Written by Nikolaus von Twickel
Summary
While the Russian offensive in Donbas continued to be extremely slow, the Kremlin overhauled its management of the “People’s Republics” by replacing Dmitry Kozak with domestic policy chief Kirienko as their new “curator”. However, despite the fact that russification of occupied areas was stepped up, it was not clear if annexation will follow soon.
Kirienko replaces Kozak
In a momentous step, the first deputy head of Vladimir Putin’s Presidential administration, Sergei Kirienko, reportedly took over as the top Russian official responsible for the “People’s Republics” in late April. Kirienko met with separatist leaders during a maiden visit to Donetsk that was reported only after he returned to Moscow on 23 April. It was the first time since 2014 that Moscow acknowledged the visit of such a high-ranking figure to the “People’s Republics”.
Kirienko replaces his Kremlin colleague Dmitry Kozak, who himself had taken over the job in February 2020 from Vladislav Surkov, who is widely seen as the founding father of the separatist statelets (see Newsletter 71). Ukrainian officials quickly interpreted the move as a sign that Moscow intends to annex the “People’s Republics”, because Kirienko oversees the Kremlin’s domestic policy department, which tightly controls Russia’s more than 80 regions. Hitherto, the responsibility for Donbass lay with the administration’s cross-border cooperation department, which controls policies vis-a-vis former Soviet states and is overseen by Kozak.
However, media reports suggested that no decision about annexation has been taken. Among Kirienko’s first tasks is to analyze how to integrate “the occupied territories into the Russian context”, the BBC’s Russian service reported on 5 May. “Whether this will be modelled after ‘independent’ Abkhazia and South Ossetia or after annexed Crimea has not been decided yet,” the report quoted two anonymous sources close to the Kremlin.
Moscow recognized the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent in 2008 and has stationed thousands of troops there – however, Abkhazia managed to retain significantly more autonomy than South Ossetia, e.g. allowing it to not recognizing the “People’s Republics” as independent before 2022 (see Newsletter 99). South Ossetia announced on 13 May that it would hold a referendum on joining Russia on 17 July. It was not immediately clear how Moscow, which has in the past been wary about annexing parts of Georgia, would react.
Why Kozak fell from grace
Kirienko, who was briefly Prime Minister under Boris Yeltsin in 1998 and headed the Rosatom state nuclear energy corporation before joining Putin’s administration in 2016, is widely seen as a technocrat with little political ambitions. The handover to him is a blow for Kozak, who had taken pragmatic steps to save the local economy from all-out ruin, but also became closely associated with the Minsk Agreement, which Putin tore up on 21 February when he recognized the “People’s Republics” as independent. At the Kremlin Security Council meeting earlier the same day, Putin showed his frustration by twice cutting off Kozak’s address about negotiations with Ukraine.
According to a BBC Russian report published on 13 May, Kozak lost his Ukraine portfolio after the 24 February invasion and has been in “inner emigration” inside the Presidential Administration: He has fallen from grace because he advocated to keep the “Normandy Format” going in order to achieve a diplomatic solution, when Putin had already changed his mind, the report cited an anonymous source close to the Kremlin.
Referenda postponed, “ambassadors” nominated
The BBC report also said that after Kirienko’s initial visit to Donetsk, plans to hold referenda in the “People’s Republics” about joining Russia were postponed “because the situation on the ground does not allow this”. The Latvia-based news site Meduza reported that the referenda could be held – together one in South Ossetia – during the Russian regional elections on 11 September.
“DNR” leader Denis Pushilin had said in late March that this issue would be tackled after the end of the war. “LNR” leader Leonid Pasechnik made a similar statement on 12 May, after having suggested holding referenda in late March (see Newsletter 100). Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry stressed at the time that any “pseudo-referenda” would never be recognized.
Both “People’s Republics” announced on 6 May that they will send “ambassadors” to Russia. The “DNR” nominated Olga Makeyeva, an MP in the separatist legislature, while the “LNR” named Rodion Miroshnik, a former separatist official at the Trilateral Contact Group talks. While this may also be interpreted as a sign that Crimea-style annexation might not be imminent, clearly any “embassy” can be converted into a representation of a Russian region at short notice.
