Meet Motorola, Self-Confessed War Criminal of the Donbas

The latest entry into the Donbas enclave’s Pantheon of heroes is one Arsenii Sergeevich Pavlov, a slight 32 year-old Russian from Russia who sports the nom de guerre, Motorola. 

Why Pavlov chose this ridiculous moniker is unclear. Was his first cell phone a Motorola? Is he even aware that Motorola was a telecommunications firm founded in a country he detests almost as much as Ukraine—America? 

The Russian Spring website, which serves as a cheerleader for Putin’s separatist commandoes in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territories, refers to Pavlov as “legendary.” And indeed he is. The guy’s fought in all the major battles in eastern Ukraine and earned a name for himself as the commander of the Sparta battalion. 

He’s also a self-declared war criminal. 

Here’s what Motorola told the Kyiv Post on April 3 after being asked to comment on eyewitness testimony that he had murdered a Ukrainian prisoner of war on January 21:

I don’t give a f**** about what I am accused of, believe it or not. I shot 15 prisoners dead. I don’t give a f****. No comment. I kill if I want to. I don’t if I don’t.

Ukrainian human rights activists were outraged. As was Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia Deputy Director Denis Krivosheev, who asked: “The new evidence of these summary killings confirms what we have suspected for a long time. The question now is: what are the separatist leaders going to do about it?” 

Krivosheev is missing the point. 

Criminality is at the very core of the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine. The separatist leaders are not just not going to do anything about it. They positively need criminality in order to be who they are. Criminality is their raison d’etre. To Motorola’s credit, he was open and honest about it. You can accuse Pavlov of many things, but pussyfootin’ ain’t one of them.

Remember: these are the guys who’ve managed, in just under a year, to bring about a humanitarian catastrophe in the Donbas enclave. These are the guys who are actively involved in stripping the region of its few remaining assets. These are the guys who shot down a Malaysian airliner last summer. These are the guys who are threatening to bring more destruction to Ukraine.

True separatists would be actively building—a nation, a state, whatever. All these guys do is actively destroy. 

But that should come as no surprise to anyone who knows they’re Putin’s puppets. After all, Herr Putin is Russia’s dictator. He’s the man who transformed a potential democracy into a full-fledged fascist state. He’s the man who promotes hate with his vast propaganda machine. He’s the man who’s managed to persuade some 85 percent of Russians that war is peace, hate is love, democracy is fascism, and fascism is democracy. If that sounds like George Orwell’s 1984, that’s because it is. No, wait: it’s more like Adolf Hitler’s 1939.

The Donbas enclave that the Motorolas of Russia have invaded is just an outgrowth of Putin Russia proper—a thuggish little protectorate that like, Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechnya, serves as model of Putin’s regime style. 

Putin, after all, has been a man of violence and criminality all his life. The KGB was his natural home, and fascism is his natural worldview. Motorola is just Putin writ small.

The problem for Ukraine is that there are thousands of crazed Motorolas running around the Donbas enclave and many thousands more in Russia, willing and able to pick up the killing. Worse, there are probably hundreds of thousands of enclave residents who think Motorola’s a great guy. 

Does Ukraine really want to reintegrate a territory awash with fascist thugs and their morally obtuse collaborators? Cut them loose, I say. Renounce the enclave, build a deep moat, and surround it with the Great Wall of China.

You can’t build a decent country with war criminals.

Alexander J. Motyl

Photo from: daily.com.ua.