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  • RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE SEEKS TO DESTABILIZE CRIMEA

    RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE SEEKS TO DESTABILIZE CRIMEA

    By Taras Kuzio

    Wednesday, October 1, 2008

     

    On September 29 the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) protested against an appeal made by the Russian delegation to the OSCE about the Crimea. “Methods and dirty technology created in the ’90s of the last century are being used to destabilize the situation in the ARK [Autonomous Republic of Crimea] by fomenting separatist movements in the territories of the former USSR… Such actions cannot be regarded as anything other than gross interference in the internal affairs of another state,” the MFA said (www.mfa.gov.ua, September 29). 

    That Ukrainian-Russian relations are poor and deteriorating is increasingly obvious from mutual accusations, counter-accusations, and insinuations. Russian political technologist Sergei Markov, a Unified Russia deputy, described Ukrainian-Russian relations to all intents and purposes as non-existent (www.pravda.com.ua, September 24).

    Even in the area of Soviet history the Ukrainian and Russian sides have diametrically opposite views. The Russian Foreign Ministry gloated over Ukraine’s failure to find support for a resolution at the UN to recognize the 1933 artificial famine as “genocide” conducted against Ukrainians. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry issued a strongly worded rebuttal. Writing in September’s Prospect magazine Arkady Ostrovsky said, “an old fashioned nationalism, in neo-Stalinist costume, has become the most powerful force in Russian society” (www.prospect-magazine.co.uk).

    Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko has officially accused Russia of seeking to destabilize the autonomous republic of the Crimea. It is undesirable that “the Russian consulate in Simferopol distributes passports” (EDM, September 15). Meanwhile, Russian politicians, such as Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov, travel to Ukraine and call for uniting the Crimea to Russia (Fokus, no.38, September 19).

    Ohryzko also complained that Russia was attempting to block Ukraine’s entry into NATO by using, among others things, the Crimean card. Russia also disrespected Ukraine’s sovereignty (Fokus, no.38, September 19).

    At a well-publicized press conference on September 25, the Security Service (SBU) provided extensive details of attempts by Russian intelligence to hire Ukrainian citizens to participate in conflicts in the Caucasus. The SBU gave details about recent attempts to hire Ukrainians for the August Georgian conflict. In August and September the SBU collected intelligence on many attempts by Russian intelligence to dispatch Ukrainians to the conflict. Ukrainians were offered $200 to $500 per day if they accepted the proposal. Candidates approached by Russian intelligence should have “specific training, including in the field of subversive activity.” Russian intelligence targeted those with existing connections to the Ukrainian military, including reservists (www.mfa.gov.ua, September 29).

    The SBU warned Russia that it was carefully observing these approaches and was initiating counter-measures (www.sbu.gov.ua). “Every attempt at recruiting Ukrainian citizens in foreign games will receive a harsh rebuff,” the SBU warned. Russian intelligence had established and supported “extremist organizations” in Tiraspol, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia; but “We will never permit such activity on our territory,” the SBU stated. Following the Georgian-Russian war, Ukraine purchased its first unmanned drone from the Israeli Ministry of Defense (www.pravda.com.ua, August 29).

    Senior Russian military officers have alleged that Ukrainians fought on the Georgian side during the August conflict. Such claims about “Ukrainian nationalists” are nothing new. In the first and second Russian interventions into Chechnya in 1995 and 2000, Russian officials and media alleged that numerous “Ukrainian nationalists” were fighting with the Chechens. The allegations revived Soviet ideological tirades against western Ukrainian “bourgeois nationalists.”

    The nationalist group most often accused of training recruits for battle against Russia is the extreme right UNA-UNSO (Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian Peoples Self Defense Organization). Russia’s intelligence on Ukrainian nationalists is, in fact, outdated, as the UNA-UNSO disintegrated in the late 1990s into at least three groups.

