The End of the Russian Fairy Tale - Slate

[R3druM]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/07/malaysia_airlines_flight_17_crash_reveals_a_true_war_vladimir_putin_sowed.html

Excerpt

Before there is any further discussion of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, it’s important that one point be made absolutely clear: This plane crash is a result of the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine, an operation deliberately designed to create legal, political, and military chaos. Without this chaos, a surface-to-air missile would not have been fired at a passenger plane.

From the beginning, the Russian government did not send regular soldiers to Ukraine. Instead, it sent Russian mercenaries and security service operatives such as Igor Strelkov—the commander in chief in Donetsk and a Russian secret police colonel who fought in both Chechen wars—or Vladimir Antyufeyev, the Donetsk “deputy prime minister” who led the Latvian KGB’s attempt to overthrow the independent Latvian government back in 1991.

We can’t pretend this war isn’t happening any longer, or that it doesn’t affect anyone outside of Donetsk.
With the help of local thugs, these Russian security men besieged police stations, government offices, and other symbols of political authority, in order to delegitimize the Ukrainian state. In this task, they were assisted by the Russian government and by Russia’s state-controlled mass media, both of which still constantly denigrate Ukraine and its “Nazi” government. Just in the past week, Russian reporting on Ukraine reached a new pitch of hysteria, with fake stories about the supposed crucifixion of a child and an extraordinary documentary comparing the Ukrainian army’s defense of its own country with the Rwandan genocide

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Wow - Antyufeyev is yet another Russian running the 'separatist' self-declarde republics

and one with a nasty criminal past, too. Looking him up, I found this:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Iotmj8wAXssJ:www.workersliberty.org/story/2014/07/15/pro-russian-separatists-regroup+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a
(web cache for http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2014/07/15/pro-russian-separatists-regroup , which is currently down for maintenance)

Meanwhile, in the neighbouring fiction of the “Lugansk People’s Republic” (LPR) Valery Bolotov (whose official title is simply: “head of the LPR”) announced that he had sacked the entire LPR government and appointed Marat Bashirov as “President of the Council of Ministers”, tasked with creating a new government.

Like Borodai, Strelkov-Girkin, Antyufeyev and Pushilin, Bashirov is a Russian national. He is the former vice-president of a Russian private energy company and a former lobbyist for the private sector. In his first public statement after his appointment he announced that the LPR would be switching to the Russian ruble.

Borodai and Strelkov/Girkin have been covered on DU before, and Pushilin resigned yesterday and fled to Moscow, but we haven't mentioned Bashirov before. As confirmation:

Luhansk People's Republic Appoints Russian Lobbyist to Head Council of Ministers

The head of Ukraine's self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic appointed a prominent Russian lobbyist with ties to Moscow's elite to act as chairman of its council of ministers Friday in a move likely to prompt fresh accusations that Russia is backing the separatists there.

Marat Bashirov has held a number of positions close to Russian decision-making circles, including assistant to the chairman of the Federation Council's Committee on Foreign Affairs, according to the lobbying.ru website. He has also occupied senior positions at billionaire Viktor Vekselberg's Renova conglomerate and IES Holding, one of Russia's largest private energy companies, according to the website.

Bashirov joins a number of other representatives of the Russian business community with close ties to the self-proclaimed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk. Kremlin insider Konstantin Malofeyev, the founder of Marshall Capital investment fund, has been linked to Russian rebel leader Igor Strelkov, Donetsk People's Republic head Denis Pushilin and Alexander Borodai, prime minister of the self-proclaimed republic.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/luhansk-peoples-republic-appoints-russian-lobbyist-to-head-council-of-ministers/503015.html

It's getting hard to find any locals left in charge of these 'republics', as opposed to Muscovites.