MOSCOW — Despite repeated vows not to interfere or intervene, President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia has now found itself more deeply ensnared than ever in Ukraine’s worsening political crisis, facing appeals to support the country’s ethnic Russians, provide haven for its deposed president and perhaps even undertake a military response. The question is whether he intended it that way.
Mr. Putin’s silence has resulted in confusion over Russia’s policy, even as the crisis in Ukraine has moved closer to Russia’s own border and raised concerns about Ukraine’s geopolitical and economic impact on its neighbor. Russia could stand to lose what it considers a place that is not only within its sphere of influence but part of its political, social and historical identity. For now, Mr. Putin’s strategy for retaining Russia’s influence in a country where the Kremlin has profound interests, from its largest foreign military base to gas pipelines that fuel its economy, remains unknown and full of risks. Even so, events are subtly forcing Moscow’s hand.
Ukraine’s Political and Cultural Divisions
Ukraine’s political split reflects a deeper cultural divide in the country. In the 2010 presidential election, the opposition won in all of Ukraine’s western provinces, where most people speak Ukrainian rather than Russian and many call for deeper economic and political ties with Europe.
IMAGE Sources: State Statistics Service of Ukraine, Ukraine's Central Election Commission
Mr. Yanukovych’s appeal for Russia “to secure my personal safety,” and reports that he will hold a news conference in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Friday, have made it clear that the Kremlin has quietly provided at least tacit assistance to a humiliated leader who has been abandoned even by his own political supporters.
The seizure of the regional Parliament building in Crimea by masked gunmen vowing loyalty to Russia, and not Ukraine, has renewed fears that Mr. Putin could be provoked into a military intervention like the one in 2008 .. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/world/europe/09georgia.html .. when Russian troops poured into Georgia to defend a breakaway region, South Ossetia, that it now recognizes as an independent country.
Russian officials have dismissed such fears as absurd, but at the same time, Mr. Putin ordered a surprise military exercise involving 150,000 troops on Ukraine’s doorstep that was clearly intended as a palpable warning about Russia’s preparedness. It prompted warnings in return from NATO and the United States that Russia should do nothing provocative and respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Mr. Putin has a number of options to influence affairs in Ukraine short of an armed intervention. Ukraine’s economy is entwined with that of Russia, which is by far its greatest trading partner, and Ukraine’s heavy industry is hugely dependent on Russian gas. And the Kremlin can inflame separatist tensions almost at will, if it so desires, destabilizing the country. Perhaps Mr. Putin’s most effective weapon, though, is time, sitting back and watching as the West takes ownership .. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/world/europe/policy-makers-devise-plans-to-provide-money-to-kiev.html .. of an economy on the brink of collapse.
Outwardly, Russia continues to insist that the turmoil in Ukraine is an internal affair and that neither it nor the United States and Europe should meddle. Events, however, are quickly overtaking that position.
Mr. Yanukovych’s flight — apparently to Russia, though his location remained unknown Thursday — has made it more difficult for the Kremlin to sustain the detached response it has sought to maintain, despite deep reservations among Russian officials over Mr. Yanukovych’s handling of the crisis and the collapse of his authority last weekend.
That ambivalence was clear on Thursday when Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, declined to confirm or deny that Russia had extended protection to Mr. Yanukovych and refused to discuss the matter of his whereabouts at all, even when pressed in a telephone interview.
“I think Putin hates Yanukovych,” said Sergei A. Markov, a political strategist who advises the Kremlin, “but what should he do for a legally elected president who asks to come to Russia?”
With Mr. Yanukovych declaring that he is still the lawfully elected leader of Ukraine and with Parliament approving a new interim government, Russia now faces the prospect of being the host of a president in exile. Mr. Markov said that Mr. Yanukovych’s presence in Russia, which is still unverified, would amount to “asylum by fact,” adding that he thought Mr. Yanukovych should have stayed in Ukraine and called on the military and security forces to rally behind him in defiance of the new leaders in Kiev.
