Is Putin's 'maskirovka' strategy finally failing? (2 Feb 2015)

"On Saturday, Contact Group talks took place in Minsk. The former president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, representative of Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Heidi Tagliavini and Russian ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov, as well as the envoys of the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk republics, Denis Pushilin and Vladislav Deinego, attended the negotiations in the Belarusian capital." (Russian Sputnik News : Sat 31.01.2015)

These talks failed after 4 hours of intense negotiations, with each side blaming the other for this failure.

This Minsk meeting on Saturday 31.01.2015 follows on from a FAILED meeting that Putin's proxies wanted to have on Friday, as reported by  Alessandra Prentice and Natalia Zinets (Reuters : Fri Jan 30, 2015). 

In fact,

"The press service for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the Foreign Ministry said they had no information whether a Ukrainian envoy was traveling to Minsk for talks on Friday." (ibid Prentice and Zinets)

Furthermore, even the OSCE chairman Ivica Dacic declined to comment on Pushilin's statements that this Friday meeting had been set up. (ibid Prentice and Zinets)

This meeting NEVER happened, and was then superseded by the Saturday Minsk meeting that completely failed.                                                         

This tactic of Putin is an overt example of  'Maskirovka', the Russian military strategy of deception, involving techniques to surprise and deceive the enemy.

The critical elements of Putin's maskirovka includes:

• Surprise
• Kamufliazh - camouflage
• Demonstrativnye manevry - manoeuvres intended to deceive
• Skrytie - concealment
• Imitatsia - the use of decoys and military dummies
• Dezinformatsia - disinformation, a knowing attempt to deceive

 

However, this technique of Putin's, whilst effective when he annexed Crimea, set up his proxies in eastern Ukraine, imported arms into eastern Ukraine under the guise of 'humanitarian' aid, and continuously denies that Russian soldiers are fighting and dying alongside his proxies in eastern Ukraine, can no longer be sustained. As the saying goes,

 "You can fool all of the people some of the time

  Some of the people all of the time

  But not all of the people all of the time" 

This is perhaps best summed up by Sir Andrew Wood, former UK ambassador to Russia, during a recently held CNBC interview towards the end of Jan. 2015.

  

More critically however, given the recent avalanche of sophisticated Russia arms flowing across the border into eastern Ukraine, coupled with an horrendous increase in civilian casualties; President Barack Obama's administration in particular,

" ... is taking a new look at providing Ukrainian forces with defensive weapons and equipment in the face of a rebel offensive that shattered a five-month truce, the New York Times reported on Sunday." (Peter Cooney : Reuters : Feb. 2, 2015)

John Kerry

 This new attitude of the US follows on from,

" ... Pavlo Klimkin, Ukraine’s foreign minister, [who] said a deeper “understanding” was growing in the US and EU that Ukraine needed high-tech gadgetry and training as much as weapons." (Christian Oliver: Financial Times : February 1, 2015)

Now that Obama is finally beginning to move towards supplying Ukraine with the sophisticated arms that it needs to counter the arms and Russian soldiers that, even as I write, is flowing across the border from Russia into eastern Ukraine; what will the EU do to support this effort of the US, especially in the face of,

" A Ukrainian separatist leader ordered a full military mobilization as the conflict with government forces escalated after peace talks failed to secure a truce.

The call-up in 10 days’ time seeks to increase the rebel army to as many as 100,000 people, Alexander Zakharchenko, head of the self-declared Donetsk republic, said Monday, according to the separatist-run DAN news service."? (Daryna Krasnolutska and Kateryna Choursina : Washington Post : Feb 02, 2015)

  

Pavlo Klimkin

Pavlo Klimkin further stated that,
 
“People who were very supportive of Russia’s unlawful action last year now find there is no facility to interact with the outside world, not even to travel with passports issued in Crimea. There is no possibility of investment. They are not treated as normal Russians . . . The situation in Crimea will change far earlier than anyone expects.” (ibid Christian Oliver) (my emphasis)
 
Meanwhile the casualties mount up as Putin's current and viscious military offensive in eastern Ukraine continues to accelerate.

What is hidden from both the world and the Russian people is the toll that Putin's current military offensive is having on the Russian soldiers fighting alongside his proxies in eastern Ukraine. Putin dare not reveal the number of body-bags containing  fallen Russian soldiers from eastern Ukraine that is being transported into Russia.

Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Saint Petersburg

As Ales Byalyatski, formerly nominated for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize reports,

“While Moscow continues to deny any form of military intervention in the Ukrainian conflict, the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Saint Petersburg, despite multiple threats, continues to report on the growing numbers of dead soldiers arriving from Ukraine with no information on the circumstances or the place of their deaths." (Euromaidan Press : 1 Feb., 2015) (my emphasis)

Putin's maskirovka in action against the Russian people itself.

(to be continued)