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Ukraine moves against pro-Russian gunmen in East, triggering bloody gun battle Ukraine moves against pro-Russian gunmen in East, triggering bloody gun battle
(35 minutes later)
MOSCOW — The conflict between pro-Russian gunmen and Ukrainian authorities turned bloody Sunday, with one security serviceman killed and reports of people wounded on both sides, escalating the struggle for the country’s east one week after separatists began occupying a series of government buildings. MOSCOW —The conflict between pro-Russian gunmen and Ukrainian authorities turned bloody on Sunday, with one security serviceman killed and reports of people wounded on both sides, escalating the struggle for the eastern part of the country a week after separatists began systematically occupying government buildings.
The gun battle — the first reported between Ukrainian authorities and pro-Russian separatists — was set off as Ukraine’s top policeman declared an “anti-terrorist” operation Sunday against a burgeoning revolt that enveloped several small towns over the weekend. The systematic takeovers of police stations and other government buildings in the Donetsk region, close to the Russian border, led officials in Kiev to accuse Moscow of directing a coordinated campaign of aggression against Ukraine. Gunfire – the first reported between authorities and pro-Russian separatists – was set off as Ukraine declared an “anti-terrorist” operation Sunday using the Army against a burgeoning revolt in the Donetsk region over the weekend.
One member of Urkaine’s security service was shot to death Sunday in the fight for Slavyansk, 90 miles from the Russian border. Reports were contradictory about whether the officer died inside the city, where the police station had been occupied Saturday, or as a Ukrainian convoy approached the city. Five officers were reported wounded, along with four local residents. “The blood of Ukrainian heroes has been shed in a war which the Russian Federation is waging against Ukraine,” President Oleksander Turchynov said in an address to the nation Sunday evening. “The aggressor has not stopped and is continuing to sow disorder in the east of the country.”
Ukraine lost its Crimean peninsula to Russia last month in circumstances that looked highly similar to the events of the past week in eastern Ukraine, where men in unmarked uniforms began appearing and declaring themselves as local self-defense forces. In Crimea, many of them actually were Russian troops who surrounded Ukrainians in their bases and paved the way for a quickly held referendum that resulted in Russia annexing Crimea. The armed assaults on government buildings in the Donetsk region, close to the Russian border, alarmed not only the leadership in Kiev – which accused Moscow of a coordinated campaign of aggression against Ukraine – but those in the West as well. The attacks, officials said, were reminiscent of the shadowy invasion of the Crimean Peninsula, which resulted in its annexation by Russia last month.
In a statement Sunday, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made the same comparison to Crimea and called the unrest “a concerted campaign of violence by pro-Russian separatists, aiming to destabilize Ukraine as a sovereign state.” “Well, it has all the telltale signs of what we saw in Crimea,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday. “It’s professional, it’s coordinated, there’s nothing grass-roots-seeming about it.”
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power echoed that accusation and said that the United States is prepared to intensify sanctions against Russia if its actions continue. If the attacks continued, she warned, the United States would intensify its sanctions against Russia. As for Ukraine, it lost Crimea without firing a shot and has vowed not to repeat the mistake in the east.
“Well, it has all the telltale signs of what we saw in Crimea,” Power said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” “It’s professional, it’s coordinated, there’s nothing grass-roots-seeming about it. The forces are doing in each of the six or seven cities that they’ve been active in exactly the same thing. So, certainly it bears the telltale signs of Moscow’s involvement.” Although the West has been cautioning Ukraine against starting a shooting war with the separatists for fear that would offer Russia a pretext for invasion, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said he had no alternative but to begin an “anti-terrorist” campaign Sunday after days of urging separatists to go home peacefully.
Donetsk already had been the scene of a week-long occupation of the regional government headquarters by pro-Russian agitators. And thousands of Russian troops — American and NATO officials put the number at 40,000 — are nearby, conducting a long-running exercise on their side of the border. Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement Sunday night calling the Ukraine’s actions “criminal,” adding that “it is now the West’s responsibility to prevent civil war in Ukraine.”
Eastern Ukraine, generally hostile to the new government in Kiev and tied by language and business interests to Russia, has become the focal point of Ukraine’s continuing political crisis. But public support for separatism has been scant, and that may have provoked the more aggressive actions of the past week. Officials in Kiev accuse Russia of fomenting trouble to create a pretext for invasion. Moscow has repeatedly denied that. Sunday night, there was little evidence that the pro-Russians had any inclination to retreat. Last Monday, they overran the Donetsk regional administration building and have held it ever since. Saturday they took Donetsk regional police headquarters while other men in camouflage overwhelmed the Slavyansk police department, 55 miles from Donetsk. By Sunday they had stormed other towns in the region.
Officials in Washington on Saturday expressed grave concerns about the developments in Ukraine and placed the responsibility squarely on Russian President Vladi­mir Putin. A captain in Ukraine’s security service was shot to death Sunday in a fight outside Slavyansk, Turchynov said, and two colonels were wounded. Four local residents were wounded, according to other reports.
