From the MT:
“Russian
Officials Appointed to Top Posts in Occupied Ukraine”
A growing
number of Russian officials have been handed senior jobs in occupied parts of
Ukraine in what analysts said was an attempt to strengthen ties to Moscow ahead
of a possible annexation process. This week alone, appointments included a
former deputy from the Russian parliament, regional government officials and a
high-ranking Federal Security Service (FSB) officer. “Russians are sent there in order to bring
Russian standards,” political analyst Ivan Preobrazhensky told The Moscow
Times. “Moscow wants to stage a referendum [on joining Russia] and it looks
like the Russians will prepare everything.”
This
parachuting in of officials is the most recent sign that Russia is seeking to
draw occupied Ukrainian areas closer into its orbit. The Kremlin has also
launched a campaign to integrate occupied areas by twinning Russian and
Ukrainian cities, giving out Russian passports, and moving in major Russian
banks and mobile operators. Perhaps the most high-profile instance so far
came Tuesday, when former Russian parliamentary deputy Andrei Kozenko was made
the deputy head of the “military-civilian administration” for occupied areas of
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region. He will oversee economic integration with
Russia, according to an official statement. The day before Kozenko was installed in the
Zaporizhzhya region, former FSB officer Sergei Yeliseyev was made head of the
government in the occupied Kherson region.
One reason why
Russia has resorted to dispatching its own officials is that Ukrainians in
occupied territories are unwilling to switch sides, according to Konstantin
Skorkin, an expert on the politics of eastern Ukraine at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace. “Despite [Ukrainian] parties considered pro-Russian
having significant representation in these regions, most deputies refused to
cooperate with the occupation authorities,” Skorkin told The Moscow Times. “In
Kherson, for example, people are not sure that these areas will join Russia as
Ukraine could take them back at any moment.” Other Ukrainians may have been
dissuaded from accepting Russian offers to collaborate by assassinations of
officials from Russia’s “military-civilian administrations.” For example,
Dmytro Savluchenko, who led the directorate for family, youth and sports in
Kherson’s local Russian-installed government, died in a car bombing last month.
Along with former FSB officer Yeliseyev,
two other Russian officials — Mikhail Rodikov and Vladimir Bespalov — were also
appointed to senior government positions in Kherson this week. Bespalov, a former deputy minister in the
Kaliningrad region, will oversee domestic policy, while Rodikov, an official
from the Moscow region, was made education and science minister. Several of the new appointees have experience
when it comes to integrating Ukrainian regions into Russia, as they worked in
Crimea after its 2014 annexation by Moscow.
Rodnikov spent three years
adapting the Crimean education system to Russian standards, according to the
Kherson Regional Military Administration’s Telegram channel, while Kozenko was
a Ukrainian politician who joined the ruling United Russia party in 2014 and
went on to represent Crimea in Russia’s lower house of parliament.
The
Russia-backed separatist Donetsk and Luhansk republics in eastern Ukraine have
also seen Russian officials appointed to top government posts in recent weeks. A former top official in Russia’s Trade and
Industry Ministry, Vitaly Khotsenko, was last month named prime minister of the
Donetsk People’s Republic. And the former deputy governor of Russia’s Kurgan
region, Vladislav Kuznetsov, became the first deputy chairman of the Luhansk
People’s Republic. Installing Russian officials might also be a way to ensure
oversight of the vast sums of money the Kremlin has earmarked for rebuilding
occupied Ukraine, according to analysts.
Russia could spend as much as 3.5
trillion rubles ($60 billion) on reconstruction projects in the occupied parts
of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, according to statements from
separatist officials. “Russia is allocating huge sums for the reconstruction of
the Donbas and Moscow doesn’t trust local officials,” Skorkin told The Moscow
Times. While Russian officials have
publicly been equivocal about the prospect of annexing Ukraine’s occupied
regions, developments on the ground suggest it is an increasingly likely
outcome from a process of creeping integration.
The
Russian-installed administrations in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia have already
announced plans to stage a referendum on joining Russia later this year. The
Russia-backed separatist republics’ leaders have also called for similar
popular votes. Although President Vladimir Putin asserted at the start of the
invasion of Ukraine that Russia had no plan to absorb Ukrainian territory, the
appointment of Russian officials to occupied areas indicates Moscow is planning
the opposite, according to analyst Preobrazhensky. “We might see the full annexation by this
autumn,” Nikolaus von Twickel, a former OSCE staff member who researches the
Donbas region, told The Moscow Times. “Previously
the Kremlin was trying to play by the rules, but that time has already gone.”
^ The Russian
Nazis are only doing what the German Nazis did in the 1930s-1940s. They send in
their Occupation Soldiers and Government Officials to Russify (or Germanize)
the place.
Ukrainian Partisans
are working hard to sabotage and stop the smooth-running of Russian Occupation
including killing Russian Government Occupation Officials (again just like Ukrainian
Partisans did to the German Occupation Forces.)
Eventually,
Putin's Russia will be defeated, as Hitler's Germany was, and these War Crimes
will be prosecuted. ^
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