AFP
News from the NOS•yesterday, 21:32
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Paolo Alessandro
publisher abroad
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Paolo Alessandro
publisher abroad
At the Kremlin’s annexation party last week, four local representatives from the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions stood in front of a hall filled with Putin’s supportive applause. They were allowed to show up to show the world that the regions were joining Russia of their own free will.
As Foreign Minister Lavrov said: “We want the Ukrainians to decide for themselves how they want to proceed.”
The extent to which facts undermine this image of the Kremlin is also evident from Ekaterina Reznikova’s research on the website of the collective of independent Russian journalists media.project. He calculated that 90 percent of the officials and administrators appointed after the invasion in the four regions come from Russia.
“Moscow has been preparing for annexation right from the start,” concludes Reznikova. You have compiled the biographies of more than one hundred directors and officers. Together they give a good picture of how areas under the Russians are governed.
Especially Russians
The local governments of those regions are made up of a total of 36 administrators. Only three of them are originally residents of Ukraine, he found. And of the 49 local mayors Reznikova interviewed, only five were in office before the invasion.
“A third went through the ‘School of Governors’ or the ‘Leaders of Russia Competition’,” Reznikova said over the phone. These educational programs for loyal officials are an initiative of Sergei Kirijenko, the Kremlin’s deputy chief of staff. Immediately after the invasion, he was named “Curator of the liberated areas” by Putin.
Reznikova: “Kirijenko is keen to show that the integration of those regions into the Russian administrative system is in good hands with him.”
These Ukrainian territories are annexed to Russia:
NOS
These Ukrainian territories are annexed to Russia The rest of the civil servants are made up of middle managers from the Moscow province or ministries. “There are no stars among them, or riders with notable merits,” says Reznikova.
Surprisingly, these officials often decline in rank. But they earn well and above all they want to show their loyalty to Putin and the war with the change. The position in the outlying areas offers career prospects, with a position in Moscow as the ultimate goal.
“Some are not of good character,” says Reznikova. “Local officials convicted of corruption can increase their reputation away from home.”
Military reign of terror
According to Reznikova, the appointment of all these Russians to the conquered part of Ukraine has only one purpose: to convince the local population that Russia has no intention of ever leaving.
The real power in the annexed territories rests with the commanders of the Russian army. They lead a military reign of terror and violently suppress deviant sounds and any form of resistance. Commanders operate under their “nom de guerre”. There is a ‘Moses’ and also an ‘Eagle’.
The commanders direct specifically set up military-civil administrations. They are made up of local Ukrainians, often with a background in the (Soviet) army or security services. Their task is mainly aimed at conquering the local population to Russian rule.
President Putin signed the annexation documents with the Russian-settled leaders of those regions, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya:
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Putin and the leaders of the region sign documents for illegal annexation
According to Reznikova, these figures are characterized by a dark past. One of them is Vladimir Saldo, head of the Kherson region. who was also present in the Kremlin for the signing of the annexation documents.
Reznikova: “Before the war he was already accused of collaborating with the FSB and was imprisoned in the Dominican Republic for a kidnapping case. In August, Saldo, now head of Kherson, suddenly ended up in hospital: he was rumored to have been poisoned. In mid-September he suddenly reappeared in office.
Attacks
As a Ukrainian driver among the Russians, your life is insecure, especially in the Kherson region. There the local partisans began the hunt for collaborators and several administrators were killed in attacks.
And with all the rivalry between them, the regions are administratively a snake pit. This is shown in the biography of the Gubarev couple from Donetsk, prepared by Reznikova.
The spouses were appreciated by the voters of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Pavel Gubarev was seriously injured in an attack during the election period. His wife Ekaterina was briefly kidnapped a few years later during the election, he says. While Pavel now fights in the Russian army, his wife Ekaterina tries her luck in the military-civilian administration of Kherson.
Local regional leaders Denis Pushilin (Donetsk) and Leonid Paschnik (Luhansk) also solemnly signed the annexation documents to the Kremlin. At the same time he goes there all items who are expected to step down in the near future.
Reznikova cannot confirm this. “They were present in the Kremlin because they were needed. But what is really being decided around Putin, nobody knows. We only know: when they are no longer needed, they will have to leave the field. Then, without a doubt, the Russians will take their place.”
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