Written by Nikolaus von Twickel<\/p>\n
Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n Rumours about an imminent replacement of Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin\u2019s point man for the separatists, did not make it into the headlines of the separatist media. Nevertheless, early consequences may already be felt in the region. The fact that Ukrainian military took control of another \u201cgrey zone\u201d village might be one of them.<\/p>\n Rumours swirl about Surkov<\/strong><\/p>\n The past week was characterized by what could be some of the biggest news for the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d since their inception four years ago \u2013 the ouster of Vladislav Surkov from his job as their point man in the Kremlin.<\/p>\n Surkov\u2019s influence on the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d is believed to be enormous because practically all meaningful political decisions from their onset in spring 2014 are widely believed to have been taken in the Kremlin \u2013 where Surkov has been presidential aide<\/a> overseeing Russia\u2019s relations first with Georgia\u2019s and later Ukraine\u2019s breakaway regions since September 2013.<\/p>\n However, both the Kremlin and the separatists have always staunchly denied any such links and the tightly controlled \u201cLNR\u201d and \u201cDNR\u201d media did not mention the report at all. Asked about Surkov\u2019s departure, \u201cDNR\u201d chief negotiator Denis Pushilin told RBC, the Moscow-based media group that broke the news, that these were \u201crumours\u201d.<\/p>\n Surkov also had an important international role as Russia\u2019s envoy to talks with the United States over Ukraine \u2013 first with Victoria Nuland and since 2017 with President Donald Trump\u2019s special representative Kurt Volker.\u00a0 He and Volker met four times until January 2018, mainly to discuss Putin\u2019s proposal to deploy a peacekeeping force. These talks have taken a time-out<\/a> since then, and it is not clear whether this is just because of the March 18 Russian Presidential Election or because of an imminent replacement of Surkov.<\/p>\n President Vladimir Putin\u2019s spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not confirm or deny the RBC report about Surkov\u2019s departure, saying merely<\/a> that the Kremlin does not announce staff changes in advance. The RBC report<\/a>, published on May 11, quotes anonymous Kremlin sources in addition to Moscow political scientist and Surkov confidant Alexei Chesnakov as saying that Surkov is unlikely to retain his post.<\/p>\n Putin, who was elected to a fourth term in March, is currently reshuffling the Russian government, and although staff changes have been slight so far, they might also occur in his presidential administration.<\/p>\n The RBC report cited two possible reasons for Surkov\u2019s ouster. One is that the Kremlin wants a fresh impetus after efforts to implement the Minsk agreement are believed to have reached a dead end. The other explanation is that Surkov wants to give up his job after losing a fight with Russia\u2019s Federal Security Service, or FSB, over the recent power struggle among the Luhansk separatists.<\/p>\n The FSB is widely believed to have backed former \u201cLNR\u201d intelligence chief Leonid Pasechnik in his struggle against separatist leader Igor Plotnitsky, who in turn was believed to be Surkov\u2019s man. Last November, Plotnitsky was ousted by a coup that brought Pasechnik to power and was supported by armed troops from the \u201cDNR\u201d (see Newsletter 25<\/a>).<\/p>\n However, the Luhansk \u201cPeople\u2019s Republic\u201d has not behaved out of tune since Pasechnik took power: The new leader has sought to improve relations with his Donetsk counterpart Alexander Zakharchenko by initiating talks for a customs union (see Newsletter 26<\/a>) and has said that he will stand for elections this autumn in what looks like a Kremlin-orchestrated campaign (see Newsletter 28<\/a>).<\/p>\n While it is too early to speculate about the consequences, it is clear that a departure of Surkov would leave a large gap to fill. The recent escalation of fighting along the contact (front) line might be an early sign of what may come.<\/p>\n Ukrainian soldiers enter another \u201cgrey zone\u201d village<\/strong><\/p>\n The Ukrainian military on May 17 confirmed<\/a> that it had taken news positions in a small hamlet just outside Horlivka, a separatist-controlled city northwest of Donetsk. It said that the positions in Pivdenne (locally known as Chyhyri or Chyhari) were taken after separatist fighters had attempted to take the village under their control. However, the separatists claimed that the village was of little strategic value. A blog post<\/a> by the Atlantic Council\u2019s Digital Forensic Research Lab found that the Ukrainian positions are low-lying, while the separatists hold elevated positions.