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Ukraine Puts ‘Extremists’ on Notice After Deadly Clashes Ukraine Leader Strains to Keep Grip as Crisis Grows Deeper
(about 3 hours later)
KIEV, Ukraine — The security authorities in Ukraine offered the first indication on Wednesday that the deadly political violence afflicting Kiev had spread far beyond the capital, announcing a crackdown on what the Interior Ministry called “extremist groups” that had burned down buildings and seized weapons nationwide. KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine spiraled deeper into crisis on Wednesday as the government of President Viktor F. Yanukovych and several thousand grimly determined protesters — along with their supporters in Russia and Europe — prepared for an extended confrontation over the fate of this fractured country of 46 million.
The Interior Ministry announcement of an “antiterrorist operation” across the country came a day after Kiev was gripped with the deadliest mayhem since protests erupted in November, leaving at least 25 dead, including nine police officers. The Health Ministry said that 241 people had been wounded but Ukrainian news accounts put the number at more than 1,000. As measures of the turmoil, the authorities announced a nationwide “antiterrorist operation” to keep guns and power from “extremist groups” and cashiered the country’s top general, then turned around late in the day and declared that a “truce” had been reached with political leaders of the opposition.
A statement issued by President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s press office, posted on the presidential website late Wednesday, said that he had agreed to a truce with the main opposition leaders and to start negotiations “with the aim of ending bloodshed and stabilizing the situation in the state in the interests of social peace.” But there was no immediate comment from the opposition, and no sign that riot police officers or protesters in Kiev were pulling back. But it was clear that, with their bloody offensive to take back the center of Kiev stalled by a ring of fire — and even the deployment of paratroopers to help protect military bases — the Ukrainian authorities were concerned about maintaining control, particularly in the western part of the country.
The violence turned a protest encampment in Kiev’s central Independence Square into a fiery war zone on Tuesday and sharply escalated the political crisis that has convulsed the former Soviet republic of 46 million for the past three months. The crisis raised East-West tensions over Ukraine’s future, with Russia denouncing the protesters as Nazi-like coup plotters and the European Union threatening severe sanctions against Ukrainian government leaders. “In many regions of the country, municipal buildings, offices of the Interior Ministry, state security and the prosecutor general, army units and arms depots are being seized,” Oleksandr Yakimenko, the head of the state security service, the SBU, said in a televised statement.
The United States said it might join the European sanctions effort and President Obama pointedly warned that there would be consequences if the Ukrainian military was ordered to end the protests. The Defense Ministry later added a further beat to a drumroll of ominous warnings a day after the capital, Kiev, erupted in a frenzy of fire and fighting that left at least 25 people dead, including nine police officers. The Health Ministry said 241 had been wounded, but Ukrainian news reports put the number at more than 1,000.
Earlier, President Yanukovych described the violence as an attempt to overthrow the government by his political adversaries, who want to push Ukraine closer to the European Union. “Without any mandate from the people, illegally and in breach of the constitution of Ukraine, these politicians — if I may use that term — have resorted to pogroms, arson and murder to try to seize power,” the president said in a statement. “Military servants of the armed forces of Ukraine might be used in antiterrorist operations on the territory of Ukraine,” the Defense Ministry said, raising the prospect that Mr. Yanukovych could call on the armed forces to try to restore order — and keep himself in office.
In another indication of the gravity of the crisis, Mr. Yanukovych announced on the presidential website that he had replaced the head of the armed forces, Gen. Volodmyr Zamana, with the commander of the navy, suggesting possible loyalty issues among Mr. Yanukovych’s military leaders. Mr. Yanukovych gave no explanation for the change, but it came as the government has suggested it may deploy the armed forces to quell the violence. That statement brought a quick response from President Obama and other Western leaders, who sought to defuse the crisis even as their differences with Russia hardened in an escalating East-West struggle redolent of the Cold War.
An announcement by the SBU, the Ukraine state security service, offered a new indication of turmoil extending beyond Kiev. It was not clear how the military could be legally deployed for what would be a domestic policing mission unless the authorities first declared a state of emergency, a step that Mr. Yanukovych has previously shied away from and for which the military has shown no enthusiasm. That was why the firing of the pro-European chief of the Ukrainian general staff, Volodymyr Zaman, set off alarms in the West.
