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Tensions Rise in Crimean Capital as Armed Men Continue to Take Up Posts Amid More Signs of Russian Force in Crimea, Delight Mixes With Dismay
(about 4 hours later)
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Scores of heavily armed men, wearing green khaki with no insignia and speaking Russian, fanned out across central Simferopol on Saturday, assisted by hundreds of men gathered in small groups who officiously blocked streets and stoked tensions as local television and radio reported new unrest in Crimea and elsewhere. BALAKLAVA, Ukraine — Reduced to a ghoulish tourist attraction by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the former pride of the Black Sea Fleet — a top-secret nuclear submarine base burrowed into a rocky hill and worthy of a James Bond villain — was closed on Saturday for “technical reasons,” announced a handwritten note taped to the ticket window.
In a contest of bold moves and political appeals for protection reminiscent of past ethnic conflicts in the Communist bloc — from the Balkans to the Caucasus — pro-Russian forces were also said to have taken control of a government building in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and part of its eastern region, which adjoins Russia. A more likely but unannounced reason was the sudden appearance just a few hundred yards away of 10 Russian troop trucks crammed with soldiers, five armored vehicles mounted with machine guns, a communications van and, most ominous of all, three military ambulances.
In Simferopol, the regional capital of Crimea, the armed men refused to talk to reporters but were overheard speaking Russian, and city residents interviewed away from the center expressed no doubt that they were Russian forces. The armed men were supported by dozens of clusters of men sporting orange and black or Russian tricolor ribbons to display their loyalty to Russia. None of the heavily armed soldiers had insignia on their green combat uniforms, but, after days of insisting that it was just a spectator to the dramatic events unfolding in the Ukrainian region of Crimea and was as puzzled as everyone else by the identities of masked gunmen who had seized Crimea’s two main airports and its Parliament and main government office buildings, Russia on Saturday pulled down the mask to openly display its determination to seize control.
“The Russian soldiers — this is not right,” said a vendor at the central market who identified herself only as Regina, 48, an ethnic Tatar who came to Crimea, the ancient homeland of her Muslim Turkic people, in the 1990s. “We have to decide this peacefully. Who knows if they don’t start shooting? We will suffer.” Black license plates used by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet — as opposed to the white ones issued by Ukrainian authorities — were clearly visible on the military vehicles lined up on the main road into Balaklava, a beautiful and highly strategic deep-water bay. It was here that Ukraine, when it still controlled Crimea, stationed Coast Guard, customs and border officers. It is also where British troops established their own base during the 1853-56 Crimean War — and then made their suicidal Charge of the Light Brigade against Russian forces.
The Tatars were deported by Stalin in 1944 and allowed home only five decades later as Soviet rule crumbled. By and large, they support Ukrainian rather than Russian rule on a peninsula where about 60 percent of the two million people are ethnic Russian. The loudest echoes of history on Saturday, however, stretched back not to the 19th century but to more recent episodes of Russian muscle flexing.
None of half a dozen people interviewed in and around the central market could recall ethnic tensions producing violence here. Another vendor, Azizia, 28, who said her husband was Russian, added that most Crimeans had no problems with one another and certainly no desire for war. In an almost word-perfect replay of Moscow’s Cold War interventions in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 after appeals for “fraternal assistance” from embattled local allies, Russia’s troop mobilization in Crimea on Saturday followed a request for help from Crimea’s new pro-Moscow prime minister, Sergei Aksyonov, who was named Thursday by regional legislators meeting under the guns of the unidentified intruders. The Kremlin quickly issued a statement saying that Mr. Aksyonov’s plea “would not be ignored,” and within hours it had announced its plans for military action.
On Wednesday, when thousands of Russians and Tatars clashed outside the regional Parliament building, two Russians, Igor Postny, 23, and Valentina Kornyeva, 67, died in the crush. People stuffed money for the families of the dead men into a plastic box and laid flowers and candles around their portraits, as they did after scores of protesters were killed in Independence Square in Kiev, the national capital. But in stark contrast to Soviet deployments in recalcitrant foreign lands, the display of overwhelming might on Saturday met not with fierce and futile resistance — at least not in heavily Russian areas of Crimea like Balaklava — but with a mix of delight and eerie calm.
About 400 people gathered at one point, holding placards saying “Free Ukraine From U.S. Occupation” and “The U.S.A. Works With Fascism.” An old woman held up a photograph of President Obama with a red line through it and the caption “Yankee Go Home,” and led a chant to that effect. “I have been hoping for this from the very beginning,” said Ilina Kulkova, an ethnic Russian resident of the nearby city of Sevastopol, after learning that the Russian Parliament had authorized the use of military force in Ukraine, of which Crimea has been a part since 1954. “Russia is the only guarantor of our security,” she said, adding that she “did not know anybody who is complaining.”
Speeches ran the gamut of emotion, railing against the new government in Kiev and its supposed American and European supporters. The crowd, whipped up, then chanted, “Glory to the Berkut,” the now-disbanded riot police who shot most of the protesters in Kiev. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged its consulate in Simferopol late Friday to issue Russian passports quickly to the Berkut. At least two members of the unit mingled with the armed men in the city center on Saturday. She acknowledged that she had not heard complaints because she did not know anybody who supported the “Nazi gangster regime” that she and many other ethnic Russians living in Crimea — and also the Kremlin — believe seized power last weekend in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, following the flight of the country’s elected president, Viktor F. Yanukovych.
