Crimean city offers refuge to Ukrainian police; Russia launches military exercises
Focus turns to Ukraine’s Crimea, where loyalties to Russia run deep
(about 2 hours later)
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine disbanded the elite security police force that spearheaded most of the attacks on protesters in Kiev last week, the acting interior minister announced Wednesday, and neighboring Russia said it was launching urgent military exercises to test the readiness of its forces bordering the turbulent nation.
SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine — Thousands of ethnic Russians massed in the Crimea region of southern Ukraine late Wednesday to protest the new government in Kiev, as Moscow ordered surprise military exercises in a district bordering Ukraine and put troops in the region on high alert.
Members of the dissolved police force were immediately offered sanctuary in the pro-Russian Crimean Peninsula, further stoking concerns about divided loyalties in Ukraine. Russia backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted over the weekend and fled the capital following last week’s bloody crackdown on protesters.
The developments stoked concerns about divided loyalties in Ukraine and raised the question of Russian military intervention, which Secretary of State John F. Kerry said would be a “grave mistake.” Russia insisted that the exercises were routine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered surprise military exercises Wednesday and put troops in the area on high alert starting at 2 p.m. Moscow time. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the drills were aimed at checking preparedness “for action in crisis situations that threaten the nation’s military security.”
In the aftermath of Ukraine’s toppling of its Kremlin-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych, eyes turned toward the Crimea Peninsula, where ties to Russia are especially strong and where the fallen protesters in Kiev are viewed not as heroes but as hooligans.
The exercises, due to start Friday and last four days, will also involve elements of the Russian navy and air force, Shoigu said. He made no mention of Ukraine in his announcement and later said the maneuvers were not related to the country’s turmoil, the Interfax news agency reported. Russia has held at least six such snap exercises to test readiness in the past year, the RIA Novosti news agency said.
The country’s interim authorities presented their list of nominees for a new cabinet, to be headed by Arseniy Yatsenyuk, one of the three political leaders who helped maintain the protest over the course of the past three months. Neither of the other two — Vitali Klitschko, a former boxing champion who is running for president in a May election, or Oleh Tiahnybok, of the nationalist All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” party — was on the list.
The exercises, he said, involve the western military district, which abuts Ukraine’s northeastern border and is headquartered in St. Petersburg, and units of the central district, which covers a vast swath across the middle of Russia and is headquartered in the Ural Mountain city of Yekaterinburg. The district closest to the Crimea, the area with the greatest agitation for Russian protection, is not involved.
The roster was approved in consultations with a self-organized council of protesters from the Maidan, or Kiev’s Independence Square, but was greeted with little enthusiasm by the thousands gathered there.
Russian officials have said their country has no intention of intervening militarily in Ukraine. Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, said Wednesday, before Shoigu’s announcement, that intervention was out of the question.
“Too many politicians. We don’t trust anyone,” said Svetlana Kravtsova, 50. “We need to see real people.”
Shoigu said the troops participating in the drills should achieve a state of readiness by Thursday and are to remain in readiness until March 3.
Parliament plans to confirm the list Thursday. The move comes amid concerted efforts to secure foreign aid, with the Ukrainian currency dipping to a new low.
In a brief news conference in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made no direct mention of the Russian exercises but said that “we take it for granted that all nations respect the sovereignty and independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and this is a message that we have also conveyed to whom it may concern.” He made the remarks Wednesday as NATO defense ministers assembled for a scheduled meeting.
While the protests have quieted in Kiev — the protest council called on the “self-defense” groups to remove their ski masks and put down their weapons — they are just beginning here in the Crimea. In the regional capital, Simferopol, pro-Russia demonstrators clashed with thousands of Muslim Tatars who were rallying in support of the interim pro-Europe government in Kiev.
Although Ukraine has not sought NATO membership, it has long cooperated with NATO operations, sending troops to Bosnia and Afghanistan and participating in alliance anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia.
Police mostly succeeded in keeping the two sides apart, though fists were thrown as the two groups staged dueling rallies outside the regional parliament. A dozen people were injured, and one elderly man died of a heart attack at the demonstration.
“We stand ready to continue assisting Ukraine in its democratic reforms,” Rasmussen said. Ukraine’s acting defense minister is expected to attend a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission on Thursday.
The Tatars, who as a people were deported to Asia by Joseph Stalin after World War II and returned to their ancestral homeland only in the 1980s, are Russian speakers who strongly oppose the idea of joining Russia.
Later, in a statement following their closed-door meeting, NATO defense ministers said it was “imperative that the [Ukrainian] armed forces do not intervene in the political process” and commended them for so far staying out.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, there were some signs of reconciliation. In the fervently anti-Yanukovych city of Lviv, in the Ukrainian-speaking west, activists organized a campaign to have everyone there speak Russian for the day. In Odessa and in Donetsk, Yanukovych’s home town, there was a move to have residents and businesses use only Ukrainian for a day.
