Among those who died fighting in Donetsk this week were Russian citizens -- at least eight, according to the city's mayor. With that revelation, Russia's involvement in the violence in eastern Ukraine is no longer in question.The confirmed presence of foreign fighters exposes as untrue repeated claims by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that they are merely horrified bystanders to events in eastern Ukraine. Those claims were never plausible, given Russia's record in Crimea and thin popular support for the secessionist rebels in the east.
Lavrov recently challenged those who insisted Russia was backing the rebels to produce a single captured Russian agent. Of course, he can maintain that the Russian citizens killed in Donetsk were simply volunteers motivated by attacks on their ethnic kin in Ukraine. The eight, however, included Chechens, who by no stretch of the imagination are Russian nationalists.
There are certainly Chechen mercenaries available for hire, but they also answer to Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, who is fiercely loyal to Putin. Kadyrov has denied sending anyone to fight in Ukraine, but in an otherwise hard-to-explain twist, he personally negotiated the recent release of two Russian journalists held by pro-Ukraine forces. It is inconceivable that Kadyrov would send fighters to Ukraine without Moscow's approval or, more likely, instructions.