This article is from the source 'washpo' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russias-putin-prepares-to-annex-crimea/2014/03/18/933183b2-654e-45ce-920e-4d18c0ffec73_story.html?wprss=rss_world

The article has changed 15 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 10 Version 11
Russian and Crimean parliaments sign treaty of accession Kremlin says Crimea is now officially part of Russia after treaty signing, Putin speech
(35 minutes later)
MOSCOW —Russia effectively absorbed Crimea on Tuesday afternoon, moments after President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia has no designs on any other parts of Ukraine. MOSCOW — Invoking the suffering of the Russian people and a narrative of constant betrayals by the West, President Vladimir Putin declared Tuesday that Russia was within its rights to reclaim Crimea, then signed a treaty that did just that.
In a speech to a joint session of parliament, which he used to call for the “reunification” of Crimea with Russia, he said the region has a special role in Russian history that makes it unique. Putin, defiant in the face of U.S. and European pressure, dispensed with legal deliberation and announced a swift annexation of Crimea, as if to put Europe’s most serious crisis in decades beyond the point where the results could be turned back.
Ecstatic members of the Russian parliament watched while Putin and Crimean leaders signed a treaty of accession as soon as Putin was done speaking, and the Kremlin said afterward it considers the treaty to be in force even before parliament has ratified it. In a speech to a joint session of the Russian parliament, he compared the move to the independence declaration of Kosovo in 2008 and the reunification of Germany in 1990 — but, in reality, this is the first time that one European nation has seized territory from another since the end of World War II.
Sevastopol, the city where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based, also entered the Russian Federation, as a separate entity. “Crimea is our common legacy,” Putin said. “It can only be Russian today.”
Even while declaring that Moscow will not seek to expand its holdings in Ukraine, Putin also promised that Russia will do what it must to protect the rights of Russians living abroad — which suggests that he intends to play a role in restive eastern Ukraine, with its large ethnic Russian population. In Kiev, Ukrainian officials said they would never recognize or accept the loss of Crimea. Western leaders, including Vice President Biden during a visit to Poland and Lithuania, talked about further sanctions against Russia on top of those announced in the past two days. Russia is also facing expulsion from the Group of Eight leading industrial nations as relations between Moscow and the West reach their lowest level since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
[Photos: This is what happened in Ukraine before its independence.] In Crimea, where celebrations were held to mark the Russian annexation, a Ukrainian lieutenant was fatally shot in an incident that immediately set nerves on edge.
He said Moscow will always protect the rights of Russians using “political, diplomatic and legal means.” Putin declared that Russia has no interest in expanding its hold within Ukraine. “Don’t believe those who say Russia will take other regions after Crimea. We don’t need that,” he said.
But he stressed: “Don’t believe those who say Russia will take other regions after Crimea. We don’t need that.” But he also said that Russia would always be ready to stand up for the rights of fellow Russians living in other countries. He mentioned, seemingly in passing, that Russians in eastern Ukraine, in the cities of Kharkiv and Donetsk, had been subject to the same sort of abuse at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists that he said had led him to act on Crimea.
The speech touched off dancing and jubilant cheers in downtown Sevastopol, even as the United States continued diplomatic consultations it says are aimed at reversing Russia’s takeover of Crimea from Ukraine. Putin’s speech, nearly 50 minutes long, catalogued 20 years of Russian complaints about the West. He touched on the Soviet Union’s downfall, Kosovo, NATO expansion, missile defense, Libya, Iraq and Syria. He said the West has been backing Ukrainians responsible for “terror, murder and riots,” including neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and Russophobes.
There were moves to diplomatically isolate Russia: President Obama has called a meeting of major nations next week and pointedly left Moscow off the invitation list so the group could discuss Ukraine. Preparations for a high-profile summit in Russia have also been suspended. “Our Western partners have crossed a line,” he said. “We have every reason to think that the notorious policy of confining Russia, pursued in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, continues today.”
Vice President Biden landed Tuesday morning in Warsaw, where he will confer with Polish and Estonian leaders about the situation. In the evening, he intends to fly to Lithuania for similar meetings. He said the challenge presented to Russia by the Ukrainian crisis couldn’t be ducked.
