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Protests boil over in Crimea as Russia orders test of combat readiness
Russia puts military on high alert as Crimea protests leave one man dead
(about 2 hours later)
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has reportedly ordered an immediate test of combat readiness of troops in central and western Russia in a move that will dramatically elevate fears of a separatist threat in Ukraine.
The Kremlin ordered major military exercises on Wednesday, as concerns about unrest in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula continued to grow and scuffles in the region left one person dead.
The Russian presidential order was confirmed by the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. The order came as pro-Russian demonstrators clashed with about 20,000 Muslim Tatars rallying in support of Ukraine's interim pro-European government in the Crimean administrative capital of Simferopol.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, ordered an urgent drill of his country's armed forces in western Russia, in what appeared to be a display of sabre-rattling aimed at the new government in Kiev.
At least 20 people were injured as two competing rallies met outside the city's regional parliament building, which was scheduled to hold a crisis session to address the turmoil gripping the country.
Putin instructed his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, to place Russia's military in a state of high alert for drills in the western military district, bordering Ukraine. The defence ministry quickly denied the drills had anything to do with the political situation in Kiev, where the government of President Viktor Yanukovych was in effect toppled at the weekend. But the move comes amid increasingly forthright statements from Moscow that the rights of ethnic Russians in Ukraine are being infringed.
At least one person died in the chaos, though probably as the result of a heart attack rather than a violent injury, Interfax news reported.
Shoigu told a defence ministry meeting that forces must "be ready to bomb unfamiliar testing grounds" as part of the drill.
The order for the military tests was followed by a statement from the Russian foreign ministry claiming that extremists were "imposing their will" in Ukraine and whipping up religious tensions. Priests and property belonging to the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox church had been threatened, the statement said, adding that these tension could cause "an even bigger schism in Ukrainian society".
Crimea has a largely pro-Russian population and earlier this week Ukraine's acting president Oleksandr Turchynov warned there was a "serious risk" of separatism in the region.
These provocative rumblings from Russia comes as Ukraine's interim leadership urgently tries to win the confidence of its divided and economically ravaged nation with the creation of a new unity government.
In the regional capital of Simferopol on Wednesday, there was a gathering of around 10,000 Crimean Tatars, a Muslim ethnic group that supports the peninsula remaining part of Ukraine. Waving Ukrainian flags they chanted: "Ukraine is not Russia." The group clashed with a smaller pro-Russian rally nearby in which participants waved Russian flags. Protesters shouted abuse at each other, with the atmosphere growing more hostile by afternoon. The pro-Russian group swelled to about 5,000 later on as more protesters arrived on buses from the port city of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based.
Pro-European protesters filled Kiev's Maidan square – the seat of the Ukrainian revolution – preparing to meet the replacement cabinet proposed by Oleksandr Turchynov, Ukraine's acting president, on Wednesday, as Turchynov dismissed the country's feared riot police.
A smattering of rocks flew overhead as the two sides engaged in fistfights at the frontline. The anger in the faces of both sides was visible shortly before the violence as they catcalled and jeered at one another and beckoned at each other offering the occasional middle-finger salute.
Turchynov had warned on Tuesday that the country faced a serious threat from separatism amid fears the Kremlin may be stoking pro-Russian sentiment in the Crimean peninsula.
"You're defending all the millionaires who have stolen the land," shouted one angry Tatar. The Russians responded with a taunting rally cry of "Berkut, Berkut, Berkut", a reference to the police special unit responsible for much of the violence against protesters in Kiev last week, which left at least 82 dead.
"We discussed the question of not allowing any signs of separatism and threats to Ukraine's territorial integrity and punishing people guilty of this," Turchynov said after meeting key officials.
"Allahu Akbar!" chanted the Tatars as the other side responded with a rally cry of "Russia, Russia, Russia". Those in the Tatar camp held signs reading: "Ukraine to Europe." "We just want to be free," said Arsen Bilyalov a 36-year-old Tatar.
Before Wednesday's military manoeuvre, a visiting Russian parliamentarian said on Tuesday that Moscow would act in the event of heightened tension over the Crimean peninsula.
The clashes resulted in several serious injuries on the Russian side, as well as one man who died, apparently from a heart attack. The parliamentary session was cancelled as a result of the violence outside.
