[In Simferopol, the capital of Ukraine’s autonomous Crimea region,
U.N. special envoy Robert H. Serry was accosted Wednesday by unidentified armed
men after visiting a naval headquarters in the city, U.N. Deputy Secretary
General Jan Eliasson told reporters by telephone from Kiev. Eliasson said the
group of 10 to 15 men blocked the Dutch diplomat’s car and ordered him to go to
the airport and leave Crimea immediately.]
By William
Booth and Kathy
Lally
 |
View Photo Gallery — Standoff in Crimea: Russian troops and
pro-Russian
militants take up positions around the Crimean Peninsula in
Ukraine,
surrounding government buildings and military installations.
|
SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine — As Secretary of State John F. Kerry met with
his Russian counterpart in Paris, a standoff continued Wednesday between Russia
and Ukraine over Crimea, and a U.N. envoy was forced to abandon a mission to
the region after encounters with pro-Russia militiamen and an angry crowd.
Kerry met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the foreign
ministers of Britain, Germany and France, and French President Francois
Hollande in Paris an effort to resolve the Ukrainian crisis. But Russia
rebuffed the demands of the United States and its allies that Russia pull its
forces in Crimea back to their bases, news agencies reported.
The diplomacy went ahead as Russian and Ukrainian warships faced
off in this Crimean port with no sign of a breakthrough in a stalemate between
the new government in Kiev and pro-Russian authorities in the Crimean
Peninsula.
In Brussels, the European Union weighed in Wednesday with a proposal
to provide a $15 billion aid package of loans and grants to Ukraine in
the coming years, on top of a U.S. announcement Tuesday of $1 billion in loan
guarantees.
And NATO announced Wednesday that it is suspending collaboration
with Russia on several fronts, including planning for the first joint
NATO-Russian mission, as part of an effort to “de-escalate tensions” in
Ukraine.
The E.U. package is “designed to assist a committed, inclusive and
reforms oriented Government in rebuilding a stable and prosperous future for
Ukraine,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a statement. The
package would be phased over several years, but Barroso did not immediately
specify any conditions that Ukraine would have to meet in overhauling its
economy. Kiev estimates it needs $35 billion in international rescue loans over
the next two years.
The package is to be formally approved Thursday, perhaps along
with sanctions on Russia. It includes about $8 billion in loans and grants
spread over several years and further assistance from the European Investment
Bank.
In Simferopol, the capital of Ukraine’s autonomous Crimea region,
U.N. special envoy Robert H. Serry was accosted Wednesday by unidentified armed
men after visiting a naval headquarters in the city, U.N. Deputy Secretary
General Jan Eliasson told reporters by telephone from Kiev. Eliasson said the
group of 10 to 15 men blocked the Dutch diplomat’s car and ordered him to go to
the airport and leave Crimea immediately.
“He refused,” Eliasson said, and left the vehicle on foot to walk
back to his hotel. Eliasson called the incident “very regrettable” but said
Serry told him by phone from a coffee shop that he is “in good shape
physically” and was “not kidnapped.”
A reporter from
Britain’s ITV News, who was accompanying Serry, said local pro-Russia
militiamen in combat fatigues subsequently blocked the door to the coffee shop
with the U.N. envoy inside. Reporter James Mates said Serry agreed to end his
mission and go straight to the airport. Serry then got into a car for the drive
to the airport as an angry crowd chanted slogans in support of Russia and
President Vladimir Putin. Serry said he was happy to leave Crimea if it helped
to de-escalate the situation, Mates wrote on his Twitter feed.
NATO’s decision to suspend collaboration with Russia affects a
joint mission in which Russia was to provide a maritime escort for the U.S.
container ship Cape Ray, aboard which Syrian chemical weapons are to be
destroyed at sea. In addition, the alliance has canceled all staff-level
civilian and military meetings with Russia, and “we have put the entire range
of NATO-U.S. Russia cooperation under review” pending a meeting of NATO foreign
ministers in April, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.
The announcement came after a meeting in Brussels of the
NATO-Russia Council, established in 2002 to facilitate cooperation. The
alliance suspended council activities in 2008 to protest Russia’s invasion of
Georgia, a former Soviet republic that gained independence in 1991. Although
Russian troops remain in breakaway regions of Georgia, NATO decided to fully
resume council activities in early 2009.
Rasmussen described Wednesday’s measures as a balance between
sending a “clear message” to Russia and keeping “a channel open for political
dialogue.” He said NATO’s actions were being coordinated with those taken by
other international organizations and that together they would “send a very
clear message to Russia that they must de-escalate tensions” in Ukraine. He
said suspension of Russian participation in the Syrian operation would not
impede destruction of the chemical weapons.
