LPR and DPR: Eight years on the road to Russia

LPR and DPR: Eight years on the road to Russia
by: Marat Bylov 21.02.2022, 20:33
https://readovka.news/news/89087

	For the first time in the history of Russian journalism, we have tried to cover the period of existence of the People's Republics of Donbass for eight years, showing the stages of development of the DNR and LNR and the difficulties they encountered along the way, which are not always known to the general reader - from the atamans who tore them apart to the oligarchs who tried to dominate

To begin with, let us briefly recall a chronology of events that many have since managed to forget.

After President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev on February 21, 2014, fearing an assault on the government quarter by Maidan activists, and left Kharkiv on February 22 (only eventually appearing in public in Rostov-on-Don on February 28), Ukraine began sinking into a state of anarchy on February 23, 2014, when the Supreme Rada elected Alexander Turchinov (one of the leaders of the opposition) as acting president. Nominally, power passed to the acting president and the government formed by the victorious Euromaidan, but in fact, local officials and security forces in the southeast withdrew from work.

The Party of Regions, which ruled the country in 2010-2014 and had millions of members on paper, repeated the fate of the Communist Party, which neither rank-and-file activists nor functionaries defended. Their junior partner in power, the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU), which is also numerous on paper, did not behave more responsibly; it turned out that they were ready to fight only as long as they existed in a comfortable niche under the patronage of local officials. Local Communists did not attend the anti-Maidan rallies in southeastern cities announced in advance by the Communist Party for February 23, 2014; they turned off the lights in the regional and city committees and sent the activists home; moreover, they demanded the same from other protesters. In a matter of days, influential regional leaders, such as Kharkiv mayor Gennadiy Kernes, also changed their position from anti-Maidan to loyal to the new government.

    That is why the protests in the cities of Southeast of Ukraine became spontaneous, and their coordination was undertaken by pro-Russian organizations, which under Yanukovych were not in favor with the authorities, and were often persecuted (for example, the leader of Odessa party "Rodina" Igor Markov for criticizing the European integration policy of Yanukovych was deprived of parliamentary mandate on September 12, 2013 and arrested on October 22, and the ATV television channel he owned was stripped of its broadcasting license on October 23) - the Union of Soviet Officers of Ukraine (in Dnepropetrovsk), Rodina (in Odessa), Slavic Guard (in Zaporozhye), Donetsk Republic (in Donetsk), Luhansk Guard (in Luhansk).

The "Donetsk Republic" public movement led by Andrei Purgin has existed in Donetsk since 2005, including a militant wing of right-wing youth (including soccer fans) from the Donetsk branch of Alexander Matyushin's Russian Image. It was this militant wing, which numbered up to several hundred people, that played the main role in the street confrontation with pro-Ukrainian forces, which had a powerful power bloc of the same subcultural youth in Donetsk, and in the storming of the Donetsk Regional Administration (OGA) on March 1 and April 6, 2014.

    "The main organized force was us, the 'Donetsk Republic,' led by Purgin, and I was, roughly speaking, already the head of the assault unit at the time. The striking force was mostly young people, of course," Matyushin recalled in 2019. - On April 6, we were just marching as usual, trying to be no different from the "usual" people's unrest of that day. The police thought that we would march to the Regional State Administration as usual, wave our flags, shout something and then disperse. We lined up... The people went, but somehow it turned out so imperceptibly that the young people came forward in the course of the march. The grandparents were pushed a little bit back, the middle generation too... And right from the start, as they approached the state administration, without speaking or holding a rally, they began to storm the two rows of cordons, pulling out shields and batons. And the guys were young, VVSH guys, they didn't really need all this either, so they didn't resist. They broke through from one side, then broke through from the second side, from the side where they first broke through. They burst into the OGA and immediately began to barricade themselves.


