May 2022
Extracts from a lengthier article published on 1 April 2022 by Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris. Translated from the French by N. Dass. Our title (originally, "The Military Situation in Ukraine"). Original sub-heads and italic emphases.
The vastly experienced Swiss author is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, and specialist on Eastern countries. Trained in the American and British intelligence services, he is a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions and, among much else, was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programmes to assist Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism.
Ukraine Truth
Part One: The Road To War
For years, from Mali to Afghanistan, I have worked for peace and risked my life for it. It is therefore not a question of justifying war, but of understanding what led us to it. I notice that the “experts” who take turns on television analyse the situation on the basis of dubious information, most often hypotheses erected as facts—and then we no longer manage to understand what is happening.
This is how panics are created.
The problem is not so much to know who is right in this conflict, but to question the way our leaders make their decisions.
Let’s try to examine the roots of the conflict. It starts with those who for the last eight years have been talking about “separatists” or “independentists” from Donbass. This is not true. The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014, were not referendums of “independence” (независимость), as some unscrupulous journalists have claimed, but referendums of “self-determination” or “autonomy” (самостоятельность). The qualifier “pro-Russian” suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term “Russian speakers” would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.
In fact, these Republics were not seeking to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy, guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language. For the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the overthrow of President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that made Russian an official language. A bit like if putschists decided that French and Italian would no longer be official languages in Switzerland.
This decision caused a storm in the Russian-speaking population. The result was a fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk) which was carried out beginning in February 2014 and led to a militarisation of the situation and some massacres (the most notable in Odessa and Mariupol). At the end of summer 2014, only the self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk remained.
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It is essential to recall here that Minsk 1 (September 2014) and Minsk 2 (February 2015) Agreements did not provide for the separation or independence of the Republics, but their autonomy within the framework of Ukraine. Those who have read the Agreements (there are very, very, very few who actually have) will note that it is written in all letters that the status of the Republics was to be negotiated between Kiev and the representatives of the Republics, for an internal solution in Ukraine.
This is why since 2014, Russia has systematically demanded their implementation while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter for Ukraine. On the other side, the West—led by France—systematically tried to replace the Minsk Accords with the “Normandy format,” which brought Russians and Ukrainians face-to-face. However, let us remember that there were never any Russian troops in the Donbass before 23-24 February 2022. Moreover, OSCE observers have never observed the slightest trace of Russian units operating in the Donbass. Thus, the U.S. intelligence map published by the Washington Post on December 3, 2021 does not show Russian troops in Donbass.
In October 2015, Vasyl Hrytsak, director of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), confessed that only 56 Russian fighters had been observed in the Donbass. This was exactly comparable to the Swiss going to fight in Bosnia on weekends, in the 1990s, or the French who go to fight in the Ukraine today.
The Ukrainian army was then in a deplorable state. ...
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So, to compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias. They are essentially composed of foreign mercenaries, often extreme right-wing militants. As of 2020, they constituted about 40% of Ukraine's forces and numbered around 102,000 men, according to Reuters. They are armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There are more than 19 nationalities—including Swiss.
Western countries have thus clearly created and supported Ukrainian far-right militias. In October 2021, the Jerusalem Post sounded the alarm by denouncing the Centuria project. These militias had been operating in the Donbass since 2014, with Western support. Even if one can argue about the term “Nazi,” the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-Semitic. Their anti-Semitism is more cultural than political, which is why the term “Nazi” is not really appropriate. Their hatred of the Jew stems from the great famines of the 1920s and 1930s in Ukraine, resulting from Stalin’s confiscation of crops to finance the modernisation of the Red Army. This genocide—known in Ukraine as the Holodomor—was perpetrated by the NKVD (forerunner of the KGB), whose upper echelons of leadership were mainly composed of Jews. That is why, today, Ukrainian extremists are asking Israel to apologise for the crimes of communism, as the Jerusalem Post reports. This is a far cry from a “rewriting of history” by Vladimir Putin.
These militias, originating from the far-right groups that led the Euromaidan revolution in 2014, are composed of fanatical and brutal individuals. The best known of these is the Azov Regiment, whose emblem is reminiscent of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division, which is truly revered in Ukraine for liberating Kharkov from the Soviets in 1943, before carrying out the 1944 Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in France.
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The labelling of the Ukrainian paramilitaries as “Nazis” or “neo-Nazis” is considered Russian propaganda. Perhaps. But that is not the view of the Times of Israel, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre or the West Point Academy’s Centre for Counterterrorism. But this is still debatable, because in 2014, Newsweek magazine seemed to associate them with… the Islamic State. Take your pick!