At a monument commemorating Crimea’s 18th-century union with Russia, someone had taped a poster saying, “Better With Russia Than With This Ukraine.” Near the Parliament building was another poster asserting that “Crimea Is Russia.” While ethnic Russians rejoiced, however, Crimea’s other main populations, Muslim Tatars and Ukrainians, mourned a return to an era thought to have ended with the Cold War. At Bakhchysarai, the historic capital of Crimea before the Tatars were conquered by Russia in the 18th century and then deported en masse to Central Asia by Stalin, Chiygoz Ahtem, the head of the local Tatar council, huddled gloomily with supporters around a television in his office, gasping in disbelief at reports of Ukraine’s crumbling authority in the region.
Armed guards appeared around the building on Saturday after a reported overnight gun battle, and Sergei Aksyonov, the newly installed Crimean prime minister, announced that he was taking charge of all security forces and appealed to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for help. No one in central Simferopol could recall having heard shots at night. Boasting that he had helped his community form units to protect themselves, Mr. Ahtem said Tatars “do not like to speak loudly, but our people made their choice a long time ago: We are part of Ukraine,” not Russia. He declined to say whether his followers had guns, offering only a high-five when asked whether there could be armed resistance.
The appeal came after word late Friday that the Russian Parliament had begun discussing a law that would make it easier to integrate new territories into the Russian Federation. Mr. Aksyonov said a referendum on Crimea’s future allegiance would be moved forward to March 30 from the May date announced just two days earlier. But with Tatars vastly outnumbered by ethnic Russians, Mr. Ahtem placed most of his hopes in an expectation that foreign powers would not let Russia’s “naked aggression” pass without a response. “In the 21st century, the international community cannot be a bystander,” he said.
At the bustling market barely half a mile from the city center, the normal business of Saturday shopping went on uninterrupted. “It’s just a struggle for power,” said Iskander, a 58-year-old Tatar wearing their traditional beaded cap, who said he scraped by on odd jobs. God “gives us this life to test us, and you have to live in a way that is worthy,” he said. A few miles away, at a makeshift roadblock of concrete slabs flying Russian flags and manned by Russian “self-defense” volunteers and hairy members of a Russian motorcycle gang, a big black banner with red letters gave a blunt warning: “Russia has always been the graveyard of evil ideas. You cannot win over a graveyard, you can only stay in it forever.”
Natasha Galych, 53, who said she was born in Russia and came to Crimea as a child, glanced around warily when asked her opinion of events and the armed men in the streets. In Simferopol, the Crimean capital, about 400 people had gathered, some holding placards saying “Free Ukraine From U.S. Occupation” and “The U.S.A. Works With Fascism.” A woman held up a photograph of President Obama with a red line through it and the caption “Yankee Go Home,” and led a chant to that effect.
“I think everything should end peacefully,” she said, clutching a bag of mushrooms. “It was always calm here — no confrontations or war.” Now, she said, “it’s provocations — to put Russians and Tatars against each other.” Asked who was responsible, she said: “Who knows who’s doing it? Everybody has their own thing.” Earlier in the day, scores of armed men believed to be Russian soldiers and hundreds of supporters had massed at street corners and blocked roads. But by nightfall, they had withdrawn, and the city was quiet.
But the two Tatar women selling fruit and pickled cabbage at the market were less cautious. “Russia is especially provoking us,” Azizia said. Ukraine’s own military in Crimea, far weaker than Russian forces stationed permanently on the Crimean Peninsula under an agreement between Russia and Ukraine, appeared to be stuck in deep despondency.
A nervous Ukrainian military officer, who agreed to talk on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that Ukraine’s forces were no match for Russia’s but added that they had nonetheless received orders from Kiev to “open fire” if attacked.
At Ukraine’s Kirovsky military airfield late on Friday, Ukrainian forces tried briefly to stop a small group of Russian troops from entering. The Russians, said the Ukrainian officer, smashed up the airfield navigation equipment, apparently to make sure that Ukraine would not be able to fly in reinforcements.
The Russians had also taken over the Coast Guard in Balaklava, until a few days ago the most important agency of Ukrainian state authority in the area.
As Ukrainian leaders in Kiev, 400 miles to the north, fumed at what they denounced as an invasion that violated international law, more than a thousand residents of Sevastopol, the home of the Black Sea Fleet, gathered on Saturday night for a celebratory outdoor concert in a central square featuring the fleet’s naval choir and Cossack singers. The audience waved Russian flags and banners declaring Crimea part of Russia as cars drove by honking their horns in support.
In Balaklava, young couples, families with infants and doddering pensioners came out to admire the Russian military column, strolling up and down through a park adjacent to the road blocked by the soldiers, as if just out to enjoy the suddenly warm coastal air.
By nightfall, several hundred people had gathered for a joyous rally beside a World War II memorial near the entrance to Balaklava Bay and a now vanquished Ukrainian government post. “Are you for Russia or Ukraine?” asked a speaker. In unison, the crowd, waving Russian flags, roared back: “Russia! Russia!”