Attempts to enter Russia - directly and through the Customs Union

This was followed by the adoption of a declaration on the creation of the DNR, and, as Purgin recounted in 2018, it went like this: "The documents were written by Boris Litvinov in a single break-in at the OGA building... overnight. They were read and corrected by only three people: myself, Litvinov and Kirill Cherkashin... At the time the Declaration of Sovereignty was declared, only three people knew what it said. Even the late Vladimir Makovich, who read the text of the Declaration, was unaware of what was in the text. Perhaps we succeeded because it was, in fact, a three-man special operation.

Later, Purgin became first deputy chairman and then head of the People's Council of the DPR; Litvinov first served as minister and chief of staff of the Council of Ministers, then from July to November 2014 as chairman of the People's Council of the DPR (he was succeeded by Purgin, who left in September 2015); Cherkashin became head of the DPR Central Election Commission in November 2014; Makovich was briefly acting head of the DPR People's Council, etc.

In Luhansk, the People's Republic was not declared until April 27, 2014, at a rally outside the Luhansk Regional State Administration (OSA).

On May 11, 2014, a referendum was held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions with only one question, "Do you support the act of state independence of the Donetsk (otherwise Luhansk) People's Republic?"

    And already on May 12, 2014, Denis Pushilin, head of the provisional coalition government of the DNR, said at a press conference broadcast by the RT television channel: "Based on the will of the people of the DNR and to restore historical justice, we ask the Russian Federation to consider the issue of the incorporation of the DNR into the Russian Federation."

    On May 17, 2014, DPR Prime Minister Aleksandr Boroday told ITAR-TASS that "the DPR is preparing a request to the Russian Foreign Ministry to become part of Russia." The republic's press center specified that "an official draft of this request has already been prepared," but that "it is still premature to talk about a specific date for sending an official document," and that "the request will most likely be sent to the Russian Foreign Ministry after the DPR government is formed.

However, the entry did eventually happen, although on June 10, 2014, DPR and LNR plenipotentiary representatives in the Contact Group Denis Pushylin and Vladislav Deinego recalled in a joint statement that "our republics... would like to be part of the Russian Federation.

    Having lost hope of joining Russia directly, the republics tried to enter at least a union with it as independent states. On June 11, 2014, the LNR officially asked Russia for recognition, mentioning that "since the establishment of the Luhansk People's Republic, our citizens have been firm in their intention to build an independent state and consistent in their desire to share the fate of the Russian Federation."

    "We have a working version of the government's program for joining the Customs Union," Andrei Purgin, deputy prime minister of the DNR, told Interfax on June 12, 2014. On June 28, 2014, Alexei Karyakin, head of the LNR Supreme Soviet, said at a press conference, "We, just like the DNR, will join the Customs Union."

But that did not happen either. And after Alexander Boroday resigned as prime minister of the DNR on August 7, 2014, and Igor Strelkov ceased to be minister of defense of the DNR on August 14, 2014 (and, according to the latter, not by choice), it became clear that Moscow did not want to associate the leadership of the republic with Russia.

On September 7, 2014, the first Minsk agreements were signed, declaring the DNR and LNR "separate districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions" (the status they are still officially recognized by Russia), which were to remain part of Ukraine under the terms of their special status and the general decentralization of the Nezalezhnaya.
Ataman's liberties.

It should be taken into account that the authorities of the republics banal did not control their territory.

    "When we entered Donetsk - everything was fine there. The mayor of Kyiv was sitting there, the UVD was still subordinate to Kyiv - classic dual power... The forces there were extremely small, they were fragmented, scattered, no one was subordinate to anyone: separately there was the Russian Orthodox Army, separately - the Vostok battalion, separately - the Oplot. Each unit was defending its own area, there was no single control," Strelkov said in a November 2014 interview with Alexander Prokhanov, editor-in-chief of Zavtra.

    Boroday, who had been there since April 2014, similarly described what was happening in Donetsk. "Donetsk existed as a kind of feudal principality. The Donetsk People's Republic, it was a kind of funny conglomerate at a time when Slavyansk had not yet been abandoned. If you want, it can be described in such medieval terms - Donetsk feudal princedom, where I acted as a prince, and the main feudal lords, such boyars with their cohorts, were several people, the main of which were Zakhar with his cohorts and Khodakovsky with his cohorts, "- told the former prime minister of the DNR in an interview on March 15, 2019 to journalist Gennady Dubovoy.

