Plotnitsky — The Vanished Koschei

In Slavic folklore there is a deathless villain called Koschei. An old man in black armour who cannot be killed in the ordinary way. His death is hidden — in a needle, inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare, inside a chest, buried beneath an oak tree on an island in the middle of the sea. To kill Koschei you must undo every layer.

Igor Plotnitsky appears in the Luhansk Well 445 times between 2014 and 2017. He was the “Head of the Luhansk People’s Republic” — its “president” in miniature. Then, in November 2017, he vanished. An armed challenger, Leonid Pasechnik, moved on him with tanks. Plotnitsky was deposed. He fled to Moscow. He did not die. He is reported, occasionally, to be alive.

The Prophetic Moment

5 April 2016, ria.ru:

“Surkov says ‘LPR’ and ‘DPR’ leaders to stay in power until 2018. Director of Russia’s Political Environment Center, Alexei Chesnakov said to RIA Novosti that recently he attended a meeting of advisor to President Putin, Vladislav Surkov with the group of experts. According to Chesnakov, among other things there has been discussed a possibility of the reshuffle in the leadership of ‘DPR’ and ‘LPR’.”

Read that carefully. In April 2016, a Russian official is telling a Russian wire service that Plotnitsky is authorised to remain in office until 2018. His removal is already, in the spring of 2016, being timetabled in Moscow.

This is how you know the LPR is not a state. The leader has a Moscow-assigned expiry date. Plotnitsky was never sovereign. He was Koschei with a scheduled death.

The Performance Before the End

17 February 2017, en.lug-info.com: Plotnitsky issues a joint statement with Zakharchenko (DPR) demanding that “Kiev let the Republics’ observers carry out inspections” of Ukrainian-controlled industrial facilities.

The Koschei-figure, one year from deposition, is performing peak sovereignty: issuing demands across an international frontier, acting as if his title carries diplomatic weight. The louder the performance, the nearer the end.

The Interchangeability Principle

Why should we care about Plotnitsky specifically? Because his disappearance illustrates the interchangeability principle of Russian occupation governance.

The individual ruler is a costume. The costume is hung on whichever chekist is useful this year. The population’s loyalty is to the costume, not the man — because the population has been trained, by the daily fake-state liturgy, to revere the position.

When Plotnitsky is replaced by Pasechnik in November 2017, almost no one in occupied Luhansk protests. The Koschei-figure has changed, but the spell has not.

The Pattern

This is why Russia can afford to burn through occupation leaders quickly. Zakharchenko is assassinated in a café bomb in 2018. Plotnitsky is deposed in 2017. Gubarev is sidelined. Mozgovoy is killed. Dremov is killed. The Koscheis fall, and new Koscheis rise, and the archetypal chair is never empty.

The Counter

Name the chair as empty. The LPR has no legitimate sovereign. Only a rotating cast of disposable men in black armour.