© Reuters / Andrew Kravchenko

Ukrainian soldiers drive a military vehicle with a Ukrainian flag at a checkpoint near Slavyansk in eastern Ukraine July 3, 2014
A leaked memorandum from the RAND corporation think tank suggests the Ukrainian govt should engage in an all-out war in eastern regions, including shutting down all communications, putting citizens in internment camps and kill all who resist such actions.


In the shocking letter, which has been leaked to the press, the advice offers a step by step brutal guide in how to deal with the population in eastern Ukraine.

'Military op's advantages overweigh'

In the first line the memorandum notes that the peace plan outlined by new president Poroshenko is likely to fail. However, it soothes, the political and material downsides of the operation will be "outweighed" by the gains.




Shutting down the Donbass industries would also mean a reduction in Russian gas consumption and the destruction of the local oligarch Rinat Akhmetov's clan and his political and economic clout.

Stage 1: Suspend Constitution, impose martial law

The shocking memorandum then lists a three stage military campaign to guarantee victory. Stage one, called the total isolation of the rebel regions, presuming that all civilians who have stayed behind are "complicit in the unrest or supportive of it."



As regards the media it recommends that all broadcasting services, telephone and mobile communications and internet services in the region should be shut down and that the international media should be "subject to a special procedure."



Without any apparent regard for human life the RAND authors then advise that the use of non-conventional arms should not be ruled out "to ensure smaller casualties among our own personnel".



In a bizarre piece of advice that appears at best unrealistic and at worst deranged RAND then says that anyone with bruises, scuff marks, traces of gun powder or gun oil on their clothes should be tried in court for separatism and terrorism. Any lucky residents who don't fall into these categories would be allowed to return home after a period of two months "of internment" and would then be slapped under surveillance by the security services.

Stage 3: Property of convicted and displaced to be nationalized

Stage Three, which is risibly called 'Back to Normal', says that all refugees "from the warzone" should then be allowed to return home. This is presuming that in the first place they would have a home to return to and in the second place they would want to return home to a region now so divided along Ukrainian and Russian ethnicities.

However men aged 18-60 shall be "checked" in internment camps, while the property of convicted and displaced resident of Donetsk and Lugansk regions shall be nationalized.

The area of the punitive operation shall be made "off limits" to foreign media, the memorandum concludes.