It is worth clarifying that the Oplot battalion (which later grew into a regiment and then a brigade) was commanded by Alexander Zakharchenko, while the Vostok battalion (which also later grew into a brigade) was commanded by Alexander Khodakovsky.

The picture was similar in Mariupol, which was shared by the "commandant" of the city, Andrei Borisov, with his detachment, and the Russian Orthodox Army. Separately, Gorlovka was controlled by Igor Bezler's "Donbass People's Militia" until the end of the fall of 2014.

    At the same time, according to Boroday, things were even worse in Luhansk (which, to all appearances, explained the great passivity of the republic's authorities noted above): "The situation in the republics was that from under every bush was sticking out its own ataman and commander. In Donetsk it was mostly commanders, while in Luhansk oblast it was simply atamans, frankly speaking.

Indeed, the level of anarchy in the LNR was much greater. Anthracite and Krasny Luch were taken under control in the spring and summer of 2014 by Cossacks of Ataman Nikolay Kozitsyn, who did not even recognize LNR (trying to revive pre-revolutionary Don Army in this territory) and as an alternative center of power attracted commanders of many volunteer units (the same Dremov or Gaidei). Alexey Mozgovoy's "Ghost" brigade and Alexander Bednov's soon separated from it "Batman" Rapid Response Group, Pavel Dremov's "Stakhanov Cossack Self-Defense" (later transformed into the 1st Cossack Regiment named after ataman Matvey Platov), Alexander Gaidey's "Sverdlovsk Defense" and the 1st Cossack Sotnia named after Stas Sinelnikov created on its basis, etc. controlled their territories in Luhansk region.

Atamanshchina in Luhansk Oblast lasted until mid-2015, resulting in a series of harsh mop-ups, of which only the largest can be mentioned. In January 2015, assassination attempts killed Bednov (January 1) and the commandant of Pervomaisk, Yevgeny Ishchenko (January 23), and simultaneously disarmed Gaidei's fighters in Sverdlovsk and Alexei Fomin's "Odessa" brigade of political migrants from southeastern Ukraine in Krasnodon. Between January and April, Kozitsyn's Cossacks were disarmed and expelled to Russia in several runs. On May 23, 2015, near Alchevsk, which was controlled by the Ghost, Mozgovogo's car was blown up, and on December 12, 2015, on the Stakhanov-Pervomaysk highway, the longest-serving Dremov was blown up in his jeep.
Akhmetov's fiefdom

    "I consider my, maybe my main, or maybe one of my main achievements as head of the first Donetsk People's Republic to be precisely the fact that I managed to wrest this republic from one of its main founders - Rinat Leonidovich Akhmetov," Boroday mentioned in an interview with Dubovoy.

In an earlier interview given to journalist Yuri Kotenok on October 21, 2017, Boroday said that in the spring of 2014, Akhmetov, a longtime sponsor of Yanukovich and the Party of Regions, "needed his own principality in order to balance Kiev, which then openly threatened him... and, on the other hand, to balance between the Russian Federation." So the republic should not have fallen out of Ukraine completely, only isolated itself.

    The influence of the richest Ukrainian oligarch (as of February 2014, the fortune of Rinat Akhmetov was estimated at 18.3 billion dollars) on the seemingly separated from Ukraine republic was enormous. "Akhmetov ... managed to earn several billion. He earned from this war, not lost... He earned very well from this war," Boroday told Dubovoy.

    The former DNR head gave this example: "A significant part of the products of the Akhmetov holding company were produced on DNR territory... These enterprises worked at the height of the hostilities, continued to work, and did not even reduce such an important indicator - indirect, of course, but an indicator - as energy consumption. The statistics were on my desk in the summer of 2014. Almost all of the enterprises that were not part of the Ahmetov holding company saw a significant drop in energy consumption. It was clear that these enterprises either did not work, or worked so from fifth to tenth, as they say, barely, breathing on their breath. But the enterprises of Akhmetov, for some reason they worked to the fullest.