In Crimea, meanwhile, the newly appointed pro-Russian regional
prime minister, whose own legitimacy has been questioned because he was
installed after masked gunmen seized the Crimean parliament, said his
administration was not speaking with the national government in Kiev.
“We don’t consider this government that proposes talks to us to be
legitimate; that is the main issue,” Crimean Premier Sergei Aksyonov told a
Latvian radio station.
Russian officials continued to deny that their forces were spread
out across the Crimean Peninsula. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, speaking in
Madrid, said Wednesday that all the armed men who arrive in Russian troop
transports, with Russian plates, are local self-defense militias.
In Moscow, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu denied Wednesday
that any of his troops had strayed from their bases in Crimea despite videos
and photos that suggested otherwise.
“No, absolutely not,” he responded when asked by Kremlin pool
reporters if there were any Russian troops in Crimea outside their own bases.
Even though videos show troops in Crimea admitting they are
Russian, despite wearing uniforms without any insignia, Shoigu echoed
statements made Tuesday by Putin, who insisted the troops were exceptionally
well-trained Crimean self-defense units.
“Of course, these are provocations,” Shoigu said, regarding the
videos. When asked how Crimean self-defense troops could have come into
possession of Russian Tiger and Lynx armored vehicles, he said he had no idea,
the Interfax news agency reported.
On Tuesday, Kerry dismissed Russian denials that its troops were
surrounding Ukrainian military bases.'
“The contrast really could not be clearer: determined Ukrainians
demonstrating strength through unity, and the Russian government out of
excuses, hiding its hand behind falsehoods, intimidation and provocations,”
Kerry said during a visit to Kiev.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Wednesday that
economic sanctions against Russia will be discussed by the European Union when
its leaders meet on Thursday. “We cannot accept, we members of the
international community, a country that invades another,” Fabius said on his
twitter account.
The European Union will consider sanctions against Russia if there
is no de-escalation in the Ukraine crisis, he said via Twitter.
Meanwhile, the United States and Britain maneuvered to begin a
diplomatic outreach to Russia. Kerry and British Foreign Secretary William
Hague invited Lavrov to a meeting Wednesday morning in Paris with Ukraine’s
acting foreign minister.
The Russian did not attend that meeting, although he met later
with Kerry, the three European foreign ministers and Hollande.
“Regrettably missing one member,” Kerry said at the start of the
session of nations that signed a 1994 agreement for post-Soviet Ukraine to give
up its nuclear weapons.
Hague told reporters Wednesday that many foreign ministers
gathered in Paris for an unrelated meeting on Lebanon were urging Lavrov to sit
down with the Ukrainian diplomat.
The goal is to “bring the Russians into a diplomatic process,”
Hague said, “at least a start of it.”
Ukraine’s acting foreign minister, Andrii Deshchytsia, traveled to
Paris on Kerry’s plane from Kiev in hopes of beginning diplomatic talks that
the United States and Britain see as a way for Russia to back away from
confrontation.
Speaking to reporters at his country home west of Moscow on
Tuesday, Putin offered a vigorous defense of his Russia’s intervention in
Ukraine. He said the pro-Russian former government in Kiev was illegally
overthrown last month and that the man he regards as Ukraine’s legitimate
president asked him for military help.
In his first public comments about the crisis since President
Viktor Yanukovych was deposed Feb. 22, Putin described Ukraine as
lawless and suggested that Ukrainians appeared unable to run their own country.
He said masked militants were “roaming the streets of Kiev” — even though the
Ukrainian capital has remained calm in recent days.
Other Russian officials quickly imitated the pugnacious tone that
Putin struck Tuesday. A member of the upper house of parliament, Andrei
Klishas, said Wednesday that he planned to draft a bill that would permit
Russia to confiscate property and accounts belonging to European and American
companies if the West pursued sanctions against Russia.
“Any sanctions must be mutual,” he said.
Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of the upper house, disputed the
idea that the West would act against Russia. Europe depends too much on exports
to Russia to risk sanctions, she said.
“Are they going to stop supplying these products to us now?” she
asked reporters. “To whom are they going to supply them then? Everyone who
talks about sanctions should calm down and stop talking to Russia in the
language of ultimatums.”
After days of heightening tension, Putin’s remarks appeared to
suggest that Russia could refrain from escalation — if Ukraine gets its house
in order. Hours later, Russia proclaimed the successful test launch of an
intercontinental ballistic missile in Asia, a move unrelated to the crisis but
a demonstration to Ukraine and the West of Russia’s military prowess.
Putin said that so far he has not found it necessary to send
troops to Ukraine but that Russia had fortified security at its installations
in Crimea, where its Black Sea Fleet is based. He did not mention the Russian
troops and naval forces that have surrounded Ukrainian bases and ships in
Crimea.
