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Ukrainian Soldiers Killed in Militia Ambush At Center of Ukraine Talks, Degrees of Decentralizing
(about 5 hours later)
DONETSK, Ukraine — Antigovernment forces ambushed a Ukrainian Army convoy outside a village west of Kramatorsk on Tuesday afternoon, further intensifying tensions in Ukraine’s restive eastern regions. KIEV, Ukraine — National “round-table” talks seeking to resolve Ukraine’s six-month political crisis by finding a formula for decentralizing power will begin Wednesday against a seemingly formidable array of obstacles.
The attack represented a significant tactical escalation, with the pro-Russian militia venturing for the first time outside its strongholds to disrupt Ukrainian military movements along routes it uses to supply the positions essential to what it calls a blockade of armed rebel areas. First is the matter of who will talk to whom. Ukrainian government officials have said they will speak with their antagonists in the east, but not those with “blood on their hands.” That would appear to rule out most of the leaders of the pro-Russian uprising in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions who are backed by armed militants, which could hurt the credibility of the talks.
The fighting left six Ukrainian soldiers dead and eight wounded, according to a statement from the Ministry of Defense. A rebel commander in nearby Slovyansk reported one dead and two wounded among the militiamen, and claimed the rebel unit involved had killed up to 30 Ukrainian soldiers. The heart of the debate will deal with the question of how to reshape the government and bestow more power on officials outside Kiev, a charming, cosmopolitan capital with a reputation since the Soviet collapse a generation ago of being a cesspool of corruption and mismanagement.
Neither casualty toll could be independently confirmed. A large gulf remains between the views of the interim government and the eastern separatists, but officials say a compromise on a new system of governance is inevitable. “There is no other way out,” said Volodymyr Groysman, the acting minister for regional development, who is leading the decentralization initiative.
The clash was the first skirmish outside Kramatorsk or Slovyansk since a referendum carried out Sunday by the militia’s political wing, the Donetsk People’s Republic, led the region to declare its independence and to appeal to Russia for incorporation. Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, visited Kiev and Odessa on Tuesday to help find the way. Getting there will not be easy, however, particularly with the ever-present threat of violence in the east, which could disrupt or destroy the chances of reconciliation.
Earlier in the day, the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, arrived in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, for a new diplomatic effort to defuse the crisis that seized the eastern region of Ukraine after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March. On Tuesday, for example, separatist rebels ambushed a Ukrainian Army convoy outside a village west of Kramtorsk in eastern Ukraine, killing at least six soldiers and wounding eight others, according to the Ministry of Defense, which called the episode a “terrorist attack.”
The visit came as the battle lines seemed to harden between the interim authorities in Kiev and separatists in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where, after the vote Sunday, separatist leaders indicated that the continued presence of Ukrainian forces would lead to further armed confrontation. A separatist commander in nearby Slovyansk said that one rebel was killed in the fighting and that two others were wounded. In the city of Luhansk, the separatist governor, Valery Bolotov, was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt.
“If they don’t leave our land on their own, we will drive them out,” the self-appointed mayor of Slovyansk, Vyachislav Ponomaryov, said late Sunday night. Kiev officials decided that the first round-table session would be held in Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, potentially undermining the legitimacy of the talks in the eyes of separatists but ensuring that the entire country will be represented. Although President Viktor F. Yanukovych was driven from power in February after months of protests, the membership of Parliament has not changed.
The Ukrainian government said that rebels had used grenade launchers in the ambush on Monday and that, in recent weeks, some rebels in Slovyansk have been openly carrying Kalashnikov rifles with 40-millimeter under-barrel grenade launchers and ammunition pouches often heavy with high-explosive 40-millimeter grenades. Despite the enormous challenges, the concept of round-table talks has been endorsed by world leaders including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and the discussions will be overseen in part by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and the region’s largest employer, has urged separatists to seek a compromise with Kiev that would increase the authority of local governments.
Russia, the key power broker in the region, stopped short of outright recognition of the increasingly militant drive for secession, using the results from the referendum Sunday to press for a negotiated autonomy for the restive provinces. As a result, this much is clear: After months of uprising and violence, and for all the troubled history, ethnolinguistic tensions, charges of fascist aggression and Cold War-style geopolitical maneuvering that have characterized the crisis until now, events here seem about to shift into uncertain territory — a policy discussion on the optimum balance between centralized government and local control that would not be out of place in the United States.
In a statement on Monday, the Kremlin said only that it “respects the will of the population of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” and that the crisis should be resolved through dialogue. All sides to the Ukraine dispute — Moscow, Kiev, the rebels and the West — agree that some degree of devolution would be a good thing. “It’s a necessity,” Mr. Groysman said. “We should have done it during independence” in 1991.
Despite those words, Moscow kept up pressure on the interim authorities in Kiev through Gazprom, the giant natural gas company controlled by the Russian government and often used by the Kremlin for political purposes. But the agreement seems to stop there.