Boroday also mentioned the port of Mariupol, which was never returned to DNR control in the fall of 2014: "One of these reasons, of course, was Akhmetov.

    The port, through which products from Akhmetov's Donetsk plants were exported to other countries, should have remained in Ukraine: "And exported from where? The products are being exported, after all. To export from the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic, which even now is not considered a state, but a territory from the point of view of international law, is not possible. But to export from the Ukrainian port - why not?

Nationalization of the economy (GDR-2)


Akhmetov's influence on the republics lasted until 2017. There was no hurry to give it up, partly because there was generally nothing to fill the budget of the republics, and the enterprises of Akhmetov's System Capital Management (SCM) continued to pay salaries, as well as to pay taxes to the budget of the unrecognized republics. And the amounts of taxes were not insignificant. On March 2, 2017, SCM's press service reminded that "since the beginning of the conflict in the Donbass, SCM Group has paid more than 100 billion UAH of taxes to the state budget, 10% of which was provided by the payments of enterprises working in the NCP", that is, in the territory not controlled by Ukraine (a euphemism convenient for all sides). That is, over three years the budget of the DNR and LNR received about 21.5 billion rubles only in the form of taxes from Akhmetov's enterprises.

But in the summer of 2016, when it became clear that the suspended state of the republics was a long-term one (and it is not known how long) and it was necessary to somehow settle down in this situation, they began to nationalize (calling it "the introduction of state administration") large enterprises, but not yet connected with Akhmetov.

On June 24, 2016, the DNR passed a law "On the protection of property and property rights" (which was immediately called the nationalization law), and the next day, by Order No. 12 of June 25, 2016, the head of the republic nationalized the Donetsk Electrometallurgical Plant owned by the Russian Mechel (its property was transferred on July 21 to the newly created state enterprise Yuzovsky Metallurgical Plant), and then in December 2016 the Silur plant in Khartsyzsk, owned by Vladimir Nemirovsky (a business partner of Igor Kolomoysky, who had a feud with Akhmetov).

In late January 2017, ATO veterans, primarily former members of the Donbass and Aidar volunteer battalions, began blockading railroads and roads linking Ukraine to the DNR and LNR, and on March 15 the blockade was officially authorized by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. In turn, on February 27, 2017, the heads of the DNR and LNR demanded that Kiev lift the blockade, stating that "if the blockade is not lifted by 00:00 Wednesday (March 1, 2017), we will introduce external administration at all enterprises of Ukrainian jurisdiction operating in the DNR and LNR." On March 1, the threat was implemented.

    The list of Akhmetov's nationalized enterprises was extensive - Komsomolets Donbassa Mine, Mospino Coal Processing Enterprise (UPE), PES-Energougol, Vostokenergo, Donetskoblenergo, Techrempostavka, Sverdlovantratsit, Rovenkiantratsit, DTEK Electronaladka, "DTEK Power Grids, DTEK Service, Yenakiieve Steel and its Makiivka branch, Yenakiieve Coke and Chemical Plant, Khartsyzsk Pipe Plant, Komsomolsk Mine, Krasnodoncoal, Donetskkoks, Metalen, Pushkinsky and 7th Line business centers, Dokuchaevsk Flux-Dolomite Plant, etc. д. Moreover, according to RBC, Akhmetov was taken by surprise by the nationalization - until the last moment he was sure Kiev would agree with Luhansk and Donetsk again.

The point is that Luhansk and Donetsk were no longer very eager to negotiate, intending to build an economy that would be fully controlled by the republics and offer their own model to spite Ukraine - yes, our income is lower and the choice of goods even smaller, but prices for housing and utilities are much lower and some kind of social services are provided. That is, here they began to build something like an analogue of GDR, with a small "Trabant" instead of German "Mercedes.

