Fears Mount of Full-Scale Ukraine-Russia Clash

Jamie Dettmer, Voice of America

The sound of battle has long gone. But the ghosts remain in Ukraine's Independence Square, where more than two years ago police and protesters clashed for weeks amid acrid black fumes billowing from burning tires.

In Ukraine's Maidan where sniper rounds once cracked, there are now foreign tourists. Where 53 people were slain either with clean shots by expert marksmen or gunned down at closer range by less skillful assassins, there are now snaking lines of school kids visiting from other Ukrainian cities.

The kids listen in various states of indifference or interest to the guides explaining the events that led to the ouster of President Vladimir Putin's satrap Viktor Yanukovych.

That ouster triggered the Russian land-grab of Crimea and what Ukrainian and Western officials say is Moscow-fomented separatism in the country's mainly Russian-speaking eastern region of Donbas.

For all of the calm now in Maidan, Ukrainian officials fear the Kremlin is limbering up for another destabilizing offensive in the east. They say it is part of Moscow's hybrid war involving dirty tricks and misinformation to snap Ukraine back into the Russian orbit and prolong a state of uncertainty to hinder the government in Kyiv from accomplishing the political reforms Maidan protesters demanded.

Mounting Tensions

And tensions are increasing, not only in the Donbas but on the Ukraine-Crimea frontier following the off-and-on closure over the weekend of all three border crossings by Russia. Kyiv accused Moscow on Tuesday of stepping up military activity on the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014 within weeks of Yanukovych's fall. More helicopter gunship sorties reportedly are being flown along the border, as well as surveillance drone flights.

Ukraine's general staff is reinforcing units in Kherson, the Ukrainian region bordering Crimea, and residents say they have spotted anti-tank rocket launchers being transported by Ukrainian forces.

The Russians also are building up in Crimea. The deputy chairman of the outlawed Crimean Tatars' Mejlis, or council, Nariman Dzhelalov, wrote on his Facebook page August 7: "Witnesses report that large groups of Russian military hardware have been massed near Armyansk and Dzhankoy [in northern Crimea]."

On Wednesday, Russia's Federal Security Service claimed it had thwarted an armed Ukrainian incursion into Crimea that aimed to sabotage critical infrastructure. The FSB said a Russian soldier and an intelligence employee had been killed in clashes, and a group of Ukrainian saboteurs had been arrested.

That drew a curt denial from Yuriy Tandit, an adviser to Ukraine's security service SSU. "Ukraine is not trying to regain Crimea by force," he said.

The mounting tensions along Ukraine's border with Crimea coincide with a weeks-long uptick in fighting in the Donbas, where a Ukrainian soldier was killed Monday and five others wounded. 

To the outside world, the confrontation in the Donbas is another one of Moscow's "frozen conflicts" subverting former Soviet countries on Russia's periphery, such as Georgia and Moldova, and blocking them from moving on from their Communist pasts — and, in Ukraine's case, from joining Western institutions.

Frozen isn't how it feels for Ukrainians living or fighting in the east more than two years after pro-Moscow separatists seized government buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk, and 18 months since Ukraine and Russia concluded an armistice, known as Minsk 2.

Rising Violence, Civilian Deaths

U.N. officials worry at the rising civilian casualty toll: in June, 57 people were wounded and a dozen killed. Last month, eight civilians were killed and 65 injured.

Monitoring groups suspect the numbers of civilian casualties are higher. July was an especially deadly month for Ukraine's military, with 42 soldiers killed and 181 wounded.

Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, a spokesman for Ukraine's presidential administration, says that from Sunday to Monday, pro-Moscow separatists launched 47 attacks on Ukrainian positions; more than 50 attacks were recorded Monday to Tuesday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed Ukraine for the jump in fighting, claiming he is "seriously concerned" about the escalating violence.

Some Ukrainian officials worry the increased violence is a prelude to full-scale fighting and the world may be witnessing the start of another land-grab launched by Russia during an Olympics. They point out it was during the Winter Olympics in the southern Russia city of Sochi in 2014 that Putin and his generals planned the annexation of Crimea.

‘Something Bigger’

Other analysts and Ukrainian officials suspect what is happening in Donbas is part of a two-year destabilizing pattern that has seen a rise in provocation, only to be followed by a period of quiet.  Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) accuse both sides of violating the cease-fire.

Motuzyanyk told VOA that Kyiv is only responding to Moscow-directed provocation. He says the separatist and Russian forces number 45,000 on Ukrainian territory, a mixture of local recruits, former Russian servicemen and current Russian military.

