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Abstract
The purpose of this article is to determine whether a ‘dark side’ exists to Russia’s trust-building in the Black Sea region. An empirical analysis is made of whether, and how, Russia uses soft power to deter democratization by anchoring the promotion of pro-Russian separatism in Crimea to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. It is argued that despite the unavoidable methodological challenges the topic brings with it, one cannot ignore it even in academic research because of its constantly growing empirical importance. A presentation is made of some of the actors and activities that built trust between the Crimean population and Russia by affecting Ukraine’s soft power security. The legitimacy of such activities and the extent to which they may be linked to the post-Soviet political–criminal nexus are also considered.
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Notes
1. The concept of soft power has been brought forth by Joseph Nye. However, its relationship to national security has been greatly overlooked by security analysts. The author is writing a PhD. thesis on this topic at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.
2. This categorization comes from Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde (Citation1998). The difference between institution-dependent and independent identity ideas is, however, somewhat vague, in particular in this article where the Russian state activity is very closely intertwined with that of civil society actors.
3. In May 2010, Ukraine’s former SBU Chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko publicly stated that the stationing of FSB officers in Sevastopol throughout the entire 2000–2010 period was illegal because the signing of the agreement violated Ukrainian law (Kuzio Citation2010). The former president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, was a political backer of President Viktor Yanukovich. His Party of Regions is a United Russia affiliate party with codified collaboration (Maigre Citation2009, see also Kyiv Post, 22 November 2009).
4. For example, newspaper ‘Rusychi’ (printed in Sevastopol and edited by P. Butsai) has printed a series of anti-Ukrainian materials containing elements of separatism and spurring of interethnic tensions.
5. According to Ukrainian Intelligence Report (2006, 2), journalism students generally intern and gain employment at the youth studio and production centre Devkom and newspapers Slava Sevastopolya, Sevastopolska Gazeta and the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s publication Flag Rodyny (the latter linked to the GRU-642nd Group on Informational-Psychological Warfare).
6. ‘Spetz operations’ refer to ‘special purpose operations’ which are carried out both during war- and peacetime. Typical spetz operations include infiltration in order to commit acts of sabotage or assassinations of enemies. The word and practice have their roots in the Soviet times. During the Soviet times, the internal units of Special Purpose Forces (Voyka spechial’nogo naznachniya) were used against the counter-revolutionaries and dissidents whereas its external units operated abroad.
7. The 2005 French documentary ‘Trafficking Arms on Europe’s Doorstep’ linked Dmitri Soin, the president of the youth organization Proryv in Transdniestria, to the underground arms trade. Soin is also wanted by Interpol for ‘crimes against life and health’ (see Interpol undated).
8. The majority of RCC members are associated with the following Ukrainian political parties: Russian Bloc, the Party of Regions of Ukraine, the Communist Party and the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine.
9. There has been at least one instance where a Crimean inhabitant who worked as an FSB officer held both Russian and Ukrainian passports (Ivanov Citation2009).
10. Russian Federal Law On Russian Federation Citizenship, no. 62-FZ, 31 May Citation2002 (with the Amendments and Additions of 11 November 2003, 2 November 2004).
11. One scandal pertains to the RBSF construction directorate and a private commercial structure which was created with the help of a $40 million investment by Yuri Luzhkov. Among its first projects was the construction of four apartment buildings on Astana Kasayeva Street in Sevastopol. The construction was officially started in 2006 and 197 Crimean families paid for their part of the investment – however, the construction was never realized. Fifty-two of these investors appealed to President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin to intervene and bring the situation to justice. However, the Russian leaders did not acknowledge their appeal (Danyliuk Citation2009).