<\/p>\n According to the Ukrainian military, Pivdenne was taken without losses. However, the \u201cDNR\u201d military said<\/a> on May 11 and 12, when the fighting took place, that four of its fighters had been killed and three were injured.<\/p>\n Pivdenne, or at least its eastern outskirts, is a \u201cgrey zone\u201d settlement, meaning that it is so close to the contact line that there is no administration, civilian or military.<\/p>\n The Ukrainian military has entered and taken up positions in a couple of such settlements over the past years. The last instance was reported<\/a> in early February in Katerynivka, a small settlement just south of Zolote in the Luhansk region. In November, government forces took up positions in Hladosove and Travneve, two villages north of Horlivka. As a result, the hostile parties are sometimes located very close to each other, making armed clashes more likely.<\/p>\n Violence continued to simmer during the ensuing week. The Donetsk Water Filtration Station, which provides drinking water for several hundreds of thousand people on both sides of the contact line, was repeatedly forced to halt work because of shelling. At the Minsk Contact Group talks on May 16, the OSCE chief envoy Martin Sajdik deplored<\/a> that further ceasefire violations near the Station occurred despite security guarantees from both sides and reinforced OSCE patrolling.<\/p>\n On May 16 and 17, two schools were hit by shelling (first in separatist-controlled Sakhanka<\/a>, then in government controlled Svitlodarsk<\/a>), luckily with no injuries.<\/p>\n The Donetsk People\u2019s Republic said on May 17<\/a> that it had set up a foundation to help the families of servicemen killed in the fighting with government troops. The foundation, called \u201cRuka Pomoshchi\u201d (Helping hand), is an initiative of \u201cDNR\u201d leader Alexander Zakharchenko, who announced<\/a> its setting up in early March.<\/p>\n Because of the reluctance from both \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d to publish any information on their own losses, there are no reliable casualty figures from the separatist side.<\/p>\n Donetsk average wage less than 150 euros<\/strong><\/p>\n The precarious economic situation inside the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d was highlighted earlier this month, when a Donetsk official said<\/a> that an average salary in the \u201cDNR\u201d amounts to 10,000 roubles (136 euros). This is less than half than the 8927 hrywna (287 euros) in the government-controlled part of Donetsk Region. Even allowing for some price differences, this is sufficient evidence that the quality of living in Donbass is significantly higher in government-controlled areas.<\/p>\n While the \u201cDNR\u201d number has been around since at least October<\/a>, it has risen considerably since 2016, when Radio France International reported<\/a> that \u201cDNR\u201d fighters are paid 20,000 roubles per month (then 270 euros), adding that this amounted to four times an average wage, ie 5,000 roubles (68 euros).<\/p>\n Such a low figure is still the rule in the Luhansk \u201cPeople\u2019s Republic\u201d, where according<\/a> to separatist leader Leonid Pasechnik an average teacher\u2019s salary is currently less than 5,000 roubles (he promises to raise this to 10,500 roubles by 2023).<\/p>\n Pensions, according to estimates<\/a> a vital source of income for about one million people in the separatist-held areas, are also miserable. In the \u201cDNR\u201d, the average pension in September<\/a> was 4118 roubles (56 euros), the minimum pension stood at 2,904 roubles (39 euros) in January 2018<\/a>. For comparison, the average Russian pension<\/a> was 13,304 roubles (181 euros) in December.<\/p>\n The average pension in the government-controlled part of the Donetsk region was 3268 hryvna (105 euros), significantly higher than the national Ukrainian average of 2480 hryvna (80 euros). The minimum pension in Ukraine was 1452 hryvnia (47 euros) in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by Nikolaus von Twickel Summary Rumours about an imminent replacement of Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin\u2019s point man for the separatists, did not make it into the headlines of the separatist media. Nevertheless, early consequences may already be felt in...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[244,245],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1560,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions\/1560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}