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Defying West, Putin Formally Claims Crimea for Russia Defying West, Putin Formally Claims Crimea for Russia
(about 2 hours later)
MOSCOW — A defiant President Vladimir V. Putin claimed Crimea as a part of Russia on Tuesday, reversing what he described as a historic mistake made by the Soviet Union 60 years ago and brushing aside international condemnation that could leave Russia isolated for years to come. MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin reclaimed Crimea as a part of Russia on Tuesday, reversing what he described as a historic injustice made by the Soviet Union 60 years ago and brushing aside international condemnation that could leave Russia isolated for years to come.
Within minutes of delivering a passionate speech to Russia’s political elite, Mr. Putin cemented his pledge by signing a draft treaty with Crimean leaders to make the strategic Black Sea peninsula part of Russia. The events unfolded two days after Crimeans voted in a disputed referendum to break away from Ukraine. While the treaty signed Tuesday still needs parliamentary approval, that is regarded as a formality. In an emotional address before the country’s political elite in the Grand Kremlin Palace, Mr. Putin said he did not seek to divide Ukraine any further, but he vowed to protect Russia’s interests there from what he described as Western, and particularly American, actions that had left Russia feeling cornered.
“Crimea has always been an integral part of Russia in the hearts and minds of people,” Mr. Putin declared in his address, delivered in the chandeliered St. George’s Hall in the Grand Kremlin Palace before hundreds of members of Parliament, governors and others. His remarks, which lasted 47 minutes, were interrupted repeatedly by thunderous applause, standing ovations and at the end chants of “Russia, Russia.” Some in the audience wiped tears from their eyes. “Crimea has always been an integral part of Russia in the hearts and minds of people,” Mr. Putin declared in his address, delivered in the chandeliered St. George’s Hall inside the Kremlin before hundreds of members of Parliament, governors and others. His remarks, which lasted 47 minutes, were interrupted repeatedly by thunderous applause, standing ovations and at the end chants of “Russia, Russia.” Some in the audience wiped tears from their eyes.
Reaching deep into Russian and Soviet history, Mr. Putin said he did not seek to divide Ukraine any further, but vowed that he would protect Russia’s national security from what he described as Western, and particularly American, actions that had left Russia feeling cornered. Mr. Putin’s actions provoked renewed denunciations and threats of tougher sanctions and diplomatic isolation, though it remained unclear how far the West was willing to go to punish Mr. Putin. The United States, Europe and Ukraine vowed never to recognize what Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., visiting Poland, denounced as “nothing more than a land grab.” The leaders of what had been the Group of 8 nations announced they would meet next week as the Group of 7, excluding Russia from a club Russia once desperately craved to join.
He spoke as he has often in the past of the humiliations Russia has suffered in a world with one dominant superpower — from the NATO air war in Kosovo in 1999 against Moscow’s Serbian allies to the one in Libya that toppled Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011 on what he called the false pretense of a humanitarian intervention. Certainly the sanctions imposed on Russia ahead of Tuesday’s steps did nothing to dissuade Mr. Putin, as he rushed to make a claim to Crimea that he argued conformed to international law and precedent. And in his remarks he made clear that Russia was prepared to withstand worse punishment in the name of restoring a lost part of the country’s historic empire, effectively daring world leaders to sever political or economic ties and risk the consequences to their own economies.
Mr. Putin dipped into deep wells of emotion, starting with the 10th century baptism of Prince Vladimir, whose conversion to Orthodox Christianity transformed the kingdom then known as Rus, to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which left many Russians of his generation feeling that they had been stripped of their nation overnight. Mr. Putin, the country’s paramount leader for more than 14 years, appeared to be gambling that the outrage would eventually pass, as it did after Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008, because a newly assertive Russia would be simply too important to ignore on the world stage. As with any gamble, though, the annexation of Crimea carries potentially grave risks.
“Millions of Russians went to bed in one country and woke up abroad,” he said. “Overnight, they were minorities in the former Soviet republics, and the Russian people became one of the biggest — if not the biggest — divided nation in the world.” Only hours after Mr. Putin declared that “not a single shot” had been fired in the military intervention in Crimea, a group of soldiers opened fire as they stormed a Ukrainian military mapping office near Simferopol, killing a Ukrainian soldier and wounding another, according to a Ukrainian officer inside the base and a statement by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.
Assailing the West for what he has said were its broken promises, he said: “They cheated us again and again, made decisions behind our back, presenting us with completed facts. That’s the way it was with the expansion of NATO in the east, with the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders. They always told us the same thing: ‘Well, this doesn’t involve you.’ ” The base appeared to be under the control of the attacking soldiers, who like most of the Russians in Crimea wore no insignia, and the ministry said that Ukrainian forces in Crimea were now authorized to use force to defend themselves.
In a deepening clash of wills, Western reaction was swift. The White House condemned the move, which it said it would not recognize. Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, told Parliament on Tuesday that the crisis in Ukraine “is the most serious test of European security in the 21st century so far.” The episode underscored the fact that the fate of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers, as well military bases and ships, remains dangerously unresolved.
“No amount of sham and perverse democratic process or skewed historical references can make up for the fact that this is an incursion into a sovereign state and a land grab of part of its territory with no respect for the law of that country or for international law,” he said. In the capital, Kiev, Ukraine’s new prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, declared that the conflict had moved from “a political to a military phase” and laid the blame squarely on Russia.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel firmly rejected Moscow’s absorption of Crimea, a position she said was widely supported by international organizations including the United Nations and the European Council. The speed of Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea, redrawing an international border that has been recognized as part of an independent Ukraine for 23 years, has been breathtaking and, so far, apparently unstoppable.
“The so-called referendum breached international law, the declaration of independence which the Russian president accepted yesterday was against international law, and the absorption into the Russian Federation is, in our firm opinion, also against international law,” Ms. Merkel told reporters in Berlin. And it has left American and European leaders scrambling to find an adequate response after initially clinging to the hope that Mr. Putin was prepared to find a political solution – or “off ramp” – to an escalating crisis that began with the collapse of Viktor F. Yanukovych’s government on the night of Feb. 21.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in Warsaw on Tuesday in a show of support for countries unnerved by the Russian incursion into Ukraine, rebutted Mr. Putin’s assertions. “Russia has offered a variety of arguments to justify what is nothing more than a land grab,” he said. “But the world has rejected those arguments.” Within a week of that night, Russian special operations troops had seized control of strategic locations across Crimea, while the regional authorities moved to declare independence and schedule a referendum on joining Russia that was held on Sunday.
While Western sanctions in response to Sunday’s referendum on independence in Crimea had been relatively mild, American officials had already made clear they would ratchet up the pressure if Mr. Putin went ahead with annexation. The Obama administration is expected to react quickly with a new round of sanctions targeting three groups: Russian government officials, the Russian arms industry and Russians who work on behalf of government officials, the latter called “Russian government cronies” by a senior American official. Even as others criticized the vote as a fraud, Mr. Putin moved quickly on Monday to recognize its result, which he called “more than convincing” with nearly 97 percent of voters in favor of seceding from Ukraine. By Tuesday he signed a treaty of accession with the region’s new leaders to make Crimea and the city of Sevastopol the 84th and 85th regions of the Russian Federation.
Mr. Putin brushed aside concerns about economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation, saying the West had forced Russia’s hand. By supporting the political uprising that toppled Ukraine’s president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, the United States and Europe crossed “a red line,” Mr. Putin said, forcing him to act to protect Crimea’s population from what he called “Russophobes and neo-Nazis” that had seized control in an illegal coup abetted by foreigners. The treaty requires legislative approval, but that is a mere formality given Mr. Putin’s unchallenged political authority and the wild popularity of his actions, which have raised his approval ratings and unleashed a nationalistic fervor that has drowned out the few voices of opposition or even caution about the potential costs to Russia.
Mr. Putin appeared Tuesday evening at a rally and concert on Red Square to celebrate an event charged with emotional and historical significance for many Russians. Among the music played was a sentimental Soviet song called “Sevastopol Waltz.”