    One wing of UNA-UNSO that remained committed to its nationalist ideology aligned with the radical opposition Yulia Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT) and Socialist Party in the “Kuchmagate” crisis. The radical opposition led the protests by Ukraine Without Kuchma and Arise Ukraine! from 2000 to 2003. UNA-UNSO members also acted as paramilitary stewards during the orange revolution. The UNA-UNSO was accused of organizing the March 2001 riots in Kyiv (in reality, this was apparently a provocation by undercover Interior Ministry personnel to discredit the anti-Kuchma opposition), and 20 senior UNA-UNSO leaders were charged and imprisoned. Following their release, many of the nationalist wing of the UNA-UNSO, such as Andriy Shkil, joined the BYuT. Shkil is still a BYuT deputy.

    The other two wings of the UNA-UNSO were co-opted by Russian intelligence. They continue to be available for provocations by Russian intelligence in attempts to portray Ukraine’s orange leaders (like their Georgian rose revolution counterparts) as “anti-Russian extremists.”

    The two co-opted former wings of the UNA-UNSO played a highly provocative role in attempts to discredit the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko in the 2004 presidential elections. Political technologists close to Russia’s presidential administration (i.e., Markov and Gleb Pavlovsky) worked for the candidate supported by Russia, Viktor Yanukovych. They sought to portray Yushchenko as a rabid “anti-Russian, Ukrainian nationalist” to reduce his popularity in Russophone eastern Ukraine (see EDM, June 29 and September 23, 2004, May 13, 2005).

    One of the two co-opted UNA-UNSO groups, led by Dmytro Korchynsky, was renamed Bratstvo (Brotherhood). Bratstvo and the Progressive Socialist Party are the only two Ukrainian parties in the Highest Council of the International Eurasian Movement and the Eurasian Youth Movement. Both of these organizations are devoted to the Eurasianist ideologist Aleksandr G. Dugin who has ingratiated himself with the Putin regime (see Andreas Umland’s detailed analysis in www.pravda.com.ua, July 20, 2007).

    The SBU has also unveiled Russian intelligence’s attempts to recruit Ukrainians who would “testify” for money that they had undergone “subversive training” in UNA-UNSO bases in western Ukraine with the aim of undertaking “terrorist” attacks alongside Chechens in Russia. Recruited Tatars were also paid to speak on Russian television about the existence of alleged training camps for Islamic terrorists in the Crimea. The aim in both cases, the SBU believes, was to show that Ukraine was a host to training camps for religious and nationalist extremists.

    Russia’s accusations are doubly ironic. First, the UNA-UNSO wing with solid nationalist credentials joined the BYuT in 2001-2002. Tymoshenko meanwhile has been accused of “treason” by the presidential secretariat based on an unfounded allegation that she has “done a deal” with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Second, the remainder of the former UNA-UNSO (i.e., Bratstvo) has long worked for Russian intelligence.

  • Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital ; Yahudi Turklerin Hazar Devletinin Baskenti: Itil, the Khazar capital

    Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital ; Yahudi Turklerin Hazar Devletinin Baskenti: Itil, the Khazar capital

     

    The KHAZARS/ Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital

    September 22nd, 2008 · 1 Comment  

     