"If the life and health of our compatriots is under threat, we will not stand to one side," the parliamentarian, Leonid Slutsky, said after arriving in the regional capital of Simferopol for a one-day visit.
Ukraine's acting interior minister said he was doing all he could not to inflame tensions in Crimea further. "The police and all enforcement bodies in Crimea received instruction from me – at any cost do not provoke any conflict, any military confrontation with the civilians," Arsen Avakov said. "I'm demanding law enforcement officers from Sevastopol to Simferopol to do all possible to prevent clashes between radical pro-Russian forces with any other radicals, including those who stand for European integration or Crimean Tatars," he added.
Slutsky, who leads the Russian Duma's committee for relations with former Soviet states, declined to say what sort of action Russia might take.
Avakov also announced on Wednesday that the notorious Berkut riot police, elite troops responsible for much of the violence over the past three months, had been disbanded.
The AFP news agency reported that two armoured personnel carriers had been deployed near Russian military installations in Ukraine's second port of Sevastopol on Tuesday. One of the vehicles was on a base belonging to Russia's Black Sea fleet while another was parked in the courtyard of a navy building in the city centre. A spokesman for the fleet in Sevastopol refused to comment on the deployment of the vehicles but local media reported that they had been sent out in case of "terrorist attacks".
"This special unit has totally discredited itself," he said, adding that a new unit would be established in time. The 4,000 former Berkut troops will now have to pass a revalidation exam in the next 15 days to determine whether they will serve in the new structure. He added that some top-ranking Berkut officers had fled already, and the police was now searching for them.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, warned the EU and US not to try to shape Ukraine's future. "It is dangerous and counterproductive to try to force upon Ukraine a choice on the principle 'you are either with us or against us'," Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow.
However, in another sign that Crimea is the only part of Ukraine where the new authorities are not welcome, a number of Berkut units returning to the region from Kiev have received a heroes welcome this week, and on Wednesday, the newly appointed pro-Russia mayor of Sevastopol invited the elite squad to join local law enforcement.
Russia and the west should use political contacts in Ukraine to calm the situation and not seek advantage when national dialogue was needed, Lavrov added.
Since Yanukovych fled the capital at the weekend, the protest movement has attempted to take over the mantle of government, attempting to build bridges with the police and intelligence services, and continuing to patrol the capital with its own "self-defence units".
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, and the British foreign secretary, William Hague, have rejected the suggestion that Ukraine is being forced to choose between east and west.
The acting president, Turchynov, has drawn up a new cabinet, which he announced to the crowds on Independence Square on Wednesday evening. It included a number of key figures in the protest movement, including the journalist Tetiana Chornovol, who was beaten to within an inch of her life after investigating government corruption, and will now head an anti-corruption bureau.
"This is not a zero-sum game. It is not west versus east," said Kerry after hosting Hague in Washington.
Presidential elections have been set for 25 May. Frontrunners include the former boxer Vitali Klitschko, and Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister who was released from jail on Saturday. She has not yet said whether she will run. Tymoshenko's ally Arseny Yatsenyuk was named as acting prime minister by Turchynov, to a mixed reception from the crowd.
The Ukrainian government faces foreign debt payments of $13bn (£7.8bn) this year and has less than $18bn in its fast-depleting coffers – a grim equation that has forced it to seek as much as $35bn from western states.
Ukrainian police are still searching for Yanukovych, who has been the subject of various rumours since he fled. The interim authorities announced they believed the president was hiding in Crimea, after a failed attempt to leave the country in a private jet from Donetsk airport. There were unconfirmed reports in Ukrainian media on Wednesday that Yanukovych had left Crimea by sea and was now in Russia with his two sons. One Russian news outlet claimed Yanukovych had been spotted at a government sanitorium just outside Moscow.
Moscow has frozen payments on a massive bailout package promised by Putin to Yanukovych as his reward for rejecting closer EU ties.
However, a top Russian foreign policy official told Russian media on Wednesday evening he was "absolutely certain" that Yanukovych was not in Russia. Mikhail Margelov added that he thought it unlikely that Russia would offer asylum to the disgraced leader, although just a day earlier a top Russian MP had said Moscow still considered Yanukovych to be the legitimate president of Ukraine.
