World News Russians Imperial Dream Faces Last Stand in Donetsk Muscovite Heading Separatist Movement in Ukraine Seeks Return of Empire Email Print 22 Comments Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn smaller Larger By Philip Shishkin July 13, 2014 8:02 p.m. ET Alexander Borodai, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic, attends a news conference at the administrations headquarters in Donetsk, Ukraine on June 12. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images DONETSK, Ukraine—The military noose was tightening around the rebel city, and Alexander Borodai, now the leader of pro-Russia separatists in Donetsk, was urging decisive action. That was more than a decade ago, in a different war and a different city—Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, which was fighting for independence from Russia. Mr. Borodai, accompanying Russian troops as a war correspondent, wanted to see Grozny hit hard, all insurgents killed, and Chechen autonomy eradicated in favor of direct Moscow rule. Together, they will finally wipe the hated city off the face of the Earth, he wrote of Russian soldiers preparing to enter Grozny in 2000. Related Ukraine Cargo Plane Taken Down Fighting Surges in Ukraine With Civilian Death Inside Russia Now as Ukrainian forces encircle Donetsk for a final push against pro-Russia insurgents holed up in this regional capital, Mr. Borodai, head of the rebel government, is likely to find himself on the receiving end of the kind of anti-separatist offensive he once urged. Mr. Borodais sudden emergence at the helm of the pro-Russia separatist movement in Ukraine shows how Russia has struggled to find reliable local leaders in a fight the Kremlin continues to insist it isnt inciting. His comments on Chechnya help explain the harsh worldview of a Muscovite who has nurtured an ideal of Russia for more than two decades. Mr. Borodai, 41 years old, says he is ready to die in Donetsk for his imperial dream, which he first began working toward in the early 1990s. Back then, as a 19-year-old philosophy student in Moscow, he spent a summer fighting alongside pro-Russia rebels in Transnistria, a breakaway republic that was carved out of Moldova. Later that decade, Mr. Borodai began to cover Chechnya for a nationalist Russian newspaper, Zavtra, though he says he carried out other unspecified roles there, not just journalism. It is there that he crossed paths with a man who would become a close friend— Igor Strelkov, another Muscovite who was then an officer with Russias main intelligence agency, and is now the defense minister of what the separatists call the Donetsk Peoples Republic. Over the weekend, the European Union banned Mr. Borodai from traveling to the EU and ordered that his assets there, if he has any, be frozen as punishment for his role in the Ukraine insurgency. Mr. Strelkov has already been sanctioned by the EU. Mr. Borodai said hes proud to join his friend on the list, and said, I pity old Europe, according to Gazeta.ru, a Russian newspaper. The prominence of Mr. Borodai and other Russian citizens at the helm of the insurgency makes any negotiated peace with Kiev harder to attain and poses an image problem for Moscow, which has argued that separatism in east Ukraine is a grass-roots movement. I have no idea what this person from Moscow is doing here, said a local separatist official, who, like several other senior homegrown activists, found himself sidelined with Mr. Borodais arrival. It was a raiders takeover. Andrei Purgin, a Donetsk man who has been agitating for separatism for more than a decade and now serves as a deputy to Mr. Borodai, says revolutionaries dont necessarily make good administrators, so we had to rely on specialists from outside, on parachutists so to speak. Mr. Borodai arrived in May, after an earlier stint in Crimea where he helped midwife the Russian annexation behind the scenes. as an adviser to Crimeas separatist boss. In Donetsk, he stepped straight into the spotlight, citing a dearth of local talent. While he insists theres never been an official Kremlin role in any of my actions, he clearly benefits from support from Moscow. He shuttles between Donetsk and the Russian capital, eluding Ukrainian forces, and crossing the Russian border at will. In Moscow, he gives interviews to state-controlled media, and holds meetings, though he refuses to say with whom, citing a military secret during a news conference he gave in Donetsk a couple of days ago. Here he acts with near-absolute authority. At a recent news conference, he gave its popular mayor an ultimatum—side with the separatists or step down. He explained his order: To step down doesnt mean to stand against the wall and face a firing squad. Over the weekend, he demanded that local businesses pay taxes to the separatists. His style has alienated powerful local insurgents. Alexander Khodakovsky, a Ukrainian counterterrorism officer based in Donetsk, defected to the separatist side in the spring, and formed his own rebel battalion. Neither Borodai nor anyone else could seize the initiative of our movement because it wasnt them who created it, said Khodakovsky, who operates out of a fortified base on the other side of town from Mr. Borodais office. He said some men from Moscow see an opportunity to earn political dividends here. Mr. Borodai chafes at such displays of insubordination. When Pavel Gubarev, the separatist peoples governor already stripped of real authority, spoke about conflicts within rebel leadership, Mr. Borodai publicly belittled him. Who is Pavel Gubarev? he said. He believes autocracy is the best form of government, though he says he could cede power if a credible homegrown alternative emerges. He believes he is fulfilling a historical mission on behalf of the Russian nation, which he calls a super-ethnicity glued together with Orthodox Christianity. The boundaries of the Russian world are considerably larger than the boundaries of the Russian Federation, Mr. Borodai, a pistol holstered on his belt, said in an interview in his spacious Donetsk office, with unadorned except for a picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin hanging above his desk. Mr. Borodai smoked slim cigarettes, his head shaved to a buzz-cut, a tight black T-shirt hugging his potbelly. Heavily armed guards lounged on a couch outside his office discussing the latest weaponry. For more than two decades, Mr. Borodai has been concerned with the disintegration of what he calls the Russian world, hastened by the collapse of the Soviet Union, buffeted by the separatist actions that followed, weakened by Russias flawed and ultimately abandoned experiment with liberalism and democracy, and accompanied by the spiritual and physical decay of the Russian nation itself. His recipe for restoring the Russian world to its proper place means expanding it and interfering on behalf of ethnic Russians wherever they may live: in Moldova where he fought in a separatist war in the early 1990s, and now in Ukraine. Like much of Moscow in the past decade, Mr. Borodai was busy making money. He ran a consultancy, and enjoyed an affluent lifestyle, he says. One of his clients was a prominent Moscow investment bank. Another was Konstantin Malofeyeva, wealthy Moscow businessman with a vision for a Russian empire. He has denied any connection to Mr. Borodais mission in Ukraine. Asked about the irony of calling for the annihilation of Chechen separatists—given that he is now a separatist himself—Mr. Borodai said, paused and offered this: Im in the same exact situation; Im now also fighting against separatists, not Chechen separatists, but Ukrainian separatists. Because theres Russia, the great Russia, theres a Russian empire. And now the Ukrainian separatists who are in Kiev are struggling against the Russian empire. Write to Philip Shishkin at philip.shishkin@wsj
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 02:14:03 +0000
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