One senior Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the vice president’s plans, said his trip is “first and foremost to reassure our allies that we are deeply concerned about Russia’s action in Ukraine and what the deeper implications might be.”
The adviser said Biden will discuss measures that would be taken “in the days and weeks ahead,” building on financial sanctions imposed on 11 Russian and Ukrainian officials that President Obama announced Monday but that appeared to have little effect on Putin’s calculations.
In response to Russian’s actions, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Tuesday that Britain was suspending military cooperation with Russia and would also stop arms exports to the federation out of concern they could be used against Ukraine.
In a statement to Parliament, Hague condemned Russia’s “land grab” and warned that relations between Russia and the West could deteriorate further.
He said a “new state of relations” with Russia could be “one in which institutions such as the [Group of Eight] are working without Russia, military cooperation and defense exports are curtailed, decisions are accelerated to reduce European dependence on Russia energy exports, foreign policy plays a bigger role in energy policy, Russia has less influence in Europe, and European nations do more to guard against the flagrant violation of international norms we have seen in Crimea.”
In Kiev, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk gave a nationally televised address Tuesday in which — pointedly using the Russian language — he seemed to recognize the limits of the situation. He pledged that Ukraine would not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and sought to reassure ethnic Russians and the government in Moscow.
But his government also said it “will never recognize” Crimea’s new status, the Interfax news agency reported, citing a statement from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
Russia’s swift annexation of Crimea, however, suggests that the Kremlin wants to put the Crimean crisis quickly beyond the point where the results could be turned back. Relations between Moscow and the West are now arguably at their lowest point since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Even the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo did not produce a level of hostility between the two sides such as now exists.
Putin mentioned Kosovo several times in a 50-minute speech that was a catalogue of Russian complaints about the West over the past 20 years. He touched on the downfall of the Soviet Union, Kosovo, NATO expansion, missile defense, Libya, Iraq and Syria. He mentioned Soviet support for the reunification of Germany in 1990.
“I hope Germans will support the aspirations of Russians to restore Russia,” he said.
“Our Western partners have crossed a line,” Putin said. “They’ve been unprofessional.”
He said the challenge presented to Russia by the Ukrainian crisis could not be ducked.
“We have to admit one thing — Russia is an active participant in international affairs,” he said. “At these critical times, we see the maturity of nations, the strength of nations.”“We have to admit one thing — Russia is an active participant in international affairs,” he said. “At these critical times, we see the maturity of nations, the strength of nations.”
Putin traced Russian roots in Crimea to the baptism there of Vladimir, who converted the Russian people to Christianity just over 1,000 years ago. He mentioned that the bones of Soviet soldiers who fought the Germans in World War II are buried all across the peninsula. One factor that forced Russia to act, he said, was the threat that Ukraine, under its new leaders, might join NATO – which would have left Russia’s Black Sea naval base in Sevastopol in an untenable position.
Derision toward sanctions
Putin insisted that Russia is acting within international law. He complained that leaders in the West, led by the Americans, “believe they’ve been entrusted by God to decide the fate of other people.”
The sanctions already announced by the United States, the European Union and Canada were treated with derision by the members of the Russian parliament Tuesday. They passed a unanimous resolution calling on the West to include every member of the Russian legislature on the sanctions list.
The speaker of the upper house of parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, who is on the U.S. sanctions list, was defiant.
“These days we are feeling a huge amount of pressure — pressure from the so-called authorities in Kiev and pressure from the West,” she said as she met with Crimean leaders. “Threats, announcement of sanctions, banned entry — all this comes from the helplessness when there is no legal argument.”
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian armaments industry, said Moscow needs to take up the cause of ethnic Russians in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria, which has been outside Moldova’s control since the early 1990s. Now that Moldova is moving to sign an agreement with the E.U., Rogozin said, it is time for Russia to act. Rogozin is one of 11 Russians and Ukrainians on the U.S. sanctions list announced Monday.
Putin traced Russian roots in Crimea to the baptism there of Vladimir, who converted the Russian people to Christianity just over 1,000 years ago. He mentioned that the bones of Russian soldiers who fought the British and French in the 19th century, and of Soviet soldiers who fought the Germans in World War II, are buried all across the Crimean Peninsula.
