Battlefield Russia

Occupation Duty

Ambassador Ava Hicks cleaned her desk. The clutter on it was distracting her, and she could not afford to walk into this next meeting with General Sobolev unprepared.

The new ambassador to Russia was a stunning woman with an impressive work and academic background. Ava had been born to a working-class family in Michigan in 1972, during the high time of the automotive industry. Her father was a union member who’d worked on the Ford assembly line, building the Ford F-150 series trucks. Her mother had worked as a middle school teacher in Canton, halfway between Detroit and Ann Arbor. Growing up, her father instilled in her, “You can be anything you want to be, Ava, if you work harder than everyone else and take jobs no one wants. You just have to try your hardest and never give up, no matter what obstacles get thrown at you.”

When she was a senior in high school, she’d applied to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, to study civil engineering and had been accepted. Unfortunately, that was also the year that her father was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer; he died just weeks after she’d graduated high school. With the death of her father, her mother was not able to pay for her college as Ava still had three younger siblings her mother had to think about. Not wanting to give up on her aspirations, she’d joined the Reserve Officer Training Course or ROTC on campus. Her plan was to finish college, go into the military for her obligatory four years, hopefully in civil engineering, and then get out and pursue a career in the automotive sector like her dad.

What she hadn’t counted on was being deployed to Bosnia during the height of the Bosnian-Serbian War in 1995-96. As a first lieutenant in an engineering battalion, her job was to help rebuild roads, bridges, schools, and medical clinics. She couldn’t believe how brutal and savage the warring parties had been to each other. Every chance she got to do something kind for a child, or family, she did. She also worked with her family and church back in Michigan to send care packages, school supplies, clothes and anything else she could give away.

While building a school in a small city outside of Sarajevo, she’d met a cadre of people from an organization she knew little about, the United States Agency for International Development. They brought with them experts and funds to help rebuild the small community. During the remaining time her unit was deployed to Bosnia, she routinely worked with USAID, making many new contacts and friends within the organization.

When her contract with the military expired in 1998, Ava went to work for USAID for several years before later joining the State Department and becoming a political officer in 2002. During her time at the State Department, she’d spent four years working in Iraq, three years in Paris, two years in Moldova and two years in Belarus before she’d returned to headquarters in D.C.

She’d become a bit of a Russian expert over the years and moved quickly through the ranks by following her father’s advice and taking jobs no one else wanted. All those years volunteering to work in Iraq, Moldovia, and Belarus had let her shine. She became the youngest ambassador when she was sent back to Moldovia, and she was on the fast track to become a deputy assistant secretary when President Gates became president. When the war with Russia started, she immediately became the go-to person for all things Russia, especially after Ambassador Duncan Rice had been assassinated in Ukraine.

When President Gates approached her about a postwar Russia plan, she was thrilled to have been chosen to lead what could arguably be the largest occupation and political restructuring of a nation since the end of World War II. The Allies’ approach to postwar Russia was complex yet doable. Throughout the war, the CIA, MI6, and BND had found and cultivated political opposition groups to the Petrov regime. As a credible leader became clear, they worked with that leader to begin identifying and recruiting a postwar government.

When Lieutenant General Grigory Sobolev seized power and brought an end to the war, the plan had effectively started, and she’d flown to Moscow to meet with General Sobolev and Alexei Kasyanov to set up the Russian Provisional Authority or RPA that would administer the government of Russia in coordination with General Sobolev while a new constitution was written and then voted on by the people. New political parties had had to be created, and a new Justice Department was developed that would enforce the laws as they were written.

The first governmental meeting had taken place two months ago. A lot had happened since she’d set up shop. In some areas of Russia, it had taken nearly a full week for combat operations between the warring factions to subside. Once that had been achieved, the Allied armies had quickly moved in and occupied the major cities across the country. Unlike what had happened in Iraq, the military and local police were not disbanded or dismantled. The RPA kept them intact and planned on using them to help stabilize the country; in fact, they’d placed them on the Allied payroll to make sure they were paid and continued to work. Allied Forces would work more as advisors and mentors with the Russian military as the country began the process of rebuilding and healing the wounds of war.

When Russia had surrendered, a total of two and a half million Allied soldiers had moved into the country. Once the occupation was fully up and running, nearly half of those soldiers would continue to stay on in Russia as part of the occupying force. The rest of the soldiers, along with their equipment and planes, were being transferred to fight in Asia against the Chinese and, if the Indians refused to surrender, then against them as well.

So far, her meetings with Russian leadership had gone very well, but Ambassador Hicks knew that the situation was still tenuous at best. Every encounter was a walk into the lion’s den, and she had to be prepared for every possible scenario. She put on her headphones and listened to some Bach as she studied every imaginable angle.

Sitting across a conference table with General Sobolev, Ambassador Hicks began, “General, before we turn to the civilian sector of this meeting, I need to ask for your help and assistance in the Russian Far East.”

He shot a glance to General Zolotov before he spoke. “What can we do for you, Ambassador?” he asked.

Hicks looked at General Cotton, the Allied Commander in Europe, and the man who was overseeing the military occupation of Russia. Cotton then turned to speak directly his counterpart, General Zolotov, who had taken over as the Minister of Defense.

“I’m having some problems with General Chayko complying with some of our requests,” explained General Cotton. “I was hoping you might be able to intercede on our behalf and help get things moving.”