    It is worth recalling that the Soviet leadership, initially sanctioning the creation of the GDR under the Soviet occupation in East Germany in 1949, did not envision its long-term independent existence. In Stalin's famous "note" addressed to the leaders of Western powers on March 10, 1952, the USSR demanded the unification of Germany, into which it intended to incorporate an already Sovietized East Germany with its army and administration, thereby gaining a "blocking stake" in a future unified (and, importantly, demilitarized and non-NATO) Germany. But after the uprising in East Berlin on June 17, 1953, it became clear that unifying Germany on Soviet terms was impossible, and the GDR began to be driven hard into socialism, including the dispossession of local farmers, then fleeing by tens of thousands to the West in the late 1950s.


Taking into account the fact that Russia provided aid to Luhansk and Donetsk not only by regular humanitarian convoys, but also financially (through the closed part of the federal budget, so these expenses are unknown, but in 2016 experts estimated the amount of 38 to 48 billion rubles annually for each of the republics), And "Gazprom" not only supplied gas to the LNR and DNR at low prices (2.8 thousand rubles per cubic meter instead of 10 thousand rubles for the rest of Ukraine), but also shifted the payment for it to Ukraine, socialism could exist for some time in one separate (although unrecognized) country. But not indefinitely. In the summer of 2017, information leaked to the press that, starting in 2018, the Russian government was cutting spending on the Donbass in order to find additional 165 billion rubles to fund the Crimea and the Kaliningrad region (and the latter, let us recall, hosted the 2018 World Cup, which required huge money to build infrastructure, including a huge new stadium).
Kurchenko's arrival and Zakharchenko's murder

No sooner had the authorities of the People's Republics nationalized their enterprises than a new (or rather, not even quite new) oligarch arrived there instead of Akhmetov. Only he did not want to produce anything, but only to "skim off the cream" from the sale of products abroad.

    On April 4, 2017, Alexander Zakharchenko signed a decree, according to which Vneshtorgservis CJSC became the "temporary administrator" of the nationalized plants. As Kommersant journalists noted on May 6, 2017, the re-registration of the plants under the management of Vneshtorgservis began as early as March 28 (Komsomolsk Ore Management) or April 1 (Yenakievsk Metallurgical Plant), and "in the LNR the transfer of the plants under the new administrator began in early March.

The de jure head of the company was Vladimir Pashkov, who in 2008 - 2014 was deputy governor of the Irkutsk region and since 2012 in parallel vice-governor, but very quickly it became known that behind the monopoly company is Ukrainian oligarch Sergii Kurchenko, who until 2014 was a member of the inner circle of Viktor Yanukovich, in the so-called "family".

    It is worth clarifying what the "Yanukovych family" is. When Viktor Yanukovych became president in 2010, he shared power and finances with the old elite of the Party of Regions for some time, but around 2012 he began to move his old associates away from governance and financial flows in favor of his eldest son Alexander, who was considered an "asset holder" of his father the president. Kurchenko, the head of the National Bank of Ukraine Serhiy Arbuzov, promoted to first deputy prime minister in 2012, and Oleksandr Klymenko, who became minister of income and levies in 2012, were associated with Yanukovych Jr.

They were all very young (Yanukovych Jr. was born in 1973, Arbuzov in 1976, Klymenko in 1980 and Kurchenko in 1985) but extremely hungry for money. Klymenko is now accused of inflicting about 100 billion hryvnias (about $12.5 billion) to the Ukrainian budget through various tax schemes, while the revenue side of the Ukrainian budget in 2011-2013 averaged about 330 billion hryvnias. Yanukovych Jr. had assets worth $79 million by 2013, according to expert estimates.

Kurchenko, who registered the company "Gas Ukraine-2009" in 2009, was already called in the press in 2012 "the gas king of Ukraine," as he constantly won tenders from the state-owned Ukrnafta and Ukrhazdobycha. His renamed Eastern European Fuel and Energy Company in 2013 already controlled 25-30% of wholesale oil and gas sales in Ukraine, although the courts had dozens of criminal cases in which Kurchenko's company was accused of "creating the appearance of financial and economic operations" and "taking state funds in especially large amounts" throughout the country. But the judges could not do anything about it because of the strong support in the higher echelons of power. For his part, Kurchenko bought a large media holding UMH for his "family" in 2013, costing between $350,000 and $500,000.

