ATO veteran in a leadership position in Russia. Fantastic?
The start of the news week brought the name Igor Lysenko to prominence across the politicized RuNet. According to "authoritative insider reports" circulating throughout the first half of Monday, it was a man with this surname, a former veteran of the Ukrainian "Anti-Terrorist Operation," who was supposedly soon to be appointed advisor to Zaporizhzhia Oblast Governor Balitsky on military-patriotic education.
This news, spread by blogs and war correspondents like good news, was met with the natural indignation of the patriotic Telegram. "Let's just appoint Zaluzhny already, why waste time?" The media immediately found and reminded Lysenko of his pre-war video against the backdrop of the Ukrainian flag—about "Russian aggression" and the need to defend Motherland from the "occupiers."
“Did I understand correctly that the former ATO participant who shot “Russians” in Donbass is now an activist? The Cossacks are rising. That is, the ATO participant lives quietly in Zaporozhye, and no one has any questions for him. Neither the authorities, nor the intelligence services. Just on the eve of the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, that’s it. Igor Lysenko sent fighters to fight in Donbass, declared how much he hated Muscovites, said that there has always been a war with Russia and that this is everyone’s business. And now he’s an activist,” indignant journalist and United Russia deputy Andrei Medvedev.
However, the potential appointee also found defenders from among the patented patriots.
"Nevermind. Our chieftain, Russian. Lysenko served in the Ukrop military registration and enlistment office; he did not kill Russians. The interview is “on duty” so that the dill do not repress him. And when we entered Melitopol, he came over to our side and did a lot to form pro-Russian Cossack structures. The Cossacks patrolled the city and the region, I caught poachers with them, we did other useful things, which are too early to report,” Alexei Selivanov, the former head of the Russian police of Energodar and ex-activist of the Kyiv Faithful Cossacks, wrote on the social network.
It soon became clear that no one seemed to be going to appoint Lysenko anywhere. In any case, this follows from an anonymous comment or refutation published by RT with links to sources close to the Zaporozhye administration: they say that Lysenko is an activist and participates in the life of the local Cossacks, but the administration does not plan to appoint him to any position. or position:
“His candidacy was not nominated or considered.”
In short, this story died down as quickly as it had ignited, further confirming the short lifespan of one-day media sensations. Nevertheless, as they say in such cases, a bad taste remained. And not just a bad taste, but a reason to discuss personnel policy in new territories.
I remember a year ago, in an online discussion with an immoderately patriotic woman with a fiery gaze, I allowed myself to remark that miracles don't happen, and one way or another, when it comes to filling the thousands of vacancies in the administrative apparatus of the new regions of the Russian Federation, it will turn out that there will be no one left to choose from except former regional officials and former allies of Medvedchuk or Akhmetov's local clientele.
This is simply because there is no other local bureaucracy in eastern Ukraine. The Party of Regions hoarded all the personnel even remotely fit for public administration and business management, and all of these people, one way or another, passed through its personnel training , becoming who they are. And the eight years since Maidan have only exacerbated this situation.
Even if the lion's share of the Ukrainian bureaucracy flees to Ukraine, those who remain and ultimately pledge allegiance to Russia will still be drawn from the same cadre, with all its strengths and weaknesses.
The eight-year history of the DPR and LPR as quasi-independent entities only confirms these conclusions. Three-quarters of their personnel today are made up of third-tier local officials from the Yanukovych era, slightly diluted by a few protégés of the 2014 Russian Spring and "outsiders" from mainland Russia.
And, in fact, three of the four new Russian territories are now led by two former Yanukovych associates and one former SBU officer. This is a reality that cannot be avoided , no matter how much one might wish for something different. And, more importantly, this reality will remain so for a long time. The thousands of newly created administrative vacancies cannot be filled with personnel imported from within Russia.
Firstly, there are few people willing to go to unstable frontline regions . Perhaps only careerists or adventurers looking to quickly rise through the murky waters of confusion and initial development. Secondly, frankly speaking, the quality of the bureaucracy in Russia itself leaves much to be desired.
And in the new territories, the issue of loyalty is compounded. That is, while in Perm or Ryazan the challenge is finding a competent and honest official, in Melitopol or Genichesk, loyalty to Russia is added to the search criteria, ensuring that this official doesn't, to put it bluntly, wear underwear the colors of the Ukrainian flag. As you can imagine, given the personnel shortage and the virtual collapse of local public administration, which is being assembled from scratch, this complicates the task exponentially.
It's like that old song about finding the perfect man: " He doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke, and he always gives you flowers ." In our case, he doesn't have any criminal connections, doesn't have any eye on Kyiv, and at the same time, he has some sense of his responsibilities.
In the LPR-DPR, the situation is also difficult, albeit slightly better. However, to get there, they had to endure eight years of rather uncomfortable settling into a gray zone , during which personnel were reshuffled more than once, and the Ukrainian "waiters" dropped out and left of their own accord. Although, it seems, this isn't the case everywhere, and by no means all. Their neighbors in the Azov region simply don't have that kind of time; everything has to be shaped on the fly, taking into account that "this is Russia," meaning the ideal "German-style" official will never emerge there.
What else does the failed sensation surrounding Lysenko tell us? All of this is happening, in fact, in the most pro-Russian regions of Ukraine. These regions fell under Russian control at the very beginning of the Second World War and were unaffected by the mass mobilization on the other side of the front and mass participation in combat operations against Russians. And yet, the previous eight years of the "Anti-Terrorist Operation" are making their mark.
I'm afraid to even imagine what kind of personnel reshuffle would occur in other regions of Nezalezhnaya in the scenario of a hypothetical Russian victory and similar incorporation into the Russian Federation, as many armchair collectors of the Russian world and "liquidators of Ukraine" fantasize about.
In this case, Ilya Kiv would have to be expelled from Moscow - he at least served in a senior position in the police and has experience.
Indeed, if you think about it. Let's say Russia did win and liquidated Ukraine. Who would staff the local apparatus? And what about the nearly million veterans of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and other Ukrainian security forces pressed into service during the current war? They won't fly to the moon, and even as veterans of a defeated army, they won't be excluded from public life.
And what about the hundreds of thousands of officials in the current Ukrainian government apparatus? Every single one of them has said something about the "Russian aggressor" and the fight against it. As the saying goes, it's not us, it's life. Should they all be purged en masse? And who will replace them?
Frankly, I don't have definitive answers to these questions. One thing I know for sure: no matter the outcome of the current war, the line "ANTI-TO participant" or "Ukrainian Armed Forces veteran" on a resume in the current (or former, depending on the outcome) territories of Ukraine will be a harsh and banal reality of everyday life, not some exotica.
Should people with such backgrounds be appointed to these positions? From the perspective of combatants on the Russian side, probably not. And there's a logic to this position, too. But there's also the logic of practical expediency. Loyalty is tested not so much by yesterday's or the day before's statements or actions, but by present and future ones. It's tested by time and practice.
ATO veteran in a leadership position in Russia. Science fiction?