“We are very concerned by the concerted campaign we see underway in eastern Ukraine today by pro-Russian separatists, apparently with support from Russia, who are inciting violence and sabotage and seeking to undermine and destabilize the Ukrainian state,” said Laura Lucas Magnuson, a National Security Council spokeswoman, in an e-mailed statement. “We saw similar so-called protest activities in Crimea before Russia’s purported annexation. We call on President Putin and his government to cease all efforts to destabilize Ukraine, and we caution against further military intervention. We will continue to monitor the situation closely.” The annexation of Crimea has been wildly popular in Russia. In Moscow, Russian flags now hang from many balconies. President Vladimir Putin’s ratings are higher than ever. Even so, there are objections, to the invasion and to the Russian media’s coverage, which has presented Ukraine’s Russian-speakers under threat and in need of protection. Moscow considers the Kiev government illegitimate, and the news media routinely calls it a “fascist junta” in the pay of the United States.
A senior State Department official said that during a call Saturday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry “made clear that if Russia did not take steps to de-escalate in eastern Ukraine and move its troops back from Ukraine’s border, there would be additional consequences.” About 10,000 demonstrators in Moscow rallied Sunday to protest such coverage – and a wider crackdown on independent media in a “March of Truth.” Some carried Ukrainian flags. Others posters supporting Ukrainians. They were far fewer in number than the tens of thousands who marched along the same route March 15 to demonstrate against Russian intervention in Ukraine.
The spokesman said Kerry expressed strong concern to Lavrov that Saturday’s attacks were orchestrated and synchronized and that “militants were equipped with specialized Russian weapons and the same uniforms as those worn by the Russian forces that invaded Crimea.” Trouble roiled one town after another in Ukraine over the weekend. Mariupol, a city of nearly 500,000 in the Donetsk region, was beset by several hundred separatists Sunday who occupied the city council and raised Russian and “Donetsk Republic” flags, recently introduced by separatists. Local news reports said the attackers called themselves “the people’s army of Donbass,” which refers to the region around Donetsk.
The White House said in a statement that Vice President Biden would travel to Kiev this month to meet with government officials and “underscore the United States’ strong support for a united, democratic Ukraine that makes its own choices about its future path.” The city council in Makeyevka, about 16 miles east of Donetsk, was also seized, local reporters said, and about a thousand demonstrators rallied outside wearing black and orange St. George ribbons, which represent the Soviet victory in World War II and have been adopted as an emblem of pro-Russian sentiment.
In his meetings, which are scheduled for April 22, Biden “will discuss the latest developments in eastern Ukraine,” the statement said. The police station, city council and prosecutor’s office in the small town of Yenakiev, 40 miles east of Donetsk, was seized Sunday, according to Ukrainian newspaper reports. Former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who has been accused of helping Moscow stir up unrest, comes from the town.
Ukraine’s acting foreign minister, Andriy Deschytsia, spoke by phone Saturday with Lavrov and “demanded an end to the provocative activity by Russian special agents in the eastern regions of Ukraine,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Yanukovych fled to Russia in February after three months of demonstrations against his government in Kiev, set off by his refusal to sign an agreement for closer cooperation with the European Union. Instead, he wanted to pursue economic ties with Russia, an inclination more popular in the Russian-speaking east than the rest of the country.
Deschytsia said Russia is trying to disrupt a meeting Thursday in Geneva that is scheduled to bring together representatives of Russia, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States to seek a resolution to the Ukrainian issue. Russia has insisted that the Ukrainian delegation represent a broad sample of Ukrainian opinion, not just the views of the government in Kiev. In Kramatorsk, a city of 200,000 about 60 miles north of Donetsk, the police department was captured Saturday night by heavily armed men who were shooting at the building and in the air, in a tense scene shown in an online video. The city council building was also reported in separatist control.
Lavrov, in a television interview to be broadcast Sunday, said no Russian agents or troops are in southeastern Ukraine. Police and residents of the small town of Krasniy Liman reportedly fought off an attempt to take offices there.
An issue facing authorities in Kiev is the reliability of their police forces. The head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s main office in the Donetsk region, Kostiantyn Pozhydayev, met with pro-Russian demonstrators at his headquarters Saturday and announced his resignation. In the Kharkiv region north of Donetsk, 50 people were injured when separatists attacked a pro-Ukrainian rally with sticks and stun grenades, local police reported. No violence was reported in Luhansk, in the easternmost part of Ukraine.
There were reports that the militants had taken over the building, but the Interior Ministry denied that. Armed protesters also assaulted buildings in the towns of Kramatorsk and Krasny Liman. The unrest has been accompanied by the unseen presence of Russian troops along the border. NATO and U.S. officials estimate there are 40,000 there. Russia has consistently denied the troops are any threat.
In Slavyansk, the mayor, Nelly Shlepa, told the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN that her city would immediately hold a referendum. Crimea, before it appealed to Russia for annexation, conducted a similar snap vote. Turchynov’s announcement that the Army would be used helped solved the problem of local police, many of whom were reportedly defecting to the pro-Russian side. And the Army might also be a more appropriate force to use against a potential invasion.
Shlepa said that 92 percent of Slavyansk’s business is with Russia, and she referred to Russia as an “older brother.” The Army, however, is poorly equipped and U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday it was time for the United States to do something about it.
“We ought to at least, for God’s sake, give them some light weapons with which to defend themselves,” McCain said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.”