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European Union Adds 15 Names to Ukraine Sanctions List
Pro-Russian Militants Seize More Offices in Eastern Ukraine
(about 9 hours later)
LONDON — Following the imposition of new sanctions against Russia by the Obama administration, the European Union added 15 names on Tuesday to its own list of figures close to the Kremlin, including senior military and political officials and pro-Russian militants in Ukraine, who will now be subject to asset freezes and travel bans.
KIEV, Ukraine — Pro-Russian militants seized more state offices in Ukraine’s troubled east on Tuesday, in apparent defiance of the latest Western sanctions announced against them and their presumed backers in the Kremlin, which also showed no sign of wilting in its worst confrontation with the West in decades.
Russia called the measures “unfriendly,” and the expanded sanctions seemed to have little deterrent effect on pro-Russian militants in eastern Ukraine. Militants stormed the regional government headquarters in the city of Luhansk on Tuesday, adding to a string of similar recent takeovers, including the security headquarters in Luhansk a few weeks ago.
Speaking to reporters in Belarus, President Vladimir V. Putin said he had vetoed suggestions within the Kremlin that Russia respond in kind to the latest sanctions. “The government has already proposed some steps in response, but I consider that there is no need for this,” Mr. Putin told reporters, according to the Interfax news agency. But if it continues, he said, Moscow will have to think about who works and how they work in key sectors of Russia’s economy, including energy.
In television coverage of the events in Luhansk on Tuesday, separatists were seen surrounding the government headquarters and shouting “Get out,” “Junta away” and “Russia,” and then knocking out windows to enter. They met no opposition from the police. A loud explosion was heard and an ambulance appeared, but it was not immediately clear whether any people had been injured. A crowd of about 2,000 people gathered in the square outside, with some waving Russian or separatist flags.
Mr. Putin was in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, to attend the summit of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council — the economic bloc of former Soviet republics he started in order to try to counterbalance the draw of the European Union. Its viability without Ukraine has been called into question.
“The regional leadership does not control its police force,” Stanislav Rechynsky, an aide to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov of Ukraine, was quoted by Reuters as saying. “The local police did nothing.”
But Mr. Putin said the integration of the Eurasian union would not be affected by Western sanctions. In a similar vein, he also denied that Russians were playing any role in fomenting unrest in Ukraine’s east — echoing similar denials in March over Crimea, where Mr. Putin later admitted Russian forces were involved.
The Western sanctions, initially designed to punish Russia for its annexation of Crimea, reflected deepening concern about instability in eastern Ukraine, where the actions of pro-Russian separatists have underscored the increasing ineffectiveness of the interim government in Kiev, the capital.
Unopposed by the local police, armed militants stormed into the regional government headquarters in the city of Luhansk, capital of the Ukrainian region closest to Russia on the eastern border, a live video stream on the Internet showed. Militants had already taken over the city’s security headquarters on April 6.
On Monday, the United States expanded its list of targets for sanctions, concentrating on the holdings of four wealthy associates of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and including banks, energy companies, investment accounts and other entities controlled by the four men.
Hours after the storming of the Luhansk regional government headquarters, militants seized control of the prosecutor’s office in the city, Yelena Bugayets, head of the regional press service, said by telephone.
On Tuesday, the 28-nation European Union said its measures would affect officials including Dmitri N. Kozak, a deputy prime minister; and Lyudmila I. Shvetsova, a senior figure in the State Duma, the lower house of Parliament. The list also included Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of staff of the Russian military, along with Lt. Gen. Igor Sergun, identified as the head of the Kremlin’s military intelligence agency, the G.R.U.
The Luhansk action followed violent attacks on peaceful demonstrators in Donetsk late on Monday, when masked men, several of them wielding bats and clubs, pounced on marchers carrying the blue and yellow Ukrainian national flag.
Pro-Russian militants who have led the assault on government facilities in Luhansk and Donetsk were also on the list.
The police in Donetsk also proved ineffectual, doing little or nothing to stop what Geoffrey R. Pyatt, the American ambassador to Ukraine, said on Tuesday were attacks on women, children and elderly people “who were willing to put it on the line” for Ukraine.
The latest additions brought the number of people on the European list to 48.
There was no sign on Tuesday that the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, had made any progress in securing the release of a German-led team of six military observers who were seized by militants last Friday in the eastern town of Slovyansk. The observers were brought before television cameras by their captors over the weekend, a sight Mr. Steinmeier described as “revolting.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry responded on Tuesday that the Europeans were merely “going along with Washington” and had done nothing to pressure Kiev to negotiate with rebellious residents of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking southern and eastern provinces.
The observers were working under the auspices of the 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, whose negotiators returned to Slovyansk on Tuesday.
“Our partners are going along with Washington with newer and newer unfriendly gestures toward Russia,” the ministry said in a statement on the state-run news agency RIA Novosti. The statement said that the European measures revealed a “full misunderstanding of the domestic political situation” in Ukraine.
