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Putin changes course, admits Russian troops were in Crimea before vote Putin’s remarks during national Q&A raise fears of future moves against Ukraine
(about 5 hours later)
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin, who repeatedly denied Russian troops had entered Crimea before the March referendum there, changed his version of those events Thursday, telling the nation that they had indeed been there all along. MOSCOW — A confident President Vladimir Putin used his annual televised meeting with the nation Thursday to portray a powerful Russia – one that is dismissive of the West, had troops operating in Crimea even as it denied them, has traditionally regarded a large swath of southeastern Ukraine as Russian territory and doesn’t care if the rest of the world objects to its actions.
But the green-uniformed men observed in eastern Ukraine right now, storming buildings and raising the Russian flag, are not Russian, he said. “Those are local residents,” he said. Somewhat ominously, Putin reminded his audience that Russia’s parliament had given him the authority to send troops into Ukraine. Southeastern Ukraine — Luhansk, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Odessa — had been part of the Russian empire, called New Russia, he pointed out. The Soviet Union had turned it over to Ukraine. “Why? Let God judge them.” The argument was reminiscent of the one he had made earlier about Crimea, which was given to Ukraine in 1954.
Appearing on a televised call-in program, Putin even took a video question from Edward Snowden, the American former intelligence contractor who revealed large-scale U.S. surveillance programs and has taken refuge in Russia. Putin greeted him as a fellow spy, saying, “We can talk one professional language.” Putin’s remarks raised fears that he was justifying a possible incursion into southeastern Ukraine, where the United States says 40,000 Russian troops are massed on the border. U.S. and European officials have accused Russia of organizing the armed men and agitators who have been capturing government buildings in southeastern Ukraine and raising Russian flags. Putin denies it. The West says he is lying.
Snowden asked if Russia spied on its citizens the way he said the United States did. Putin denied it, saying that Russian eavesdropping is strictly controlled by the law. “Nonsense,” he said Thursday. “There are no Russian units in eastern Ukraine — no special services, no tactical advisers. All this is being done by the local residents.”
Putin made several ominous statements about eastern Ukraine, referring to it as “New Russia,” observing that Russia’s legislature had authorized him to use troops there and accusing the Kiev government of carrying out crimes against its people. In early March, Putin denied that well-equipped troops operating on Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and wearing green uniforms without insignia were Russian — anyone could buy those uniforms, he said. They were widely known as the green men. Thursday, when asked about those green men, he said they were Russian. Their presence had been necessary, he said, to keep order so that Crimeans could decide their future in a referendum.
Instead of understanding that they had problems to solve in the east, Putin said, Ukrainian authorities began using tanks against their people. “We didn’t want any tanks, any nationalist combat units or people with extreme views armed with automatic weapons,” he said. “Of course, Russian servicemen backed the Crimean self-defense forces.”
“It’s another serious crime of today’s authorities in Kiev,” he said. “They are dragging their country down the abyss together.” The hastily arranged March 16 referendum resulted in 96 percent counted as voting for joining Russia. “In this situation,” he said, “we couldn’t have done otherwise.”
And, making it sound more like a warning than reassurance, he alluded to the use of force in Ukraine. “I very much hope I will not have to use this right and we will manage to resolve all pressing, not to say, critical contemporary problems of Ukraine with political and diplomatic means,” he said. For just shy of four hours Thursday, Putin answered questions from a studio audience, from a video-connected crowd standing in the heart of the Crimean city of Sevastopol, and from people calling in and texting from around the nation. Of 2 million calls and 400,000 texts, he answered around 70 questions. Last year, he spoke for four hours and 47 minutes.
Putin said southeastern Ukraine was traditionally Russian and had been called “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia,” a name he said dated from czarist times. He said those territories were given to Ukraine by Soviet authorities when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. Even Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who revealed a wide-scale U.S. surveillance program and has taken refuge from prosecution in Russia, came out of the shadows to ask a video question.
“Why?” he asked, questioning the Soviet leaders’ decision. “May God judge them.” Does Russia spy on its citizens the way the United States did? No, Putin said.
The United States and Europe in recent days have accused Putin and other Russian officials of lying when they say Moscow has no hand in the disorder playing out in eastern Ukraine, close to Russia’s border. “Thank God, our special services are strictly controlled by the state and society, and their activity is regulated by law,” he said.
