Separatists step up takeovers in eastern Ukraine; NATO to bolster its presence
In Ukraine, a crisis of bullets and economics
(about 7 hours later)
DONETSK, Ukraine — Tensions escalated in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, with pro-Russian gunmen storming City Hall in the sprawling city of Donetsk and commandeering half a dozen Ukrainian armored vehicles and their crews outside Slovyansk.
DONETSK, Ukraine — As pro-Russia militants stormed City Hall here Wednesday, the interim Ukrainian government was battling more than just a separatist problem.
The events signaled a challenge ahead for the pro-Western Ukrainian government on the second day of its campaign to quell the restive east and came as Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Ukraine was on the verge “of a civil war.”
Kiev’s credibility is on the line as the central government tries to persuade residents fearful of economic hardship that their future lies with Ukraine rather than Russia.
Reflecting increasing alarm among Russia’s neighbors, NATO vowed Wednesday to bolster its military presence in Eastern Europe by deploying more forces.
Scenes of armed occupation unfolded Wednesday across eastern Ukraine. Besides the takeover of City Hall in this city of nearly 1 million, separatists farther north flew the Russian flag over six armored vehicles that fell into their hands after Ukrainian forces surrendered them, either willingly or through intimidation. The Defense Ministry said the loss came after a crowd of pro-Moscow residents, mingling with covert Russian operatives instigating violence in the east, blocked an advance by pro-Kiev forces.
“We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water and more readiness on the land,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after a meeting in Brussels of the alliance’s North Atlantic Council. Rasmussen said more sorties would be flown over the Baltic Sea and that allied ships would be deployed there, in the eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere. The measures will be implemented immediately, and “more will follow, if needed, in the weeks and months to come,” he said.
Nevertheless, many residents here are not eager for the region to follow in the footsteps of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia last month. Ilya, a small-business owner who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used for fear of reprisals, considers himself solidly pro-Ukrainian. Still, the government in Kiev is managing to alienate citizens here, he said, with a little help from the West.
“Our decisions today are about defense, deterrence and de-escalation,” Rasmussen said. “They are entirely in line with our international commitments.”
At a most dangerous and delicate time, just as it battles Moscow for hearts and minds across the east, the pro-Western government is set to initiate a shock therapy of economic measures to meet the demands of an emergency bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
Earlier Wednesday, a line of combat vehicles flying Russian flags rolled into Slovyansk, a city of 120,000 where separatists have set up roadblocks since Saturday. One soldier named Andrei, speaking to the Associated Press, identified the men as part of the 25th Brigade of Ukraine’s airborne forces that had switched to the side of pro-Russian forces. The troops, in green camouflage and packing automatic weapons and grenade launchers, received a warm welcome from local separatists, AP said.
“We don’t trust them,” Ilya said of the country’s interim leaders in the capital as he pushed his infant son in a stroller in the gardens behind City Hall.
The report could not be immediately verified, and it was unclear whether the troops, if they did defect, were acting on their own free will.
Both the government and IMF say they have no choice. Interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk acknowledged that the package is “very unpopular,” but Kiev is broke and desperate for cash, and Russia is no longer seen as a viable benefactor.
AP later reported that another Ukrainian soldier was overheard suggesting that the armored-vehicle crews were forced to turn over their vehicles to the separatists at gunpoint.
No matter how much they publicly offer their unequivocal support for Kiev, the IMF and Western governments that have pledged up to $27 billion in loans refuse to toss their money down the black hole of corruption and waste that is the Ukrainian economy.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement that its troops had entered Kramatorsk, where local separatists and “members of Russian sabotage groups” seized six armored personnel carriers and drove them to Slovyansk, about 10 miles to the north.
Especially here in the east, where cultural and economic ties to Russia are far stronger than in western Ukraine, the bailout is hurting the government’s popularity among an already skeptical audience.
Around 10 a.m. local time, a squad of separatists backed by seven masked gunmen in camouflage stormed the seat of Donetsk’s mayor and local council.
Residents are bracing for the worst. A rollback of long-generous subsidies on natural gas will raise the rate consumers pay on their heating and cooking bills by roughly 63 percent next month. About 24,000 state workers and 80,000 police officers nationwide are set to be laid off. Taxes on vodka, beer and cigarettes will soon go up. Changes in property tax calculations mean that many Ukrainian homeowners will soon be paying more.
By Wednesday afternoon, more than 40 men, some masked and heavily armed, were occupying the building but still allowing workers and local officials to go about their business inside city hall.
Ukraine is already a failed student of IMF programs, with the fund pulling the plug on a package for the previous government of former president Viktor Yanukovych after it abandoned pledged reforms. But at least one of the previous demands of the IMF — a more flexible exchange rate for Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia — came to pass in February when the embattled Central Bank pulled back from defending the currency.
The scene was calmer than earlier in the morning, when suited bureaucrats were running back and forth to vehicles in an attempt to save files and computers. City workers were shuffling to and from meetings under the watchful gaze of camouflage-clad militants who loitered in the corridors, many clutching automatic weapons. Offering glaring evidence of the Kiev government’s tenuous grip on the region, a few local police officers casually strolled outside without attempting to intervene.
