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Ukraine Mounts Diplomatic Offensive Russia Says It’s Preparing Counterproposals for Crimea as Russian Forces Strengthen Grip There
(about 2 hours later)
LONDON — Ukraine’s interim prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, was reported on Monday to be pursuing a high-profile diplomatic offensive in the United States and at the United Nations as a referendum approaches in his country’s southern region of Crimea that could herald its secession. KIEV, Ukraine — Russia said Monday that it cannot accept the “fait accompli” of the new Western-backed government in Ukraine and was preparing diplomatic counterproposals to serve “the interests of all Ukrainians,” even as Russian forces strengthened their control over Crimea, less than a week before a contentious referendum on the future of that southern Ukrainian region.
At the same time, Russian troops who have swept into control of many military installations in Crimea were reported to be tightening their grip on the peninsula, taking over a military hospital in the regional capital, Simferopol, and a military base in Sevastopol, where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based. The Russian position came in a televised clip showing Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov briefing President Vladimir V. Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, the site of the Winter Olympic and Paralympic games.
There were signals, too, that the Kremlin was focusing closely on events in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian feeling runs high. According to news reports, the foreign ministry in Moscow said lawlessness now rules in eastern Ukraine as a result of extreme rightists “with the full connivance” of the authorities who took over after the ouster of President Viktor F. Yanukovych. Mr. Lavrov said that proposals made by Secretary of State John Kerry “did not completely satisfy us” because they used “the situation created by the coup as a starting point.” He told Mr. Putin that Mr. Kerry had delayed a visit to Moscow and that Russia was working on new proposals of its own.
In Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, said that Secretary of State John Kerry had postponed a trip to Moscow on Monday to discuss Russia’s reply to American proposals for a solution of the Ukraine crisis. The Russian diplomatic moves seemed to Ukrainian officials to be delaying tactics as Russian forces acted more assertively in Crimea, taking over a military hospital in the regional capital, Simferopol, and a military base in Sevastopol, where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based.
In a meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin, broadcast on television, Mr. Lavrov said that the American ideas “did not completely satisfy us.” Mr. Kerry had initially said that he would travel to Moscow on Monday but telephoned on Saturday to postpone the talks, Mr. Lavrov said. The Russians also took over a small Ukrainian naval supply base at Chornomorskoye, on the western coast, where pro-Russian “self-defense units” and police patrolled the town, threatened journalists from The New York Times and a man they were interviewing and confiscated the journalists’ notes. They also took a small base housing a Ukrainian motorized battalion in Bakhchisarai after firing in the air, said Aleksey A. Mazepa, a spokesman for the Ukrainian ministry of defense in Crimea. No one was reported hurt.
The encounter came as Mr. Yatsenyuk, battling to hold Ukraine together, scheduled talks at the White House on Wednesday — days before a referendum on Sunday on Crimea’s future. The Interfax-Ukraine news agency said Monday that Mr. Yatsenyuk would address the United Nations Security Council on Thursday. Pro-Ukrainian demonstrations in Crimea have been broken up, some Ukrainian journalists have been beaten and Ukrainian television channels there have been replaced with Russian ones ahead of the contentious referendum next Sunday about whether to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.
“Our fathers and grandfathers have spilled their blood for this land,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said in a speech on Sunday. “We won’t budge a single centimeter from Ukrainian land. Let Russia and its president know this.” Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, the Ukrainian prime minister, will speak to the United Nations on Thursday, a day after he meets President Obama in the White House in what the administration intends to be a show of firm American support. The United States and its allies have joined the Ukrainian government in declaring the Russian occupation of Crimea illegal and the referendum unconstitutional and non-binding.
He followed up that warning on Monday by accusing Russia of seeking to “undermine the foundations of global security and revise the outcome of World War II.” The Ukrainian foreign minister, Andriy Deshchytsya, received his counterparts from Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, who had come Monday to show support. “We have to admit that our life now is almost like a war,” he said. “We have to cope with an aggression that we do not understand.”
The war of words between Ukraine and Russia seemed set to intensify on Tuesday when, according to Russian news reports, Mr. Yanukovych, the deposed president of Ukraine, will make a public statement in Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia. He said Ukraine is counting on help from abroad to deal with Russia and restore Crimea to Kiev’s control.
The looming deadline set by the Crimean referendum, which will ask voters whether they want to join Russia or seek broader autonomy within Ukraine, has added to the challenges facing the international diplomacy. The United States and European countries like Germany, Britain and France have been pushing for a contact group to include Russia and Ukraine to de-escalate the conflict, one of the most serious East-West confrontations since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
“We can see that time is really very pressing,” Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for the German government, said in Berlin on Monday, one day after Chancellor Angela Merkel again called Mr. Putin and urged him to facilitate the creation of a contact group to bring Russia and Ukraine into talks. But while the West recognizes the new interim government in Kiev, with presidential elections scheduled for May, Russia wants to return to a late February deal that former President Viktor F. Yanukovych signed, agreeing to a new unity government and new presidential elections in December. Moscow insists Mr. Yanukovych remains Ukraine’s lawful president and was deposed, while the West says he abandoned his post and was legally replaced by a constitutional majority vote of the Ukrainian parliament.