“Of course we had our servicemen behind the self-defense units of Crimea,” Putin said in his televised meeting with the nation. “We had to make sure what is happening now in eastern Ukraine didn’t happen there.” The U.S. Embassy in Moscow tweeted in contradiction: “Snowden would probably be interested to know that Russian laws allow the control, storage and study of all data in the communication networks of the Russian Federation.”
Putin was asked in regard to Crimea: “Who were those men in green uniforms?” They were Russian troops, he answered, deployed to make sure residents of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula were safe from assault by the government in Kiev. They also needed the proper conditions, he said, so they could safely vote in a referendum on secession. Russia annexed Crimea after a March 16 referendum, in which voters approved leaving Ukraine. Putin’s program was broadcast live on three main television channels and three radio stations. From across the nation, people added their voices to a chorus of “thank-you-Mr.-Putins,” expressing their gratitude for his acquisition of Crimea and his standing up to the West. Journalists and artists lauded him. “There is no legitimate power in Ukraine today,” lamented Karen Shakhnazarov, a filmmaker, who said that as a 20-year-old, his father had fought in the Soviet Army to free Crimea in World War II.
In early March, reporters asked Putin about the appearance in Crimea of mysterious armed men in green uniforms, which had no insignia but resembled Russian gear. Andrei Norkin, a journalist for Kommersant Radio, said he was worried about the level of patriotism and urged Putin to support legislation that would set up military academies where schoolchildren could study under inspiring conditions.
“There are many uniforms there that are similar. You can go to a store and buy any kind of uniform,” he said then. “Those were local self-defense units.” “They learn respect for women and older people,” he said. “At cadet schools, they are trained to become real men.”
A reporter asked then if Putin considered it possible Crimea could join Russia. A few critics were heard, giving Putin the opportunity to describe how misguided they were.
“No, we do not,” he said. “Laws are being developed that will make culture just a servant of ideology,” said Irina Prokhorova, a literary critic, head of the Civic Platform party and sister of Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov. People are being persecuted if they object to the annexation of Crimea, she said, calling it a “sad and forced decision.”
In Crimea, Putin asserted Thursday, the local largely ethnic Russian population was under threat from Kiev. This is not 1937, Putin said, when people were being sent to labor camps.
“They had 20,000 well-armed Ukrainian troops,” he said. “We had to protect the civilian population from even the slightest opportunity of those weapons being used against them.” “Some members of the Russian intelligentsia are unaccustomed to the fact that they might meet resistance or have someone else express a different position and disagree with their position,” Putin said. When contradicted, he said, they get emotional.
Putin, answering questions from a studio audience, from a video-connected crowd standing in the heart of the Crimean city of Sevastopol and from people calling in and texting from around the nation, said that Russian troops were not, however, now present in eastern Ukraine. He said he had heard that some people, regarding Crimea, “want their country to lose and think that this is a good thing. Here, too, there is a continuity. As is known, during the First World War, the Bolsheviks also wanted the Russian government and Russia in general to lose, and the situation quickly got out of hand, which led to the revolution.
“In Crimea, the threats to the Russian-speaking population were quite real, palpable,” he said Thursday. “They turned to Russia for help. Russia never planned any annexation or military actions in Crimea. “There is some sort of historical continuity here, not the best, though. However, I agree that in any case, we should not slip into some extreme forms of dealing with each other’s views or cast aspersions on people for their opinions. I will do my best to prevent this from happening.”
“But when this situation came up, when people said they wanted self-determination, that’s when we knew what we had to do. Everyone in the National Security Council agreed. Everything was done quickly and decisively. There have been no analogues in global history.” He dismissed U.S. complaints about Russian behavior as a double standard. “Why isn’t Russia allowed to defend its own interests?” And he criticized the sanctions the United States has imposed on Russia because of its annexation of Crimea as counterproductive.
“If you try to punish someone like mischievous kids and put them in a corner kneeling on frozen peas so it hurts them, then in the end, you will cut off the branch on which you are sitting,” he said, mixing his metaphors.
Many of his friends — wealthy men — were targeted by the sanctions. They had nothing to do with Crimea, he said.
“I should tell you,” he said, “that I don’t feel ashamed of my friends.”
Would he remarry, someone asked, referring to Putin’s recent divorce.
“First, I have to help my former wife get married, then think about myself.”
His comments were once again met by applause.