President Vladimir V. Putin led a security council meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on Tuesday. Credit Alexey Druzhinin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement on Thursday complaining that an agreement .. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/22/world/europe/ukraine.html .. brokered by three European foreign ministers only a week ago was not being honored. It insisted that the accord, which would leave Mr. Yanukovych in the presidency until new elections in December, serve as the basis of a negotiated agreement, even as the Europeans and the United States moved to recognize the legitimacy of the new interim government that was formed after Mr. Yanukovych’s escape from Kiev.
“We are convinced that only such a constitutional framework can ensure the interests of all political forces and all regions of Ukraine,” the ministry’s statement said.
In essence, the statement suggested that Russia still recognized Mr. Yanukovych as the country’s leader, though no officials have explicitly said so, even though they have denounced the new interim leaders as radicals riding to power in an armed fascist coup.
In the absence of a clear statement of Russia’s intent, the perception of its strategy has been shaped by rumors, by strident coverage on state news media and by statements of Russian lawmakers vowing solidarity with Ukraine’s ethnic Russians and questioning whether Crimea, which the Soviet Union ceded to Ukraine in 1954, should rightfully be Russia’s.
Three high-profile members of Russia’s lower house of Parliament arrived in Crimea on Thursday, visiting the city that is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. “I arrived in Sevastopol to support residents of Crimea,” Nikolai Valuev, a former boxing champion who was elected to the Parliament in 2011, wrote on Twitter. “Friends, Russia is with you.”
He was joined by the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, and a former Olympic figure skater, Irina Rodnina, who carried the Olympic torch on its final leg at the opening ceremony of the Winter Games in Sochi (and was mired in a controversy over her recent posting of a doctored and racist photograph of President Obama and his wife, Michelle), RIA Novosti reported.
Mr. Valuev, an unmistakable presence at 7 feet 1 inch tall, described the visit as a fact-finding mission “to personally interact with the residents to know the situation from the inside.” Like many officials in Russia, he said the crisis in Ukraine, or at least the foreign news media reporting on it, was clouded by Western propaganda. “There is an information war,” he wrote on Twitter.
The military exercise that began in earnest on Thursday added an ominous element of volatility. Aleksandr Golts, an independent military analyst in Moscow, said that the exercise could theoretically — and he emphasized the word theoretically — disguise a more general mobilization of Russia’s military in case a conflict erupted over Ukraine.
“In my view it’s very bad, even if there are no plans to use the military, that maneuvers are being held with the goal of testing the nerves of others,” he said.
To critics, especially in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s hand is seen in many of the most disturbing turns in the unfolding situation, including the visits by Russian lawmakers; reports of handing out Russian passports to Crimea’s citizens, as happened in Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia; and the mysterious seizure of the Parliament building in Crimea. They see the downward spiraling of events as evidence that Mr. Putin intends to splinter the country and retake Crimea as Russian territory.
“We’re not interfering,” Mr. Peskov, the president’s spokesman, said on Thursday. “We’re standing on this position.”
.. one of two comments says no surprise if Russia invades eastern Ukraine and goes for partition .. to that possibility ..
~~~~~
Leaders in east Ukraine vote to take control of their areas
KIEV Sat Feb 22, 2014 9:47am EST
(Reuters) - Leaders of mainly Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine that are loyal to President Viktor Yanukovich challenged the legitimacy of the national parliament on Saturday and said they were taking control of their territories.
The move appeared to increase the possibility of a split in the sprawling former Soviet republic of 46 million, despite denials by the leaders that this was their intention.
The Kiev parliament has passed a series of measures that would reduce the president's powers and pave the way to the formation of a national unity government and early presidential elections.
Mikhaylo Dobkin, Governor of Kharkiv region in northeast Ukraine, told regional leaders meeting in the city: "We're not preparing to break up the country. We want to preserve it."
But a resolution adopted at the meeting said: "The decisions taken by the Ukrainian parliament in such circumstances cause doubts about their ... legitimacy and legality."
It added: "The central state organs are paralyzed. Until the constitutional order and lawfulness are restored ... we have decided to take responsibility for safeguarding the constitutional order, legality, citizens' rights and their security on our territories."