Rasmussen said that his earlier statement about stability and territorial integrity had been directed as much at internal players in Ukraine as at unnamed outside actors. He added said that NATO had been informed of the Russian exercises and that they had “lived up to all their obligations as regards transparency.”
The most independent television company in the country, Channel 5, which came to be identified with the protests, announced that it will now present the evening news in Russian.
The senior NATO official later said that the Russians had also notified the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Military drills at issue
The ministers, who included U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, said NATO would “continue to support Ukrainian sovereignty and independence, territorial integrity, democratic development and the principle of inviolability of frontiers as key factors of stability and security in Central and Eastern Europe and on the continent as a whole.”
Moscow’s military exercises — which, intentionally or not, are a stark reminder of Russia’s armed power — were announced by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. He said the maneuvers were not related to Ukraine’s turmoil but were ordered by President Vladimir Putin to check preparedness “for action in crisis situations that threaten the nation’s military security.”
The elite Ukrainian police force that has been disbanded, known as the “Berkut,” was reviled by the protesters in Kiev following attacks that included the use of live ammunition against anti-government demonstrators occupying the capital’s Independence Square, popularly known as the Maidan.
The exercises, due to start Friday and last four days, will also involve elements of the Russian navy and air force, Shoigu said. Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet is at a leased base here in Sevastopol’s deep-water harbor.
Dismantling such units can be a difficult business. A similar outfit, the Latvia OMON, was disbanded in 1991 and its members became the backbone of organized crime in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In Brussels, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that NATO had been informed of the exercises and that the Russians had “lived up to all their obligations as regards transparency.”
The new head of the Coordinating Council of the Sevastopol city administration, Alexey Chaly, said Berkut troops would be welcome there, according to a Web site called Sevastopol.su.
Russia has held at least six such snap exercises to test readiness in the past year, the RIA Novosti news agency said.
“These people adequately fulfilled their duty to the country, have shown themselves to be real men,” Chaly wrote, “and are now abandoned to the mercy of this rabid pack of Nazis. For faithful service, today criminal cases are brought against them. At this difficult time our city needs decent men who could form the basis of self-defense groups, and in the future the municipal police. We are ready to provide for them if they join us in our struggle, and to offer safety to their families.”
The exercises, Shoigu said, involve the western military district, which abuts Ukraine’s northeastern border, and units of the central district, which covers a vast swath across the middle of Russia. The district closest to the Crimea is not involved.
In Kiev, interim authorities said they are prepared to ask the approval of a self-organized Maidan council Wednesday evening for a slate of new cabinet ministers.
Russian officials have said their country has no intention of intervening militarily in Ukraine. Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, said Wednesday that intervention was out of the question.
The parliament has decided that the people who maintained the protest encampment through three sometimes violent months must be allowed a say in the formation of a new government.
In a brief news conference in Brussels on Wednesday, Rasmussen made no direct mention of the Russian exercises but said, “We take it for granted that all nations respect the sovereignty and independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and this is a message that we have also conveyed to whom it may concern.” He made the remarks as NATO defense ministers assembled for a scheduled meeting.
That means the new authorities have been held back from moving too swiftly. But as days go by, Ukraine remains deeply unsettled by the overthrow of Yanukovych.
Although Ukraine has not sought NATO membership, it has long cooperated with the alliance’s operations, sending troops to Bosnia and Afghanistan and participating in NATO anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia.
In Kharkiv, a large eastern city where hostility to the Maidan protesters was strong, tensions ran high as rival crowds faced off, with no one seemingly in charge. In the Crimea, with a strong pro-Russian population, a Russian flag was raised on a major government building and four Russian legislators met with local officials. Then came the invitation to the Berkut.
Ukraine’s acting defense minister is expected to attend a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission on Thursday.
Officials in Moscow continued Tuesday to express displeasure with events in Ukraine, if not as harshly as the day before. A law that flew through the Ukrainian parliament on Monday downgraded the status of Russian as an official language, which struck critics as an unnecessary and incendiary move and opened Ukraine’s new authorities to stinging criticism from their larger neighbor.
Yanukovych hasn’t been definitively spotted in public since Friday. But a Russian newspaper, RBK, reported that he had been seen in Moscow on Tuesday night — at the Ukraina hotel. It said he moved Wednesday to a villa in the city’s most exclusive suburb, Barvikha.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, tweeted Tuesday, “We want to curtail the influence of radicals and nationalists who are trying to play first fiddle in Ukraine.”
Various Russian officials denied the report or refused to comment on it.
The turn of events in Ukraine has been a major setback for Putin, who wants to draw Ukraine into a new Eurasian Economic Union. But protesters on the Maidan worry that Russia still hopes to recoup its losses.
Before that, he is thought to have last been seen in the Crimean Peninsula, in the seaside resort town of Balaklava, just down the coast.
“There are an awful lot of bandits here,” said Viktoria Ignatova, “and Putin wants to get them back into power.”
A city loyal to Russia
Moscow argues that the Ukrainian protests have been taken over by extremists. But on the Maidan there were sharp fears that the revolution was being sold out.
