On July 16, 1945, the world ended. Or at least it seemed that way to residents of the Tularosa Basin in New Mexico.
Unbeknownst to local civilians, J. Robert Oppenheimer had chosen their backyard as the proving ground for the world’s first nuclear weapon. The explosion, which U.S. officials publicly claimed to be an accident at a local ammunition depot, tore through the morning sky, leaving a 40,000-foot-tall cloud of radioactive debris that would cake the surrounding area with dust for days on end.
Tina Cordova, whose hometown of Tularosa lies just 45 miles from ground zero, remembers her grandmother’s stories about wiping that infernal dust off every nook and cranny of her childhood home. No one knew what had happened quite yet, but they figured it must have been something special. After all, a local paper reported that the explosion was so bright that a blind woman had actually seen it.
When the initial shock wore off, the 40,000 locals who lived within 50 miles of ground zero returned to their daily lives. They drank from cisterns full of radioactive debris, ate beef from cattle that had grazed on the dust for weeks on end, and breathed air full of tiny plutonium particles. Only later would the real impact become clear.
Bernice Gutierrez, born just eight days before Oppenheimer’s “Trinity Test,” moved from a small town near the blast site to Albuquerque when she was 2 years old. Cancer followed her like a specter. Her great grandfather died of stomach cancer in the early 1950s. She lost cousins to leukemia and pancreatic cancer. Her oldest son died in 2020 after a bout with a “pre-leukemia” blood disorder. In total, 21 members of Gutierrez’s family have had cancer, and seven have died from it.
“We don’t ask ourselves if we’re gonna get cancer,” Gutierrez told RS. “We ask ourselves when, because it just never ends.”
“Oppenheimer” — the latest film from famed director Christopher Nolan — is a three-hour-long exploration of the “dilettante, womanizer, Communist sympathizer,” and world-historic genius behind the ultimate weapon. The movie, based on the book “American Prometheus,” delves deeply into Oppenheimer’s psyche, from his struggles as a young student at Cambridge to his profound melancholy over the world he helped create.
Yet nowhere in the film will viewers find an acknowledgement of the first victims of the nuclear era. Indeed, the movie repeats the myth that the bomb site was in a desolate area with “nothing for 40 miles in either direction.” This was not for lack of effort, according to Cordova, who leads an activist group called the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. (“Downwinders” refers to those who live in the fallout zone of nuclear tests.)
When Nolan’s team got to New Mexico to film, Cordova and her team published an op-ed in the local newspaper that called on the Oppenheimer crew to “grapple with the consequences of confronting the truth of our stories, of our history.” When that didn’t work, she reached out to the production through Kai Bird, the journalist who co-wrote American Prometheus, in an attempt to get a meeting. She received a flat “no.”
Cordova says she was “aggravated, angry, and disappointed” that the filmmakers had come to New Mexico to shoot the movie (and rake in state-funded tax breaks) but showed little interest in engaging with locals affected by Oppenheimer’s work. “Tens of millions of people are going to flock to theaters to see this movie, and a lot of them have never been exposed to this history,” she added. A short mention at the end of the movie could have changed that, Cordova argues. (Universal Pictures, which produced the film, did not respond to a request for comment from RS.)
And her concerns are not just about recognition. In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which gave insurance and lump-sum payments to the people affected by decades of nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. RECA payouts to date total more than $2.5 billion. But New Mexican downwinders were not included in the original law or a broader version of it passed in 2000, a fact that former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson attributes to a simple lack of awareness about their plight.
Cordova and her team have lobbied for years for an expanded version of RECA that would include New Mexican downwinders and some previously ineligible uranium miners, many of whom had little knowledge of just how dangerous their work was. A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a RECA expansion bill earlier this month.
“Imagine having radioactive waste fall down like dirty snow on your homes and communities causing cancer and disease,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.), who sponsored the bill in the House, in a statement. “Then think about the despair when you learn that the U.S. government compensated other communities exposed to radiation during the nuclear testing program but not yours.”
Lawmakers have introduced similar proposals several times in recent years, but, with limited public awareness behind their efforts, the proposal has never quite gotten enough support in Congress to pass.
“It’s an inconvenient truth,” Cordova said. “People just don’t want to reflect on the fact that American citizens were bombed at Trinity.”
Born in 1947 in Alamogordo, New Mexico, John Greenwood grew up a short distance from the Trinity Test site. Years of radiation exposure caught up with him in 2008, when he was first diagnosed with colon cancer.
Greenwood and his family spent four years fighting for his life. Their insurance covered 80 percent of costs, but the remaining 20 percent added up quickly given that a single chemotherapy treatment could cost $100,000. Other expenses fell by the wayside. One after another, utilities companies cut off their electricity and phone lines. Their car was repossessed.
But Laura Greenwood, John’s wife, knew their only option was to keep going. “I can’t tell you how stressful it was,” she remembered. “You go to bed crying every night wondering what you’re going to do the next day.”
John passed away in 2012, just six months after learning that the cancer had metastasized to his liver. He was the thirteenth member of his family to die from cancer since the Trinity Test.