According to the Russian media, Mr. Yanukovych will make a public statement on Tuesday in Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia, where he has sought Russian protection.
Germany, with close ties to Russia, has so far not succeeded in budging Moscow in any clear way. “We can see that time is really very pressing,” Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for the German government, said in Berlin on Monday, one day after Chancellor Angela Merkel again called Mr. Putin and urged him to facilitate the creation of a contact group to bring Russia and Ukraine into talks.
“There can be no playing for time,” Mr. Seibert said at a news conference. “We are expecting concrete steps for the development of a contact group.”“There can be no playing for time,” Mr. Seibert said at a news conference. “We are expecting concrete steps for the development of a contact group.”
Germany has conducted intensive diplomacy in recent days, and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier will visit the three Baltic states late Monday and Tuesday, while Ms. Merkel is expected in Poland on Wednesday. So far, however, Germany’s traditionally tight ties with Russia and all over the east of Europe have failed to improve what Mr. Steinmeier, according to his spokesman, has called the most difficult crisis in Europe since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. There were signals, too, that the Kremlin was focusing closely on events in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian feeling runs high.
Government officials refused to discuss when Germany would declare the diplomatic avenue closed, and exactly when and how any European Union sanctions such as travel bans or frozen accounts would be imposed on so far unnamed Russian officials. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that lawlessness now rules in eastern Ukraine as a result of extreme rightists “with the full connivance” of the Kiev authorities.
The maneuvering came one day after rival rallies turned violent in Crimea on Sunday, as Ukraine celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of its greatest poet, Taras Shevchenko. The statement claimed that masked men had fired on and injured peaceful protesters last week in Kharkiv. Ukraine has said that Russia is fabricating such charges as part of a propaganda campaign to destabilize the Kiev government and justify possible new military action in the east. Kharkiv police said that they are treating the alleged shooting as a minor incident, according to Reuters.
As Ukrainians rallied, the leaders of several nations continued to pursue diplomacy. Like Ms. Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain spoke with Mr. Putin, who, according to Mr. Cameron’s office, “said that Russia did want to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis” and “agreed that it is in all our interests to have a stable Ukraine.” Kiev has been working to reassert its control over the cities of the east. In Lugansk, the capital of a coal-mining region that borders Russia, police freed a regional administration headquarters, which had been captured by pro-Russian demonstrators on Sunday, and briefly arrested their leader, Arsen Klinchayev, a local councilman.
The German government said that Ms. Merkel had made it clear that any Crimean referendum was illegal and that it would not be recognized internationally. On Thursday, the chancellor said that if a contact group was not formed soon and if no progress was made in negotiations with Russia, then the European Union could impose sanctions on Russia, including travel restrictions and the freezing of assets. Oleg Lyashko, a far-right member of the Kiev government who flew to Lugansk to break the siege, released a video of himself and several supporters arresting Mr. Klinchayev and violently interrogating him before later handing him over to police.
According to the Kremlin’s account of the call, however, Mr. Putin “underlined in particular that the steps taken by Crimea’s legitimate authorities are based on international law and aimed at guaranteeing the legitimate interests of the peninsula’s population” and that the leadership in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, was not acting “to limit the rampant behavior of ultranationalists and radical forces in the capital and in many regions.” “When we’re talking about the territorial integrity of a country, people don’t play at that,” Mr. Lyashko lectured Mr. Klinchayev, who sat with arms handcuffed behind his back, stomach exposed.
The Kremlin statement continued: “Despite the differences in the assessments of what is happening,” the three leaders “expressed a common interest in de-escalation of the tensions and normalization of the situation as soon as possible.” In Kiev, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the wealthy Russian businessman and dissident who was jailed for a decade until December, said that the struggle over Crimea had importance for Europe and the world.
The new Ukrainian government and its supporters, the United States and the European Union, reject the legitimacy of the Crimean referendum, scheduled for March 16, and deny that any ethnic Russians or Russian speakers have been threatened or harmed in Ukraine. He said Crimea should remain part of Ukraine but with broad autonomy akin to Scotland in the United Kingdom.
“For Russians, it’s a sacred place, an important element in our historical memory and the most painful wound since the Soviet collapse,” Mr. Khodorkovsky told a packed audience at Kiev Polytechnic University. But nothing, he said, could justify “such a blatant incursion into the affairs of a historically friendly state.”
Speaking later, he said that the stakes were high for Mr. Putin and Russia, too. “If a war between Ukraine and Russia happens, or even a paramilitary conflict which does not go into military phase, then we can forget about democratization of Russian public life forever,” he said.