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Separatist Leader Vows to Ignore Deal Reached on Ukraine Pro-Russian Insurgents Balk at Terms of Pact in Ukraine
(about 7 hours later)
DONETSK, Ukraine — The leader of a group of pro-Russian separatists said Friday that he would ignore an international agreement to de-escalate the political crisis in eastern Ukraine, saying his group would remain in the government buildings in the regional capital of Donetsk that it commandeered last weekend. KIEV, Ukraine — An American-backed deal to settle the crisis in eastern Ukraine fell flat on Friday as pro-Russian militants vowed to stay in occupied government buildings, dashing hopes of a swift end to an insurgency that the authorities in Kiev portray as a Kremlin-orchestrated effort to put Ukraine’s industrial heartland under Russian control.
The agreement, announced on Thursday by the United States, Russia, the European Union and Ukraine, called for all protesters to vacate the buildings they have occupied and lay down their arms. But the agreement, reached in Geneva on Thursday by diplomats from the European Union, Russia, Ukraine and the United States, appeared to arrest, at least temporarily, the momentum of separatist unrest in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east. Armed pro-Russian militants, who have seized buildings in at least 10 towns and cities since Feb. 6, paused their efforts to purge all central government authority from the populous Donetsk region.
But Denis Pushilin, the leader of the separatist group in Donetsk, which has declared an independent People’s Republic of Donetsk that no nation has recognized, told reporters that his followers would not comply until the interim government in Kiev resigned. He repeated his group’s demand for a referendum on the region’s future, similar to the one that preceded the annexation of Crimea by Russia last month. It was clear all along that for the pact to have a chance of success, the Kremlin would have to pressure the militants to leave the buildings they had seized. So far, it has shown no inclination to do so, blaming the Ukrainian government for the turmoil and denying that Russia has any ties to the rebels.
Mr. Pushilin’s group is only one of many groups of pro-Russian militants that have seized buldings and arms in the east, and it was not immediately clear whether others would follow his line. But his rejection highlighted a critical omission in the Geneva agreement. With militants vowing to ignore the agreement but halting what had been a daily expansion of territory under their control, officials in Kiev, the capital, voiced some hope that a settlement was still possible. They were skeptical, however, about Russia’s willingness to push the separatists to disarm and vacate occupied buildings.
Russia “did not sign anything for us,” Mr. Pushilin said at a news conference in Donetsk. “If Russia is responsible before not just Ukraine but the world community, it should prove it,” said Andrii Deshchytsia, the acting Ukrainian foreign minister, who took part in the Geneva talks.
There was no immediate official reaction from the Kremlin. Western officials said the United States planned to reassure Eastern European members of NATO by conducting company-size — about 150 soldiers — ground force exercises in Estonia and Poland. The exercises would last a couple of weeks and would most likely be followed by other troop rotations in the region.
In an apparent effort to help calm the crisis, the politician Yulia V. Tymoshenko, a presidential candidate formerly imprisoned by Ukraine’s ousted pro-Russian government, made a surprise visit to Donetsk on Friday. She told reporters at a news conference that she had come to “listen to the complaints of the demonstrators.” In a sign of the chasm separating Russian and Ukrainian views, Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Friday that made no mention of the pro-Russian militants driving the unrest. It said the call for militants to disarm “meant in the first place” the disarming of Ukrainian nationalist groups hostile to Russia, like Right Sector “and other pro-fascist groups which took part in the February coup in Kiev.”
It was unclear whether Mr. Pushilin would be receptive to Ms. Tymoshenko, a former prime minister who has opposed closer ties to Russia, an underlying tension in the crisis that has convulsed Ukraine for months. The state-run Russian television channel, Rossiya, reporting from an occupied building in Horlivka in the Donetsk region, featured a masked gunman who pledged to “fight to the end for his convictions.” He displayed an armband emblazoned with a swastika-like symbol, which he said had been seized from supporters of the Ukrainian government.