Greenwood’s story highlights the devastating economic impact that years of health problems have had on downwinders. This, in part, is why RECA expansion has struggled to get off the ground in Congress, according to Laura. Many lawmakers argue behind closed doors that it would simply be too expensive to compensate downwinders and cover future medical costs related to radiation exposure.
Advocates of RECA expansion also have limited data to back up their claims of a link between the test and later cancers, which they blame in part on government secrecy surrounding the event. “The specter of endless lawsuits haunted the military, and most of the authorities simply wanted to put the whole test and its after-effects out of sight and mind,” according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on the history of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
A years-long study from the National Cancer Institute found that “no firm estimates can be established” of how many cancer cases came from the test due to limited radiation data from Oppenheimer’s team and a lack of reliable information on cancer rates and daily habits in rural New Mexico at the time. Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), who supports RECA expansion, called the NCI research “limited” when it was released.
But one impact of the test is clear. In the months after the explosion, the entire state of New Mexico saw an unprecedented spike in infant mortality, with 56 percent more New Mexican babies dying during live births in 1945 than in 1944. That number went back down in 1946 and has never reached such high levels since, a statistical anomaly with a 0.0001 percent chance of being caused by natural conditions, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
To Nolan’s credit, “Oppenheimer” includes affecting scenes in which the scientist wrestles with the pain wrought by his life’s work. While it leaves out some notable parts of the history, the film offers a powerful and largely accurate account of Oppenheimer’s quest to build — and later try to contain — the ultimate weapon, according to Stephen Schwartz, an expert on the history of nuclear weapons and a non-resident senior fellow with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
“I don’t think it glorifies nuclear weapons at all, which was the concern that some people had,” Schwartz told RS. Viewers will leave with “a better understanding of why he did what he did and all the complications that ensued,” he added. “I hope that it sparks many conversations.”
But Cordova sees the lack of engagement with downwinders as a major missed opportunity. She remembered back in 2018, when the Santa Fe Opera put on a production of “Dr. Atomic,” an opera about the lead-up to the Trinity Test. When Peter Sellars, who wrote the show’s libretto, found out about the problems faced by downwinders, he invited Cordova and her team to talk about their experiences on stage before each performance.
At a climactic moment of the show, Sellars portrayed a general arguing with scientists over whether to warn locals about the blast as a group of downwinders quietly watched on from the other side of the stage. “History is about what’s happening to people you’ve never met,” Sellars told RS. “Their bodies are carrying the traces of what you did.”
Sellars says the engagement with locals affected by the blast — most of whom were Latinos or native New Mexicans — helped make the show a hit. “The show was sold out, and the talks were packed,” he remembered.
Despite her lack of luck with the Oppenheimer team, Cordova remains optimistic. She hopes the movie will encourage people to learn more about the impacts of nuclear tests and boost support for her cause. “Every movement that has ever been started has a tipping point,” she said. “This movie could [have been] that tipping point. And it still might be that tipping point.”
In Reality It Resulted Largely from Kyiv’s Destruction of Eastern Ukraine’s Economy Under Neo-Liberal Economic Policies Pushed by Washington Since the 1990s
Ambrose is an independent researcher and former social worker from Toronto, Ontario.
The war in Ukraine is commonly seen through one of two lenses. The vision presented by Western, NATO-aligned powers is one of an astro-turfed Donbas separatism created by Moscow to justify the division of Ukraine.
The view of NATO’s critics is that the Donbas republics rebelled against the Euromaidan revolution and the country’s nationalistic, Euro-centric tilt. The reality is that this conflict started much earlier and was merely frozen until the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2013.
Political Economy of the Donbas
Global Security outlines the economic situation in Donbas at the time of the dissolution of the USSR.
The Donetsk basin had been settled by Russian and Bessarabian people in the 18th century, after the steppes of Ukraine and the coasts of the Black and Azov Seas were added to the Russian Empire.
Donbas held enormous reserves of coal, which were vital to the industrialization of the Empire and, later, the Soviet Union. During Soviet times Donbas became the industrial center of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with major iron mines in Krivoy Rog, the massive “Azovstal” steelworks, and the manufacture of machine parts for the defense and space industries.
Coal miners were able to exert political power throughout the industrial age by staging widespread strikes. Major strikes in August and September 1962 were held in Donbas and neighboring regions, resulting in promises of extra pay and threats of military force from the authorities.
Another wave of Donbas strikes in 1989 received concessions from the central government and the strike committees were effectively left in control of mining towns instead of the Communist Party.
The tension between the central government and the Donbas miners was fueled by the increasing difficulty (and cost) of pulling coal from Donbas mines. Other coal-mining regions of the USSR were less costly but the social unrest in Donbas was placated with increasing state subsidies.
Ukrainian independence ended the Donbas struggle against Moscow but created intractable economic problems. The extensive subsidies for Donbas mines were shifted to the less wealthy government in Kyiv, the economic integration of the Soviet Union’s republics was disrupted, and the shift to a market economy was disastrous.
After the break-up of the Union, the political leaders of the Donbas miners would become known as “red directors,” socialists who put the interconnected economic needs of the Donbas and surrounding regions at the heart of their demands to Kyiv.
