Ukraine prepared to offer autonomy to eastern regions if Russia pulls back troops
Diplomats reach deal on defusing Ukraine crisis
(about 7 hours later)
GENEVA — Ukraine was prepared to offer a level of autonomy to its eastern regions Thursday in exchange for Russia’s agreement to withdraw its troops from the Ukrainian border and end its efforts to destabilize the east.
GENEVA — Top diplomats meeting here on the Ukraine crisis Thursday agreed that all parties, including separatists and their Russian backers, would stop violent and provocative acts, and that all illegal groups would be disarmed in steps Secretary of State John F. Kerry said must begin within days to be taken seriously.
That pledge, to be made at diplomatic talks here aimed at calming the increasingly volatile Ukrainian situation, was accompanied by a U.S. warning of more economic sanctions against Russia if it does not stand down.
The breakthrough, which Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov referred to as “a compromise, of sorts,” came after nearly seven hours of negotiations among Lavrov, Kerry, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
“I think we still have a chance to de-escalate the situation using diplomatic means,” acting Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia told reporters on the eve of his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
A joint statement made no mention of the presence of what the United States has said are 40,000 Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s eastern and southern borders.
But as the day-long meetings at a luxury Geneva hotel began, Obama administration officials expressed little optimism that either the Ukrainian promise or the U.S. threat would change Russian calculations.
(Read: Full text of the joint statement on Ukraine)
Asked at the beginning of a separate session with Ashton whether he thought any progress would be made, a grim-faced Kerry shrugged and lifted his hands.
But Kerry said that it made clear that Russia is “absolutely prepared to begin to respond with respect to troops,” provided the terms of the agreement are observed.
The four participants sat down together at midmorning amid increasingly dire reports from Ukraine, where government forces struggled with armed pro-Russian separatists in an effort to restore order across a wide span of eastern towns and cities.
Kerry said there had been “no discussion at this point in time about removal of existing sanctions” imposed by the United States and Europe in response to Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea, which he said the allies still consider illegal.
The United States and its European allies charge that the separatists are being directed and funded by Moscow, which has massed 40,000 troops on Ukraine’s eastern border. Russia last month annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea, after similar agitation and the infiltration of troops wearing uniforms without insignia.
“Everybody understands that would be premature where we’re putting to the test the bona fides and proffers” made in the agreement.
Russia charges that the interim Ukrainian government in Kiev, installed in late February after a pro-Russian regime was ousted amid popular protests, is illegitimate. It has characterized the separatists as acting out of legitimate concern that their interests are being undermined by Western-backed leaders in Kiev.
At the same time, he said, the Obama administration’s threat of more substantial sanctions remains if the deal falls apart. “I made clear to Foreign Minister Lavrov today that if we’re not able to see progress on immediate efforts to implement” the agreement beginning “this weekend,…we will have no choice but to impose further costs on Russia.”
In his Geneva presentation, Deshchytsia was expected to offer a package of measures to address demands by Russia and the separatists for a more decentralized Ukrainian government. A senior State Department official said the measures would allow regions “to keep more of their money, elect leaders and have more say in federal affairs than in the past.”
In addition to disarmament of “illegal groups,” the seven-paragraph agreement called for the return of “all illegally seized buildings ... to legitimate owners” and said that “all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.”
“The goal is to make the case that grievances and concerns about decentralization and minority rights . . . can be addressed through the democratic process,” including ongoing constitutional reforms and presidential elections scheduled for May 25.
As Ukraine’s interim government has previously offered, the agreement also grants amnesty to protesters, “with the exception of those found guilty of capital crimes.”
“The Ukrainian view is that they have worked very hard to open space in this process for legitimate concerns, legitimate grievances, and they want to use this process for that, rather than to have . . . external actors” determining their future,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the closed-door meetings.
The document stood in stark contrast to events on the ground in Ukraine Thursday, where three pro-Russian separatists were reported killed in confrontations with government forces in eastern Ukraine. In a news conference in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin reminded that the Russian parliament had authorized military action in Ukraine.
But officials expressed little confidence that Russia is seriously interested in anything short of full economic and political control of the east, if not all of Ukraine, and questioned whether any appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin will resonate. While they believe sanctions can have a devastating effect on a weakening Russian economy, they acknowledged that such actions have a lag time far behind fast-moving events on the ground in Ukraine.
Referring to a portion of the agreement that “rejected all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance, including anti-Semitism,” Kerry noted that “just in the last couple of days, notices were sent to Jews in one city indicated that they have to identify themselves as Jews, and obviously the accompanying threat implied is, or suffer the consequences.”
Talks are also expected to focus on Ukraine’s floundering economy, and on threats by Putin to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine if it does not pay a gas debt he described as potentially tens of billions of dollars under a 2009 contract. In a letter last week to 18 European governments, he warned that gas flows to Europe through Ukraine could be affected.
“In the year 2014…this is not just intolerable,” he said, “it is grotesque.” Reports of the anti-Semitic notices first surfaced in Israeli publications early Thursday, with reports saying the flyers had been distributed by separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.
At the White House on Wednesday, senior Obama aides tempered expectations about a potential breakthrough at the Geneva talks and reiterated that they have agreed with European allies to enact additional economic sanctions if Russia does not help to de-escalate the situation.
Other elements in the document included agreement that the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe, whose monitors are already on the ground in Ukraine, should “play a leading role in assisting Ukrainian authorities and local communities in the immediate implementation of these deescalation measures...beginning in the coming days.” It said that the United States, the EU and Russia would all provide monitors.
President Obama will call European leaders in the coming days, and Vice President Biden is set to travel to Ukraine next week to express solidarity with interim government in Kiev, the officials said.
It voiced support for the constitutional reform process currently underway in Ukraine, and insisted that it be “inclusive, transparent and accountable.” The process, it said, “will include the immediate establishment of a broad national dialogue, with outreach to all of Ukraine’s regions and political constituencies, and allow for the consideration of public comments and proposed amendments.”
White House press secretary Jay Carney, talking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Pennsylvania, where Obama spoke about the economy, emphasized that although the discussions in Geneva were important, the president believes that “talk is one thing, but action is another.”
Kerry called the document “a good day’s work,” but emphasized that “words on paper” were no substitute for action.
Officials said the severity of the sanctions will be determined by the outcome of the Geneva meeting and that European partners are on board with a range of options if Moscow refuses to make concessions.
“On laying down of weapons,” he said, the responsibility will lie with those who have organized” the separatists, “equipped them with weapons, put the uniforms on them and been engaged in the process of guiding them over the course of this operation…we’ve made it clear that Russia has a huge impact on all of those forces.”
At a minimum, the administration is prepared to add to the list of Russian individuals under asset freezes and visa bans that were imposed last month after Moscow’s intervention and subsequent takeover of Crimea. An executive order Obama signed last month also authorizes full-scale sanctions against entire Russian economic sectors.
At the beginning of the session, the first extended dialogue between Russia and Ukraine’s interim government since the crisis began in late February, the Ukrainian government outlined its plans to offer a significant autonomy go its eastern regions. Kerry said that according to the plan, most government functions except defense and foreign policy would be left to the regions.
But there is disagreement among senior Obama national security advisers about how hard to come down on Russia absent a full-fledged invasion of eastern Ukraine.
The Europeans have expressed reservations about the wider sanctions, which are likely to affect their economies far more than that of the United States. The administration has been reluctant to move unilaterally without European support, which it believes will make the sanctions both morally and economically more powerful.
Neither three previous Kerry-Lavrov meetings nor sanctions imposed thus far,appear to have altered Moscow’s strategy in Ukraine.
David Nakamura in Washington contributed to this report.