Sevastopol embraced news of the Russian military exercise and took it as a sign of saber rattling and support.
Activists were unhappy with the roster of veteran politicians who were being mentioned for top posts in a new government. And one very familiar face was missing Tuesday — the giant poster with a portrait of Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister and arch-foe of Yanukovych, had been taken down.
Sevastopol looks, sounds and feels like a little corner of Russia, and activists here have declared that it will remain that way, no matter what happens in the rest of Ukraine.
Her release from prison Saturday had turned her into a player again, instead of a cause, and she is no longer a uniting factor among what until a few days ago was the opposition. Her party, in any case, said she will go to Germany for medical treatment.
“We have our Russian language, Russian heroes and Russian culture,” said Valeriy Bespalko, who stood in the drizzling rain earlier in the day to support the city’s new de facto mayor, who is a Russian, not Ukrainian, citizen and who took over City Hall two days ago.
“We need totally new people,” said Yaroslav Kazmyrchuk, 70, who described himself as a pensioner and a revolutionary.
Hours after the new Ukrainian interior minister announced Wednesday that he would disband the elite security force that spearheaded most of the attacks on protesters in Kiev last week, its members were offered sanctuary here in the Crimea, further stoking concerns about divided loyalties and old schisms in turbulent Ukraine.
A Maidan council has been established by a group of prominent activists to consult on ministerial choices. It wants to veto any candidate who is rich, who worked for Yanukovych, or who was involved in human rights abuses.
“These people adequately fulfilled their duty to the country and have shown themselves to be real men,” said Alexey Chaly, the new head of the Coordinating Council of Sevastopol.
The Maidan had a full crowd Tuesday, as Kievans laid flowers at shrines to the dead built from stacked paving stones and snapped photos of the barricades of rubble that had held back the police. More than 80 people were killed in the violence last week as police cracked down on the demonstrators.
Chaly said the security police have been “abandoned to the mercy of this rabid pack of Nazis,” a reference to the protesters in Kiev.
Kazmyrchuk said the camp protest there would continue until it was clear that all the “bandits” would be removed from power.
“At this difficult time, our city needs decent men who could form the basis of self-defense groups and, in the future, the municipal police. We are ready to provide for them if they join us in our struggle, and to offer safety to their families,” he said in a post on his Facebook page.
There was still no conclusive word Tuesday on the whereabouts of Yanukovych, a day after the authorities here announced a nationwide manhunt for him on murder charges.
The special police unit, known as the “Berkut,” was reviled by the protesters in Kiev after attacks that included the use of live ammunition.
But a top aide, Andriy Kluyev, who was thought to have been with Yanukovych, was reported by his press secretary to have been shot and wounded — where and when were not clear.
Dismantling such units can be difficult business. A similar outfit, the Latvia OMON, was disbanded in 1991, and its members became the backbone of organized crime in St. Petersburg.
While the parliament was putting off a vote on a new government, Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, met with the interim leaders and asked for a financial reform plan, which would open the way to E.U. loans.
Englund reported from Kiev. Karen DeYoung in Brussels contributed to this report.
Ukraine’s economy is in dire shape, and the new authorities said they have found the government’s coffers almost bare.
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Wednesday that the Obama administration is proposing a $1 billion infusion to help stabilize Ukraine’s chaotic finances.
The money would be an emergency loan guarantee, as Ukraine reels from the ouster of the Yanukovych government and prepares to address the deep fiscal crisis that prompted the anti-government protests. It would be followed by a much larger international aid package that is expected to include European and U.S. contributions and loans from the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions.
“There’s gotta be some reality here,” Kerry said during an interview with The Washington Post and other news organizations. “I don’t think it’s enough for us to be heralding the advent of democracy and to applaud the courage and conviction of the people who brought about this transition and then just not do anything. I think that’s unconscionable.”
In Kharkiv, where nationalists seized the local government building over the weekend, an opposing crowd had gathered around a huge statue of Lenin across the main square, to protect it from assault.
The nationalists wear the red arm bands of the right-wing Pravy Sektor movement that was the militant backbone of the Maidan protests. Those defending the Lenin statue flew the black and orange Saint George flag commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
Neither Mikhail Dobkin, the governor of Kharkiv region, who said he would run in the presidential election in May, nor his deputy, Valentin Dulub, has been seen since the weekend.
Yet local government employees continue to show up for work, picking their way through the motley crowds roaming the ground floor of the building on their way to their offices.
All over Ukraine, in fact, the wheels kept turning. The Daily Bulletin of the Council of Ministers was published as usual Tuesday, even if there aren’t any government ministers at the moment. It contained a few nods to the crisis but also announced the construction of 743 locomotives last month, a new transport agreement with Turkey, a plan to build a bridge across the Dnieper River next year, and a 5.3 percent increase in natural gas extraction.
Ukraine has a vast bureaucracy, and it would take more than the overthrow of a president to bring it to a halt.
Karen DeYoung in Brussels and Isabel Gorst in Kharkiv contributed to this report.
