‘Power struggle’ in Donetsk prompts flurry of speculation in Kyiv and beyond

Reports came on the evening of Sept. 4 that
Denis Pushilin, the vice-speaker of the pseudo parliament in the part of
Donetsk Oblast controlled by Russian-backed separatists, had ousted the body’s
speaker, Andrey Purgin at an extraordinary meeting of the so-called “People’s
Council,” and taken the role of speaker for himself.

The Kremlin-controlled information
mouthpiece Sputnik said an anonymous source had told it Pushilin was now the
interim head of the body. The Kremlin-controlled TASS information agency said
that deputies in the pseudo parliament had voted for the move by a narrow
margin of 73 for, to 70 against.

Explaining the ouster of Purgin, Pushilin
said the former had tried “to disrupt (the Sept. 4) meeting of the People’s
Council, when the deputies had to listen to false declarations made with the
aim of increasing tensions and destabilizing the situation,” the separatist
Donetsk News Agency information source reported. In his first decision as a
newly appointed head of the people’s council, Pushilin dismissed the chief of staff of the People’s Council,” Aleksey Aleksandrov, who is a close ally of
Purgin.

There were unconfirmed reports from other
separatist information sources that Purgin and his wife were now under arrest,
and that heavily-armed Russian troops had surrounded the “parliament” building in
Donetsk during the vote on Purgin’s ouster.

Meanwhile, experts tried to make sense of
what was going on. New York University Professor Mark Galeotti, writing
overnight in his “In Moscow’s Shadows” blog, said that there was “an inevitable
Kremlin dimension” to the affair.

“There have been on-and-off indications
that Moscow is concerned about tightening its grip on the region (witness the
greater integration of military units, under regular Russian officers), and if
… a ‘soft annexation’ is increasingly the least-worst option the Kremlin is
having to adopt, maybe it is time to ensure (there is) a compliant man at the
top.”

Galeotti said the overall impression he had
from the affair was that the Kremlin was indeed taking another step towards
turning the Donbas into a Transdniester-style frozen conflict, referring to the
breakaway region of Moldova that the Kremlin carved off that country in the
early 1990s.

There has also recently been speculation
over the whereabouts of Alexander Zakharchenko, another separatist leader and
the “prime minister” of the pseudo authorities in separatist-held parts of
Donetsk Oblast. There were unconfirmed reports from separatist sources that
Zakharchenko had been absent from the separatist areas, and had possibly been
in Moscow.

Writing in an opinion piece on the
Euromaidan Press website, Russian journalist Kirill Mikhalilov said there were
also claims from separatist sources that Zakharchenko had initiated the session
of the “parliament” that led to Purgin’s ouster and his replacement with
Pushilin. But other separatist sources said Zakharchenko could also face
Purgin’s fate if he didn’t “adapt to the new political reality” in Russian-occupied
Donetsk Oblast, Mikhalilov wrote.

One indication that Zakharchenko might
indeed be adapting to new realities came early on Sept. 5, when an “official”
news agency for the separatist-held part of Donetsk Oblast reported that
Zakharchenko had said there was “no alternative to the Minsk agreement” on
achieving peace in eastern Ukraine.

Previously, Zakharchenko has been one of
the most belligerent of the separatist leaders, repeatedly saying that the
forces under his command intended to attack Ukrainian forces and take over more
territory “up to the borders of Donetsk Oblast,” which would show clear
disregard for the peace deal reached in Minsk on Feb. 12 this year.

The separatists control about one third of
the combined area of Donetsk Oblast and neighboring Luhansk Oblast.

There were also suggestions that the “power
struggle” in Donetsk might have a more mundane aspect – money and criminality.

Pushilin is reported to have been connected
to the MMM “Ponzi” scheme that robbed millions of Russian and Ukrainian
citizens of their savings in the 1990s. According to Mark Lawrence Schrad,
writing in the Moscow Times on June 23 last year, “without question, the
(separatist-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast) is a criminal enterprise, and
the chairman of its ruling council – Denis Pushilin – is little different.”

Zakharchenko, a former mine technician and
poultry trader, is now in control of many businesses in the separatist-held
parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, and is known for his love of expensive cars,
according to Mikhalilov.

Denys Kazansky, a well-known Ukrainian
journalist who is originally from Donetsk, points out financial and personal
causes of conflict between so-called Donetsk republic leaders. “The conflict
between him (Purgin) and Pushilin has existed for a long time. They cannot
share power and financial flows. Each of them has a curator in Russia, so the
conflict probably goes deeper than the squabbles in DNR,” Kazansky wrote on his
Facebook page on Sept. 4.

Galeotti also saw the struggle for power
and money as being one of the main reasons for the political upheaval in the
separatist-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast.

“… This was as much a struggle over
economic as political assets (though the point is, of course, that ultimately
they are really one and the same,” Galeotti wrote in his blog.

“The politics of the (separatist-controlled
parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts) have all the well-mannered and
collegial constitutionality of a Brazilian prison riot,” he wrote.

Kyiv
Post editor Euan MacDonald can be reached at [email protected] and Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected]