By ANDREW HIGGINS, MICHAEL R. GORDON and ANDREW E. KRAMER
Descriptions endorsed by the Obama administration suggest many of the
mysteriously well-armed gunmen in eastern Ukraine are Russian military
and intelligence forces.
KIEV,
Ukraine — For two weeks, the mysteriously well-armed, professional
gunmen known as “green men” have seized Ukrainian government sites in
town after town, igniting a brush fire of separatist unrest across
eastern Ukraine.
Strenuous denials from the Kremlin have closely followed each
accusation by Ukrainian officials that the world was witnessing a
stealthy invasion by Russian forces.
Now, photographs and descriptions
from eastern Ukraine endorsed by the Obama administration on Sunday
suggest that many of the green men are indeed Russian military and
intelligence forces — equipped in the same fashion as Russian special
operations troops involved in annexing the Crimea region in February.
Some of the men photographed in Ukraine have been identified in other
photos clearly taken among Russian troops in other settings.
And
Ukraine’s state security service has identified one Russian reported to
be active among the green men as Igor Ivanovich Strelkov, a Russian
military intelligence operative in his mid- to late 50s. He is said to
have a long résumé of undercover service with the Main Intelligence
Directorate of the Russian general staff, most recently in Crimea in
February and March and now in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of
Slovyansk.
“There
has been broad unity in the international community about the
connection between Russia and some of the armed militants in eastern
Ukraine, and the photos presented by the Ukrainians last week only
further confirm this, which is why U.S. officials have continued to make
that case,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said Sunday.
The
question of Russia’s role in eastern Ukraine has a critical bearing on
the agreement reached Thursday in Geneva among Russian, Ukrainian,
American and European diplomats to ease the crisis. American officials
have said that Russia would be held responsible for ensuring that the
Ukrainian government buildings were vacated, and that it could face new
sanctions if the terms were not met.
Ukraine Provides Evidence of Russian Military in Civil Unrest
The Ukrainian government provided these photographs last
week to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in
Vienna. Ukraine says the photographs document that the armed men who
have taken over government buildings in eastern Ukraine are Russian
combatants. The State Department, which has also alleged Russian
interference, says that the Ukrainian evidence is convincing.
Georgia, 2008
Kramatorsk, Ukraine, 2014
Slovyansk, Ukraine, 2014
A Russian special forces soldier, above with
beard, shown during the conflict in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine this
year, right.
Special
forces
patch
Group photograph taken in Russia
Slovyansk, 2014
Slovyansk, 2014
Kramatorsk, 2014
Soldiers in a group photo of a reconnaissance
unit, which was taken in Russia, were later photographed operating in
towns in eastern Ukraine.
Donbass self-
defense forces
Russian special operations forces
The equipment, including the helmets, used by
the Donbass self-defense forces appears similar to that of the Russian
special operations forces.
In Crimea
In Slovyansk
Ukraine says the same soldier was identified in Crimea and Slovyansk.
MASK
UNIFORM
GLOVES
AMMUNITION
POUCHES
PANTS
The
Kremlin insists that Russian forces are in no way involved, and that
Mr. Strelkov does not even exist, at least not as a Russian operative
sent to Ukraine with orders to stir up trouble. “It’s all nonsense,”
President Vladimir V. Putin
said Thursday during a four-hour question-and-answer session on Russian
television. “There are no Russian units, special services or
instructors in the east of Ukraine.” Pro-Russian activists who have
seized government buildings in at least 10 towns across eastern Ukraine
also deny getting help from professional Russian soldiers or
intelligence agents.
But
masking the identity of its forces, and clouding the possibilities for
international denunciation, is a central part of the Russian strategy,
developed over years of conflict in the former Soviet sphere, Ukrainian
and American officials say.
John
R. Schindler, a former National Security Agency counterintelligence
officer who now teaches at the Naval War College, calls it “special
war”: “an amalgam of espionage, subversion, even forms of terrorism to
attain political ends without actually going to war in any conventional
sense.”
And
one country, Mr. Schindler noted in an article last year in which he
coined the term, that particularly excels at special war is Russia,
which carried out its first post-Soviet war to regain control of
rebellious Chechnya back in 1994 by sending in a column of armored
vehicles filled with Russian soldiers masquerading as pro-Moscow
Chechens.
Russia’s
flair for “maskirovka” — disguised warfare — has become even more
evident under Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. officer whose closest advisers
are mostly from that same Soviet intelligence agency.
For
nearly two months now, the shaky new Ukrainian government has been left
to battle phantoms, first in Crimea and now in eastern Ukraine, where
previously fringe pro-Russian political activists have had their
fortunes lifted by small but heavily armed groups of masked men.
In
the eastern city of Slovyansk, under the control of pro-Russian
insurgents for more than a week now, the green men have worked hard to
blend in with locals but have occasionally let the mask slip, apparently
to send a clear message that any push to regain control by Ukrainian
forces would risk bringing down the wrath of the Russian military.