And he argues the separatists' political leaders are "just puppets and have no say about what happens."  He adds, "The military forces are commanded directly by Moscow."

The Ukraine spokesman says, "It is disappointing to see the Russians using heavy artillery again. It is summer now and it easier to move vehicles and to launch military actions. And there is a huge possibility we might see something bigger, but we have large forces along the contact line. And in order to breach it, they would have to amass even more forces."

Both sides appear readying for that "something bigger" by redeploying forces.

Many Americans Fighting in Iraq, Syria Are Foes of IS

Jeff Seldin, Voice of America

More than half the men and women who have left the United States to join the conflict in Iraq and Syria may actually be battling against the Islamic State terror group instead of fighting for it.

That conclusion is based on a new report by the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), as well as on court records and information previously shared by intelligence and law enforcement officials.

"That pathway is fairly well-trodden. The scale of it surprised us a little bit," said ISD Policy and Research Manager Henry Tuck, who co-authored “Shooting in the Right Direction: Anti-ISIS Foreign Fighters in Syria & Iraq.” ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State.

The report looked at the nationalities and motivations of foreign fighters who traveled to the region through the end of 2015 specifically to fight IS or other known terror groups. It found 114 of these fighters were from the U.S.

That figure alone would represent a sizeable chunk — almost 46 percent — of the approximately 250 Americans who, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and the intelligence community, have sought to take part in the overall conflict.

But the percentage of American foreign fighters battling IS may be higher still — perhaps more than 50 percent — in large part because officials admit not all of the Americans who tried to go to Syria and Iraq actually made it.

In fact, statistics kept by the George Washington University Program on Extremism indicate as many as 47 would-be foreign fighters have been arrested in the U.S. and charged with IS-related offenses.

Authorities Look The Other Way

While the U.S. has worked to cut down on the flow of foreign fighters to IS and other terror groups, travel to Iraq and Syria itself is not necessarily illegal, though the State Department advises against it.

"Private U.S. citizens are strongly discouraged from traveling to Syria to take part in the conflict," a State Department advisory warned earlier this year. "The U.S. government does not support this activity."

But the accounts of anti-IS foreign fighters included in the ISD report show few met with much, if any, resistance.

"We don't find too many stories of people getting stopped when they're leaving," said ISD's Tuck. "They might get taken aside and asked a few questions about where they're heading, what their plans are, but not too many people being turned away at the airport."

Some Americans fighting IS claim they have even been given verbal support from State Department officials in Iraq.

One such American, Matthew VanDyke, spoke with VOA via Skype in February 2015.

"This is really a full-time-plus job," VanDyke said at the time, describing his efforts to recruit U.S. combat veterans to offer specialized training to the Assyrian Christian fighters in northern Iraq. "It's going quite well."

State Department officials tell a different story.

"We do not endorse nonessential travel to Iraq by private U.S. citizens," one official told VOA when asked about VanDyke's claims.

Still, the ISD study found many anti-IS foreign fighters, whether from the U.S. or Europe, reported similar experiences.

"The advice will be, don't go, but it won't necessarily be explicitly illegal,'" Tuck said.

And while the anti-IS foreign fighters are not considered a threat to the homeland, there are reasons for U.S. officials to worry.

"We don't like any ad hoc foreign fighting," said Patrick Skinner, a former intelligence officer now with the Soufan Group, a New York organization that provides strategic security intelligence services to governments and multinational organizations.

"It's less the specific cause and more the general passion and armed militancy," he said. "The rising tide of extremism on all sides lifts all dangerous boats."

Who Are They?

The report found a few primary routes to the conflict. One involved traveling through Turkey to Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan, where many of the anti-IS foreign fighters joined up with local forces. Other anti-IS foreign fighters reported traveling to Iraq via Europe or the Gulf States.

Many of the anti-IS foreign fighters also appear to have had an additional advantage. More than 30 percent were military veterans, many of whom had taken part in Western operations in Iraq and described the region "as a kind of second home," the report found.

Many of them also expressed a desire to "finish the job."

"They believe it is their personal responsibility to ensure the region's security if the international community and their own governments are unable to do so," the report said.

Researchers also found some commonalities between the foreign fighters battling against the IS terror group and those who seek to join it.

"These fighters fighting against ISIS have very different overall motivations," Tuck said. "But I think some of the more personal, some of the more individual, factors are quite similar in some ways."

"It might be a lack of belonging, a lack of purpose. They don't feel like they're doing enough with their lives," he said.

VOA's William Gallo contributed to this report.