Since then, the currency has fallen precipitously, forcing the Central Bank to raise interest rates this week and driving up the cost of credit. Among the effects of a weaker currency: Prescription drug prices have soared because high-quality medicines here are imported.
The pro-Russian militants who took over city hall said they were separate from a similar group that occupied the regional headquarters in this city of nearly 1 million 10 days ago, but they issued at least one similar demand. They called for a referendum on May 11 with two questions: whether the populace agreed with the creation of a new “Donetsk People’s Republic” and, if so, whether it should be part of Ukraine or Russia.
Deepening resentment
“Why should we consider Russia a hostile state?” asked Alexander Zakharchenko, a militant commander at city hall. “They are the closest people to us in the world.” He commands the Donetsk branch of a group called Oplot, a pro-Russian movement that started as a fight club of young men in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, to the north.
In the long run, such austerity measures may be needed to help fix the broken economy , which appeared to reach new heights of corruption when Yanukovych was in power. But they are deepening the sense of resentment against the fragile new government in Kiev.
Russia said it was still planning to attend four-party talks aimed at resolving the Ukrainian crisis in Geneva on Thursday and would use the meeting to press for the launch of constitutional reform in Ukraine.
“How can they do this to us all at once?” said Ilya, who owns a heating supply company that sells German-made boilers in Donetsk. He buys his equipment in euros and sells in hryvnia, so the currency devaluation has increased his costs by 40 percent at a time when no one is buying.
“The meeting is still on the agenda,” Sergei Lavrov, Russian foreign minister, told reporters on Wednesday in Hanoi. “Ukraine must be forced to start genuine rather than cosmetic constitutional reform.”
“People are already scared; they don’t know who to trust,” he said. “They are pushing us toward Russia.”
Lavrov is expected to represent Russia at the talks in Geneva that will likely be attended by U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry; Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief; and Ukraine’s acting foreign minister, Andrii Deshchytsia.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said this month that Ukrainians must learn to help themselves. “If there is that collective drive to eliminate corruption, to establish good governance, to have good procurements, to have true prices for energy and to own their economic destiny,” change “will happen,” she told Euronews.
The United States and European Union are piling pressure on the Kremlin to help de-escalate the crisis by removing support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
IMF demands are rarely popular, and countries around the globe from Argentina to South Korea to Greece have felt their sting. But Aleksey Kulyk, 32, a food industry manager in Donetsk and a pro-Ukrainian activist, said the political situation, coupled with Russian aggression, added a more dangerous element in Ukraine.
However, Lavrov stressed that the only way out of the crisis was to push Kiev to adopt sweeping constitutional reforms that devolved more power to Ukrainian regions.
Pro-Russians “are using the IMF deal against us,” he said. “The truth of whether it is going to hurt as bad as they say does not matter anymore. This is what people believe, and these are people who trust only in their wallets.”
“Sincere friends of the Ukrainian people must force the incumbent authorities finally to move from words to deeds and begin a genuine and comprehensive constitutional reform” to guarantee the rights of all regions of the country, he said.
Calls for a referendum
Meanwhile, Russia was bracing for a possible flood of refugees from Ukraine, according to Konstantin Romadanovsky, head of the Russian Federal Migration Service.
The IMF deal is not the only government move that opponents in the east are latching onto. Following the protests in Kiev that forced Yanukovych to flee in February, the large ethnic Russian minority in the region was outraged by a new law that sought to lower the status of the Russian language in Ukraine. Although the law was quickly rescinded, it is still quoted by separatists who have occupied official buildings in several cities and towns.
“We have some reserves for reinforcing our personnel operating in [Ukrainian] border areas if that is necessary,” he told the Interfax news agency Wednesday.
At the same time, there is no doubt that the government’s first challenge is reclaiming control in the east. Ukrainian forces seem to be treading carefully, out of fear both of wounding civilians and of giving Russia a pretext to openly join the fight. But on the second day of a new campaign to reassert Kiev’s authority in the region, there were few signs of a turning of the tide.
Crimea, the autonomous Ukrainian region annexed by Russia last month, also said it was ready to provide refuge to Ukrainians fleeing political turmoil. “We are ready today to take in all people from southeast Ukraine being persecuted for political motives,” Sergei Aksyonov, the acting governor of Crimea, told Interfax. He blamed right-wing Ukrainian nationalists for the turmoil.
On Wednesday morning, a squad of separatists backed by seven masked gunmen in camouflage stormed the headquarters of Donetsk’s mayor and local council. By afternoon, more than 40 pro-Russia militants had occupied the building, but were allowing officials to go about their business inside.
But Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk accused Moscow of supporting “terrorism” in his country and said “Russian subversives together with local terrorists” have provoked the trouble in the east.
City workers shuffled to and from meetings under the watchful gaze of militants — many of them clutching automatic weapons — who loitered in the corridors. A few police officers strolled outside without attempting to intervene, evidence of the government’s tenuous grip on the region.
“Our Russian neighbors are constructing a new Berlin Wall, and they want to return to the period of the Cold War,” he said in an address to the nation.