One speaker urged the creation of civilian patrols to restore order. Another said those gathered should fear reprisals if anti-Yanukovich protesters in Kiev seize power in the whole of the country.
With people at the meeting chanting "Russia! Russia!", the atmosphere contrasted with the mood in the capital Kiev where protesters want the Moscow-backed Yanukovich to resign.
Yanukovich said he had no intention of quitting or leaving Ukraine and declared all moves taken by parliament on Saturday to be illegal and amounting to a "coup d'état", Russian news agency Interfax reported, citing a television interview.
A day after Yanukovich signed an agreement with the opposition to relinquish some of his powers, his opponents were in control of the presidential administration and the Interior Ministry responsible for the police turned its back on him.
The regions represented at the meeting - Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Lugansk and Crimea - have a population of 14.4 million. Most are important industrial centers and Russia's Black Sea fleet is based in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
TALK OF A SPLIT
Many politicians have warned of a looming partition in Ukraine, which broke peacefully from the Soviet Union in 1991, since people took to the streets late last year to protest against Yanukovich for spurning political and trade deals with the European Union. Western Ukraine is broadly pro-EU.
Some Ukrainians are also worried by calls in Crimea for the region to again become Russian territory, nearly six decades after Kremlin leader Nikita Khrushchev - who was a Ukrainian - redrew internal Soviet boundaries to make a gift of the peninsula to Ukraine.
"The revolution has been won in Kiev, in part of Ukraine, but not in the whole of Ukraine. We still have many risks," said Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst at the Kiev-based Penta think-tank.
"If Yanukovich appears and ... proclaims an alternative power in Kharkiv or in Donetsk - it will mean that we have two countries. The most serious risk now is the possible division of the country. The crisis is not yet over."
Russia has strong cultural, historical and economic ties with eastern Ukraine, and some factories there have contracts with the Russian military. Some Russians do not think of Ukraine, the cradle of Russian civilization, as outside Russia.
Alexei Pushkov, an ally of President Vladimir Putin and chairman of the foreign affairs committee of Russia's lower house of parliament, attended the meeting in Kharkiv.
"If there is stability anywhere in Ukraine right now, it's in those regions that are represented here today," he said.
This, he said, was in contrast to "western regions where buildings have been seized, where there are weapons, APCs (armored vehicles) and the destruction of authority."
Andriy Sadovy, mayor of Lviv in the west, voiced concern that Ukraine could lose control of some of its territory and told a news conference: "We won't give up one centimeter of Ukrainian land to anyone."
Putin has made clear he does not want Ukraine to move out of what he considers Russia's sphere of influence, and agreement on a $15-billion Russian bailout plus a cut in how much Ukraine pays for Russian gas helped persuade Yanukovich to pull out of the planned deals with the EU at the last minute in November.
A Kremlin aide, Sergei Glazyev, has floated the idea that Ukraine could become a federation giving more power to its regions - a move, he said, that might enable eastern regions to join a trading bloc led by Russia.
That call has been taken up by parliamentarians in Moscow, fuelling speculation that this - or some form of annexation of Russian-speaking areas - may have the Kremlin's backing.
(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow, Alessandra Prentice, Matt Robinson and Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, Writing by Timothy Heritage, Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Ukraine Doesn’t Need the US or NATO to Build a Democracy
Bob Dreyfuss on February 27, 2014 - 12:23 PM ET
Protesters in Ukraine (tandalov.com/Flickr)
The Russian threats, bluster, troop mobilizations .. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/world/europe/russia.html?_r=0 .. and pledges to throw their support to the ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine—who, delusional to the end, still asserts that he’s president despite a revolution in the streets that’s plain to see—are worrying, and ominous. Yanukovych, who has blood on his hands from the massacre of protesters in Kiev, will never, ever again have a role in Ukrainian politics.