Both the United States and Britain have publicly backed the idea of putting together an economic rescue for Ukraine that would be overseen by the International Monetary Fund.
Avakov said Ukraine's new authorities had pulled back from the search for Yanukovych in Crimea, fearing that treading too heavily could destabilise the fragile situation further.
Hague stressed after the talks with Kerry that "this is a country that needs financial assistance from many sources, including from Russia".
"We decided the fate of Crimea is more important," he said.
However, the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, wrapped up a two-day visit to Kiev on Tuesday by mentioning only a "short-term" economic solution for Ukraine while saying nothing about extending the billions of dollars in credit requested by Turchynov.
On Tuesday, the parliament in Kiev voted to send Yanukovych to The Hague to be tried over the violence that led to at least 82 deaths in Kiev last week. He is on the run and believed to be in Crimea, but has not been seen in public since Sunday.
The parliament voted that Vitali Zakharchenko, the former interior minister, and Viktor Pshonka, the prosecutor general, should also be sent to the international criminal court. They have fled Kiev, along with other key Yanukovych aides.
There were reports on Tuesday afternoon that Andriy Kluyev, Yanukovych's chief of staff, had been wounded during a gun battle. He was reported to have been shot in the leg after his car came under fire when he was travelling back to Kiev, allegedly after visiting Yanukovych in Crimea. None of the details could be confirmed.
Outside Kiev, Yanukovych's extravagant residence has been opened to the public, and Ukrainian investigative journalists have begun releasing to the web incriminating documents found at the mansion, in a project called "Yanukovych leaks".
They say they have found evidence of corruption as well as plans to clear Independence Square of protesters using force.
Pictures from Pshonka's mansion were also posted online, including one shot of a portrait of the prosecutor general dressed as a Roman emperor and another of hundreds of lavish gold ornaments.
In The Hague, the international criminal court said it had not yet received a request from the new Ukrainian government to investigate events in Kiev.
Oleh Tiahnybok, leader of the nationalist Svoboda party, said: "It is very important that we had a positive vote today. Now we are inviting all the people of goodwill who have any materials including video, photos or papers that we may need to properly submit to The Hague tribunal the papers about crimes against people, crimes against Ukrainians, and violations of human rights that were committed by those criminals in Yanukovych's regime."
Senior figures in Washington have claimed that in the days before he fled the capital, Yanukovych spent at least an hour in consultation over the phone with Joe Biden, the US vice-president.
According to the anonymous US officials, Biden found the beleaguered Ukrainian leader to be initially defiant, accusing protesters in control of the Kiev streets of terrorism.
Speaking through a translator from his office in the west wing of the White House, Biden reportedly warned Yanukovych that leaders in his position were often "a day late and a dollar short" in their attempts to appease political protesters.
The parliament will select a new prime minister on Thursday, and presidential elections are scheduled for 25 May. The retired heavyweight boxer Vitali Klitschko confirmed on Tuesday that he would run. Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister who was released from jail on Saturday, has not indicated whether she will stand. She said she would travel to Germany in March for treatment for a back problem which has confined her to a wheelchair.
Putin has not yet commented on the situation, but the parliamentary visit to Crimea will further stoke tensions. Crowds in Simferopol and Sevastopol on Tuesday called on local authorities to reject Ukraine's new government. A crowd of about 100 people gathered outside the local administration in Sevastopol cheered when a Russian armoured personnel carrier rolled past – an apparently routine occurrence in the port city.
The night before, the city council had handed power to Aleksei Chaliy, a Russian citizen, while more than 1,000 people gathered around the city hall chanting "Russia, Russia, Russia" and "a Russian mayor for a Russian city".
Viktor Neganov, a Sevastopol-based adviser to the interior minister, condemned the events in the city as a coup. "Chaliy represents the interests of the Kremlin, which probably gave its tacit approval," he said.
The Crimean peninsula, which is the only region of Ukraine with a majority of ethnic Russians, was Russian territory until 1954. Moscow recently extended its lease on a large naval base in Sevastopol to 2042.
• Additional reporting by Oksana Grytsenko in Kiev