    After Yanukovych was overthrown, his entourage, including Kurchenko, moved to Moscow, but then the oligarch returned to Donbass. Zakharchenko was not happy about this and in November 2014, when Kurchenko walked into his office with half a million dollars in cash for "resolving issues," he sent his guest away and withdrew the money into the budget. Especially when, in March 2018, a second Kurchenko-affiliated company, Gaz-Alliance, received the status of sole supplier of coal from the DNR and LNR. Kurchenko's influence grew so much that on April 18, 2018, the zitz-chairman of Vneshtorgservis, Pashkov, was appointed deputy prime minister of the DNR.


The influence of Kurchenko's patrons in Moscow was incredibly powerful, and the head of the DNR could not get a direct meeting with Vladimir Putin and made loud public demarches because of this. Recall his statement of July 18, 2017: "We, representatives of the regions of former Ukraine, with the exception of Crimea, declare the establishment of a new state, which is the successor to Ukraine. We agree that the new state will be called Malorossia, as the name Ukraine itself has discredited itself. Such an initiative to create an "alternative Ukraine" (before which the head of the DNR held direct lines with residents of a number of regions in southeastern Ukraine) could have taken Zakharchenko to a higher level, but it immediately received a harsh reaction from Moscow.

    According to an investigation by Baza, Zakharchenko collected documentation on the activities of Kurchenko's companies, which, without investing anything in the republic (where mass strikes of miners who had not received salaries for months had already begun in 2020), took huge profits offshore - about 5 billion rubles a month. He had planned to give these documents to Putin at the farewell ceremony for Iosif Kobzon, scheduled for September 2, 2018, in Moscow. But on the eve of the trip he was blown up on August 31, 2018, in Donetsk.

Just a week after Zakharchenko's murder, on September 7, 2018, Alexander Ananchenko, an advisor to the head of Vneshtorgservis, becomes acting deputy prime minister, acting prime minister on October 18, and prime minister of the DNR as of December 1, 2018. Before that, according to Baza, "on the night of September 6-7, almost all of Zakharchenko's closest associates were removed from the republic to Russia, some were invited politely and promised a speedy return to the DPR, some were escorted under escort. Even First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Trapeznikov and Acting Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Timofeev were expelled from the republic in this way.

    "At the end of September 2018, Kurchenko came to Donetsk already as a host - he handed out tasks to people from Pushilin's team, opened his permanent office. He won," a Baza source from among the staff of the current administration of the DNR leader tells Baza. "Vneshtorgservis has taken control of almost the entire revenue side of the republics' economy. "Virtually 70% of our economy depends on this organization," Yevgeny Lavrenov, Minister of Revenues and Levies, told the DNR People's Council on March 1.

The economy of the DNR and LNR remained under Kurchenko's rule until June 11, 2021, when the republics severed cooperation with Vneshtorgservis. A few months later, on November 15, 2021, Vladimir Putin issued a decree equating goods produced in the DNR and LNR to Russian goods when making state procurements, while lifting restrictions on their import across the border.
Let's leave the epilogue open

Beginning in 2019, the DNR and LNR began increasingly explicitly declaring integration into Russia. On April 24, 2019, Putin signed a decree "On defining for humanitarian purposes a category of persons entitled to apply for Russian citizenship under the simplified procedure," under which nearly 800,000 citizens of the republics have so far been granted citizenship. Before that, on April 13, 2019, the public movement "Donetsk Republic," led by the head of the republic Denis Pushilin, placed a 54-meter banner with the inscription "Our Choice is Russia" on the building of the dormitory #8 of the Donetsk National Technical University.

True, to the "Donetsk Republic" Purgin (who was removed from all positions in the fall of 2015 on command from Moscow) and Matyushin (who never rose above the rank of commander of a small volunteer unit), the current "Donetsk Republic" has the remotest relation.

The time of revolutionary romanticism is irretrievably gone. But there is no other way.