One of the earliest separatist organizations in Ukraine was the International Movement of Donbas. The Ukrainian news site DEPO, citing Novosti Donbas, describes the origin of the Intermovement as a project of academics at Donetsk University. The group was created as the “International Front for Donbas” at a meeting held on August 31, 1989.
The “Interfront” was clearly inspired by the Intermovement of Estonia, which had formed the year before to defend communism and the Union state from Estonian separatists. In the summer of 1990 two of the leading figures of the Interfront, the brothers Dmitry and Vladimir Kornilov, traveled to the Baltics and western Ukraine. On this trip they studied the Intermovement of Estonia and its parallel organizations in Lithuania and Latvia, as well as the anti-Soviet People’s Movement of Ukraine (“Rukh”) based in Lviv.
The founding conference of the Intermovement of Donbas was held on November 18, 1990, and the Kornilov brothers were among those elected to its central council. The Intermovement unsuccessfully promoted the New Union Treaty and gained little popular support. Their most enduring success debuted at a rally on October 18, 1991, not long before the referendum on Ukraine’s declaration of independence: a red, blue, and black tricolor flag that would eventually become the flag of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Again citing Novosti Donbas, DEPO reports that former KGB General Oleg Kalugin had accused all of the Intermovements of being created by the KGB. According to Kalugin the Intermovements were meant to undermine nationalist separatism in the republics of the Soviet Union.
One might question whether or not Kalugin is the most reliable source on this subject. He had been demoted for criticizing KGB chief Yuri Andropov during Andropov’s anti-corruption campaign, and also allegedly protected CIA spies in the USSR.
Kalugin was elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies on the Democratic Platform of the CPSU in 1990 and supported the anti-communist reformer Boris Yeltsin. After securing the break-up of the KGB, Kalugin moved to the United States in 1995. From the 1980s onward Kalugin had been an opponent of the socialist system and a supporter of those who would destroy it.
Whatever the truth is behind Kalugin’s statements, it is evident that an enthusiastic clique of academics, even with KGB backing, could not create a separatist movement out of thin air. The proof is in the results of the December 1, 1991, referendum, in which 92% of voters said “YES” to the Declaration of Independence from the USSR.
The Intermovement for Donbas failed to raise support for a renewed USSR, but the separatist movement would grow larger and stronger with every crisis that shook independent Ukraine.
The Shock Year
The act of independence immediately triggered a years-long economic crisis which was the driving force behind Ukraine’s growing separatist and anti-government movements.
The March 1990 elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies and Supreme Soviet of Ukraine had been the first to allow non-communist candidates to participate. Liberals, nationalists, and other anti-communist groups like Rukh entered the legislature. During the reaction to the August Coup in 1991 the Communist Party of Ukraine was banned and the nationalist groups remained as the most organized factions in the legislature.
As Ukrainian news site STRANA opined in its retrospective on 30 years of independence:
“The nerve of 1992 is the first attempt by the country’s leadership to deviate from the framework set by 1991. When Ukraine arose as a result of a compromise between very different groups (including representatives of the party apparatus, directors of enterprises), most of [them], as well as the population as a whole (which was shown by voting for Kravchuk, and not for Chornovil [leader of Rukh]), were not nationalistic and did not want to completely break with Russia.”
The newly independent government rapidly implemented policies which served nationalist and anti-communist ideologies irrespective of the material impact they had on the people of Ukraine. Per STRANA, “the nationalist tilt and the growing tension in relations with Russia became a serious factor in internal destabilization.”
The year 1992 was immediately characterized by economic “shock therapy.” On January 2, 1992, all price controls were released and the market was allowed to dictate prices on all consumer goods. The stated goal of this policy was to find balance between the shortage of goods and the large amount of money that the public held with nothing to buy. The “solution” to the “problem” of the public having too much money was predictable: The shelves were full of goods once more but prices increased by 2100% by the end of the year.
Inflation was accelerated by the spike in oil and gas prices as Ukraine lost the preferential rates it had enjoyed in the Soviet Union. Despite warnings from Moscow and the National Bank of Ukraine that the country would have to pay world prices if it exited the “Ruble Zone,” the government decided to drop the ruble as Ukraine’s currency by year-end.
New national borders interrupted the industrial sector, costs soared, demand fell (especially in state-driven industries like defense and science), and production crashed. For the first time in living memory, Ukrainians experienced the terrors of unemployment, price gouging, and starvation in a time of plenty.
In a Year, We All Became Impoverished Millionaires
The monetary crisis was an indirect result of the USSR’s final Five-Year Plan, developed under the principle of “acceleration.” Starting in 1990 the Union Republics were forced to issue “Consumer Cards” alongside wages to help ration basic goods like bread and sugar.
The cards were perforated sheets of tear-off tokens that were printed in color and valid only if stamped by the employer or issuing agency. These were commonly referred to as “coupons” in Ukraine (as in English this comes from the French word couper, “to cut”). The main obstacle to counterfeiting was the limited availability of color photocopiers, which became increasingly accessible after the borders were opened to Western trade.