A spokesman for Gazprom said in a statement on Tuesday that the Ukrainian state gas company, Naftogaz, would have until June 2 to pay $1.6 billion for June gas supplies, news reports said, seemingly threatening a cutoff if the payment is not made. On one side is a plan for “decentralization” being developed by the provisional Ukrainian government. It uses Poland as a model and is backed by some of the country’s most important business titans.
Naftogaz said that it had been notified of the payment demand, but declined further comment. On the other is a vaguer “federalization” concept, favored by Russia and endorsed by separatist leaders, that would weaken the central administration. It would create a class of empowered regional governors, whose political and economic allegiances could be split between Moscow and the West.
Mr. Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, met the acting prime minister of Ukraine, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, in Kiev and had plans to travel to Odessa on the Black Sea, where a fire killed some 40 people earlier this month, German diplomats said. That approach has been roundly rejected by Kiev. “Federalization is a song from a different film,” Mr. Groysman, the regional development minister, said in an interview. “In order to have federalization, you have to divide Ukraine.”
“We support your efforts to launch a national dialogue, under Ukrainian ownership, here in your country, through round tables, at the central level and in the regions,” Mr. Steinmeier said at a joint news conference with Mr. Yatsenyuk, news reports said. The government’s decentralization plan, which is subject to constitutional amendments that require the approval of a supermajority in Parliament, would give the mayors and councils of towns and villages a greater say in local priorities. It would essentially safeguard a fixed portion of tax receipts that, by law, would be off limits to national leaders and would thus be insulated from misappropriation at that level.
“I hope this will create the conditions to take a step to bring back occupied territory, disarm armed groups step-by-step and reinstall the authority of the state,” Mr. Steinmeier said, adding that the presidential election scheduled for May 25 would “play a crucial role” in ending a crisis that ranks as one of the most serious in Europe since the end of the Cold War. In Poland, 39.34 percent of revenue from personal income taxes is distributed to local municipalities, along with 6.71 percent of revenue from corporate income taxes and 100 percent of local property taxes. County and regional governments also get fixed shares of personal income and corporate taxes. Ukraine has no such system.
Mr. Yatsenyuk was scheduled to meet later in the day with European Union officials in Brussels. Sergei A. Taruta, a billionaire metals magnate who was appointed by Kiev as governor of the Donetsk region, which has experienced some of the worst separatist violence in the east, said he was confident that the decentralization plan would address the concerns of his constituents, who want more local control.
The trip was Mr. Steinmeier’s third to Ukraine since February, when he and his French and Polish counterparts brokered an accord between demonstrators and President Viktor F. Yanukovych that fell apart when Mr. Yanukovych was ousted and fled the country for southern Russia. “We are capable of solving the problems in the east,” he said. “I have no doubt about that.”
Germany has repeatedly pushed for a diplomatic solution in Ukraine while insisting that it would support tougher sanctions if Russia either invades or obstructs the presidential vote. Above all, German politicians have made clear, they seek to deal with an elected figure in Kiev. By some views, though, the round-table talks are just theatrics ahead of Kiev’s unwavering push to carry out a presidential election on May 25, and of efforts by pro-Russian separatists to disrupt the vote. After Sunday’s referendum on independence in the east, some pro-Russian separatists are demanding annexation by Russia.
Mr. Steinmeier is also promoting a proposal to get the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a 57-nation group that includes Europe and the United States as well as Ukraine and Russia, involved in disarming separatists, promoting dialogue and overseeing a free and fair election. While the Kremlin has not shown interest, so far, in taking control of the eastern regions, it is not clear if Russia will be willing to live with a governance system that leaves most of the power in Ukraine concentrated in Kiev.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has assured his support, though Russia has also pledged to respect the referendums in eastern Ukraine that were condemned as illegal by the authorities in Kiev and by the West. Some officials cautioned that a strong anticorruption program would be needed to prevent local governments from engaging in graft that now happens at the federal level. “Decentralization of power must not turn into decentralization of corruption,” said Grigoriy Pustovit, the governor of the Volyn region, in western Ukraine.
Berlin has asked the German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger, a former ambassador to the United States who now runs an annual security conference in Munich every February, to coordinate a series of “round tables” intended to bring together all sections of Ukrainian society under the O.S.C.E. proposal.
The terminology being used harks back to 1989, when Poland’s Communist rulers met representatives of the trade union Solidarity, and to the time when the Communists who ruled East Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel grew up, met dissidents. But the German news media questioned whether there is even that minimum of national consensus in Ukraine today that existed in Soviet bloc countries then.
“For such talks to be successful, minimal consensus is required,” Daniel Brössler said in the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. “All sides must consider a compromise at least conceivable. And that’s the question: Who should, or could, conclude what kind of compromise?”
Many Europeans favor the O.S.C.E. as the vehicle for negotiations, as it includes all the countries involved in the crisis and is currently chaired by Switzerland. In addition, the organization has mandates to do what Mr. Steinmeier and others have recommended for both sides in Ukraine — to disarm, foster dialogue and observe elections.
Russia, too, has often viewed the group favorably, in part because it grew out of an accord in 1975 that the Soviets felt put them on a par with the West for the first time in the Cold War.