Tag: Novorossiya

Is Something Up On The Novorossiya Front?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I watch my Webstats like a hawk throughout the day because I have no life and something curious has come up: I’m beginning to get the occasional ping on my writing about Novorossiya.

My hunch is that more clued-in people know something about Russian’s intentions in Ukraine. Like, maybe Russia is about to declare the creation of Novorossiya and declare “victory?”

Or, maybe they’re hearing from people on the ground in south eastern Ukraine that Novorossiya is the ultimate goal of the pitched battle that the Russians and Ukrainians are fighting at the moment?

I just don’t know. I’m notorious for using a microscopic amount of information to draw very, very wrong conclusions. But, we’ll see, I guess.

Of Putin, May 9th & Novorossiya


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If my Webstats are any indication, the Powers that Be believe something is up with the concept of Novorossiya. I monitor my Webstats like a hawk and, for some reason, a few people from New York City are interested in my speculation about Novorossiya.

May 9th, the big military holiday in Russia, is coming up fast and it would make a lot of sense for Putin declare “victory” in Ukraine by saying Novorossiya has been established and fuck you.

Or something like that.

Or, he might declare formal war on Ukraine by saying Novorossiya is going to be officially established that way.

The point is — something’s up.

Russia’s Potential Novorossiya Endgame

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If the above tweet is accurate, then Putin has decided to go the Novorossiya route. He wants to carve out a puppet client state from Ukraine in the general area of has historically been called Novorossiya. Below is what the political boundaries of such a client state might look like.

Anyway, doing this would make a lot of sense from the Russian point of view. But it’s extremely doubtful the Russians could pull it off. What’s more likely to happen is either Putin redfines victory and leaves Ukraine, or he escalates and we have something akin to WW3.

Only time will tell.

My Hot Take On Russia’s Ukrainian War Aims This Winter


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I still don’t believe Putin is going to make a major land grab in Ukraine. Until something changes, for the time being Putin is all talk. This is yet another one of his occasional efforts to remind us what a massive cocksucker he is.

And, yet, if he were to attack Ukraine, I think his ultimate war aims would be rather modest. All he would want to do is connect Donbas to Crimea. That’s it. If he was feeling esspecially frisky, he might go for Odessa as well, simply because it would make sense for him to take it while he was at it.

Putin would want to take just enough of Ukraine to connect what he already controls, without causing the collapse of the Ukrainian government. If mass chaos struck Ukraine, there’s a really good chance there would be a far Right coup of some sort and some serious irredentism would take hold of the rump state of Ukraine.

If that happened, that would not be a war that Putin, with a very small economy, could win long-term.

Novorossiya: My Hot Take On Current Ukraine – Russia Situation


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Please note: I’m not an expert! I just have a long-time interest in this situation.

Something is going on — again — between the Ukrainians and the Russians. But, what? There has been a years-long “frozen conflict” in eastern Ukraine, to the point where it’s not somewhere one thinks anything is ever going to happen.

For the time being, the Russians like the status quo and, given how small their economy is, even if they were able to take Kiev and and try to establish some sort to Novorossiya, the Russians would not be able to keep it for very long. The one way they might make their Novorossiya dreams come true is swiftly take Kiev, have the Ukrainians sue for peace and then gobble up the land they want strictly through pollical means.

But even that somewhat ideal situation for Russia would be problematic. Eastern Ukraine’s political and ethnic makeup is far from uniform and there would be a lot of nationalists Ukrainians in Eastern Ukraine that would take up arms even if the Russians were able to conslodate power in the region as part of a peace deal.

What’s more, Ukraine signing off that much land to the Russians would enrage nationalists in the rump state and it’s very possible to imagine a far-Right government deciding to do everything in its power to take the lost land back. Which would put Russia in exactly the position was trying to avoid in the first place.

So, it’s very possible that the frozen conflict between Ukraine and Russia might heat up some, but something pretty big would have to go wrong for both sides before we were talking about any sort of general war.

But, having said all that, I am often wrong.

The Existential Threat Of Trump’s Silence On Ukraine — Russia, Or, ‘The Birth Of Novorossiya?’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m merely an armchair observer on all of this, so if you want any scholarly insight into what’s going on, please look elsewhere. But having said that, it seems as though the conditions are there, at least, for a Russia to make a major land grab in Ukraine. I say this because Trump has been completely silent on what’s going on between Russia and Ukraine.

It definitely seems to me, at least, that Putin could see that silence as tacit acknowledgement from Trump that Putin can do whatever he likes in Ukraine without any threat of the United States doing anything. Hence, it definitely seems the ball is in Putin’s court. Putin could start a general war in a wide swath of Ukraine stretching for Odessa in the west to the border between Ukraine and Russia in the east and do some serious damage to the existing order in Europe.

Putin, as I recall, has repeatedly bragged that his military could take Kiev in two weeks, should the mood strike him. Of course, the reason why he hasn’t attempted that is he knows that while he could take Kiev, he probably wouldn’t be able to keep it. It would be Afghanistan all over again, only on a much larger scale and with much higher stakes. Putin knows Soviet involvement in Afghanistan contributed to that empire’s downfall and he’s smart enough not to repeat the mistake.

Hence, that’s why Putin’s been very, very cautious in what he’s done with Ukraine. He’s used “little green men” to do is bidding and what makes the recent navel scuffle in the Black Sea so out of character is how brazen it is. Under any normal American administration, the president would make a strong speech condemning the action and that would be enough for Russia and they would back off.

But, oddly enough, Trump has been completely silent on what’s going on between Russia and Ukraine and, as I mentioned, that might be enough for Putin to push things a little bit farther than he might otherwise. And, yet, Russia remains a weak regional power outside of its many, many nuclear weapons and as such its economy probably couldn’t handle a general war between Ukraine and itself. Putin is wily enough that he probably is content — hopefully — with the point he’s made and now he’ll just wait for his buttboy Trump to be his lap down at the G20 meeting.

That seems to be what is going to happen. But given how weak Trump is in regards to Russia, on a geopolitical level, Putin might see the Trump Administration as a historic opportunity to get as much as he can from Ukraine while he can. Or not. Who knows. Putin works in murky blackbox ways and anything is possible.

We’ll see.

The convention wisdom was, at least at one point in the last few years, that should the Russians start a general war with Ukraine that the first phase of the war would see a quick victory on the part of the Russians once they took Kiev. They would then hunker down on a huge chunk of Ukraine and attempt to organize the puppet state of Novorossiya. Then the rump state of Ukraine would organize a counter attack with a flood of arms from Poland and other interested states. But all of that worked on the assumption that the United States would take a lead role in all of this.

It’s very possible in today’s weird political climate that the Russians might — just might — feel they could risk a general war with Ukraine because the United States is pretty much a Vichy state at this point. But, again, I just don’t know. I honestly have no idea what is going to happen.

I think nothing is going to happen. Putin’s made his point and he’s just going to wait until just the right moment to come out of his spider hole to do a little mischief. But that could be years in the future.

Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Va. He is currently working on his first novel. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.