The new head of the Russian Army had been causing some waves. While General Mikhail Chayko had taken over command of the Russian armed forces after the coup, he was not at all happy about or accepting of his country’s defeat. He still felt that he could have won the war, or at least ground it to a stalemate, if he had been allowed to use tactical nuclear weapons. Now that he was in charge of the military, he’d been doing his best to slow walk and throw up as many obstacles as possible to the successful implementation of the occupation.

General Zolotov nodded. “I understand. I have people keeping tabs on him as well, and I’m aware that he has not been as cooperative as he should be. I’ll speak with him at once and remind him that if he’s not going to comply with the terms of the surrender, then he will be replaced.”

Sobolev interrupted angrily. “If he won’t comply with my orders, I’ll have him lined against a wall and shot tonight!” he shouted as he pounded the table. “I won’t have my presidency or the terms of this transition period undermined by members of the military or political elements. I’m determined to get Russia back on the right track and return us to a thriving economic member of the world.”

“I don’t know that we need to go to that extreme just yet, Mr. President,” Hicks said cautiously. “Everyone is still going through a period of transition right now, figuring out their roles and what’s going to happen. It’s going to take some time to heal the wounds of war and move past the conflict.”

Sobolev was still fuming a bit, but he reached over and grabbed his cup of tea. After a sip and a deep breath, he turned his attention back to General Cotton. “What specifically do you need help with, General?” he asked.

“I need some of your engineers to help us with the fuel farm situation outside of Irkutsk and Chita. Our engineers are linking your rail lines to connect with our deployed forces in Mongolia and northern China, but there some aspects of your railroads and fuel storage facilities that we are not familiar with.” General Cotton handed over a couple of documents that were written in Russian, explaining the technical specifics of what they needed.

Sobolev perused the paper briefly, but seeing that it was more technical than he could understand, he passed it over to Zolotov to have taken care of. “We’ll see to it that this is corrected,” he asserted.

“If we can, I’d like to talk about domestic issues,” Sobolev said, changing topics. “We have a lot of ground to cover, and that’s a far more pressing area if we’re to make the occupation successful.”

Ambassador Hicks nodded. Getting Russia back on its feet and able to feed its people again was critical, as was repairing their electrical grid, roads, railway and other critical aspects of the country’s infrastructure. The Allies had done a real number on these areas as they’d readied themselves for the final assault on Moscow. She was glad it hadn’t come to that. St. Petersburg was a mess from the siege, and she couldn’t imagine how bad Moscow would have been.

“Excellent,” Ambassador Hicks began. “We have some ideas on how to get your electrical grid fully operational by summer.”

The group talked for many more hours as plans were drawn up, and timelines set for activities to begin. It seemed that Hicks’s classical music ritual for her preparation toward this meeting had helped.

Prime Minister Rosie Hoyle rubbed her temples in frustration as she listened to an argument between the Secretary of State for Defence and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The war with Russia was barely over, and already they were clamoring for their forces to be returned home. “Will these fools never learn?” she thought.

The two of them were blathering on about the costs of the war and the size of the military. The American occupation plan for Russia called on the Allied nations to commit troops to Russia for up to ten years, and now the Americans had shifted the entire Alliance’s focus to dealing with China and India.

Once these two had finally paused long enough to take a breath, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Damian Hunt, added to the chaos. “We need to convince India that they have to withdraw from the war,” he insisted. “They can’t continue to support China and be a part of this Eastern Alliance any longer.”

Liam Clark, the Secretary for International Trade, replied, “We’re already facing a lot of backlash from the Indian community here in the UK over this issue. If we have to participate in any sort of military action in India, it’s certainly going to inflame people’s sentiments at home.”

PM Hoyle pushed her chair back and stood, causing the others at the table to stop bickering and look at her. “Enough. The people of Britain have been lied to and deceived enough,” she insisted. “We’ve suffered horrific civilian and military losses thanks to Michael Chattem and been humiliated on the global stage. We as a nation are going to regain our self-respect and trust within this Alliance, and we will do our part. Britain will commit to the Russia occupation for as long as needed. If the Americans and the rest of the Alliance deem an attack on India necessary, then our military will be a part of it.”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “Right now, the focus is shifting to China. I implore Mr. Hunt to use whatever political options we have to help persuade the Indian and Chinese governments to come to terms with the Alliance for the sake of all of our people, but we will not back down from our obligation, or this fight,” she said adamantly.

She took her seat again before she continued her lecture. “Look at social media, what the Chinese and Russians have done to our people, the youth of our nation. This brand of technocommunism they are propagating across the internet has turned our youth into mindless supporters of a form of government that would take away our free will as individuals. The development of a thought police, a way to publicly shame people into groupthink conformity, developing social scores for people — it’s not only absurd, it goes against everything we as a free society stand for.”

She smacked the table with her ring. “No, this war is much bigger than just defeating the Eastern Alliance. This is about the minds and souls of our youth and the next generation. This is a battle that must be fought, and one that must be won, or we are looking at the death of everything we hold dear. Please, for the sake of the nation, let’s put aside our pettiness and focus on the common good. When the war is won, if you all want to throw me out as PM, I’ll gladly leave. Right now, we need to focus everything we have on defeating this depraved Eastern Alliance and their ideology before it has time to take root in our societies.”

Most of the cabinet members nodded in agreement. Some even smiled as they relished having a strong PM to stand up to their political foes. Not since Thatcher and Churchill had they seen a PM so resolute in a single cause. With the trial of Michael Chattem now underway, public sentiment toward the Labour Party had dropped precipitously. With the evidence of what he had done laid bare for the people to see, many voters had turned away from Labour, demanding a cleaning of house. The people held regular protests in the streets, insisting on answers from the other members of parliament as to who else was involved, and who knew what.