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Russia Girds Troops, Alarming Ukraine Conflicting Gestures From Putin to Kiev
(about 2 hours later)
DONETSK, Ukraine — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Saturday ordered troops across central Russia on combat alert and began surprise military drills, renewing concerns about a Russian buildup a day after Ukraine ordered a government cease-fire in the country’s troubled east. MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia proffered both a carrot and a stick to Ukraine on Saturday, issuing a qualified acceptance of a peace plan proposed by the Ukrainian leadership to quell a separatist uprising in southeastern Ukraine, but simultaneously putting troops across central Russia on combat alert and mounting surprise military drills.
The order for drills in Russia’s central military district, which does not border Ukraine, was announced by Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu and involves around 65,000 Russian troops, including several thousand members of an airborne unit. A statement posted late Saturday on the Kremlin’s website was Mr. Putin’s most direct call to date for all parties to stop fighting. Moscow has previously claimed that it does not hold sufficient sway over the pro-Russian separatists to influence their position.
The drills will last a week, officials said in comments carried by Russian state news agencies. “The president of Russia calls on all parties to the conflict to cease hostilities and sit down at the negotiating table,” the statement said.
Ukraine and the United States have accused Russia of covertly supplying rebel forces in eastern Ukraine with fighters and heavy arms, including tanks and rocket launchers, in recent weeks. The statement said Mr. Putin supported the declaration of a unilateral cease-fire by President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine on Friday, “as well as his intent to take a number of specific measures to reach a peaceful settlement.” But it said the plan would be neither “viable nor realistic” without practical steps to begin negotiating with the separatists, who have declared autonomy in two southeastern regions.
On Friday, a senior Obama administration official said Russia had “redeployed significant military forces to its border with Ukraine.” The official said Russian special forces along the border were also providing support to rebel fighters in Ukraine. Mr. Putin also described as “unacceptable” the firing of Ukrainian shells into a Russian border post on Friday night, soon after the cease-fire was declared, “causing material damage and threatening the life and health of Russian citizens.”
Ukrainian military officials said on Saturday that fighting between army and rebel forces had continued overnight, despite President Petro O. Poroshenko’s declaration of a unilateral weeklong cease-fire in the region. The loudest response to that episode came hours before Mr. Putin spoke, when the Russian defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, announced that about 65,000 troops across central Russia would begin a week of combat drills.
Mr. Poroshenko declared the cease-fire on Friday as he introduced a 14-point peace plan that would establish a six-mile demilitarized zone along the Ukrainian-Russian border and provide an escape corridor for Russian and Ukrainian mercenaries that the Ukrainian government has said are involved in the fighting. The dual-track approach reflected what analysts have been saying for weeks is Russia’s main goal: to put pressure on the Ukrainian government to grant significant autonomy to the southeast without prompting a third round of Western sanctions, far more serious than the earlier ones, that would further weaken the Russian economy. Western leaders are set to consult on further sanctions this week.
Moscow responded harshly to the deal, saying it was an ultimatum to the pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and did not provide for talks between the government and rebel leaders. But it also reflected the split within the Russian government. Militants and nationalists pushed Mr. Putin to annex the autonomous Ukrainian region of Crimea in March and generally want Russia to reclaim its role as a global power and an antidote to the West. More liberal economists, business moguls and diplomats, recognizing that Russia is now integrated into the world economy in a way it never was during the Soviet era, want to prevent even worse fallout than that caused by Crimea’s annexation.
“The plan lacks a key part: a call for dialogue,” Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said Saturday from Jidda, Saudi Arabia. “I think that they will keep agreeing to cease-fires, keep calling on the militants to stop the fighting and keep supplying the militants with arms until they achieve a stable equilibrium on their terms,” said Clifford Kupchan, a Washington-based Russia analyst at the Eurasia Group.
“We are alarmed and concerned that, simultaneously with the proposal of this plan, the activity of the so-called antiterrorist military operation is increasing,” Mr. Lavrov said in remarks carried by the Interfax news agency. Analysts believe that Russia is looking, eventually, for a compact. It does not want to face more sanctions or take on financial responsibility for the aging industries that employ most of the seven million people in southeastern Ukraine, they say, and it worries that the bulk of the population there would ultimately be hostile. But it wants sufficient sway in southeastern Ukraine to destabilize Kiev or to make sure that the central government there does not get too close to the European Union or contemplate joining NATO.
Military and political leaders of the self-declared people’s republics in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine have said they will not lay down arms. “Hence, Russia’s approach, which is currently dual in nature,” two analysts, Igor Bunin and Aleksey Makarkin, wrote recently in the business daily Vedomosti. But they and others point out that there is no trust on either side to take the steps necessary to negotiate, and that the fighting might slip out of leaders’ control. Many analysts say the coming month will be crucial.
Alexander Borodai, prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said flatly that “there is no cease-fire” and called for peacekeepers from Russia to enter the country to prevent “a humanitarian catastrophe.” Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia’s security forces at New York University, said, “Each side is escalating, hoping the other side will blink, but in the process it is getting harder and harder for any kind of meaningful agreement to be reached.” Mr. Putin emphasized the need for such an agreement in his announcement.
“How can I comment on a plan that is only a fantasy?” Mr. Borodai said when asked if he was aware of the peace plan proposed by Mr. Poroshenko on Friday. “The peace plan proposed by President Poroshenko should not take the form of an ultimatum to militia groups,” Mr. Putin’s statement said. “The opportunity that opens up with the end of hostilities should be used to start constructive negotiations and to reach a political compromise between the parties to the conflict in southeast Ukraine.”
Late on Saturday, a commander named Vadim whose unit defended the city of Seversk predicted that, within a day, his forces would retake the Yampil checkpoint near Krasny Liman, where heavy fighting has raged for several days. Mr. Poroshenko declared the cease-fire as he introduced a 15-point peace plan that would establish a six-mile demilitarized zone along the Ukrainian-Russian border and provide an escape corridor for Russian and Ukrainian mercenaries, who the Ukrainian government has said are involved in the fighting.
On a central square in Donetsk on Saturday, about 100 armed rebels swore an oath of allegiance to the people’s republic. Before Mr. Putin issued his statement, Moscow had responded harshly to the plan, saying it was an ultimatum to the rebels and did not provide for talks with the government.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the Border Ministry reported attacks by pro-Russian militants overnight at two posts on the border, as well as at a Ukrainian military base in Avdiivka, near Donetsk, and a military post at Karachun, near the rebel stronghold of Slovyansk.
Mr. Poroshenko introduced his peace plan at a Ukrainian military base in Svyatogorsk on Friday in his first visit to the eastern region of Donbass, where the rebels are strongest. In his remarks, he said Ukrainian forces would not advance but would protect themselves if fired upon.
Vladislav Seleznyov, the spokesman for the government campaign against the rebels, said all attacks against government positions had been repulsed.
Mr. Borodai, of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said some rebels were wounded but declined to give precise numbers.