State Department: 'Russian Military Has a Significant Presence in Ukraine'

    Ever since March 2014 when President Obama referred to Russian aggression against Ukraine as an "invasion", administration officials have avoided that word in conjunction with the ongoing conflict. In fact, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt's declared on April 29, 2014, that "Russian troops crossing Ukraine's borders would be a major escalation, and would draw an inevitable, sharp reaction from the United States," implying that, President Obama's March remarks notwithstanding, no Russian troops had "invaded".
    Evan as recently as this week, Ambassador Samantha Power at the United Nations charged Russia with training, supplying, aiding, and arming separatists in Ukraine, but stopped short of saying that Russian troops were engaged across the border in Ukraine. And Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, in Kyiv for a meeting with Ukrainian Finance Minister Jaresko referred to the "ongoing military offensive... being carried out by Russia-backed separatists," but made no mention of Russian forces.
    Today, however, when asked to comment on remarks by a US army general that suggested Russian special operations forces are playing an active role in the conflict, a state department spokesperson replied:

We cannot confirm specific numbers, but the Russian military has a significant presence in Ukraine.  In late December, Russia transferred more than one hundred additional pieces of Russian military equipment and material to pro-Russia separatists.  The latest transfer complements the previous transfer of hundreds of pieces of Russian military equipment provided to pro-Russia separatists since the September 5 Minsk ceasefire agreement, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, heavy artillery pieces, and other military vehicles. 

There are several sites near the Ukraine border, which serve as staging points before transporting Russian military equipment to pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine. Russian combat forces remain deployed near the Ukraine border, and Russian military forces still operate in eastern Ukraine, where they play a coordinating role and provide ongoing tactical support to pro-Russia separatists.

    The US Department of Defense (DOD) has been more vocal about Russian military activity in eastern Ukraine beyond simply supplying and training separatists. In remarks Tuesday at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium, Army Gen. Joseph L. Votel suggested that Russian special operations forces are active in the conflict:

[A] resurgent Russia is now employing coercive techniques against its neighbor using [special operations] forces, other clandestine capabilities, information operations, other cyber operations and groupings of ethnic proxies and surrogates to drive wedges into our key allies in East Europe.

    General Votel seemed to distinguish between the activities of Russian forces and "groupings of ethnic proxies and surrogates," presumably the separatist forces in Ukraine that have been fighting Ukrainian forces in the eastern part of that country since early 2014. When asked for comment, a DOD spokesperson said, "The general referred to the use of Special Operations Forces and Information Operations. In the US military, Special Operations Forces is an umbrella term for all special operations units to include units that conduct  Military Information Support Operations or MISO. MISO, also referred to as Psychological Operations, is a subset of Information Operations‎ and has nothing to do forces on the ground."
    A second DOD spokesperson's comments mirrored those of the state department, and also called on Russia to fulfill the Minsk agreement by "withdrawing all troops and weapons from eastern Ukraine":

[W]e've been saying out of the DoD for quite a while now [that] we cannot confirm specific numbers, but the Russian military has a significant presence in Ukraine.  We call on Russia to de-escalate this conflict by fulfilling the commitments they signed up to in Minsk, including by withdrawing all troops and weapons from eastern Ukraine, establishing effective international monitoring of the international border and returning control of Ukraine’s side of that border to the government in Kyiv, freeing all hostages, and working towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

    President Obama himself addressed the Ukrainian situation with Chancellor Merkel of Germany in a phone call on Tuesday, but the readout of the call made no mention of Russian forces in Ukraine. Rather, the president and Chancellor Merkel decried "Russia’s materiel support for the separatists and its failure to fulfill its commitment under the Minsk Agreement."


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

The Non-Invasion of Ukraine: Foreign Policy by Syntax

    Obama administration officials, with a temporary early August lapse by Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Powers, have studiously avoided calling Russia's current actions in eastern Ukraine an "invasion." State department spokesperson Jen Psaki, after referring to the Russian "incursion", was then asked if she agreed that "there is actually a Russian invasion of Ukraine." However, Psaki demurred, saying, "I think I’m going to leave it as I said[.]" A reporter questioned Josh Earnest twice at a press briefing last week about whether or not an invasion was taking place, but Earnest avoided the word to the point that the reporter followed up with: "But doesn’t the language matter in this case?  Is there something that is -- you are reluctant to use those words to describe what appears to be happening in front of everyone’s eyes in Ukraine?" Earnest replied that the administration had been "very clear" and "pretty candid", but still avoided the word.

     The president himself was also directly confronted last week with the invasion question. While continuing to avoid pronouncing the word, the president answered:

I consider the actions that we’ve seen in the last week a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now.  As I said in my opening statement, there is no doubt that this is not a homegrown, indigenous uprising in eastern Ukraine.  The separatists are backed, trained, armed, financed by Russia.  Throughout this process, we’ve seen deep Russian involvement in everything that they’ve done.  

    But Russia's presence in Ukraine extends further back than the current activity in eastern Ukraine. The slow-motion takeover of the Crimean peninsula (with comparatively little violence) was unequivocally termed an "invasion" by none other than President Obama himself in a speech at the end of March. In remarks to European youths in Belgium in late March, the president used "the invasion of Crimea" and "Russia’s invasion of Ukraine" interchangeably. As recently as Wednesday, President Obama has continued to condemn Russia's "occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea," and yet it is as if there has been an invasion reset. It's not that Russia is threatening to invade Ukraine; Putin is threatening re-invasion, or further invading that "sovereign and independent European nation," in the president's words.
    The question then becomes, why has "invasion" been dropped from the administration's foreign policy lexicon when discussing Russia and Ukraine? The answer again lies in the words of President Obama, this time at an August 6 press conference. The president was asked what it would take to see "lethal aid" provided to the government of Ukraine. His reply was arguably yet another "red line" [emphasis added]:

Q    The troops that are massing on the border are more highly trained.  They seem to have more sophisticated weaponry, according to intelligence.  Does that make you reconsider -- as a few Democrats have suggested -- providing lethal aid to Ukraine, given those troop movements? 

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, keep in mind that the Russian army is a lot bigger than the Ukrainian army.  So the issue here is not whether the Ukrainian army has some additional weaponry.  At least up until this point, they’ve been fighting a group of separatists who have engaged in some terrible violence but who can’t match the Ukrainian army. 

Now, if you start seeing an invasion by Russia, that’s obviously a different set of questions.  We’re not there yet.  What we have been doing is providing a whole host of assistance packages to the Ukrainian government and to their military, and we will continue to work with them to evaluate on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis what exactly they need in order to be able to defend their country and to deal with the separatist elements that currently are being armed by Russia.

But the best thing we can do for Ukraine is to try to get back on a political track.

    With the Obama administration so invested in the persuasive power of sanctions, the president and his team appeared to be actively avoiding that "different set of questions" that would be raised by an "invasion." And with conflicts erupting around the world and even Democrats calling for increased military action against ISIL in Iraq and perhaps Syria, the president seems to wish to maintain his flexibility where Russia is concerned. And so an "invasion" in March becomes an "incursion" in September, and the people of Ukraine must wait for help, hostages of syntax.