Russian 'Hybrid Warfare' and the Annexation of Crimea: The Modern Application of Soviet Political Warfare by Kent DeBenedictis

Author:Kent DeBenedictis [DeBenedictis, Kent]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780755640027
Google: 3rxJzgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 58637314
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Published: 2021-01-15T13:37:39+00:00

The chamber did not reach the required fifty-one deputies; the press had been allowed to witness the session and could see quorum was not met (Kozlov 2015). Konstantinov was therefore forced to call off the session (Matsuzato 2016: 246–7). The plan to follow standard legal procedure had failed. The Russian government’s Crimean collaborators could not muster enough deputies to force a vote on removing the existing regime and appealing for direct Russian assistance. Without such a vote, the Russian government could not claim that these moves were the valid wishes of the Crimean people. Any (overt) action on Russia’s part without the vote risked undermining its argument of legitimacy – just as the failed vote in the CPCz Presidium had caused such issues in 1968.

The solution was to seize control of the Crimean Rada and force the vote the following day. During the night of 26–27 Fe bruary, Russian special forces without insignia departed Sevastopol in two Kamaz military trucks. They arrived at the Crimean Rada and Council of Ministers buildings in Simferopol, disarmed the security and took control of the buildings. The soldiers stated that they were local self-defence forces there to guard the Crimean government and to allow an extraordinary session to take place (Vzglyad Business Newspaper 2014). However, one eyewitness interviewed early that morning said that he saw men ‘armed to their teeth’ surrounding the buildings, and when he questioned who they were, they admitted flatly, ‘We are Russians’ (Kliatskin 2016). According to some sources, the units involved were from FSB Vympel and the 45th Spetsnaz Regiment. They had arrived in Sevastopol on the landing ships coming from the Sochi Olympics (Interview with Mykhailo Gonchar 2017). Putin later signed a decree designating 27 February as Special Operations Forces Day in Russia (Belousov 2015), thus indirectly confirming that these forces were the ones who seized the Crimean Rada. In control of the parliamentary buildings, the Russian forces could then set the conditions for the vote – and the desired results – that had failed to happen the day before.

For his part, Aksyonov claims that he did not know about the seizure until he received a phone call early the next morning (Kondrashov 2015). That Aksyonov was not aware of Russia’s plan to seize the buildings is questionable. However, the picture he is painting is that Russian forces seized the main government buildings of Crimea without the consent, knowledge or request of one of their key collaborators, meaning it would have been a unilateral Russian decision. Unlike his openness on the rest of the operation, Temirgaliev refused to answer questions about the emergence of the ‘green men’, but he asserted that ‘the role of the Crimean elites in these processes [wa]s secondary’ to the Russian decision-makers (Kozlov 2015). He thus also presents the situation as such that the Russian leadership, not the Crimean politicians, drove the decision to seize the Rada to ensure the necessary ‘vote’ was held.

With unmarked Russian forces in control of the parliament building and a

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