“After a long, hard and exhaustive journey at sea, Crimea and Sevastopol are returning to their home harbor, to the native shores, to the home port, to Russia!” Mr. Putin told the crowd. When he finished speaking, he joined a military chorus in singing the national anthem.
Since Russia’s stealthy takeover of Crimea began, Mr. Putin has said very little in public about his ultimate goals. His only extensive remarks came in a news conference with a pool of Kremlin journalists in which he appeared uncomfortable, uncertain and angry at times. In the grandeur of the Kremlin’s walls on Tuesday, Mr. Putin sounded utterly confident and defiant.
Reaching deep into Russian and Soviet history, he cast himself as the guardian of the Russian people, even those beyond its post-Soviet borders, restoring a part of an empire that the collapse of the Soviet Union had left abandoned to the cruel fates of what he described as a procession of hapless democratic leaders in Ukraine.
“Millions of Russians went to bed in one country and woke up abroad,” he said. “Overnight, they were minorities in the former Soviet republics, and the Russian people became one of the biggest — if not the biggest — divided nations in the world.”
He cited the 10th-century baptism of Prince Vladimir, whose conversion to Christianity transformed the kingdom then known as Rus into the foundation of the empire that became Russia. He called Kiev “the mother of Russian cities,” making clear to the world that he considered Ukraine, along with Belarus, to be countries where Russia’s own interests would remain at stake regardless of the fallout from Crimea’s annexation.
He listed the cities and battlefields of Crimea – from the 19th-century war with Britain, France and the Turks to the Nazi sieges of World War II – as places “dear to our hearts, symbolizing Russian military glory and outstanding valor.”
A theme coursing throughout his remarks was the restoration of Russia after a period of humiliation following the Soviet collapse, which he had famously described as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”
He denounced what he called the global domination of one superpower and its allies that emerged. And he recited a list of grievances – from NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders, to its war in Kosovo in 1999, when he was a little-known aide to President Boris N. Yeltsin, to the one in Libya that toppled Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011 on what he called the false pretense of a humanitarian intervention.
“They cheated us again and again, made decisions behind our back, presenting us with completed facts,” he said. “That’s the way it was with the expansion of NATO in the East, with the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders. They always told us the same thing: ‘Well, this doesn’t involve you.'”
In the case of Ukraine, however, he said that the United States and Europe had crossed “a red line” by throwing support to the new government that quickly emerged after Mr. Yanukovych fled the capital following months of protests and two violent days of clashes that left scores dead.
Mr. Putin, as he has before, denounced the uprising as a coup carried out by “Russophobes and neo-Nazis” and abetted by foreigners, saying it justified Russia’s efforts to protect Crimea’s population.
“If you press a spring too hard,” he said, “it will recoil.”“If you press a spring too hard,” he said, “it will recoil.”
If there had been any doubt before Tuesday, Mr. Putin made clear that within what he considers his sphere of interest he would not be cowed by international pressure. And the speed of his moves in Crimea, redrawing an international border that has been recognized as part of an independent Ukraine since 1991, has been breathtaking. He justified the annexation using the same arguments that the United States and Europe cited to justify the independence of Kosovo from Serbia and even quoted the American submission to the United Nations International Court when it reviewed the matter in 2009.
Just three weeks after Russian special operations troops seized control of strategic locations on the peninsula, the authorities there organized and held a disputed referendum that paved the way for Tuesday’s treaty signing. Mr. Putin called the outcome of the vote — almost 97 percent in favor of secession —- “more than convincing.” Mr. Putin did not declare a new Cold War, but he bluntly challenged the post-Soviet order that had more or less held for nearly a quarter century, and made it clear that Russia was prepared to defend itself from any further encroachment or interference in areas it considers part of its core security, including Russia itself.
Mr. Putin acted despite the first of a series of threatened sanctions imposed by the United States, Canada and Europe on Monday. He did so using the same arguments that those countries used to justify the independence of Kosovo — which the West generally supported — including a passage from an Obama administration document establishing the legal rationale for recognizing that country. He linked the political uprisings in Ukraine and the Arab world and ominously warned that there were efforts to agitate inside Russia. He suggested that dissenters at home would be considered traitors, a theme that has already reverberated through society with propagandistic documentaries on state television and moves to mute or close opposition news organizations and websites.