    By MANSUR MIROVALEV, Associated Press Writer Sat Sep 20, 2:13 PM ET
    MOSCOW – A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of theKhazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.
    Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.
    By law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said. The general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmed in medieval chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.
    “The discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe’s first feudal state is of great significance,” he told The Associated Press. “We should view it as part of Russian history.”
    Kevin Brook, the American author of “The Jews of Khazaria,” e-mailed Wednesday that he has followed the Itil dig over the years, and even though it has yielded no Jewish artifacts, “Now I’m as confident as the archaeological team is that they’ve truly found the long-lost city,
    The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea.
    Itil, about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied 0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Vasilyev said.
    It lay at a major junction of the Silk Road, the trade route between Europe and China, which “helped Khazars amass giant profits,” he said.
    The Khazar empire was once a regional superpower, and Vasilyev said his team has found “luxurious collections” of well-preserved ceramics that help identify cultural ties of the Khazar state with Europe, the Byzantine Empire and even Northern Africa. They also found armor, wooden kitchenware, glass lamps and cups, jewelry and vessels for transporting precious balms dating back to the eighth and ninth centuries, he said.
    But a scholar in Israel, while calling the excavations interesting, said the challenge was to find Khazar inscriptions.
    “If they found a few buildings, or remains of buildings, that’s interesting but does not make a big difference,” said Dr. Simon Kraiz, an expert on Eastern European Jewry at Haifa University. “If they found Khazar writings, that would be very important.”
    Vasilyev says no Jewish artifacts have been found at the site, and in general, most of what is known about the Khazars comes from chroniclers from other, sometimes competing cultures and empires.
    “We know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jews wrote about them, and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, to name a few,” said Kraiz. “But from the Khazars themselves we have nearly nothing.”
    The Khazars’ ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited number of Jewish religious artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David found at other Khazar sites prove that ordinary Khazars preferred traditional beliefs such as shamanism, or newly introduced religions including Islam.
    Yevgeny Satanovsky, director of the Middle Eastern Institute in Moscow, said he believes the Khazar elite chose Judaism out of political expediency — to remain independent of neighboring Muslim and Christian states. “They embraced Judaism because they wanted to remain neutral, like Switzerland these days,” he said.
    In particular, he said, the Khazars opposed the Arab advance into the Caucasus Mountains and were instrumental in containing a Muslim push toward eastern Europe. He compared their role in eastern Europe to that of the French knights who defeated Arab forces at the Battle of Tours in France in 732.
    The Khazars succeeded in holding off the Arabs, but a young, expanding Russian state vanquished the Khazar empire in the late 10th century. Medieval Russian epic poems mention Russian warriors fighting the “Jewish Giant.”
    “In many ways, Russia is a successor of the Khazar state,” Vasilyev said.

    He said his dig revealed traces of a large fire that was probably caused by the Russian conquest. He said Itil was rebuilt following the fall of the Khazar empire, when ethnic Khazars were slowly assimilated by Turkic-speaking tribes, Tatarsand Mongols, who inhabited the city until it was flooded by the rising Caspian Seaaround the 14th century.

    The study of the Khazar empire was discouraged in the Soviet Union. The dictator Josef Stalin, in particular, detested the idea that a Jewish empire had come before Russia’s own. He ordered references to Khazar history removed from textbooks because they “disproved his theory of Russian statehood,” Satanovsky said.

    Only now are Russian scholars free to explore Khazar culture. The Itil excavations have been sponsored by the Russian-Jewish Congress, a nonprofit organization that supports cultural projects in Russia.

    “Khazar studies are just beginning,” Satanovsky said.

     

  • The KHAZARS/ Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital

    The KHAZARS/ Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital

    Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital

    By MANSUR MIROVALEV, Associated Press Writer Sat Sep 20, 2:13 PM ET

    MOSCOW – A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.
    ADVERTISEMENT

    Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.
    By law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said. The general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmed in medieval chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.
    “The discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe’s first feudal state is of great significance,” he told The Associated Press. “We should view it as part of Russian history.”
    Kevin Brook, the American author of “The Jews of Khazaria,” e-mailed Wednesday that he has followed the Itil dig over the years, and even though it has yielded no Jewish artifacts, “Now I’m as confident as the archaeological team is that they’ve truly found the long-lost city,
    The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea.
    Itil, about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied 0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Vasilyev said.
    It lay at a major junction of the Silk Road, the trade route between Europe and China, which “helped Khazars amass giant profits,” he said.
    The Khazar empire was once a regional superpower, and Vasilyev said his team has found “luxurious collections” of well-preserved ceramics that help identify cultural ties of the Khazar state with Europe, the Byzantine Empire and even Northern Africa. They also found armor, wooden kitchenware, glass lamps and cups, jewelry and vessels for transporting precious balms dating back to the eighth and ninth centuries, he said.
    But a scholar in Israel, while calling the excavations interesting, said the challenge was to find Khazar inscriptions.
    “If they found a few buildings, or remains of buildings, that’s interesting but does not make a big difference,” said Dr. Simon Kraiz, an expert on Eastern European Jewry at Haifa University. “If they found Khazar writings, that would be very important.”
    Vasilyev says no Jewish artifacts have been found at the site, and in general, most of what is known about the Khazars comes from chroniclers from other, sometimes competing cultures and empires.
    “We know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jews wrote about them, and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, to name a few,” said Kraiz. “But from the Khazars themselves we have nearly nothing.”
    The Khazars’ ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited number of Jewish religious artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David found at other Khazar sites prove that ordinary Khazars preferred traditional beliefs such as shamanism, or newly introduced religions including Islam.
    Yevgeny Satanovsky, director of the Middle Eastern Institute in Moscow, said he believes the Khazar elite chose Judaism out of political expediency — to remain independent of neighboring Muslim and Christian states. “They embraced Judaism because they wanted to remain neutral, like Switzerland these days,” he said.
    In particular, he said, the Khazars opposed the Arab advance into the Caucasus Mountains and were instrumental in containing a Muslim push toward eastern Europe. He compared their role in eastern Europe to that of the French knights who defeated Arab forces at the Battle of Tours in France in 732.
    The Khazars succeeded in holding off the Arabs, but a young, expanding Russian state vanquished the Khazar empire in the late 10th century. Medieval Russian epic poems mention Russian warriors fighting the “Jewish Giant.”
    “In many ways, Russia is a successor of the Khazar state,” Vasilyev said.

    He said his dig revealed traces of a large fire that was probably caused by the Russian conquest. He said Itil was rebuilt following the fall of the Khazar empire, when ethnic Khazars were slowly assimilated by Turkic-speaking tribes, Tatars and Mongols, who inhabited the city until it was flooded by the rising Caspian Sea around the 14th century.

    The study of the Khazar empire was discouraged in the Soviet Union. The dictator Josef Stalin, in particular, detested the idea that a Jewish empire had come before Russia’s own. He ordered references to Khazar history removed from textbooks because they “disproved his theory of Russian statehood,” Satanovsky said.

    Only now are Russian scholars free to explore Khazar culture. The Itil excavations have been sponsored by the Russian-Jewish Congress, a nonprofit organization that supports cultural projects in Russia.

    “Khazar studies are just beginning,” Satanovsky said.

    __._,_.___

  • Turkey: Ankara’s S-300 Curiosity

    Turkey: Ankara’s S-300 Curiosity

     
     