Mr. Pushilin said he did not consider the new government in Kiev to be legitimate, and that if illegally occupied buildings are to be relinquished, then its officials, including the president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, should vacate the presidential administration building in the capital. Doubts about the Kremlin’s readiness to push pro-Russian militants to surrender their guns have been strengthened by its insistence that it has no hand in or control over the separatist unrest, which Washington and Kiev believe is the result of a covert Russian operation involving, in some places, the direct action of special forces.
The central government has not pulled military forces back from a town north of here, Slovyansk, that was seized by pro-Russian separatists a week ago. Mr. Pushilin said Kiev would use the Geneva agreement to stall on promised constitutional changes to grant eastern Ukrainian regions greater autonomy. “I don’t know Russia’s intentions,” Mr. Deshchytsia said, noting that during the negotiations, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, had repeatedly asserted “that Russia was not involved.” He said Mr. Lavrov had been “cooperative and aggressive at the same time.”
The Ukrainian authorities signaled on Friday that they were moving ahead with one provision of the Geneva agreement. Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk told the Parliament on Friday morning that the government had drafted a law offering amnesty to protesters who leave occupied government buildings and lay down arms, The Associated Press reported. Russia’s denials have stirred concerns that it went along with the agreement not to curb the turmoil in eastern Ukraine, but to blunt American and European calls for tougher sanctions that could severely damage Russia’s already sickly economy. Western sanctions have so far been limited to a travel ban and asset freeze on a few dozen individuals and a Russian bank.
The diplomatic accord reached on Thursday, while limited in scope, represented the first time Russia and Ukraine had found common ground since protests toppled a pro-Moscow government in Kiev, leading the Kremlin to annex the Crimean Peninsula and threaten other parts of Ukraine with 40,000 troops on its border. The deal came hours after Ukrainian security forces killed three pro-Russian activists in a firefight. Secretary of State John Kerry called Mr. Lavrov on Friday and urged Russia to ensure “full and immediate compliance” with the agreement, a senior State Department official said. Mr. Kerry, the official added, “made clear that the next few days would be a pivotal period for all sides to implement the statement’s provisions, particularly that all illegal armed groups must be disarmed and all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners.”
But neither President Obama in Washington nor President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow signaled that the crisis over Ukraine was over. During a long televised question-and-answer session before the agreement was announced, Mr. Putin asserted historic claims over Ukrainian territory and the right to send in Russian troops. Mr. Kerry also spoke with Ukraine’s prime minister and praised him for moving to carry out the deal, including by increasing transparency and guaranteeing amnesty for militants who disarm and leave occupied buildings. In Washington on Friday, Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, denounced anti-Semitic fliers distributed in Donetsk, which instructed Jewish residents to “register,” as “utterly sickening” and said Mr. Obama had “expressed his disgust quite bluntly.”
Speaking after the agreement was announced, Mr. Obama sounded a skeptical note, saying it offered “a glimmer of hope,” but “we’re not going to count on it,” and adding that the United States would take more punitive action if Russia did not abide by its terms. “They have no place in the 21st century,” she said.
“My hope is that we actually do see follow-through over the next several days,” Mr. Obama told reporters at the White House, “but I don’t think, given past performance, that we can count on that, and we have to be prepared to potentially respond to what continue to be efforts of interference by the Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine.” American officials gave no firm timeline for when they expect militants to pull back, but said it should be days, not weeks. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is scheduled to travel to Ukraine on Tuesday, which could be a moment to assess whether the agreement has yielded results.
Mr. Obama did not outline what those measures might be, but aides said that the White House had assembled a list of more Russian figures and institutions to sanction if Russia did not pull back and the situation in Ukraine continued to worsen. The president does not plan to impose more stringent measures against whole sectors of the Russian economy unless Moscow sends in troops or otherwise takes more drastic steps, aides said, a recognition of resistance in Europe, which is more tied economically to Russia. Russia responded with fury on Friday to remarks the day before by Mr. Obama, who said that the deal offered a “glimmer of hope” but that the United States would take more punitive action if Russia did not abide by it. The Foreign Ministry blasted Washington for making “ultimatums” and for moving “to threaten us with new sanctions, which is absolutely unacceptable.”