From-UA tells us the origin of the “coupon-karbovanets,” Ukraine’s first national currency. Independent Ukraine still used the ruble as its official currency in 1992, but rubles were printed by Goznak in Moscow. Unable to print more rubles to accommodate soaring prices and (slightly) increased wages, the Kyiv government had to issue its own currency which was of much lower quality and was much easier to counterfeit than the ruble.
Introduced January 10, 1992, the karbovanets was printed on simple paper with few protections. It was meant to supplement the ruble and replace coupons, not to act as a primary currency. The ease of counterfeiting was made worse by the ease of modification: A one karbovanets note was the same color as a 100 karbovantsiv note. The kupon-karbovanets (notes were marked “купон,” literally “coupon”) became the most counterfeited currency in the world and inflation accelerated further. By the end of 1992 the karbovanets was so worthless that it was no longer profitable to counterfeit.
Counterfeiters and “shuttle traders” who exploited shortages of money and goods made enormous illicit profits. Criminal enterprises flourished and became increasingly appealing to an impoverished public and dissolute youth, such as the “Runners.” These were gangs of ultraviolent teenagers who terrorized the streets of southern cities, using grenades and handmade pistols in their feuds.
Ukraine dropped the ruble on November 12, 1992, and had no stable legal currency to use at markets. Wages were worthless and some workers were paid directly in consumer goods like soap instead of money. The economic problems of the working masses had become many times worse than they had been at the end of the Soviet era.
Demands of Donbas
Naturally there were outbursts of popular rage against the government as people lost their livelihoods. Ph.D. student Vadim Borisov was with the miners in Donetsk when the 1993 general strike began.
Borisov describes the inciting incident at Zasyadko coal mine on June 7:
The spark that ignited the flame was the increase in prices, carried out in the Donetsk region without advance warning on June 7. Half-smoked sausage, the daily food of miners, almost quadrupled in price overnight to 20,000 rubles (£4), compared to an average miner’s monthly salary of 120,000.
Many miners found out about the price increase when their wives returned in the morning from the shops, where they were going to buy food for their men on the “brake” …
The last straw was the director’s innocent attempt to justify the state’s price policy—here the workers immediately agreed with the words of one of their comrades: ‘Work yourself!’”
As the workers marched to the Kirov District Council, a local journalist informed the City Strike Committee of the spontaneous action. The Strike Committee in turn contacted all of the mines in the region and work stopped in mines and other industries across Donetsk, Luhansk and Dnipropetrovsk.
A government commission headed by the Finance Minister (who had authored the disastrous economic reforms) arrived in Donetsk on June 8. The striking miners made their demands clear: a no-confidence referendum on the President and parliament, and stronger regional self-government for Donbas. On June 18 the government agreed to schedule the referendum for September and to double miners’ wages. However this wage increase did little in the face of hyperinflation and the referendum was eventually canceled in favor of early elections.
Regional autonomy had already been a project of the Donetsk Regional Council before the 1993 general strike. Chairman Vadim Chuprun, elected November 12, 1992, had been carefully negotiating agreements with the president regarding Donetsk Oblast’s right to determine some of its own economic policies. In a February 1993 interview with Dmitry Kornilov’s newspaper, Chuprun explicitly proposed the federalization of Ukraine. Then on June 8, when the miners demanded autonomy and a confidence vote, Chuprun called a meeting of the Donetsk Council to demand broad autonomy for Donetsk, Luhansk, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia.
Even after the general strike had ended, President Kravchuk acceded to some of these demands and, on November 26, 1993, his Decree no. 560/93 gave those four regions control over 400 state-owned enterprises. When the parliament blocked this decree and only 200 enterprises passed to regional control the Donetsk Council responded by refusing to remit taxes to Kyiv, keeping the money to fund their own budget.
The federalist movement reached its maturity the next year. A “consultative poll” was held in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts on the same day as the early elections, March 27, 1994. The central government refused to acknowledge it as a legally binding referendum, but the poll results showed that Donbas had a popular mandate to establish an autonomous government.
The poll had four questions: whether the constitution of Ukraine should change from a unitary state to a federal state; whether the Russian language should be constitutionally equal to the Ukrainian language; whether Russian should be an equal language of government and education in Donbas; and whether Ukraine should be a full participant in the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States.
An overwhelming majority of voters said “YES” to all four questions: The federal system received 84% of all valid ballots in Donetsk, and the other three questions received more than 90% of all valid ballots in both regions.
Writing from Donetsk during the 1993 strike, Borisov noted that the national news media were hostile toward the Donbas movements. Though this strike was the largest in Ukrainian history, it received much less coverage than those during the Soviet era, directed against the Communist Party. The advocates of autonomy and federalism were portrayed as separatists or even as Russian nationalists. Were these movements really motivated by nationalist ideology?
Deindustrialization
Tensions between the Donbas miners and the Ukrainian government continued to intensify over economic and political issues, and major labor actions continued through the decade.
In 1995 Kyiv cut coal subsidies to reduce budget deficits and inflation, resulting in “mounting financial losses and payment arrears across all sectors of the economy.” That November the coal miners went on strike for two days to demand $112 million worth of unpaid wages in addition to their unpaid disability benefits, increased pensions, and worker control of coal policy. On November 15th the government agreed to pay a quarter of back wages immediately and to gradually release the remaining arrears.