Part of the speech also had an ominous tone, suggesting that Russian dissenters would be considered traitors siding with Russia’s adversaries. Mr. Putin has long suspected the United States of trying to stir up a democratic uprising in Russia along the lines of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution and the Arab Spring rebellions. “Some Western politicians already threaten us not only with sanctions, but also with the potential for domestic problems,” he said. “I would like to know what they are implying — the actions of a certain fifth column, of various national traitors? Or should we expect that they will worsen the social and economic situation, and therefore provoke people’s discontent?”
“Some Western politicians already threaten us not only with sanctions but also with the potential for domestic problems,” he said. “I would like to know what they are implying — the actions of a certain fifth column, of various national traitors? Or should we expect that they will worsen the social and economic situation, and therefore provoke people’s discontent?
Mr. Putin also spoke of the radically changed circumstances since 1954, when Russia awarded Crimea to Ukraine. At that time, he said, “nobody could imagine that Russia and Ukraine could one day become different states.” After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia felt it was “robbed” of Crimea, he said.
He was at pains to rebut the central Western argument that events in Crimea had been directed by a conventional military intervention. Mr. Putin said Russia never exceeded its permitted troop strength of 25,000 soldiers in Crimea as part of the longstanding agreement on the stationing of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.
There had been no combat, he said, and he thanked Ukrainian soldiers who avoided bloodshed. “I cannot remember a single act of intervention without one single shot” being fired, he said.
However, within hours of that declaration, a group of soldiers opened fire while storming a modest Ukrainian military installation in Kubanskoye, near Simferopol. At least one Ukrainian soldier was injured and taken to a hospital, according to a Ukrainian officer inside the base and a spokesman for Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, Vladislav Seleznev. The base appeared to be under control of the soldiers, who wore no insignia.
Buoyed by the crisis, Mr. Putin has vaulted past every line the United States and Europe have tried to draw in recent weeks. The White House indicated that it had not gone after some members of Mr. Putin’s inner circle to leave room for its next move, which the Americans and Europeans might now have to consider making sooner than they expected.
President Obama’s initial sanctions froze assets and banned travel for 11 Russian and Ukrainian figures, including Vladislav Y. Surkov, a longtime adviser to Mr. Putin; Dmitri O. Rogozin, a deputy prime minister of Russia; and Valentina I. Matviyenko, a Putin ally and the chairwoman of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s Parliament. The European Union followed with sanctions against 21 Russian and Ukrainian figures.
“We’re making it clear that there are consequences for their actions,” Mr. Obama said as he announced the sanctions. “We’ll continue to make clear to Russia that further provocations will achieve nothing except to further isolate Russia and diminish its place in the world.”
Over all, the Europeans targeted 10 Russian politicians, seven pro-Russian Crimeans, three Russian military officers in Crimea and the former leader of Ukraine’s Black Sea Fleet, who defected to Russia this month. But the Europeans declined to go after elite figures like Mr. Surkov and Mr. Rogozin out of reluctance to poke Mr. Putin too directly.
Asked whether the European Union had failed to match tough words with strong actions, Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, told journalists: “The U.S. is from Mars and Europe is from Venus. Get used to it.”
He noted that “Europe is closer and will therefore pay a bigger cost for sanctions against Russia.” He also pointed to Europe’s collective decision-making process.
“In the United States, one man takes a decision on the basis of an executive order,” Mr. Sikorski said, “whereas in Europe, for these measures to be legal, we need a consensus of 28 member states.”
The bravado in Moscow struck some American officials as bluster masking real concern about the potential financial bite of future sanctions, and there is some evidence that Russians are anxiously pulling tens of billions of dollars out of American accounts. Nearly $105 billion was shifted out of Treasury custodial accounts by foreign central banks or other institutions in the week that ended last Wednesday, more than three times that of any other recent week.