“All these places are sacred to us,” he said. After noting that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev assigned Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, he argued that Russia by rights should have gotten it back in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved.“All these places are sacred to us,” he said. After noting that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev assigned Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, he argued that Russia by rights should have gotten it back in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved.
“Russia was not just robbed — it was robbed in broad daylight,” he said. “Russia was not just robbed — it was plundered,” he said.
In his historical remarks, he also touched on Russians’ roots in Ukraine, in a way that many Ukrainians may not have found to be reassuring. “We sympathize with the people of Ukraine,” he said. “We’re one nation. Kiev is the mother of all Russian cities.” He also touched on Russians’ roots in the Ukrainian heartland, in a way that many Ukrainians may not have found reassuring. “We sympathize with the people of Ukraine,” he said. “We’re one nation. Kiev is the mother of all Russian cities.”
He described Kiev as a city today where a legitimate protest was overtaken by those plotting a coup, backed by “Western sponsors,” and where government ministers cannot act without first getting permission “from the gunmen on the Maidan” — a reference to Independence Square, the cradle of the protest movement. He described today’s Kiev as a city where a legitimate protest was overtaken by those plotting a coup, backed by “foreign sponsors,” and where government ministers cannot act without getting permission “from the gunmen on the Maidan” — a reference to Independence Square, the heart of the protest movement that ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.“We have no one to negotiate with,” Putin said.
“We have no one to negotiate with,” he said. Ecstatic Russian lawmakers watched while Putin and Crimean leaders signed a treaty of accession as soon as the Russian leader was done speaking, and the Kremlin said afterward that it considers the treaty to be in force though it awaits ratification by parliament.
Putin insisted that Russia was acting within international law. He dwelled at some length on Kosovo, which broke free of Serbia in 1999, after NATO intervention, and ultimately declared independence, with international recognition, in 2008. The city of Sevastopol also entered the Russian Federation, as a separate entity – a status it traditionally enjoyed as an important military center.
He said that precedent gives Western countries no standing to complain about Crimea. Putin’s talk of betrayal
“You can’t call something black one day, and the same thing white the next,” he said. In the early evening, Putin addressed a large celebratory rally on Red Square. “After a difficult, long and exhausting journey, Crimea and Sevastopol have returned to Russia — to their home harbor, their home shores, their home port,” he said.
He complained that leaders in the West, led by Americans, “believe they’ve been entrusted by God to decide the fate of other people.” In Kiev, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk gave a nationally televised address Tuesday — pointedly using the Russian language — in which he seemed to recognize the limits of the situation. He pledged that Ukraine would not join the NATO and sought to reassure ethnic Russians and the government in Moscow.
His address, devoted to proving that Russia cannot be pushed around, was met with a standing ovation — which is much less common here than in the U.S. Congress. Putin’s words were freighted with a sense of betrayal, said Samuel Charap, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington. Putin portrayed the United States and the West as using Ukraine and other countries as a battlefield where they could prevail over Russia – and got two standing ovations for having done so.
In Sevastopol, several thousand people flocked to a central square to watch Putin speak on a giant TV screen. They applauded loudly several times as he spoke — when he said it would have been a betrayal to deny the Crimeans when they asked Russian troops to come protect them. “I think it’s a trap we’ve gotten ourselves into about whether the sense of betrayal is rational or not,” Charap said. “The question is: Do they believe it or not? I think we underestimate the power of the grievance narrative by narrowly attributing it to a propaganda campaign or paranoid fantasies of a ruthless dictator. If this is what influences the decision-making climate, we have to deal with it.”
After Putin finished speaking and the treaty was signed, the crowd started dancing in the square and singing the Russian national anthem. Kathy Lally and Anthony Faiola in Kiev, Scott Wilson in Warsaw and Carol Morello in Sevastopol contributed to this report.
“We did it. We did it. We truly did it,” exclaimed Svetlana Kalinina, 53, as tears rolled down her cheeks from behind her sunglasses.
Another woman who said her first name was Natasha kept repeating, “Thank you, Putin.”
“I have waited so long for this,” she said, “We were given away, like a sack of potatoes. And finally we are coming back home.”
Anthony Faiola in Kiev, Scott Wilson in Warsaw and Carol Morello in Sevastopol contributed to this report.