The government did not follow through and strike action resumed on February 2, 1996, coordinated across Russia and Ukraine from Siberia to Donbas. As many as one million miners and allied workers went on strike in Ukraine. This time they demanded more than $560 million in unpaid wages. The strikes resumed in July when miners blocked roads and railways and picketed local administration buildings, bringing economic activity to a halt.[1]
The government was finally compelled to agree to a full repayment of wages but its restructuring of the coal industry accelerated. Mines were divided into categories based on profitability and work was halted at the least profitable sites. Subsidies were distributed unevenly and wages continued to go unpaid, provoking chronic labor actions and rivalries between mines and between unions.
Wage arrears reached $1 billion (or $3 billion by some estimates) by May 4, 1998, but only one of two major mining unions organized a strike, at only 45 of Ukraine’s more than 200 mines. The next week 1,000 miners marched to Kyiv on bleeding feet, unable to pay for buses after 15 months without pay. Some 20,000 desperate miners were on strike for months, many occupying a tent city in front of the Luhansk government building. It was there, on December 14th, that miner Oleksandr Mykhalevych burned himself alive. He left a note explaining his action:
“I’m tired of being scorned by mine directors and the regional administration. My [self-immolation] is hardly a way out, but it might help resolve the matter more quickly.”
Oligarch Rinat Akhmetov amassed his fortune in the 1990s by privatizing mines and steel mills, including Azovstal. Today he is the wealthiest man in Ukraine, #466 on the Forbes 500. [Source: kyivpost.com]
This time the government would not relent. Permanent mine closures began in June and the government secured loans from the International Monetary Fund by promising coal sector restructuring. The August 1998 Memorandum of Economic Policies guaranteed that no government subsidies would support production of coal, that no new mines would be opened, and that all mining subsidies would be used for “restructuring” (privatizing) the industry and permanently closing another 20 mines every year.
The central government’s economic warfare against the Donbas has continued unabated for decades. By the time of the Euromaidan and the rebellions in Donbas, Ukraine had only 150 mines remaining in operation, compared to 275 in 1998.
The mining workforce had shrunk from 1.2 million in 1996 to 500,000 in 2014 and miners were still owed an average of two to three months of back pay. The prospects for miners under the post-Maidan government were bleak: Only a month into his term Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk—a U.S. favorite—had sought a massive IMF restructuring loan worth up to $14 billion (almost 10% of Ukraine’s GDP). Yatsenyuk said that his policies would stabilize the economy but would increase gas prices by 50%, personal income taxes by 47-66%, and inflation by 1,000%.
Pushed to the Edge
Kyiv’s systematic destruction of the Donbas economy is a much greater driver of separatism than any Russophile nationalism. Sociological surveys conducted in early 2014 show us the most important issues to eastern Ukrainians on the verge of civil war.
Eight southern and eastern oblasts were surveyed by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in April 2014. KIIS found that, overall, 69.7% opposed annexing their region to Russia. In Donetsk this fell to 52.1% opposed, with 27.5% in favor. In Luhansk 51.9% opposed annexation while 30.3% supported it.
A Gallup poll conducted for the International Republican Institute in March 2014 had similar findings: 74% of easterners (Donetsk, Luhansk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv) did not feel that Russians were under threat because of their language, and 61% did not support Russian military intervention to protect Russo-Ukrainians. Even among ethnic Russians there was no clear preference for intervention, with responses split between 43% in support and 43% opposed.
Both surveys found stronger opinions about international economic relations than about ethnic politics. According to KIIS only 24.7% of respondents would choose Ukraine’s entry to the European Union over the Eurasian Customs Union; 46.8% preferred to join the ECU, rising to 64.3% in Luhansk and 72.5% in Donetsk. In Gallup’s poll the national average showed 52% in favor of the EU and 27% for the ECU. These proportions were inverted in the East, where only 20% supported EU membership and 59% favored the ECU.
KIIS additionally asked about the state structure of Ukraine. Only 10.6% in Donetsk and 12.4% in Luhansk indicated that they would keep the unitary state with its weak oblasts; 41.1% in Donetsk and 34.2% in Luhansk wanted power to be decentralized with oblasts given greater authority; and 38.4% in Donetsk and 41.9% in Luhansk endorsed a federal system with each region having its own state and the national government becoming a federation of these states. There were clear majorities in Donetsk and Luhansk (79.5% and 76.1%) that desired autonomous local governments.
Another survey was carried out by the Donetsk Institute for Social Research and Political Analysis in April 2014. It found that 31% of respondents in Donetsk favored a decentralized government with strong oblasts, 16% supported federalism, 27% supported Russian annexation, and 5% supported Donetsk independence. In total, 79% of respondents wanted Kyiv to have less power and 48% wanted Donetsk to have its own state formation, whether independent or federated with Ukraine or Russia.
On the eve of the separatist rebellion there was a clear preference among Donbas residents of all nationalities to have their own state and to join the Eurasian Customs Union. These were the political-economic concerns which the separatist republics could address in order to win popular support.