The self-declared mayor of Slovyansk, Vyachislav Ponomaryov, canceled a planned news conference, and the Russian news agency Interfax reported that he had said the observers — four Germans, a Pole, a Czech and a Dane — would be released only if the European Union lifted its sanctions against militants who back Moscow.
The European Union is Russia’s biggest trading partner, but it also depends on Russia for significant oil and gas supplies, making some of its member states, most significantly Germany, cautious about using its economic clout against Moscow.
In general, there was a sense on Tuesday that Ukraine’s east was falling further under the sway of the pro-Russian militants, although the situation remained volatile and hard to read. There was no independent confirmation, for instance, of a report by the Russian-owned RIA Novosti news agency that administrative buildings in five smaller cities and towns between Donetsk and Luhansk had replaced Ukrainian flags with separatist flags.
The bloc has threatened tougher sanctions if the crisis in eastern Ukraine worsens. Measures directly targeting Russia’s energy and financial sectors are not yet under consideration.
Five militants in eastern Ukraine — the two from Luhansk and three from Donetsk — were included among the 15 new names on the European Union’s sanction list. So were two of Russia’s most senior military commanders — Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of staff, and Lt. Gen. Igor Sergun, identified as the head of the G.R.U., the Kremlin’s military intelligence agency. Two prominent Russian politicians, Dmitri N. Kozak, a deputy prime minister, and Lyudmila I. Shevtsova, a senior figure in the lower house of Parliament, were on the list as well.
Moscow has massed tens of thousands of troops close to Ukraine, ostensibly on training maneuvers, raising fears among Ukrainians that Russian troops are in position to move swiftly across the border — an act that the interim government in Kiev says would be treated as an invasion.
Moscow called the latest sanctions “unfriendly” but continued to shrug off the eventual effects of banning such powerful figures as Igor I. Sechin, a close ally of Mr. Putin who heads the state oil giant Rosneft, from dealing with the West. Mr. Sechin was among those targeted by American sanctions announced on Monday.
In addition to the entities affected by the American measures, the Obama administration on Monday imposed sanctions on seven prominent Russians, including two longtime Putin advisers: Igor I. Sechin, the president of the state-owned oil company Rosneft; and Sergei V. Chemezov, the director general of Rostec, the state corporation overseeing high-technology industries.
The American measures were announced on a day of ominous developments in eastern Ukraine, including the seizure of the city of Konstantinovka by militants and the attempted assassination of Gennady A. Kernes, the mayor of Kharkiv.
The American measures were announced on a day of ominous developments in eastern Ukraine, where masked antigovernment militants seized control of the city of Konstantinovka. Also on Monday, Gennady A. Kernes, the 54-year-old mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and only 20 miles from the Russian border, was shot in the back and nearly killed by a would-be assassin.
The police said that the bullet that struck Mr. Kernes, 54, in the back had been fired from a sniper rifle and had missed his heart by a few millimeters. He was transferred to Elisha Hospital in Israel late on Monday after a two-hour operation to repair damage to his lungs, an aide said. The hospital issued a statement saying that the mayor “underwent diagnostic tests that showed the operations were successful.”
Late Monday evening, Mr. Kernes was transferred to a hospital in Israel after he underwent a two-hour operation to repair damage to his lungs, an aide said. The police said the bullet that struck Mr. Kernes had been fired from a sniper rifle and had missed his heart by a few millimeters.
Mr. Kernes’s aide said he underwent a second minor procedure on Tuesday, but declined to elaborate. The hospital said “he is under observation by the best doctors and it appears that there is no need for further surgical intervention.”
While his injuries were initially described as life-threatening, that he was well enough to be flown to Israel showed that his condition had improved significantly, the aide said.
It was not immediately clear why Mr. Kernes, who is Jewish but is not believed to have Israeli citizenship, was transferred to the hospital in Haifa, 1,200 miles from Kharkiv.
Elisha Hospital, in Haifa, where Mr. Kernes is being treated, issued a statement saying that the mayor “underwent diagnostic tests that showed the operations were successful.”
“He is under observation by the best doctors and it appears that there is no need for further surgical intervention,” the hospital said in the statement, citing patient privacy in declining to provide additional details.
Mr. Kernes, a powerful figure in Kharkiv politics, had been increasingly seen as a guarantor of stability as pro-Russian forces gained strength elsewhere in the east.
On Tuesday morning there were no obvious signs of a response to the attack from either pro-Russian or pro-Ukrainian supporters in Kharkiv.
In London on Tuesday, the British home secretary, Theresa May, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. of the United States convened a meeting of government officials, regulators and financial experts to promote the recovery of Ukrainian state assets misappropriated when the deposed President Viktor F. Yanukovych was in power
Ms. May said the group, the Ukraine Forum on Asset Recovery, would “provide practical leadership and assistance to the Ukrainian government as they identify and recover assets looted under the Yanukovych regime and introduce political and economic reform.”
“The message is clear — we are making it harder than ever for corrupt regimes or individuals around the world to move, hide and profit from the proceeds of their crime,” Ms. May said in a statement.