And it’s also ominous that both Secretary of State John Kerry and NATO have talked about NATO’s role in Russia’s periphery yesterday. With exquisitely bad timing, while meeting the Georgia’s prime minister, Kerry said, “We stand by the Bucharest decision and all subsequent decisions that Georgia will become a member of NATO.” And NATO’s secretary-general, whose organization ought to have nothing whatsoever to say about Ukraine, said yesterday .. http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140226/DEFREG01/302260039/NATO-Ready-Help-Ukraine-Democratic-Reforms : “Ukraine is a close and long-standing partner to NATO. And NATO is a sincere friend of Ukraine. We stand ready to continue assisting Ukraine in its democratic reforms.” Needless to say, Ukraine doesn’t need NATO to help build a democracy.
But an important news analysis in The Los Angeles Times .. http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-russia-ukraine-20140227,0,1637164.story#axzz2uXl6pekP .. notes that Russia gave NATO advance notice of its military maneuvers near Ukraine, and it says that in the end Russia, the European Union and the United States may be able to reach an accommodation over Ukraine’s future:
The [military maneuvers were] apparently intended to impress on the new Kiev leadership that it should keep in mind the interests of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking minority. However, Moscow’s heads-up to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization quietly underscored the Putin administration’s repeated assurances that it has no intention of interfering in Ukraine’s domestic crisis, much less sending troops or encouraging secession. ----
As I reported earlier this week, apocalyptic scenarios for Ukraine remain unlikely.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who played a ruthless game of chess to protect Russia’s interests there, ought to know when it’s time to admit that he’s been checkmated. The game’s over, Vlad.
Sans Russian direct interventions—that is, without Moscow’s military intervention, which would be not only hopeless but catastrophically misguided—and without Russian covert support for pro-Russian guerrilla actions, including in Crimea .. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/world/europe/crimea-ukraine.html , there’s a chance that Ukrainians can resolve their problems without generating a US-Russian, Cold War–like crisis.
And the Obama administration and the Europeans, who apparently didn’t foresee the revolution—at the last minute, last week, they were still negotiating a deal to organize early presidential elections to resolve the political crisis—it’s time to avoid pressing their advantage. To calm the crisis, the United States ought to acknowledge right away that it has no plans, ever, to include Ukraine in NATO. That would be easier to say if Russia hadn’t decided to exacerbate the crisis by pledging support for Yanukovich and ordering military exercises along the Ukrainian border.
---- Eight hundred miles away, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was ordering a surprise military exercise of ground and air forces on Ukraine’s doorstep on Wednesday, adding to the tensions with Europe and the United States and underscoring his intention to keep the country in Moscow’s orbit. ----
---- We’re hoping that Russia will not see this as a sort of a continuation of the Cold War; we don’t see it that way. We do not believe this should be an East-West, Russia-United States—this is not ‘Rocky IV’.… We see this as an opportunity for Russia, the United States and others to strengthen Ukraine, help them in this transition and there’s no reason they can’t look east and west and be involved as a vital cog in the economy of all of us going forward. ----
That’s the ideal approach, one that Russia too ought to adopt, but so far there’s little sign that Moscow is ready to admit it’s been checkmated and move on. Were it to do so, Russia could insert itself in the various schemes being cooked up to rescue Ukraine’s collapsed economy. Already the United States is pledging a $1 billion down payment for Ukraine, and both the European Union and the IMF are readying packages. But that doesn’t mean that Russia’s own, vital economic interests in Ukraine can’t be protected, or that Russia can’t defend its legitimate interests in its neighbor—a country that is far more important to Russia than to the EU, and which has almost no interest at all for the United States.
Russia’s military movements can only backfire, and the revolt by pro-Russian forces in Crimea could easily provoke a Ukraine vs. Russia military flare-up, in which case NATO and the United States might very well get involved. In a statement not exactly couched to reduce tensions, the acting president of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov, said:
---- I am appealing to the military leadership of the Russian Black Sea fleet…. Any military movements, the more so if they are with weapons, beyond the boundaries of this territory (the base) will be seen by us as military aggression. ----
He’s right, of course: it would be military aggression. Nevertheless, it’s unlikely.
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