    August 25, 2008 | 1729 GMT
    Alexey SAZONOV/AFP/Getty Images
    A Russian S-400 air defense battery, which is based on the S-300 design
    Summary
    Turkey is reportedly in the process of acquiring late-model Russian air defense technology from Ukraine and Belarus, Turkish daily Today’s Zaman reported Aug. 25. Bought second-hand, these systems would be used for the Turkish air force to train against, rather than to upgrade Ankara’s aging air defense network. That training could prove an important tool for both Turkey specifically and NATO in general.
    Analysis
    Turkey is in the process of acquiring several variants of the Russian S-300 air defense system, Turkish daily Today’s Zaman reported Aug. 25. The systems — reportedly to be acquired second-hand from Belarus and Ukraine — are not meant to revitalize Ankara’s aging air defense network; they are intended to be a training tool for the Turkish air force. Turkey decided to make the purchase July 22 — before the Russo-Georgian conflict — but should the deal go through, the lessons Turkey hopes to learn will almost certainly proliferate to NATO as a whole.
    The S-300 encompasses a number of long-range strategic air defense systems (some variants also have a limited ballistic missile defense capability). Turkey has its sights set on both the S-300 and S-300V. The former, known to NATO as the SA-10B/C/D, encompasses several models of varying capability, but in short approaches the height of Soviet strategic air defense systems. Though neither Ukraine nor Belarus has the most modern S-300 variants — the PMU series — Turkey will likely attempt to acquire a PMU-series variant from them if it can, because Ankara knows Greece fields a PMU1 variant on Crete.
    Related Link
    • Russia: The Fundamentals of Russian Air Defense Exports
    Related Special Topic Page
    • Russia’s Military
    The S-300V, meanwhile, shares the same design heritage as the S-300 (including some component parts). But while its spectrum of coverage and engagement envelope are quite similar, it is a distinct air defense system (known to NATO as the SA-12) characterized by the large tracked vehicles on which it is mounted. The S-300V was designed with a higher degree of mobility in mind. Russian troops deployed near the Turkish border in Armenia are protected by an S-300V battery.
    Both the United States and Israel reportedly were able to acquire some S-300 components during the 1990s (including, in the U.S. case, parts of the S-300V), but the Turkish effort could include a later model or a more complete system.
    Should Turkey succeed in this acquisition, Ankara’s subsequent work would take two important approaches. The first is reverse engineering, where key components are disassembled and their inner workings closely examined.. The second is training in electronic warfare against actual systems.
    Ukraine and Belarus have neither the newest nor the best-maintained air defense hardware. The condition of the equipment Ankara seeks to buy is unclear, and Russia may be in a position to block at least the Belarusian part of the sale. But perhaps the most significant aspect of this news is the intention to train against it — not just dissecting the missile, but actually flying against functional systems.
    A training range at Konya, less than 150 miles south of Ankara, is reportedly slated to host this Russian hardware, along with the shorter-range Russian Tor-M1. According to the report, the systems will be integrated with an electronic warfare training system with which Turkey’s F-16s will conduct exercises.
    If Turkey is able to acquire even one of the three S-300 variants it seeks, it will undoubtedly work at the training range to learn and test the technology’s performance parameters. This will allow Turkey (and any other NATO allies who happen to train with Turkish forces at the Konya facility) to test tactics and challenge the system over and over again. Whether it will succeed in acquiring a PMU1 remains to be seen, but even older variants could offer very real insight into some of the overall S-300 design’s ultimate limitations and weaknesses. And the result will be a Turkish air force more capable of addressing the two most advanced air defense systems positioned on its periphery: the Greek S-300PMU1 batteries (which were originally slated for Cyprus) to its southwest and the Russian S-300V battery in Armenia, on its eastern border.
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  • Activists in Ukraine’s Crimea ask Russia to reclaim territory

    Activists in Ukraine’s Crimea ask Russia to reclaim territory

     
    16:24 | 22/ 08/ 2008
     

    SIMFEROPOL, August 22 (RIA Novosti) – About 50 protesters gathered in the Crimean capital of Simferopol on Friday, urging Russia to pull out of a friendship agreement with Ukraine and to make a territorial claim on the peninsula.

    The organizer of the rally, Valery Podyachy, told the gathering: “We ask Russia to tear up the agreement [on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership with Ukraine] and to file territorial claims to Ukraine.”

    The Crimea, which has a predominantly Russian-speaking population, has been the focus of frequent disputes between the Russian and Ukrainian leaderships, over the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s lease of the soviet-era Sevastopol naval base.

    During the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia that followed Tbilisi’s August 8 offensive in breakaway South Ossetia, Ukraine threatened to bar entry to Russian Black Sea fleet vessels that had been deployed near Georgia’s coast.

    Ukraine’s Defense Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov signed instructions on Thursday to implement an earlier presidential decree complicating the rules of deployment for the Black Sea Fleet.

    Podyachy, who heads the Sevastopol-Crimea-Russia Popular Front, said: “While Russia sent aid to flood-hit Ukrainian regions, Ukraine failed to help Russia to force Georgia to peace, and took an openly hostile stance.”