“In many regions of the country, municipal buildings, offices of the Interior Ministry, state security and the prosecutor general, army units and arms depots, are being seized,” Oleksandr Yakimenko, the head of the SBU, said in a statement. Also raising concerns was the fact that American officials have sought to contact senior Ukrainian military officials by phone and “nobody is picking up,” a senior State Department official said. The United States has been warning against the imposition of a state of emergency “for months and months,” the official said.
“Courtrooms are being burned down, vandals are destroying private apartments, killing peaceful citizens,” the statement said. Mr. Yakimenko said the past 24 hours had shown “a growing escalation of violent confrontation and widespread use of weapons by extremist oriented groups.” Together, the moves suggest that Mr. Yanukovych, whose resignation many protesters see as a necessary precondition for calm, will press on with a high-risk strategy rooted in his view — zealously encouraged by the Kremlin — that Ukraine confronts not a popular uprising but a foreign-backed putsch by extremists.
In Kiev on Wednesday, protesters stoked what they called a “ring of fire” separating them from the riot police in a desperate effort to defend the remnants of a stage on Independence Square that has been a focal point of their protests. Throughout the day on Wednesday, thousands of Kiev residents braved riot police and roaming bands of pro-government “sportsmen” to visit the besieged protest encampment in Independence Square, now a harrowing vista of charred buildings and smoldering debris.
Men staggering with exhaustion dismantled the tents and field kitchens from the protest movement’s earlier, more peaceful phase and hauled their remnants onto the fires. They piled on mattresses, sleeping bags, foam pads and whatever else looked flammable, burning their own encampment in a final act of defiance. The residents brought supplies to the young men in masks and helmets who, for the authorities, are now the only true face of the country’s political tumult.
The Interior Ministry said all the police officers killed on Tuesday had died from gunshot wounds, although witnesses said it appeared that several officers had been trapped in a burning armored vehicle. With the subway system shut down, they walked, carrying bags of groceries, tires and scrap wood for the protesters’ protective ring of fire, and jerricans of gasoline. Two middle-aged women walked nonchalantly down a central street of Kiev toward Independence Square, known as Maidan, pushing a shopping cart rattling with ready-made firebombs in wine bottles.
As the scope of the violence became clear, Russia, President Yanukovych’s most important ally in the crisis, issued a blistering statement blaming the “criminal activities of radical opposition forces” for causing the bloodshed and denouncing European countries for refusing to acknowledge that. When the protests began late last year, demonstrators opposed the government’s rejection of a trade agreement with the European Union. The protesters are a hodgepodge of groups, some radical enough to alarm some European diplomats, who have been arguing for weeks over whether to impose sanctions on Ukrainian leaders, many of whom have assets outside the country. But few, if any, share Mr. Yanukovych’s — and also Russia’s — view that the government is simply a victim. “Yanukovych claims to be the victim of the radicals of the Maidan, and that he did not want such violence. We accept that the opposition made a mistake,” said Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, who is traveling to Kiev to see the Ukrainian president on Thursday morning, along with the with French and German foreign ministers. But, added Mr. Sikorski, who will also meet Mr. Yanukovych’s opponents in an effort to mediate a political settlement, the “president’s credibility with everyone is now zero.”
A statement on Wednesday from the Russian Foreign Ministry described the violence as an attempted coup and even used the phrase “brown revolution,” an allusion to the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933. The ministry said Russia would use “all our influence to restore peace and calm.” The distrust was evident Wednesday night, when a statement was posted on the president’s website declaring that he had agreed to a truce with the main opposition leaders and was ready to start negotiations “with the aim of ending bloodshed and stabilizing the situation in the state in the interests of social peace.” There was no immediate comment from the opposition, and scant signs that riot police officers or protesters in Kiev were pulling back, though a fleet of empty buses arrived overnight at a staging area near the square for a possible withdrawal or redeployment of at least some of the government’s antiriot force.