Breakaway
The infamous Donbas independence referendums were held just a few weeks after these surveys had been published. Despite accusations of endemic fraud and fabricated results the outcome was not far from what had been described by scientific opinion polls. The ballots asked not for independence but whether the republics should have “self-rule,” which the Donetsk electoral commissioner said could include autonomous or federal status within Ukraine.
When we consider the souring of public opinion on Kyiv’s “Anti-Terrorist Operation” and its civilian casualties, it is not hard to imagine how the 79% that polled in favor of more self-governance could have become 89% voting in favor of Donetsk self-rule.
Actions speak louder than words, and the people of Donbas did more than vote and answer surveys. KIIS found that the People’s Militias had little support in April 2014: In Donetsk they had 18.1% in favor and 72% opposed, and in Luhansk they had 24.4% in favor and 58.3% opposed. The separatists did not endear themselves to the hundreds of thousands of Donbas miners. They blocked mine exits, stole vehicles and explosives, kidnapped managers and union leaders, and tried to gang-press workers.
Nevertheless, analysis by Foreign Affairs found that “the size of the local mining labor force remains the strongest predictor of rebel activity.” They may not have been nationalists, but the people of Donbas were joining the revolt against Kyiv.
Surveys taken after the Minsk Protocol showed the solidification of Donbas separatism. In a 2016 survey by the Humboldt University of Berlin, 55.6% of DNR respondents wanted to remain within Ukraine while support for Russian annexation had grown to 44.4%. Another 2016 study, commissioned by Ukraine’s Ministry of Information Policy, showed 31% supporting autonomy within Ukraine and 47% supporting DNR independence; only 6% wanted Ukraine to regain the territory by force.
By 2020 the Donetsk Institute’s follow-up survey had found that 45-50% of respondents favored annexation and only 20-25% supported a return to Ukraine; the remaining 25-30% answered that they wanted any resolution that would end the war.
At the start of the 1990s Ukrainians were united in seeking independence from the USSR. It was the years of struggle and starvation which followed, aggravated by nationalist politicians and anti-Russian policies, that alienated the people of the Donbas. In large and heterogeneous countries like Ukraine, contradictions naturally arise between the interests of the people. Federalism has been proven to mitigate these contradictions in countries such as the United States and Canada, yet it was denounced at every turn by Kyiv.
Shut out of power, the Donbas was subjected to decades of ruthless economic policies which suited northern and western Ukraine’s desires to join the European Union. When President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign the EU Association Agreement, acting in the interests of the south and east, he was ousted by the Euromaidan protests and riots in the capital. The government which replaced Yanukovych’s Party of Regions immediately signed the agreement, took on colossal debts, and adopted catastrophic austerity measures.
This is how Russian separatists, far-right extremists, and paramilitary bandits were able to find support. Their militant actions burst the tension and made secession a real possibility for the first time. Now a decade of war and blockades has deepened the fissure between Donbas and Ukraine and, with the accession of Donetsk and Luhansk to the Russian Federation, this division may become permanent.
Wagner troops are in Belarus training the army there. More Wagner troops are now in a convoy on their way to Belarus. A spokesperson for Wagner and one of its top leaders have released videos with essentially the same bottom line: they will defend the fatherland and support Russia’s military and civilian leaders.
Wagner’s troops are back and private military contractor appears to be positioning to play a strategic role for Russia and Belarus.
A new head for Wagner has been selected. He is Andrei Troshev, a highly decorated Russian army veteran, a colonel, 70 years old, who played a major role in Syria where he was directly involved in military operations. His nom de guerre is Grey Hair.
The cofounder and éminence grise of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has disappeared.
On June 29th Russian President Vladimir Putin held a Kremlin meeting with about 30 Wagner commanders, including Prigozhin. (General Sergey Surovikin, another missing player, did not attend the June 29th meeting.)
This three hour-long meeting, according to the Kremlin, came with an offer from Putin. He is reported to have said that all of the Wagners “can gather in one place and continue to serve and nothing will change for them. They will be led by the same person who has been their real commander all this time.” That person, Putin said, is “Sedoy,” using the Russian word for Grey Hair.
In reply Prigozhin said, “No, the guys do not agree with this decision.”
Prigozhin’s reply effectively terminated his control of Wagner. After the meeting, on either June 4 or 5, Russian police and the FSB (Russia’s successor to the KGB) raided Prigozhin’s large estate in St Petersburg.
Different reports popped up, some saying that Prigozhin had gone to his mansion in St Petersburg in a limousine to pick up his money and guns that were seized previously. Another report had him reporting to FSB’s offices in St Petersburg, doing the same thing. But in both cases these were rumors and no eye witnesses came forward.
It seems, in retrospect, that these stories and others were designed to keep Prigozhin’s actual fate under wraps.
The Prigozhin-led attack aimed at Moscow on June 24 was a near disaster for Putin. The Russian leader was moved out of Moscow as a security precaution. Loyal forces, including Chechens, presidential guards and police, were moved in to protect the Defense Ministry in Moscow, Prigozhin’s main target.