Hoping to coordinate a future response with European leaders, Mr. Obama spoke by telephone with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain on Thursday. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called Slovakia’s prime minister for the second time in recent days to press him to help reverse the flow of a natural gas pipeline to reduce Ukraine’s reliance on Russian energy. The diplomatic accord, while limited in scope and skirting the contentious issue of the Crimean Peninsula, was the first time Russia and Ukraine had found common ground since protests toppled a pro-Moscow government in Kiev in February, leading the Kremlin to seize Crimea and mass some 40,000 troops on Ukraine’s eastern border.
Tension on the ground continued to mount in the hours before the Geneva agreement was announced. Pro-Russian protesters tried to storm a Ukrainian base in the eastern city of Mariupol, prompting a firefight that left three of the activists dead, 13 wounded and 63 captured, according to Ukraine’s interim interior minister. In Donetsk, fliers appeared ordering Jews to register with the authorities. Speaking to reporters on Thursday at the White House, Mr. Obama sounded a skeptical note. “My hope is that we actually do see follow-through over the next several days,” he said. “But I don’t think, given past performance, that we can count on that, and we have to be prepared to potentially respond to what continue to be efforts of interference by the Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine.”
The Geneva agreement — hammered out during six hours of talks by Secretary of State John Kerry; Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia; Andrii Deshchytsia, the interim Ukrainian foreign minister; and Catherine Ashton, the foreign policy chief for the European Union — called on all sides in Ukraine to refrain from violence or provocative behavior and rejected all forms of intolerance, including anti-Semitism. Militants holed up in the headquarters of the Donetsk regional administration — which they seized on Feb. 6 at the start of a well-coordinated campaign of assaults on government buildings across the region — showed no sign on Friday of abiding by the agreement. Gunmen in Slovyansk, a city in the north of the region, also seemed unwilling to leave the local police station and other seized buildings.
“All illegal armed groups must be disarmed,” the joint statement said. “All illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.” Denis Pushilin — the leader of a separatist group that seized the Donetsk government headquarters; proclaimed an independent nation, the Donetsk People’s Republic; and demanded a referendum on the future status of the region — said he was not bound by any commitment made by Russia. He added that he would ignore the Geneva agreement until the interim Ukrainian government, established after the Feb. 21 flight of President Viktor F. Yanukovych, disbanded.
In exchange, the interim Ukrainian government agreed to grant amnesty to protesters who leave the government buildings they have occupied and give up their arms, unless they are suspected of murder or other capital crimes. The Kiev government would also ensure that constitutional revisions involve “outreach to all of Ukraine’s regions and political constituencies,” a reference to Russian speakers in the eastern part of the country. “They did not sign anything for us. They signed for the Russian Federation,” Mr. Pushilin told reporters. “They do not ask our advice, but I believe all the actions of the Russian Federation were intended to solve the situation peacefully.”
But the agreement was as notable for what it did not address as for what it did. It did not require Russia to remove its troops from the border, nor did it commit Moscow to hold direct talks with Ukrainian officials, two of Mr. Obama’s demands. Moreover, the agreement made no mention of Russia’s seizure and annexation of Crimea, an action deemed unacceptable by the United States and Europe and yet unlikely to be reversed, at least in the foreseeable future, Western officials have acknowledged privately. Mr. Pushilin said he would carry on preparing for a referendum, but was coy when asked what he would recommend if people in the region voted for independence. Would he seek for the region to become part of Russia, as occurred in Crimea, or to remain part of Ukraine under a new constitution that granted greater autonomy to the country’s regions?