So, the West supported and continues to arm militias that have been guilty of numerous crimes against civilian populations since 2014: rape, torture and massacres. But while the Swiss government has been very quick to impose sanctions against Russia, it has not adopted any against Ukraine, which has been massacring its own population since 2014. In fact, those who defend human rights in Ukraine have long condemned the actions of these groups, but have not been supported by our governments. Because, in reality, we are not trying to help Ukraine, but to fight Russia.
The integration of these paramilitary forces into the National Guard was not at all accompanied by a “denazification,” as some claim. [...]
In 2022, very schematically, the Ukrainian armed forces fighting the Russian offensive were organised as:
- Army, subordinate to the Ministry of Defence: organised into 3 army corps and composed of manoeuvre formations (tanks, heavy artillery, missiles, etc.).
- National Guard, which depends on the Ministry of the Interior and is organised into 5 territorial commands.
The National Guard is therefore a territorial defence force that is not part of the Ukrainian army. It includes paramilitary militias, called “volunteer battalions” (добровольчі батальйоні), also known by the evocative name of “reprisal battalions,” and composed of infantry. Primarily trained for urban combat, they now defend cities such as Kharkov, Mariupol, Odessa, Kiev, etc.
Part Two: The War
As a former head of the Warsaw Pact forces in the Swiss strategic intelligence service, I observe with sadness—but not astonishment—that our services are no longer able to understand the military situation in Ukraine. The self-proclaimed “experts” who parade on our screens tirelessly relay the same information modulated by the claim that Russia—and Vladimir Putin—is irrational. Let’s take a step back.
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2. The "Demilitarisation"
The Russian offensive proceeds in a very “classic” manner. [...]
The idea that Russia is trying to take over Kiev, the capital, to eliminate Zelensky, typically comes from the West: this is what they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and what they wanted to do in Syria with the help of the Islamic State. But Vladimir Putin never intended to take down or overthrow Zelensky. On the contrary, Russia seeks to keep him in power by pushing him to negotiate by encircling Kyiv. He had refused so far to apply the Minsk Accords, but now the Russians want to obtain Ukraine's neutrality.
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From an operational point of view, the Russian offensive was an example of its kind: in six days, the Russians seized a territory as vast as the United Kingdom, with a speed of advance greater than what the Wehrmacht made in 1940.
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The “slowdown” that our “experts” attribute to poor logistics is only the consequence of having achieved the objectives set. Russia does not seem to want to engage in an occupation of the whole Ukrainian territory. In fact, it seems rather that Russia is trying to limit its advance to the country's linguistic border.
Our media speak of indiscriminate bombardments against civilian populations, particularly in Kharkov, and Dantesque images are broadcast on a loop. However, Gonzalo Lira, a Latin American who lives there, presents us with a calm city on March 10, and on March 11. Admittedly, it's a big city and you can't see everything, but that seems to indicate that we are not in the total war that we are being served continuously on our screens.
As for the Republics of Donbass, they have “liberated” their own territories and are fighting in the city of Mariupol.
3. Denazification
In cities like Kharkov, Mariupol and Odessa, the defence is provided by paramilitary militias. They know that the objective of “denazification” is aimed primarily at them.
For an attacker in an urbanised area, civilians are a problem. This is why Russia is seeking to create humanitarian corridors to empty cities of civilians and leave only the militias, to fight them more easily.
Conversely, these militias seek to keep civilians in the cities in order to dissuade the Russian army from fighting there. This is why they are reluctant to implement these corridors and do everything to ensure that Russian efforts are unsuccessful—they can use the civilian population as “human shields.” Videos showing civilians trying to leave Mariupol and being beaten up by fighters of the Azov Regiment are of course carefully censored here.
On Facebook, the Azov group was considered in the same category as the Islamic State and subject to the platform’s “policy on dangerous individuals and organisations.” It was therefore forbidden to glorify it, and “posts” that were favourable to it were systematically banned. But on February 24, Facebook changed its policy and allowed posts favourable to the militia. In the same spirit, in March, the platform authorised, in the former East European countries, calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire our leaders, as we shall see.
Our media propagate a romantic image of popular resistance. It is this image that led the European Union to finance the distribution of arms to the civilian population. This is a criminal act. In my capacity as head of peacekeeping doctrine at the UN, I worked on the issue of civilian protection. We found that violence against civilians occurred in very specific contexts. In particular, when weapons are abundant and there are no command structures.
These command structures are the essence of armies: their function is to channel the use of force towards an objective. By arming citizens in a haphazard manner, as is currently the case, the EU is turning them into combatants, with the consequential effect of making them potential targets. Moreover, without command, without operational goals, the distribution of arms leads inevitably to settling of scores, banditry and actions that are more deadly than effective. War becomes a matter of emotions. Force becomes violence. This is what happened in Tawarga (Libya) from 11 to 13 August 2011, where 30,000 black Africans were massacred with weapons parachuted (illegally) by France. By the way, the British Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (RUSI) does not see any added value in these arms deliveries.