Prigozhin apparently believed that key leaders in the army, aside from Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov, would support his takeover, purge the defense minister and chief of staff and put Prigozhin and, perhaps, Surovikin in charge of Russia’s armed forces.
Putin would be handed a fait accompli. Either he could accept the change or, in Prigozhin’s view, he would be replaced. Prigozhin saw himself as Russia’s power broker and, depending on how things turned out, perhaps Russia’s new President.
Putin, it seemed, also was unsure about the loyalty of the army. That uncertainty was no doubt prompted by concern over “General Armageddon,” Sergey Surovikin.
Surovikin, who served as a special consultant to Prigozhin and Wagner, was extremely angry with the army’s leadership. Surovikin had been commander in chief of Russia’s armed forces from October 8, 2022, until January, 2023, when he was replaced by Valery Gerasimov.
Surovikin was given the vague title of deputy to Gerasimov and, while formally keeping the job, became a special consultant to Prigozhin. Surovikin’s humiliation, dished out by the old guard in the Army, no doubt led him to back Prigozhin strongly. The two of them made their move after the Bakhmut victory.
On June 24, as Wagner forces moved toward Rostov on Don, Surovikin made a self-serving video claiming that the invasion was wrong and saying that the Wagner forces should return to their bases. There is a presumption that this video was made to avoid any future prosecution if the Prigozhin-led coup d’état failed.
In late June Surovikin’s daughter allegedly told Baza, a Telegram channel, that Surovikin was working from home and had not been detained. Subsequently, Surovikin’s wife reported that her husband had not come home.
According to the Wall Street Journal and other outlets, Surovikin was detained along with thirteen other army officers.
Disposition of Wagner forces
It is now known that some Wagner forces are in Belarus training regular army forces there.
Andrey Kartapolov, who chairs the Russian parliament’s defense committee, said: “It is clear that Wagner went to Belarus to train the Belarusian armed forces. There is such a place as the Suwalki Corridor. Should anything happen, we need this Suwalki Corridor very much. A strike force is ready to take this corridor in a matter of hours.”
Poland has been massing forces along the border with Belarus, causing alarm in Minsk and Moscow. Foreign advisors, including the British, are now serving as technical aides to Polish forces at the Belarus border, signaling to Russia that the real issue might be a NATO initiative to bail out Ukraine by attacking Belarus, forcing Russia to divide its forces.
The Suwalki Corridor is a 96 km strip of land that connects the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad to Belarus. While Kaliningrad can be supported by sea or by air, the land bridge is important to assure normal communications. There are both roadway and rail links. This land strip is Polish territory on one side, and Lithuanian on the other.
Last year the Lithuanians blocked shipments along this route, lifting the blockade after the Russians threatened serious consequences. The Corridor is also thought of as a weak link for NATO since it is the only NATO land connection to the Baltic states from Poland and from Europe. Other than airlift, this is the land route NATO needs to support these countries.
Indian Punchline reports that, in a weekend interview, the number two German party Christian Democratic Union’s “leading foreign and defense expert Roderich Kiesewetter (an ex-colonel who headed the Association of Reservists of the Bundeswehr from 2011 to 2016) suggested that if conditions warrant in the Ukraine situation, NATO should consider a move to ‘cut off Kaliningrad from the Russian supply lines. We see how Putin reacts when he is under pressure.’”
On July 6 the Russians flew a Tu-214SR and two Su-30M fighter jets in international waters near Kaliningrad and on to Russia. They were met by British Typhoons that flew from Estonia to shadow them. The Tu-214SR is known as the Russian “Doomsday” plane. It is a mobile command and control platform with an extensive multi-intelligence payload. (See TASS photo below.)
The Tu-214SR was likely in the area reporting on Polish and NATO operations close to Belarus and Kaliningrad. The Russians regard Kaliningrad as having great strategic importance and are sensitive about developments that may threaten the enclave.
The US position on these developments is not known, but what is clear is that Ukraine is now taking heavy losses and may be on the cusp of losing the war with Russia.
There have been a number of negative reports coming from the Pentagon including Ukrainian Chief of Staff Valerii Zaluzhny, trying to rethink the failed Ukrainian offensive.
Africa
It appears that the deployment of Wagner forces in Africa is being normalized. Around 200 Wagner troops, in effect a normal rotation, have now arrived in the Central African Republic. They were flown there by COSI ( Community of Officers for International Security), a Wagner affiliate, on military helicopters. Earlier reports that there was a purge of Wagner forces in Africa appear to have been wrong and confused a force rotation with a purge.
Strategic Issues
The Ukraine war is part of a proxy battle between NATO and Russia. While there are indeed subsidiary issues important to the main combatants, for example the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine, NATO built up Ukraine’s forces before the Russian invasion to have sufficient force to take back key territories in the Donbas and Crimea. The NATO buildup was part of a plan to bring Ukraine into NATO and strategically isolate Russia.
The Russians countered the NATO plan, forcing the issue of the Ukrainian army buildup by openly invading Ukrainian territory. But before Russia sent its forces over the border, the Russians tried to engage Washington and NATO in a diplomatic process aimed at sorting out Russia-NATO and Russia-US issues. The effort took its most mature form in December, 2021, but it failed as both Washington and NATO refused the Russian initiative.