“None of us leave here with the sense that the job is done,” Mr. Kerry said afterward. “We do not envision this as the full measure of de-escalation.” Mr. Deshchytsia, the Ukrainian foreign minister, dismissed as irrelevant Mr. Pushilin’s demand that the government in Kiev step down. He said this was not part of the agreement and added that the government would press on with a stalled “anti-terrorist operation” to dislodge the militants if they refused to leave.
But he called the measures an important first step to avert “a complete and total implosion” in eastern Ukraine and said they could lead to more far-reaching moves to resolve the conflict. The government’s efforts to confront the pro-Russian militants with force came to an ignominious halt on Wednesday after members of an elite Ukrainian military unit joined militants in Slovyansk, allowing Russian flags to be hoisted on their armored vehicles.
In response to a question, Mr. Kerry insisted that the United States had not dropped objections to Russia’s annexation of Crimea but acknowledged that it had not been the focus of the meeting. “We didn’t come here to talk about Crimea,” he said. At a news conference in Kiev, Mr. Deshchytsia declined to set a deadline to resume the military operation if the rebels refuse to disarm. He instead called on Russia to honor what he said was a commitment made in Geneva to persuade the militants to give up their weapons and leave seized buildings.
Mr. Obama said Ukraine’s government presented a “detailed and thorough presentation” of overhauls it would make and went “out of its way to address a range of the concerns” expressed by Russians. Now it was time for Russia to “use the influence that they’ve exerted in a disruptive way” to give Ukraine a chance to hold elections and stabilize its economy. Seeking to calm separatist passions, Ukrainian leaders on Friday repeated assurances that they would, as Mr. Deshchytsia promised in Geneva, pursue changes to the Constitution that would grant more power to local councils to run their own affairs and enshrine Russian as an official language — bedrock demands in the largely Russian-speaking east. Parliament also began preparing an amnesty law, honoring a Ukrainian pledge in Geneva not to prosecute rebels if they voluntarily disarm and hand over occupied buildings.
But Mr. Lavrov put the onus on the authorities in Kiev, saying that the deal was “largely based on compromise” and that a broader settlement of the crisis was primarily Ukraine’s responsibility. On a visit to Donetsk on Friday, former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko, who was jailed by Mr. Yanukovych and is now a presidential candidate in elections to be held in May, backed calls to grant Ukraine’s regions more authority. But she ruled out any “negotiations about the division of the country,” an apparent reference to Russian demands for “federalization,” a proposition widely seen as a ruse to divide Ukraine into a patchwork of semi-independent entities.
The talks were held at the same luxury hotel where five years ago Mr. Kerry’s predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, presented Mr. Lavrov with a red “reset” button intended to signal a fresh start in Russian-American relations, a gesture marred at the time by a mistranslation and mocked since as a symbol of a failed foreign policy. “We can talk only about giving the regions more autonomy,” Ms. Tymoshenko said at a news conference.
In Germany, the European country with the closest ties to Russia, the agreement was received with palpable relief. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister, said the agreement was “a first step, and many more must now follow,” but he seemed clearly content that “diplomacy now has a chance.” With hopes of a diplomatic settlement battered, Ukraine’s acting minister of economic development, Pavlo Sheremeta, summed up the mood in Kiev. Saying “it is much better to shoot with words, not bullets,” he described the Geneva deal as “a step in the right direction” but added, “We are not totally excited.”
The firefight in Mariupol on Thursday was the deadliest in eastern Ukraine since the crisis began. According to Ukrainian authorities, attackers threw firebombs and opened fire on perimeter guards at a base used by the newly formed National Guard, which has drawn volunteers who took part in last winter’s protest movement against the old pro-Moscow government. About 300 people were in the crowd.
“After warnings, in accordance with our rules, and after repeat attacks, we opened lethal fire,” Arsen Avakov, the interim interior minister, said in a statement.