In other russification, both Donetsk and Luhansk announced on 11 May that they would block Instagram and Facebook – something Russia already did in March. A few days earlier the separatist-installed mobile phone operators Phoenix (Donetsk) and Lugacom (Luhansk) announced a switch to the Russian dialing code +7.
Offensive grinds on slowly
Moscow’s hesitation with annexation is most likely linked to the slow pace of its military campaign to conquer all of Donbass.
The “DNR” said on 8 May that it controls 184 towns and villages that were previously government-controlled. On 18 April, when the offensive began, that number stood at 160 – meaning that in the Donetsk region, Russian-led forces took three weeks to “liberate” less than 25 villages. The “LNR” announced on 9 May that it had taken the strategic town of Popasna and the village of Nyzhnie, but kept saying that it controls 80 per cent of the Luhansk region – unchanged from late March (see Newsletter 100).
According to an analysis published in the “Kyiv Independent” on May 7, Russia advanced during more than two weeks of intense fighting by no more than 20-30 kilometers. Overall, the “Battle of Donbas” map looks almost the same since Russia withdrew its forces from northern Ukraine in late March.
The absence of military success was mirrored in the cancellation of Victory Day parades in Donetsk and Luhansk. Instead, “DNR” leader Pushilin took part in a march with a 300-metre St George’s ribbon in a less-destroyed part of Mariupol – amid accusations from Ukrainian officials that participants had been brought in from other towns inside the “DNR”.
It took Russian-led troops almost two months to control Mariupol until April 21, when President Putin allowed them to rotate out of the port city on the condition that remaining Ukrainian soldiers in the Azov steel plant would be blockaded. Already on 4 April Pushilin appointed Konstantin Ivashchenko, a former local MP, as a “DNR”-loyal mayor. On 21 April Ivashchenko claimed that 250,000 of formerly 500,000 inhabitants remained in the city, which was largely destroyed by Russian bombing since the start of the war.
“LNR” soldiers stuck at border
Separatist armed formations, who are commanded by Russian officers but mostly consist of local recruits, were apparently deployed in areas with the heaviest fighting, including Mariupol and the area north and east of Kharkiv. A video circulated on 13 May showing troops sitting at the roadside at the border with Russia in the Kharkiv region claimed that they were “LNR” soldiers who could not travel home because Russian border guards refused them passage.
Unlike Russia, the People’sRepublics” enacted general mobilizations on 19 February. Multiple reports have suggested that the armed formations have been forcefully recruiting civilians with little military skills, resulting in low morale among them (see Newsletter 100).
United Russia to the front
The recently occupied areas also saw much harsher and faster Russification policies than in 2014 and 2015. Not only were Ukrainian road signs replaced with Russian ones and the rouble introduced as currency (the “DNR” decreed to phase out the Ukrainian Hryvnya by 1 July), but Putin’s political party, United Russia, appeared prominently in places recently occupied by Russian forces and promised to open aid centres along the way, e.g. in Mariupol.
On 8 April, the party’s General Secretary Andrei Turchak went to Rozivka, a village in the Zaporyzhzhia region, where he hoisted a Russian flag together with “DNR” leader Pushilin. (11 days later a Russian war reporter shared a video in which a village assembly apparently votes to join the “DNR”). On 6 May, Turchak appeared in Kherson, where, again with Pushilin, they laid wreaths at a Soviet monument. On 7 May, the party’s youth wing Young Guard opened an office in Donetsk. And party activists were out in force when Pushilin marked victory Day on 9 May in Mariupol.
The Kremlin party had a de facto monopoly for political campaigning in Donetsk and Luhansk in the run-up for the Russian Duma elections on 19 September 2021 and the separatist nomenklatura has since joined the party (see Newsletter 98).
Four OSCE Mission members in detention
Meanwhile, the separatists continued to hold captive Ukrainian staff of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), whom they accused of spying for Ukraine. As of 23 April, four members of the OSCE Monitoring Mission had been detained – two in Donetsk and two in Luhansk. The separatist openly outlawed the Mission and threatened more reprisals against its members, demanding that they leave by the end of April. The OSCE declared on 28 April that it would take “immediate steps” to close the Mission, whose mandate expired at the end of March because Russia had vetoed its extension (see Newsletter 101).