The issue of bringing Ukraine into NATO is still unresolved, even after the latest NATO summit in Vilnius. The Summit itself had hopes of declaring victory in Ukraine and even foresaw the overthrow of the Russian government. There were secret talks with key Russian figures, including Prigozhin.
But the Prigozhin coup failed and the Russians successfully fended off the long-awaited Ukrainian offensive. Ukraine suffered very high casualties and the initial loss of at least 20% of the Western equipment sent there to win the fight. Systems such as the German Leopard tank and the American Bradley infantry fighting vehicle were unsuccessful and an embarrassment.
Worse than that, the battle (still ongoing) revealed that systems and tactics designed to protect NATO from Russia were inadequate and based on a number of erroneous assumptions about war fighting.
It is far from clear that any gambit to try and save Ukraine by widening the war to Belarus would succeed, and doing so could put Europe into a general war on its territory. NATO is not prepared for war now. The failures in Ukraine amply illustrate that.
While it may be true that NATO can muster superior airpower, it would have to fly against effective Russian air defense systems and Russian fighter aircraft. But the big war would be on the ground, and NATO can’t fight that war now, possibly never can.
Will Washington use its proxy, Poland, to attack Belarus to try and save Ukraine?
Wagner forces are now risen from the ashes and Prigozhin and Surovikin are gone. If the chairman of the Duma’s Defense Committee is right, those forces are prepared to take the Suwalki corridor in case Poland starts a war with Belarus.
President Vladimir Putin signed a decree that transferred the shares of foreign shareholders to the “temporary control” of Rosimushchestvo, the agency responsible for state property. The decree affects the Baltika brewery, which is 100% owned by Denmark’s Carlsberg, and dairy firm Danone Rossiya, which is owned by France’s Danone. In effect, the state has appropriated the assets of foreign investors who have poured billions of dollars into the Russian eonomy over the years.
Danone Rossiya and Baltika are important players on the Russian consumer market. Danone is Russia’s biggest diary producer and Baltika is the second-largest brewery. Danone first started producing its branded products in Russian factories in 1994, and opened its own plant in the country in 2000. By 2022, the French company owned 13 businesses in the country, employing 100,000 staff.
Carlsberg became a key player in the Russian beer market in 2000 when it partnered with Norway’s Orka to acquire a 50% stake in Baltika. In 2008 the Danes increased their share in Baltika to 100%. From 1996 to 2020, Baltika was consistently the leading beer brand in Russia.
The decree might come as a surprise to Carlsberg: three weeks ago the company announced that it found a buyer for its Russian assets (although the buyer’s identity was never publicized). However, it’s currently impossible to sell Russian subsidiaries of foreign companies without the permission of a special government commission. Carlsberg’s press service admitted that it was awaiting that permit. In February 2023, media reports said Danone planned to transfer control over its assets to new investors. However, there were never any reports that new investors had been found.“
Transfer to temporary control” is de facto nationalization. This mechanism was introduced at the end of April and was first applied to two major foreign investors in the Russian electricity market: Germany’s Uniper and Finland’s Fortum. The day after Putin’s decree was published, the management of both companies’ Russian subsidiaries were replaced with individuals from Rosneft boss Igor Sechin’s circle. This week Fortum announced that it was filing a multi-billion-euro compensation claim to international arbitration.
Why the world should care: In reality, nationalization happened some time ago, and it fell upon everyone at once. Last fall, Putin banned foreign companies from selling Russian assets without the government’s permission. If you cannot sell your business when you choose, it is no longer your business.
Inflation gains momentum
Russia’s Central Bank expects prices to rise. But just a month ago, Putin was hailing the country’s low inflation rates compared to the rest of the world.
At the start of the summer, Putin boasted of how inflation in Russia was approaching record lows and was even less than in many Western countries at 2.9%. However, with the rapid fall in the ruble and high levels of consumer demand, the Central Bank is warning of price rises to come. According to the Central Bank’s latest figures, price rises over the past 12 months reached 6.4%. Since the start of this year alone, they are up 3.25%. The bank’s analysts anticipate that the coming months will see annual inflation rates getting higher. Taking into account current monetary policies, the rate will be 4.5-6.5% this year.
The weakening ruble’s knock-on effects are currently less noticeable than usual, the Bank warned. There are exceptions for specific goods and services where demand remains high (cars, foreign tourism). As demand grows and existing stocks deplete, the combined impact of ruble depreciation may have a greater impact on prices, the Bank’s analysts warned. Inflation was also boosted by labor shortages, wage increases outstripping productivity and consumers choosing to spend rather than save, which encourages manufactures to hike prices.
The Central Bank published fresh data on inflation a week before its next meeting to discuss the base interest rate, which has held steady at 7.5% since September 2022. Now, Russian analysts predict a 50bp increase.
Why the world should care: Official inflation rates in Russia have been low all year, close to the Central Bank’s 4% target. However, factors such as ruble depreciation, increased demand, depleted stocks of imported goods indicate that inflation is set to increase. This will compel Russia’s Central Bank to pursue a stricter monetary policy.