President Obama and Kerry rejected Putin’s assertions Tuesday,
with Kerry charging during a visit to Kiev that “Russia has been working hard
to create a pretext for being able to invade further.”
They said that despite Putin’s claims, it was not true that Russia
needs to send in troops to safeguard Russians or Russian speakers in Ukraine
from violent reprisals.
Dismissing Moscow’s purported concerns, Obama said Russia was
“seeking through force to exert influence on a neighboring country.”
Putin, however, accused the United States of engineering Ukraine’s
troubles, suggesting that it was using Ukrainians as guinea pigs in some kind
of misguided experiment.
“They sit there across the pond as if in a lab running all kinds
of experiments on the rats,” he told a small group of reporters in a nationally
televised meeting at his country house outside Moscow. “Why would they do it?
No one can explain it.”
In Kiev, his remarks were greeted with less ferocity than might
have been expected. The new government is under enormous pressure from the
Russian intervention and from unrest in eastern cities, coupled with a
financial crisis. It is treading carefully. As Crimea slipped further into
Russian control Tuesday, Ukrainian military units there stood their ground but
were careful not to provoke a conflict.
In Ukraine’s parliament, there was talk of finding a way to give
Crimea more autonomy if it agrees to remain a part of Ukraine. The region has
scheduled a March 30 referendum on independence or accession to Russia,
although Aksyonov, Crimea’s new leader, said Tuesday that he wants to hold the
vote sooner. Kerry, echoing the views of many in Kiev, said Russia had
installed Aksyonov in a hurried and rigged selection process last week.
Oleh Tiahnybok, the head of the nationalist All-Ukrainian Union
“Svoboda” party, said, “The Kremlin is attempting to use blackmail to solve its
strategic plans. Ukraine should not succumb to it.”
And Russia’s intervention, he declared, is a failure: “Ukrainians
are not running with outstretched arms toward the occupiers.”
A bloodless confrontation
It has been, all around, an unusual confrontation. After a week of
deadly fighting in the streets of Kiev led to Yanukovych’s overthrow, the
Russian takeover of Crimea has been swift yet bloodless. The atmosphere in Kiev
is hardly that of a capital dealing with an intervention by a powerful
neighbor.
Aksyonov said Tuesday that most of the Ukrainian military forces
in Crimea have sworn allegiance to his new regional government. Officials in
Kiev said that is not true.
Young men in Ukrainian self-defense groups said Tuesday that they
are ready to take on the Russians but do not need to join the national army to
do so.
In a stately hall that normally houses an association for architects,
a militia had stashed construction hard hats and bicycle helmets atop a
stairway, ready to be grabbed if things turn violent. The marble floors were
lined with mattresses and sleeping bags.
“I’m ready to fight the Russians,” said Vitaliy Vovk, 24, an event
planner and the militia commander. “But I’m hoping there will be no war, that
it’s just Putin flexing his muscles.”
Putin’s defense
Putin said the whole operation is a friendly one, designed to help
out a fraternal nation. But he described Ukraine as deeply troubled, telling
his interviewers that corruption and social stratification there are even worse
than in Russia.
“Out there, they are beyond anything we can imagine,” he said.
“This revolutionary situation has been brewing for a long time.”
So it’s understandable why the protesters on the Maidan, Kiev’s
Independence Square, wanted an uprising, he said. But they went about it the
wrong way, he said, and now Ukraine has swapped one “set of thieves” —
Yanukovych’s — for another, a reference to the present government.
Putin said that if he decides to send in the Russian military, he
would have legal grounds to do so. Russia has displayed a letter from the
ousted president asking for military help in suppressing the revolt. The
current government is illegitimate, Russia contends, because Yanukovych was not
properly removed from power in a formal impeachment.
“What is our biggest concern?” Putin asked. “We see the rampage of
reactionary forces, nationalist and anti-Semitic forces going on in certain parts
of Ukraine, including Kiev.”
“We understand what worries the citizens of Ukraine, both Russian
and Ukrainian, and the Russian-speaking population in the eastern and southern
regions of Ukraine,” he said. “It is this uncontrolled crime that worries them.
Therefore, if we see such uncontrolled crime spreading to the eastern regions
of the country, and if the people ask us for help, while we already have the
official request from the legitimate president, we retain the right to use all
available means to protect those people. We believe this would be absolutely
legitimate.”
Yet, the Russian government and the interim Ukrainian government
have been in contact. “I’d say that they are quite sluggish, but the first
steps have been taken,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said.
Consultations have been held on the ministerial level.
“Ukraine is ready to build a new style of relations with the
Russian Federation,” Yatsenyuk said, based on Russia’s respect for Ukraine’s
right to determine its own policies.
Lally reported from Moscow. Karen DeYoung and William Branigin in
Washington and Anne Gearan in Paris contributed to this report.