    Ukraine supplied weaponry to President Mikheil Saakashvili’s regime that was used to kill Russian peacekeepers, he said.

    “Ukraine has proved by its policies that it is not a friend but an enemy to Russia,” Podyachy said.

    Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who grew up in Ukraine, made the Crimean Peninsula – a territory of 26,100 sq km – part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. The peninsula was until then a part of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.

    Since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, the Crimea has unsuccessfully sought independence from Ukraine. A 1994 referendum in the Crimea supported demands for a broader autonomy and closer links with Russia.

    Relations between Russia and Ukraine have deteriorated recently following Kiev’s NATO membership bid and its demand that Russia’s Black Sea Fleet withdraw from its naval base in Sevastopol.

  • Window on Eurasia: Ukrainians Discuss How Best to Counter Russian Threat to Crimea

    Window on Eurasia: Ukrainians Discuss How Best to Counter Russian Threat to Crimea

    Thursday, August 21, 2008

    Paul Goble

    Vienna, August 21 – Having watched Moscow’s moves in Georgia and listened to various Russians suggest that the Crimea, where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based, is or should be Moscow’s next target, Ukrainian politicians, diplomats, and foreign policy analysts are discussing the nature and dimensions of the Russian threat and what Kyiv should do to parry it.
    In addition to Russian actions and threats, this issue has heated up in recent days because of calls by senior Ukrainian officials for Russia to begin preparing to move its fleet out of Sevastopol by or possibly even before 2017, statements that most Russian politicians have refused to take seriously and most military analysts say would be very difficult.
    Today, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodomyr Ogryzko said that Moscow must begin thinking about moving both men and materiel from Sevastopol now because regardless of what some may think, Kyiv will honor its agreement with Moscow but “in any case after 2017, the Russian fleet will not be on our territory (news.mail.ru/politics/1960873).
    Ogryzko said that the Ukrainian government cannot understand why Russia has simply “refused” to discuss the situation or any plans to withdraw its forces and close the base. As a sovereign country, the minister said, Ukraine will meet its treaty obligations, but he underscored that Ukraine has “the right to make a choice” about any bases on its territory.
    And if Ukraine makes the decision not to have such bases, the foreign minister continued, “no one, including Russia can influence our decision. … If in Moscow, they do not yet understand this, that governments live according to such rules throughout the world, then this is Russia’s problem” and not Ukraine’s.
    But recent Russian behavior in Georgia and Moscow’s reactions to Kyiv’s positions on this and other issues has convinced many Ukrainians that Russia’s problem in this regard is becoming a problem for their country because of the danger that Moscow will try to destabilize its neighbor to ensure its continued control of Sevastopol or even seek to seize Crimea.
    Those concerns have been exacerbated by three new developments: suggestions by some officials that Timoshenko should be charged with treason, a statement by a Crimean Tatar leader and Ukrainian parliamentarian that Moscow has many levers to use in Crimea, and an assessment by Ukrainian military analysts of what Moscow is already doing.
    The first of these, charges that opposition leader Yuliya Timoshenko should be investigated for possible treason on behalf of Russia, has already been extensively discussed, with some analysts arguing that this scandal by itself represents an effort by Moscow to destabilize and discredit the Ukrainian government.
    But the second and third deserve more attention. Today, Mustafa Dzhemilyev, who is both the leader of the Crimean Tatars and a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament, said that he is convinced that the large number of Crimeans who have dual citizenship with Russia by itself points to a possible South Ossetian scenario for that peninsula (www.vlasti.net/news/20236).
    Moreover, he continued, unlike in South Ossetia, “there is no need [for Russia] to introduce forces [because] there is a sufficiently large and not badly armed contingent of the Russian Black Sea Fleet already there.” Consequently, Moscow could move even more quickly than in did in Georgia, he said.
