An Invasion by Any Other Name: The Kremlins Dirty War in UkraineBy James Miller, Pierre Vaux, Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, and Michael Weiss

The Institute of Modern Russia (IMR) is a public policy think-tank that strives to establish an intellectual framework for building a democratic Russia governed by rule of law. IMR promotes social, economic, and institutional development in Russia through research, analysis, advocacy and outreach. Our goal is to advance Russia's integration into the community of democracies and to improve its cooperation on the global stage.Founded in 2010, IMR is located in New York City and is an affiliate of the Open Russia movement. IMR is a federal tax-exempt Section 501(c)(3) public charity, incorporated in New Jersey.

The Interpreter is a daily online journal dedicated primarily to translating media from the Russian press and blogosphere into English and reporting on events inside Russia and in countries directly impacted by Russias foreign policy.Conceived as a kind of Inopressa in reverse, The Interpreter aspires to dismantle the language barrier that separates journalists, Russia analysts, policymakers, diplomats and interested laymen in the English-speaking world from the debates, scandals, intrigues and political developments taking place in the Russian Federation.

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CONTENTS

Foreword .................................................................................... 4

Overview and Methodology ............................................. 5

Executive Summary .............................................................. 6

Introduction ...........................................................................10

Ivan Get Your Gun: Evidence of Russian Military

Equipment in Ukraine ........................................................12

First Stages of War in Eastern Ukraine .........................12

The First Battle of Donetsk International Airport ......13

The First Appearance of Separatist Tanks ................14

T-64 Battle Tanks Arrive ..................................................16

Moscow Deploys Advanced Anti-Aircraft

Systems to Protect Assets in Ukraine ...........................17

Sophisticated Surface-to-Air Missile Systems Appear

on the Streets of Lugansk and Russian Troops

Build on the Border .........................................................18

Russian Military Shells Ukraine from Russia ................22

The T-72 Main Battle Tank in Separatist Hands ..........25

Ukraine Advances in the West, Russia Attacks

from the East ....................................................................27

The Russian Invasion of Lugansk ...................................32

Minsk Ceasefire Gives Way to the Second Battle

for Donetsk Airport .........................................................35

The Battle for Debaltsevo ..............................................36

The Southern Front: The Summer of 2015 .................41

Cargo 200Russian Soldiers Killed

in Action in Ukraine ............................................................45

First Battle at the Donetsk Airport, May 2014 ...........45

The Battles of August 2014 ............................................46

Separatists Admission of Russian Presence ...............48

The Curious Case of Leonid Kichatkin ..........................48

Secret Funerals for the 76th ...........................................49

The Missing Paratrooper Company ..............................50

The St. Petersburg Soldiers Mothers and

the Missing Soldiers from the North Caucasus ...........51

Committee of Soldiers Mothers

of Stavropol Territory ......................................................53

Kostroma POWs, KIA, and MIA,

and the First Demonstrations ........................................53

Soldiers Mothers Go Public in Russia ...........................56

Soldiers Mothers Vilified by Blogger ...........................57

Meeting of Defense Ministry and

Soldiers Mothers .............................................................57

Activists Interview with Reuters ...................................58

Muted Public Response ..................................................59

Arrest of Stavropol Soldiers Mothers Leader

Ludmila Bogatenkova .....................................................60

Reprisals Against Journalists .........................................60

Assault of TV Rain Producer ..........................................60

Attack on BBC Crew ........................................................61

Attack on Lev Shlosberg .................................................61

Russia Tries a Limited Hangout on News

of Soldiers Killed ..............................................................62

Putin Issues Awards to Army Units for Heroism

and Bravery in Combat ..................................................62

Putins Decree Banning Disclosure

of Casualties During Special Operations ..................63

The Limits of Mining Social Media for Cases of

Russian Soldiers Killed in Ukraine .................................64

Bloggers Find Graves of Three GRU Officers ..............65

Reports on Twitter ...........................................................66

News from Russian Ultranationalist Groups ...............67

List Maintained by Open Russia of Russian Soldiers

Confirmed Killed in Ukraine ...........................................67

The Most Active Facebook Group: Gruz-200 ............68

Latest Lists of Russian Soldiers Killed and Missing ....69

Putin.War ...........................................................................70

OSCE Reports of Cargo 200 ...........................................71

Reports of Mass Burials of Russian Soldiers ...............72

Wounded Russian Soldiers .............................................73

How Many Russian Soldiers Have Been

Killed in Ukraine? ..............................................................77

Conclusion ...............................................................................79

Appendix ..................................................................................80

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Since February 2014, Russian president Vladimir Putin has been conducting a war against Ukraine. He first seized Crimea using unidentified Russian troops whom he later acknowledged as his soldiers. He then began a hybrid war in Ukraines east, which he still denies waging.

If Putin is going to continue his war policy toward Ukraine, it is very much in his interest to maintain this air of deniability. This helps him deal with the two major problems that his own policies have created.

The first is the Western sanctions that a reluctant European Union has imposed on him for aggression in Ukraine. Hoping that the Kremlins seizure of Crimea was the end of Putins aggression, the EU was slow to react to Moscows aggression in the Donbass. The EU ignored the fact that Kremlin agents such as FSB Colonel Girkin (also known as Strelkov) and Moscow political consultant Aleksandr Borodai organized the Donbass rebellion. When Moscow sent the Vostok Battalion to Ukraine in late May and T-64 tanks and advanced anti-aircraft weapons in June and July, the EU still declined to notice and to impose serious, sectoral sanctions. Those sanctions only came after a Russian-supplied Buk anti-aircraft system shot down MH17, a commercial airliner carrying nearly 200 Dutch passengers.

The second problem Putin faces is the strong opposition of the Russian public to the use of Russian troops in the war. Numerous polls by the Levada Center, a prestigious Moscow think tank, have made this sentiment clear. Putin is afraid that his popularity and support might suffer if it becomes clear that he has sent troops to fight and die in the Donbass.

If Western governments were clear-eyed in regard to Putins aggressive designs, Kremlin efforts to hide its hand in the war with Ukraine would not be very important. U.S. and, more broadly, Western intelli-gence would spread the word that the civil war in the Donbass was manufactured in Moscow. But such has not been the case. PostCold War Europe has gotten used to a historically unprecedented period of peace and prosperity, and many there do not want to wake up to the dangers brewing on their eastern borders. Meanwhile, the White House, understandably reluctant to engage in possible military engagements after the spectacular failures of American interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, labors under the delusion that the Ukraine crisis is a European or regional crisisas

if a rampaging major nuclear power can be effectively managed by the EU!

Distracted by the less critical security challenges of the Middle East, the United States and other Western powers have not devoted enough intelligence resources to Moscows excellent adventure in Ukraine. And even when they have the intelligence capability, they have been slow to release it or characterize it properly. So even as Russian troops crushed Ukrainian forces at Ilovaisk in the late summer of 2014, the White House chose not to refer to Moscows action as an invasion. Instead, it chose an old weasel word from the vocab-ulary of President Nixon, who described an American military operation in Cambodia as an incursion.

American reluctance to devote the necessary intelligence to Kremlin aggression in Ukraine and to speak frankly about it is a problem, yet in Europe the proble