DAILY BEAST COLUMN: Leaders of Novorossia, or New Russia, the pro-Russia separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, are publicly admitting their failure. The Kremlin’s ideologues wanted Novorossia to stretch from Donetsk to Odessa, and to provide a transport corridor to Crimea. Russian nationalists believed that Russia had to annex the entire Novorossia together with its rebellious Donetsk and Luhansk republics. But the Moscow-inspired and orchestrated project fell apart from the beginning—rebel leaders and warlords quit the movement one after another, or ordered one another’s murders.
In a recent interview, former prime-minister of Donetsk rebel republic, Alexander Borodai, and Igor Bezler, one of the most feared rebel commanders—both key Novorossia figures—admitted that Novorossia could not succeed in the current economic crisis brought on by the pressure of Western sanctions…
Russian tsars conquered the south and east of present-day Ukraine using the term “Novorossia,” in the 18th and 19th centuries, but at least for now, the Kremlin’s imperial dream of repeating history seemed to be turning to dust thanks to a rash of infighting among field commanders in the war-troubled eastern regions of Ukraine. By the end of the first week of this year, 14 commanders and their fighters in the Luhansk region had been murdered, including a notoriously corrupt field commander, Alexander Bednov—known as Batman. The leaders of thousands of Cossack forces, which control an area containing more than 1 million people in the Luhansk region, blamed Moscow-appointed Novorossia politicians for abusing their power, ordering the murders of their militia allies, and stealing Russian money and humanitarian aid sent to the region… (more)