Moreover, by delivering arms to a country at war, one exposes oneself to being considered a belligerent. The Russian strikes of March 13, 2022, against the Mykolayev air base follow Russian warnings that arms shipments would be treated as hostile targets.
The EU is repeating the disastrous experience of the Third Reich in the final hours of the Battle of Berlin. War should be left to the military and when one side has lost, it must be admitted. And if there is to be resistance, it must be led and structured. But we are doing exactly the opposite—we are pushing citizens to go and fight and at the same time, Facebook authorises calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire us.
Some intelligence services see this irresponsible decision as a way to use the Ukrainian population as cannon fodder to fight Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This kind of murderous decision should have been left to the colleagues of [EU President] Ursula von der Leyen’s grandfather [who took part in the 1941 Babi Yar massacre of 33,000 Jewish inhabitants of Kiev]. It would have been better to engage in negotiations and thus obtain guarantees for the civilian population than to add fuel to the fire. It is easy to be combative with the blood of others.
4. The Maternity Hospital At Mariupol
It is important to understand beforehand that it is not the Ukrainian army that is defending Mariupol, but the Azov militia, composed of foreign mercenaries.
In its March 7, 2022 summary of the situation, the Russian UN mission in New York stated that “Residents report that Ukrainian armed forces expelled staff from the Mariupol city birth hospital No. 1 and set up a shooting station inside the facility.”
On March 8, the independent Russian media Lenta.ru, published the testimony of civilians from Mariupol who related that the maternity hospital was taken over by the militia of the Azov regiment, who drove out the civilian occupants by threatening them with their weapons. They thereby confirmed the statements of the Russian ambassador a few hours earlier.
The hospital in Mariupol occupies a dominant position, perfectly suited for the installation of anti-tank weapons and for observation. On March 9, Russian forces struck the building. According to CNN, 17 people were wounded, but the images do not show any casualties in the building and there is no evidence that the victims mentioned are related to this strike. There is talk of children, but in reality, we see nothing. It may be true, but it may be false. This does not prevent the leaders of the EU from seeing it as a war crime. And this allows Zelensky to call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
In reality, we don't know exactly what happened. But the sequence of events tends to confirm that Russian forces struck a position of the Azov regiment and that the maternity ward was then free of civilians.
The problem is that the paramilitary militias that defend the cities are encouraged by the international community not to respect the customs of war. It seems that the Ukrainians have re-enacted the scenario of [Iraqi soldiers supposedly ripping babies from incubators in the] Kuwait City maternity hospital in 1990, which was totally staged by the [PR] firm Hill & Knowlton for $10.7 million in order to convince the United Nations Security Council to intervene in Iraq for Operation Desert Shield/Storm.
Western politicians have accepted strikes against civilians in Donbass for eight years, without adopting any sanctions against the Ukrainian government. We have long since entered a dynamic where Western politicians have agreed to sacrifice international law towards their goal of weakening Russia.
Part Three: Conclusions
As an ex-intelligence professional, the first thing that strikes me is the total absence of Western intelligence services in the representation of the situation over the past year. In Switzerland, the services have been criticised for not having provided a correct picture of the situation. In fact, it seems that throughout the Western world, intelligence services have been overwhelmed by the politicians. The problem is that it is the politicians who decide; the best intelligence service in the world is useless if the decision-maker does not listen. This is what happened during this crisis.
That said, while some intelligence services had a very accurate and rational picture of the situation, others clearly had the same picture as that propagated by our media. In this crisis, the services of the countries of the “new Europe” played an important role. The problem is that, from experience, I have found them to be extremely bad at the analytical level: doctrinaire, they lack the intellectual and political independence necessary to assess a situation with military “quality.” It is better to have them as enemies than as friends.
Second, it seems that in some European countries, politicians have deliberately ignored their services in order to respond ideologically to the situation. That is why this crisis has been irrational from the beginning. It should be noted that all the documents presented to the public during this crisis have been presented by politicians based on commercial sources.
Some Western politicians obviously wanted there to be a conflict. In the United States, the attack scenarios presented by [U.S. Secretary of State] Anthony Blinken to the Security Council were only the fruit of the imagination of a Tiger Team [of administration officials] working for him: he did exactly as Donald Rumsfeld did in 2002, who had thus “bypassed” the CIA and other intelligence services that were much less assertive about Iraqi chemical weapons.
The dramatic developments we are witnessing today have causes that we knew about but refused to see:
- at the strategic level, the expansion of NATO (which we have not dealt with here);
- on the political level, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements;
- and operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of the Donbass over the past years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.