The militants said they are not connected with a similar group that occupied the regional headquarters in this city 10 days ago, but they issued at least one similar demand. They called for a referendum on May 11 with two questions: whether the populace agreed with the creation of a new Donetsk People’s Republic and, if so, whether it should be part of Ukraine or Russia.
The White House stood by Ukraine’s response.
“Why should we consider Russia a hostile state?” asked Alexander Zakharchenko, a commander of the militants at City Hall. “They are the closest people to us in the world.” He commands the Donetsk branch of a group called Oplot, a pro-Russia movement that started as a fight club of young men in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, to the north.
“The Ukrainian government has a responsibility to provide law and order, and these provocations in eastern Ukraine are creating a situation in which the government has to respond,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said.
In this region of coal mines and machinery plants, where according to a local saying, “people work, not protest,” residents often tend to vote with their stomachs.
Russia complained Wednesday that its side of the story in the Ukrainian crisis was being suppressed by what it described as an unprecedented propaganda campaign in the West.
And there is no doubt that bread-and-butter issues are influencing the debate here. There are mixed feelings in the east, for instance, over the new government’s move to sign a trade deal with European Union that could lead Russia to slap higher duties on Ukrainian imports.
“Russia’s position on Ukraine is very logical and well argued, but it doesn’t get out because it meets a strong, concrete wall of censorship,” Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, said on state television. “We have never seen anything like this before.”
Ukrainian academics in the east, such as Yuri Makogon at Donetsk National University, are calling for a balanced economic relationship between Russia and Europe. Last year, Russian wrath over an earlier E.U. agreement led Moscow to crack down on Ukrainian imports. That prompted Yanukovych’s veto of the deal, which ultimately sparked a showdown with pro-Western protesters.
Peskov accused European media of ignoring Russian explanations and denying Europeans “the right to the free choice of information.”
Fears of lost jobs if the relationship permanently sours between Kiev and Moscow run deep. For instance, Kramatorsk, the eastern city where pro-Russia residents joined hands to halt the advance by Ukrainian troops Wednesday, is home to the sprawling Novokramatorsky Machinery Plant, a manufacturer of mining equipment heavily reliant on exports to Russia.
He spoke after the European Union urged Russia to cease further efforts to destabilize Ukraine and said that European unity, freedom and democracy were “being challenged in an extremely serious and dangerous way.”
“I don’t know how this will end, but for easterners, it cannot end with bad relations with Russia,” Ilya said.
In Kiev, the government appeared to show a new, if tempered, willingness to back up its pledge in recent days to restore order. On Tuesday, witnesses reported heavy gunfire as a Ukrainian jet tried to land at an airfield in Kramatorsk.
Alex Ryabchyn contributed to this report.
Shortly afterward, Ukrainian troops were ferried to the site by helicopter and encountered a hostile reception by protesters. What followed, officials and witnesses said, was a tense standoff in which the troops repeatedly opened fire to push protesters back beyond the perimeter fences.
It remained unclear whether the area was fully or temporarily secured. But Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, described the move as part of a “counterterrorism operation” against pro-Russian separatists in the northern part of the Donetsk region.
“Soon there will be no terrorists left in Donetsk or any other region,” Turchynov vowed in parliament on Tuesday. “They will sit in prison, their proper place.”
Stanislav Rechinsky, Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, told reporters in Kiev that there were no fatalities during the operation by Ukrainian special forces at the airfield. Witnesses said crowds of pro-Russian activists roughed up a commander in the area who approached them after the airfield was supposed to be secured and that they remained on the airfield’s edge, hurling abuse at military officials.
“The aim of the operation was to avoid casualties among our people, and it is also desirable to save the lives of the separatists, because some of them are our citizens,” Rechinsky said.
In contrast to Ukraine’s official statements, however, Russian state television reported that four to 11 people had been killed in the operation. Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted a pro-Russian militiaman as saying that fighters from Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist Right Sector movement and foreign mercenaries were involved in storming the airfield.
The divergent accounts illustrated the gap between Kiev and Moscow as the crisis appeared to be deepening.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian officials and witnesses reported an ongoing buildup of their forces not far from Izyum, a city near the border of Kharkiv and Donetsk provinces in the east. Izyum is 32 miles northwest of Slovyansk, which Ukrainian forces failed to retake from well-armed pro-Russian activists Sunday in an operation that left two people dead.
An Izyum official involved in the mobilization, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the city was being used as a fueling and feeding station for Ukrainian troops, who began arriving over the weekend and were taking up positions outside the city limits.
Journalists reported seeing columns of armored personnel carriers and buses moving toward Slovyansk. But Rechinsky denied that the Ukrainian military had moved into the city, suggesting that the government remained leery of a full-on confrontation with pro-Russian forces, some of whom are heavily armed with weapons similar or identical to those used by the Russian military. Instead, the government focused on further attempts to defuse the situation in Slovyansk and elsewhere through negotiations.
“In Slovyansk, there is no equipment, no troops, although there are many panicked reports in the media about the movement of tanks, armored personnel carriers and so on,” Rechinsky said.
Isabel Gorst in Moscow and Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.
