Is Russia's Takeover of Ukraine About to Fail?

If there was ever any doubt that the people behind the insurgency in Ukraine were Russians who took their marching orders from Vladimir Putin, those doubts have now been put to rest.

The New York Times reports that as the rebellion in the Donetsk "People's Republic" has been slowly collapsing, Putin has pulled the Russians who were leading the insurgency out of the country. These leaders weren't Ukrainians of Russian descent, or Ukrainians who spoke Russian as their first language, but actual Russian citizens and members of the Russian military and FSB (the successor to the KGB).

Why yank the Russians commanders? Perhaps to lend more credibility to the "Ukrainianness" of the insurrection. But more to the point, if the Ukrainian government were to capture the Russian commanders when the insurgency is defeated, they might have some very embarrassing things to tell the world about Mr. Putin's and the Russian government's involvement in the war. This may be a hopeful sign: it may mean that Russia is abandoning the rebels.

They have replaced these Russians with Ukrainians who have less-than-stellar qualifications, including the new deputy defense minister, Fyodor Berezin, who before the rebellion was a science fiction author and purchaser of janitorial supplies for a university.

The Russians who have stepped down include Igor Strelkov (actually, Igor Girkin, the man who initially claimed credit for downing the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine), a Russian citizen and FSB colonel who was behind the takeover of Crimea; Aleksandr Borodai, a Russian citizen, who resigned as the Donetsk prime minister; Valery Bolotov, a Russian citizen, who resigned as the Luhansk prime minister; and Igor Bezler, a citizen of Crimea who was a member of the Russian army. The lone remaining Russian in the command structure is Vladimir Antyufeyev, a reputed spy who was apparently left behind to keep an eye on the Ukrainians.

And they need close watching:

Separatist fighters have taken to carousing drunkenly at night and wearing civilian clothes. This month, three of them crashed a car into the curb outside the Ramada hotel. On Saturday, two separatists again crashed at the same spot, rolling their vehicle and scattering broken glass and bullets on the street. On Tuesday, a drunken rebel, improbably, again crashed at that location, severely injuring four civilians.

As bystanders watched horrified, the drunken gunman, who was not wounded, drew a pistol and proceeded to kick one of the injured civilians, berating him for causing the accident.

As for Mr. Berezin, he seems to think he's living in a science fiction novel:

“Reality became scarier than science fiction,” he said in an interview over iced tea at the Havana Banana bar, a favorite rebel haunt. “I live in my books now. I fell right into the middle of my books.”

This brought to mind another man who thinks we're living in a science fiction novel written by a Russian: Paul Ryan.

In 2009, in a multi-part video series posted to Facebook, Paul Ryan said that “what’s unique about what’s happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now. I think Ayn Rand [who emigrated from the Soviet Union and worked as a Hollywood screen writer] did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault.”

Incredibly, Ryan said this right after the financial meltdown in which immoral and unethical Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers nearly destroyed the world economy. But in a world where finance laws were crafted by Ayn Rand sycophants, most of the worst offenders have escaped prosecution.

I don't know which vision of the future is more depressing: Berezin's Parallel Cataclysm, in which the Soviet Union took over the world in an alternate dimension, or Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, in which unbridled selfishness and greed are portrayed as the apotheosis of human achievement.

I just wish these guys could actually go to these alternate dimensions, and stop trying to screw up this one with their crazy notions.