    “In order to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” the Crimean Tatar leader said, Kyiv should “close Russian consulates which are violating the law by handing out to citizens of Ukraine Russian passports.” Indeed, Ukrainian officials should force those “who have illegal dual citizenship to annul one of the passports.”
    Moreover, Ukrainian officials must focus on the activities of pro-Russian organizations whose statements and activities are exacerbating interethnic tensions and creating the conditions for a Russian move. And Dzhemilyev said, Kyiv should insist that the Black Sea Fleet leave Sevastopol long before the 2017 date established by agreement.
    The third event was the release, also today, of a report by the Kyiv Center for Research on the Army, Conversion and Disarmament, which argued that “Russia has created in the Crimea all the preconditions” for a military operation to keep control of Sevastopol, detach Crimea from Ukraine, and weaken the rest of the country as well (www.nr2.ru/kiev/192334.html).
    “For the achievement of these goals, Russia doesn’t need a major military conflict with Ukraine,” the center’s analysts said. Instead, “it is sufficient to destabilize the situation in a single Crimean region” through the use of precisely targeted operations using “the forces of the Russian special services and particular units of the Black Sea Fleet.”
    Moreover, they continued, Moscow will build on “to the maximum extent possible” the pro-Russian segments of the population and the pro-Russian social and political organizations that Moscow and its friends in Ukraine have been promoting ever since Ukraine gained its independence in 1991.
    The center’s analysts suggested that the first stage of such a conflict might consist of “actions directed at the sharpening of relations between personnel of the Black Sea Fleet and representatives of Ukrainian authority in nearby areas,” possibly by means of “a provocation” taking the form of a supposed Ukrainian attack on the fleet.
    After that happens, according to the center’s scenario, “the pro-Russian population will rise to the defense of the Russian personnel” and then there “will begin clashes with the law enforcement bodies of Ukraine.” That in turn will lead both countries to increase their military presence in Crimea, at which time Moscow will raise the issue of Ukraine’s right to Crimea.
    Kyiv would then appeal to the West, the center said, but its analysts argued that Ukraine would not be any more successful in attracting anything more from Western countries than verbal support. And consequently, Russia could then “swallow” Crimea at its leisure, confident that Ukraine by itself would not be able to block its moves.
    The center’s director added that he does not believe that Moscow is likely to follow such a scenario, but he added that “Russia has already created all the necessary conditions for its realization,” including official statements questioning Ukraine’s right to control Crimea, ramping up anti-Ukrainian feelings among Russians, and “also dominating Ukraine’s information space.”
    Today also, Ukrainian media carried the assessments of five political analysts. Sergei Dzherdzh, the president of the Ukraine-NATO League, agreed that Russia could move in Crimea, but he suggested that “more sober” heads in Moscow were likely to act with restraint given Moscow’s experiences in Chechnya and Georgia (www.vlasti.net/news/20336).
    Vadim Grechaninov, president of the Atlantic Council in Kyiv, said that Russia will launch “not a real war but an information one” and will seek to dominate Ukraine by creating “a fifth column,” a powerful pro-Russian lobby within the government, the leaders of the country’s political parties, and in the regions.
    Political scientist Viktor Nebozheno said that Ukraine was entering a dangerous period because both Russian and Georgian “hawks” might seek to stage provocations in Sevastopol in order to achieve their goals elsewhere, a view echoed by the Ukrainian Diplomatic Academy’s Aleksandr Paliy, who said Russia has constantly been staging provocations in Ukraine.
    But Vadim Karasev, a political scientist, said that Ukraine is in fact in a good position to counter any Russian moves of this kind. If it blocks the formation of “unrecognized formations” and “separatist groups” prepared to help Russia and if it adopts “a new regional policy” to ensure that Crimea develops, then Moscow will have a much harder time in pursuing its goals.
    But “the main thing,” Karasev said, is for Ukraine “not to do anything stupid” that Moscow would then exploit.