Russia intensifying military and terrorist attacks, Ukraine reports

The Russian government has disptached soldiers and military hardware onto Ukrainian territory, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on Jan. 19, citing intelligence reports. The hardware consists of tanks; howitzers; radio-electronic warfare systems and Grad, Smerch and Buk rockets systems. The same day, the National Security and Defense Council announced two tactical groups of the Russian Armed Forces crossed into Ukrainian territory.

A bomb exploded on Jan. 19 near a district courthouse in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, injuring 14, four of them critically. It occurred after a court hearing on a suspect found in possession of an automatic rifle and grenade at a polling station during the May presidential election. Law enforcement authorities determined the explosion to be a terrorist attack and declared a anti-terrorist special operation in the city to find the assailants.

Ukrainian armed forces have secured control of the embattled Donetsk airport, reported the Ukrainian Defense Ministry web site on Jan. 19. Pro-Russian separatist forces have retreated to nearby residential areas, which are not fired upon by Ukrainian forces, the report said.  In the 24 hours leading up to noon Jan. 19, three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 66 wounded in armed fighting in the Donbas region, reported Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian government’s anti-terrorist operation. The conflict shows a tendency towards escalating, he said, as shooting from the pro-Russian separatists has intensified, particularly from residential buildings. 

The weekend’s intensified fighting in Ukraine’s Donbas region resulted in 382 deaths of Russian soldiers and “significantly more” than 500 injured, reported on Jan. 19 upon her return from Donbas Elena Vasilieva, a Russian activist who has monitored the war’s casualties. Since the start of the Donbas war, about 5,860 Russian soldiers have died or disappeared, she said.

The Russian army may be disptached to aid the “Novorossiya army” if Ukrainian forces rearm themselves and advance, Sergei Markov, a political adviser to Russian Presidential Administration, told The Daily Beast news site in an interview published on Jan. 18. He admmitted without going into details that “at least twice, in August and September, some Russian military were on Ukrainian soil.” The Kremlin planned to create a separatist state of Novorossiya in southeastern Ukraine by first winning the war in Donbas and then going further to Mykolayiv, Kharkiv and Odesa, he said. “About a month and a half ago, I advised that instead of Novorossia, we should promote integration of the Donbas regions back into Ukraine,” Markov said. The new agenda is likely to be very uncomfortable for Kiev. “If it happens that Donbas integrates into the current state, these Ukrainian citizens will demand independent investigations,” he said. 

Zenon Zawada: The Jan. 19 explosion was merely the latest in a series of terrorist attacks that haved intensified throughout Ukraine since Friday. Such attacks are as much a threat to the Ukrainian state as the Donbas warfare because they have the potential to destabilize the functioning of nation’s biggest cities, such as Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa. They also have the potential to undermine the public’s trust in how the government is handling the war. 

Markov’s comments further confirm that the Kremlin completely miscalculated when planning its invasion of southeastern Ukraine with the aim of carving out a separate state. The Russian government has a poor understanding of Ukrainian politics and society. His comments also indicate that the Kremlin will maintain a consistent, aggressive policy of undermining Ukrainian statehood. So we agree with the widely held view that Ukraine won’t be stable until the Putin regime is sufficiently thwarted by the West or deposed altogether. We believe the U.S. government is working on both goals simultaneously.