. 14. The military conflicts in Syria and Ukraine are different matters
and the Kremlin isn’t planning to escalate its Donbas offensive soon, he said.
“The Russians have been supporting the conflict in eastern Ukraine for four
years now with tanks, mortars, infantry and electronic weapons. Everything you
can imagine,” he told foreign correspondents in Washington. Therefore, there is
constant rotation of hardware and fighters, which won’t change the nature of
the fighting from the previous 3.5 years, he said.

The Russian government plans to create the
preconditions for dispatching armies to the Ukrainian mainland this autumn,
Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Deputy Head Viktor Kononenko told an Apr. 13
briefing. Members of Putin’s entourage are planning a military offensive on the
basis of defending Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population, he said. In one
scenario, pro-Russian demonstrations will be organized, including Orthodox
Christian cross processions, which are planned to be attacked by hired thugs,
he said. The SBU will work to prevent such staged attacks, he said.

Recall, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in mid-March
that
he expects Russia to escalate its hybrid warfare against Ukraine
this autumn during the election campaign season. Avakov ruled out the possibility
of a full-scale military advance. The presidential vote in Ukraine is scheduled
for March 2019, while the parliamentary election is scheduled for October 2019.

Zenon Zawada: While
Volker is correct in stating that the Donbas warfare isn’t likely to escalate
in the coming weeks, we have been predicting
since September 2017 (much earlier than Avakov’s warning) that
Moscow is likely to intensify its aggression ahead of the 2019 elections with
the goal of influencing them to produce a more desired outcome. While the next
Ukrainian president (likely to be Poroshenko or Tymoshenko) is sure to support
Euro-Atlantic integration, the Russian government will be aiming for a strong
result of Russian-oriented parties in the parliamentary elections. Indeed polls
are already indicating that the Russian-oriented parties could form the
parliamentary minority, at minimum.

An effective way to improve the turnout of the
Russian-oriented electorate would be to stage some violence directed at
Ukraine’s large Russophile minority. The SBU will be working to prevent this,
however its success will be limited by the fact that two popular
Russian-oriented parties will be actively campaigning. Inevitably, they will raise
issues of aligning militarily and politically with Russia, as well as
protecting Russian-language rights. Inevitably, they will draw protests from
Ukrainians, particularly nationalists, that are entirely genuine. So rather
than staging violence, the Russian intelligence services could also manipulate
real conflicts and exacerbate them.

When addressing the Kyiv Security Forum last week,
Ukrainian President Poroshenko called for drafting new election laws that will
protect next year’s election from Russia interference, including the Kremlin’s
use of fake news and propaganda. Yet we don’t see how that’s possible while
protecting the full participation of two Russian-oriented parties: the
Opposition Bloc led by Yuriy Boyko and the For Life party led by media mogul
Vadim Rabinovich.