A spokesman said President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had spoken by telephone with Mr. Yanukovych and expressed support for a swift settlement, but said it was up to Ukraine’s government to resolve it without external interference. “In the president’s view, all responsibility for what is happening in Ukraine rests with the extremists,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman, told reporters, according to the news agency Interfax. In a televised address to the nation early Wednesday, as battles raged between protesters and columns of riot police, Mr. Yanukovych said opposition leaders had “crossed the limits when they called people to arms” and demanded that they “disassociate themselves from the radical forces that provoke bloodshed.”
On the other side of the barricades in Kiev, scores of exhausted riot police officers, their faces covered in soot, sat slumped on the sidewalk on Khreshchatyk Street, the main artery leading to Independence Square. Reinforcements poured in, massing in European Square, a large roundabout that sits astride main roads leading to the center of the city. One of these was clogged with around a dozen military-style dump trucks, armored cars and other vehicles. The protest movement certainly contains extremist elements but, at least in Kiev and many other cities, particularly in the western regions, it has a wide base of public support and will not end with the arrest of “extremists.” After talks with Mr. Yanukovych late Tuesday as violence spun out of control, the opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyiuk complained that the president had only a single offer: “that we surrender.” He declined.
But it was unclear whether the authorities had mustered sufficient force to complete the operation they began on Tuesday to clear Independence Square. The security forces did, however, strengthen their grip on the Ukrainian House, a large modern building that had been occupied by protesters. Police officers carted out sacks filled with documents and garbage. As the mayhem that gripped Kiev on Tuesday gave way to relative calm, the authorities on Wednesday reinforced squads of riot police, bringing in hundreds of fresh officers to support those who had fought through the night. They massed at a roundabout at the end of Khreschatyk Street, the main artery leading to Independence Square. A dozen military-style dump trucks, armored cars and other vehicles waited nearby. By late evening, however, there was no sign of a new push to sweep away the thousands of protesters still singing and chanting around a stage in Independence Square.
Through the day on Wednesday, many thousands of people turned up to help the young men defending Independence Square, suggesting that Kiev remains solidly behind the protesters, providing them an logistical and moral support. The turnout, although modest compared with the hundreds of thousands who thronged into the protest zone during the movement’s peaceful phase, illustrated a key ingredient to the remarkable resilience of a movement here, and in other cities, that comprises both a dedicated and often radical core and a broad base of people simply fed up with a government they see as corrupt and brutal.
They walked toward the square through a disconcerting scene of charred buildings and smoldering debris, carrying bags of groceries, tires and scrap wood for the fires, and jerrycans of gasoline. Two women walked down a central street of Kiev en route to the square, pushing a shopping cart rattling with ready-made gasoline bombs in wine bottles. Lyudmilla Sedchuk, a soft-spoken pensioner, said she did not like violence but wholeheartedly supported young men hurling stones and firebombs at police officers. “They are excellent people, these brave lads,” she said, “The extremists are the ones standing on the other side,” she added, glowering at a line of riot police officers.
The Interior Ministry’s announcement of a nationwide crackdown came after witnesses and unofficial news reports from outside the capital said protesters had seized provincial administrative buildings in several regions, including Lviv, a bastion of anti-Yanukovych sentiment in western Ukraine near the border with Poland. Adding to the Ukrainian leadership’s alarm Wednesday were a string of reports from the west of the country, a longstanding bastion of antigovernment sentiment, that the offices of governors, prosecutors, the police and the state security service had been stormed by protesters and, in several cases, set on fire.
Andriy Porodko, a 29-year-old antigovernment activist in Lviv, said by telephone that protesters had taken control of the central government’s main offices in the region, resuming an occupation that had ended last Sunday. He said they had also raided the local headquarters of the state prosecutor, the Ukrainian security service and several district police stations. In Lviv, a city near the border with Poland, what had been a peaceful blockade of a sprawling compound housing barracks and the Interior Ministry’s western command turned early Wednesday into the seizure of a major military installation.