A
gradation of forces control the city and other areas now in the hands
of separatist rebels, ranging from clearly professional masked soldiers
and unruly groups of local men in camouflage, rifles slung over their
shoulders, to teenage boys in sweatpants carrying baseball bats or
hunting knives. At most times, only the local toughs are visible on the
streets.
But
when a woman sidled up to one of the masked gunmen in the city’s
central square last week and asked where he was from, she got an answer
that summed up Russia’s bedeviling and constantly shifting disguises.
The gunman initially said he was “from Russia,” but when pressed, said
coyly that he was “from New Russia,” a long-forgotten czarist-era term
revived last week by Mr. Putin to describe a large section of eastern
and southern Ukraine.
Asked
by the woman what would happen if the Ukrainian Army attacked, he
replied, “We have to stand for only 24 hours, to tend the fire, and
after that, a one million man army will be here.”
When
a Ukrainian armored column approached the town last Wednesday and then
swiftly surrendered, a group of disciplined green men suddenly appeared
on the scene and stood guard. Over the course of several hours, several
of them told bystanders in the sympathetic crowd that they were
Russians. They allowed themselves to be photographed with local girls,
and drove an armored personnel carrier in circles to please the crowd.
“It’s
hard to fathom that groups of armed men in masks suddenly sprang
forward from the population in eastern Ukraine and systematically began
to occupy government facilities,” Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, NATO’s top
military commander, wrote in a blog post
on the alliance’s website.“It’s hard to fathom because it’s simply not
true. What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that
is well planned and organized, and we assess that it is being carried
out at the direction of Russia.”
His
evidence, however, was mostly circumstantial: Pro-Russian gunmen
“exhibit telltale military training and equipment”; they handle weapons
like professional soldiers, not new recruits to a pickup “self-defense”
force; they carry weapons and equipment that are primarily Russian Army
issue, not gear “that civilians would be likely to be able to get their
hands on in large numbers.” General Breedlove conceded that such points,
taken alone, might not prove much, “but taken in the aggregate, the
story is clear.”
Heightening
skepticism of Russia’s denials is also the fact that Mr. Putin, after
denyingany Russian link to the masked gunmen who seized government
buildings in Crimea and blockaded Ukrainian military bases there, last
week changed his story and said, “Of course, Russian servicemen did back
the Crimean self-defense forces.”
More
direct evidence of a Russian hand in eastern Ukraine is contained in a
dossier of photographs provided by Ukraine to the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe, a Vienna-based organization now
monitoring the situation in Donetsk and other parts of the country. It
features pictures taken in eastern Ukraine of unidentified gunmen and an
earlier photograph of what looks like the same men appearing in a group
shot of a Russian military unit in Russia.
One
set of photographs shows what appears to be the same gunman in pictures
taken in the Crimean annexation and more recently in Slovyansk. Another
features a portly bearded man photographed in Slovyansk on April 14,
wearing a camouflage uniform without insignia, but six years earlier,
had been photographed during Russia’s invasion of Georgia with a Russian
special forces patch on his left arm.
Another
character in Ukraine’s case against Russia is Mr. Strelkov, the alleged
military intelligence officer who Kiev says took part in a furtive
Russian operation to prepare for the annexation of Crimea and, more
recently, in insurgent action in Slovyansk.
No
photographs have yet emerged of Mr. Strelkov, but the Security Service
of Ukraine, the successor organization to what used to be Ukraine’s
local branch of the K.G.B., has released a sketch of what it says is his
face.
The security agency, known by its Ukrainian abbreviation S.B.U., first identified him publicly early last week after releasing an audio recording
of what it said was a recording of an intercepted communication between
Russian operatives in eastern Ukraine and their controller back in
Russia.
In
the recording, a man nicknamed “Strelok” — who the Ukrainian agency
says is Mr. Strelkov — and others can be heard discussing weapons,
roadblocks and how to hold on to captured positions in and near
Slovyansk with a superior in Russia.
The
superior, clearly anxious to keep Russia’s role hidden, can be heard
ordering his men on the ground in Ukraine not to identify themselves and
to find someone with a Ukrainian accent who can give an interview to a
Russian television channel. It was very important, he added, to say on
air that all the pro-Russian insurgents want is “federalization,” or
constitutional changes to give eastern Ukraine more autonomy.
Military analysts say the Russian tactics show a disturbing amount of finesse that speak to long-term planning.
“The
Russians have used very specialized, very effective forces,” said Jacob
W. Kipp, an expert on the Russian military and the former deputy
director of the United States Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies
at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
“They
don’t assume that civilians are cluttering up the battlefield; they
assume they are going to be there,” he said. “They are trained to
operate in these kind of environments.”
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