Russian special forces weapons. Vehicle markings or plates. Accents and word use indicating Russian origins. Occasional boasting by masked men of their true identity. These were all hints at Russia's hand behind the image of resistance to Ukrainian rule.
Then add this in:
Many Western observers now take as fact that groups raiding buildings in places like Donetsk and Kharkiv are, in fact, Russian and not simply Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Consider the recent example of Kharkiv, where pro-Russian protestors first attempted to occupy the city’s opera theater before realizing that it wasn’t City Hall. “Presumably, the local citizens of Kharkiv, if they wanted to take over City Hall, they would have gotten the right building to begin with,” Steven Pifer, director of the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative and a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, told Defense One.
Huh. Well that's embarrassing.
It strikes me that the Ukrainians, supported by our ability to disseminate information widely, should catalog all the instances where the masks slipped to reveal a Russian face behind the cover. Putin can keep denying that Russians are involved. But that denial could be repeated after every instance shown of actual Russians operating on Ukrainian soil is shown.
Russia complains that Ukraine is preventing male Russians from entering Ukraine, but that is just common sense, as I've noted in other circumstances.
Despite the glorious signed agreement in Geneva, the crisis will go on as Ukraine indicates:
The anti-terrorist operation is still going on and how long it continues depends on how long terrorists remain in our country," Marina Ostapenko, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's State Security Service (SBU), told reporters.
The Ukrainians will need a better operation, however. Sending in troops to confront semi-armed civilians was a mistake since the troops were equipped and trained to overcome resistance by shooting to kill. Outnumbered by aggressive mobs and unwilling to kill civilians (a good thing, really), the troops could only retreat or surrender.
I'd pay good money if we'd start calling this the Geneva Memorandum. (Oh. Why? Because of the Budapest Memorandum that should have prevented Russia's aggression.)
UPDATE: Add the saga of Andrei Petkov, solid Ukrainian citizen/German spy/selfless pediatric surgeon (What? No puppy rescuer role?), who has been featured in Russia's propaganda efforts:
The Petkov fabrications would make for a good laugh were the situation not so serious. Readers should not think that Petkov affair is an isolated incident. It is the norm rather than the exception. Viewers of Russian television are fed a daily diet of fabrications that show non-existent gun battles, savage beatings of innocent civilians, sinister forces proudly displaying Nazi regalia, and tearful residents of east and south Ukraine longing for annexation into Russia. Readers must understand that the Crimean Anschluss, accepted by many in the West, as a joyous, celebratory reunion was a cynical spectacle organized by Russian special forces, protest tourists, and local mafia thugs.
We can laugh. But don't. As amateurish as this incident is, we can't seem to counter it. Putin's efforts to justify an invasion of Ukraine are working inside Russia and is being picked up by too many Western outfits who describe unrest in eastern Ukraine as a budding civil war rather than the Russian Operation Chaos that it is.
UPDATE: Ah. I missed this:
In a blog post entitled “Who are the men behind the masks?” the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Gen. Philip Breedlove, offered the most detailed Western evidence to date that, despite Russia’s claims that the unrest there is an organic, local movement, it was instead the work of Russian troops posing as locals that orchestrated the apparently coordinated takeover of government buildings in eastern Ukraine that has plunged the fragile country into chaos.
“The pro-Russian ‘activists’ in eastern Ukraine exhibit tell-tale military training and equipment and work together in a way that is consistent with troops who are part of a long-standing unit, not spontaneously stood up from a local militia,” Breedlove wrote.
This is a start. But speaking of the obvious training is just one part of a story we have to tell about Russia's attempt to simulate a local uprising to justify a Russian movement into Ukraine to suppress the disorder.
UPDATE: More from RFE/RL on the 25th airborne brigade debacle, in which 6 vehicles switched hands to the pro-Russian groups. It seems that the soldier was offered money to switch sides.
As you may recall, I said that I wouldn't be surprised if money changed hands for the vehicles. The post doesn't directly linke the money claim to the vehicles, but my speculation isn't so off the wall. Ukraine rightly does not want to live under Russian rule--which is something to support--but it is far from being a bastion of rule of law. Let's not think we have anything other than a potential member of the Western community in Kiev. But at least there is hope without Russian dominance.
So let's put these bits of information together with Putin's claim of innocence leading off every one of them. Just pound the point of Putin's lying about Russia's role.
