Written by Nikolaus von Twickel<\/p>\n
Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n Even after it became official, the separatists and their media kept silent about the resignation of Vladislav Surkov, their key Moscow \u201ccurator\u201d for the past six years. Their leaders Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik did not show up in public amid fresh speculation that they might be replaced soon. There was mixed news from the economy while the State Security \u201cMinistries\u201d continued to publish disturbing \u201cconfessions\u201d of arrested spies. Unlike in Georgia, the separatists imposed no restrictions because of the Coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n Pushilin and Pasechnik no shows on Fatherland Defender Day<\/strong><\/p>\n In Donetsk, “DNR\u201d leader Denis Pushilin did not appear in public since attending the premiere of a film by Russian videoblogger Semyon Pegov on 22 February <\/a>– even skipping the \u201cDefender of the Fatherland Day\u201d celebrations the next day, for which he merely published a statement<\/a> on his website.<\/p>\n Pushilin\u2019s “LNR\u201d colleague Leonid Pasechnik also posted<\/a> just a statement on Defender of the Fatherland Day, but chaired a meeting<\/a> with activists of his ruling Peace for Luhansk party on 25 February. That meeting made headlines<\/a> in Ukrainian media after a report about it was deleted from the website<\/a> of the separatist \u201c21st Century\u201d newspaper. The reason was unclear, but in his speech Pasechnik apparently<\/a> accused \u201cLNR\u201d police of smuggling drugs. The police are controlled by Interior \u201cMinister\u201d Igor Kornet, who is widely seen as Pasechnik\u2019s main rival inside the \u201cLNR\u201d.<\/p>\n Pushilin\u2019s and Pasechnik\u2019s future was thrown into doubt after Russian President Vladimir Putin on 18 February officially decreed<\/a> the removal of Vladislav Surkov from his post as presidential aide. Surkov had announced in late January that he would leave the state service because the Kremlin was changing its policy vis-a-vis Ukraine \u2013 one day after Putin appointed Dmitry Kozak \u2013 a Surkov rival \u2013 as a deputy head of the Kremlin administration and tasked him with the Ukraine portfolio.<\/p>\n Surkov stressed in an interview<\/a> published on 26 February that his departure was \u201ccompletely voluntarily\u201d and claimed that he felt \u201calienated\u201d from the (Kremlin) system that he himself had created.<\/p>\n Replacement rumours <\/strong><\/p>\n It is widely believed that Surkov personally managed the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d, picking loyalists like Pushilin for key political positions \u2013 although Kozak was responsible for the economic management, causing significant rivalry with Surkov (see our Annual Report 2019<\/a>, p. 5).<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly then, there was fresh speculation about an imminent removal of both separatist leaders from their jobs. Already before Surkov\u2019s official ouster, anonymous Telegram channels speculated<\/a> that former Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov would replace Pushilin and former Ukrainian Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko replace Pasechnik. Other rumours<\/a> focused on the arrival of Russian inspectors in Donetsk and Luhansk, apparently investigating possible embezzlement of funds.<\/p>\n However, similar speculation has been spread in the past without being confirmed. While neither Pushilin nor Pasechnik are assumed to have significant popularity, from Moscow\u2019s point of view they arguably performed reasonably well over the past months and removing them immediately poses risks to stability because that would entail widespread purges of separatist officials loyal to them. In fact the past year was characterized by efforts to integrate separatist factions by giving jobs to formerly exiled leaders (see our Annual Report 2019<\/a>, p 4-5).<\/p>\n At least one rumour was actually refuted \u2013 about the removal of \u201cDNR\u201d Prime Minister Alexander Ananchenko. On 14 February the \u201cgovernment\u201d published a speech by Ananchenko on the anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, leading Ukrainian media to assume<\/a> that the secretive Prime Minister was back in office after he missed a 5 February meeting with Pushilin, during which his deputy Vladimir Pashkov was called \u201cacting Prime Minister\u201d (see Newsletter 70<\/a>). According to the government website<\/a>, Ananchenko has been signing decrees throughout the year.<\/p>\n Wage arrears at Vneshtorgservis<\/strong><\/p>\n Both Ananchenko and Pashkov are thought to represent Vneshtorgservis, the secretive holding company that has controlled key industrial assets in both \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d since their seizure in 2017. Unconfirmed reports said that workers at Vneshtorgservis plants have not been paid for months.<\/p>\n The anonymous \u201cLugansk Inside\u201d Telegram channel claimed<\/a> that workers at the Alchevsk Metal Factory, which is controlled by Vneshtorgservis, stopped working on 13 February after they had not received any pay this year (apparently wages for December were being paid out piecemeal in February). However, the same source claimed<\/a> on 29 February that wages for January had been paid to the Alchevsk workers and those working in Vneshtorgservis plants in the \u201cDNR\u201d.<\/p>\n More \u201cconfessions\u201d for espionage<\/strong><\/p>\n The People\u2019s Republics also continued their practice of arresting civilians on spying charges and showing \u201cconfessions\u201d in YouTube videos online without any due judicial procedures and\/or giving them to long prison sentences after closed trials.<\/p>\n The \u201cLNR\u201d State Security \u201cMinistry\u201d alone published<\/a> four videos of suspicious confessions between 27 January and 26 February. Among them was a mother of eight<\/a> who claimed that she had been trying to convince separatist fighters to switch sides and a man from Luhansk apparently suffering from schizophrenia<\/a>. The latest video, published on 26 February, showed a local University worker<\/a> who was sentenced to 12 years for espionage.<\/p>\n The \u201cDNR\u201d paraded two suspects on video, one of them a man identified as Pavel Podvezko, who according to a 11 February report<\/a> was sentenced to 14 years in prison for passing on sensitive information to the anonymous pro-Ukrainian account \u201cNecro Mancer<\/a>\u201d. Also arrested were two drivers who offered rides across the Contact Line into government-controlled areas. One of them said<\/a> that he worked for Ukrainian intelligence under the pseudonym \u201cHarry potter\u201d, while the other, identified<\/a> only as \u201cA\u201d, got a 5-year prison sentence for \u201cterrorism\u201d, according to the \u201cDNR\u201d Prosecutor General\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n No closures because of Corona<\/strong><\/p>\n The separatists also seized on the Coronavirus crisis, which gripped Ukraine since 20 February, when angry locals attacked<\/a> a group of evacuees from China. In a typical propaganda report, the \u201cDNR\u201d claimed on March 1<\/a> that a Ukrainian soldier was hospitalized with an \u201cunspecified infection\u201d in Mariupol.<\/p>\n However, unlike the separatist regions of Georgia, the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d did not close any of its borders. On 27 February, South Ossetia<\/a> said that it was closing all crossing points with Georgia proper, while Abkhazia<\/a> said a day earlier that it was banning all travel for non-Russian citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by Nikolaus von Twickel Summary Even after it became official, the separatists and their media kept silent about the resignation of Vladislav Surkov, their key Moscow \u201ccurator\u201d for the past six years. Their leaders Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[244,245],"tags":[294],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900"}],"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=1900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1901,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions\/1901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}