Most ominously, said Mr. Porodko, who last month organized a blockade of an Interior Ministry garrison on the outskirts of Lviv, around 1,000 protesters had stormed the garrison, which serves as the headquarters of the Interior Ministry’s western regional command, seizing control of barracks and weapons stores. A local journalist said that around 140 guns were seized from Lviv’s central police station. Andriy Porodko, 29, a businessman who had commanded the earlier blockade, said the “soldiers all surrendered” without a fight and had allowed protesters to take control of the compound, including an armory full of weapons. Ihor Pochinok, the editor in chief of a Lviv newspaper, Ekspres, said the city was bubbling with fury at the assault Tuesday on Independence Square but “was functioning normally, except for state authorities.”
In Kiev, the fires kept security forces and their vehicles away from the stage as police officers seemed unwilling to risk driving through the blazes. It was unclear how long the debris of the protesters’ tent camp could fuel the bonfires sufficiently to prevent an assault by security forces. Protesters, he said, had also stormed the offices of the regional governor, a Yanukovych appointee, resuming an occupation that had ended just three days earlier, and raided the local headquarters of the state prosecutor, the state security service and several district police stations. Around 140 guns were seized from a police armory.
The flames from the barricades defended the entrances to the square where riot police officers were pressing forward but not streets leading from the plaza. The authorities appeared to be attempting to push the protesters out through those exits. Beyond Lviv, antigovernment activists besieged or seized police stations and administrative buildings in Uzhgorod, Lutsk, Khmelnitsky and Poltava.
Protesters began pounding with clubs on utility poles and makeshift shields, creating a rhythmic din. In Lutsk, northwestern Ukraine, protesters attacked the regional police department, which responded with stun grenades and other fire. The building was then set on fire by protesters throwing gasoline bombs.
With the center of the city engulfed in thick, acrid smoke and filled with the deafening noise of grenades, fireworks and occasional gunfire, what began as a peaceful protest in late November against Mr. Yanukovych’s decision to spurn a trade deal with Europe and tilt toward Russia became on Tuesday a pyre of violent chaos.
The violence seemed likely to resonate for weeks, months or even years around this fragile and bitterly divided nation. It also exposed the impotence, in this dispute, of the United States and the European Union, which had engaged in a week of fruitless efforts to mediate a peaceful settlement.
Doubts about the influence of Russia were also shredded, as the Kremlin portrayed the protesters as American-backed “terrorists” and, in thinly coded messages, urged Mr. Yanukovych to crack down.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. telephoned Mr. Yanukovych to “express grave concern regarding the crisis on the streets” of Kiev and urged him “to pull back government forces and to exercise maximum restraint,” the vice president’s office said in a statement on Tuesday.
Secretary of State John Kerry urged Mr. Yanukovych to stop the bloodshed. “We call on President Yanukovych and the Ukrainian government to de-escalate the situation immediately, and resume dialogue with the opposition on a peaceful path forward. Ukraine’s deep divisions will not be healed by spilling more innocent blood,” he said in a statement.
The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, warned the Ukrainian government that it could face sanctions.
“Whoever is responsible for the decisions which have led to the bloodshed in Kiev and other parts of Ukraine should expect Europe to reconsider its position on imposing sanctions on individuals,” Mr. Steinmeier said in a statement on Tuesday night. The bloodshed erupted only hours after Mr. Steinmeier had received the two main opposition leaders, Vitali Klitschko and Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, in Berlin, where they also met Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The State Department, in an alert to American citizens, said that travel into and out of the center of Kiev was restricted and described the situation as “currently very fluid.” It also warned that roving gangs had attacked journalists and protesters and committed other random acts of violence in Kiev and other cities.
“U.S. citizens whose residences or hotels are in the vicinity of the protests are cautioned to leave those areas or prepare to remain indoors, possibly for several days, should clashes occur,” the notice said. “Further violent clashes between police and protesters in Kiev and other cities are possible. The location and nature of demonstrations and methods employed by the police can change quickly and without warning.”
Mr. Yanukovych had repeatedly pledged not to use force to disperse protesters, but after meeting Mr. Putin at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, he clearly changed his mind. The fighting also broke out only a day after Russia threw a new financial lifeline to Mr. Yanukovych’s government by buying $2 billion in Ukrainian government bonds.
The Russian aid appeared to signal confidence that important votes in Parliament expected this week, to amend the Constitution and form a new cabinet, would go in Russia’s favor.