In other words, we can naturally deplore and condemn the Russian attack. But WE (that is: the United States, France and the European Union in the lead) have created the conditions for a conflict to break out. We show compassion for the Ukrainian people and the two million refugees. That's fine. But if we had had a modicum of compassion for the same number of refugees from the Ukrainian populations of Donbass massacred by their own government and who sought refuge in Russia for eight years, none of this would probably have happened.
Whether the term “genocide” applies to the abuses suffered by the people of Donbass is an open question. The term is generally reserved for cases of greater magnitude (Holocaust, etc.). But the definition given by the Genocide Convention is probably broad enough to apply to this case. Legal scholars will understand this.
Clearly, this conflict has led us into hysteria. Sanctions seem to have become the preferred tool of our foreign policies. If we had insisted that Ukraine abide by the Minsk Agreements, which we had negotiated and endorsed, none of this would have happened. The condemnation of Vladimir Putin is also ours. There is no point in whining after the fact; we should have acted earlier. However, neither Emmanuel Macron (as guarantor and member of the UN Security Council), nor [German Chancellor] Olaf Scholz, nor Volodymyr Zelensky have respected their commitments. In the end, the real defeat is that of those who have no voice.
The European Union was unable to promote the implementation of the Minsk agreements; on the contrary, it did not react when Ukraine was bombing its own population in the Donbass. Had it done so, Vladimir Putin would not have needed to react. Absent from the diplomatic phase, the EU distinguished itself by fuelling the conflict. On February 27, the Ukrainian government agreed to enter into negotiations with Russia. But a few hours later, the European Union voted a budget of 450 million euros to supply arms to Ukraine, adding fuel to the fire. From then on, the Ukrainians felt that they did not need to reach an agreement. The resistance of the Azov militias in Mariupol even led to a boost of 500 million euros for weapons.
In Ukraine, with the blessing of Western countries, those who are in favour of a negotiation have been eliminated. This is the case with Denis Kireyev, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, assassinated on March 5 by the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) because he was too favourable to Russia and was considered a traitor. The same fate befell Dmitry Demyanenko, former deputy head of the SBU’s main directorate for Kiev and its region, who was assassinated on March 10 because he was too favourable to an agreement with Russia—he was shot by the Mirotvorets (“Peacemaker”) militia. This militia is associated with the Mirotvorets website, which lists the “enemies of Ukraine,” with their personal data, addresses and telephone numbers, so that they can be harassed or even eliminated; a practice that is punishable in many countries, but not in Ukraine. The UN and some European countries have demanded the closure of this site: refused by the Rada [Ukraine parliament].
In the end, the price will be high, but Vladimir Putin will likely achieve the goals he set for himself. His ties with Beijing have solidified. China is emerging as a mediator in the conflict, while Switzerland is joining the list of Russia’s enemies. The Americans have to ask Venezuela and Iran for oil to get out of the energy impasse they have put themselves in....
Western ministers who seek to collapse the Russian economy and make the Russian people suffer, or even call for the assassination of Putin, show (even if they have partially reversed the form of their words, but not the substance!) that our leaders are no better than those we hate. Because sanctioning Russian athletes in the Para-Olympic Games or Russian artists has nothing to do with fighting Putin.
Thus, we recognise that Russia is a democracy since we consider that the Russian people are responsible for the war. If this is not the case, then why do we seek to punish a whole population for the fault of one? Let us remember that collective punishment is forbidden by the Geneva Conventions.
The lesson to be learned from this conflict is our sense of variable geometric humanity. If we cared so much about peace and Ukraine, why didn’t we encourage Ukraine to respect the agreements it had signed and that the members of the Security Council had approved?
Media integrity is measured by their willingness to work within the terms of the Munich Charter. They succeeded in propagating hatred of the Chinese during the Covid crisis and their polarised message leads to the same effects against the Russians. Journalism is becoming more and more unprofessional and militant.
As Goethe said: “The greater the light, the darker the shadow.” The more disproportionate the sanctions against Russia, the more the cases where we have done nothing highlight our racism and servility. Why has no Western politician reacted to the strikes against the civilian population of Donbass for eight years?
Finally, what makes the conflict in Ukraine more blameworthy than the war in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya? What sanctions have we adopted against those who deliberately lied to the international community in order to wage unjust, unjustified and murderous wars? Did we seek to “make the American people suffer” for lying to us (because they are a democracy!) before the war in Iraq? Have we adopted a single sanction against the countries, companies or politicians who are supplying weapons to the conflict in Yemen, considered to be the “worst humanitarian disaster in the world?” Have we sanctioned the countries of the European Union that practice the most abject torture on their territory ["extraordinary rendition"] for the benefit of the United States?
To ask the question is to answer it… and the answer is not pretty.
Full article with web links available at https://cf2r.org/