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Russia without Ukraine is a country; |
During the Great War, Germany grabbed Ukraine
and Lenin took it back
During the Great Pariotic War, Germany grabbed Ukraine
and Stalin took it back
During the Winter Olympiad, Germany grabbed Ukraine
and Putin let it slip away
Ukraine Crisis March 2014 - Week 2
Ukraine Crisis - 14 March 2014
US Secretary of State John Kerry called talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov "constructive and frank" but said that Russia is not prepared to make any decisions on Ukraine until after the referendum in Crimea. Kerry said the U.S. continued to favor a direct dialogue with Russia and Ukraine. He added that the U.S. does not recognize the legality of a referendum that could see Crimea break away from Ukraine and join Russia. While Kerry said he would remain in contact with Lavrov, "there will be conseqwuence if Russia does not change course."
US President Barack Obama said he remains optimistic for continued dialogue with Russia. "We continue to hope that there is a diplomatic solution to be found,'' Obama said. ``But the United States and Europe stands united, not only in its message about the Ukrainian sovereignty but also that there will be consequences if, in fact, that sovereignty continues to be violated.'
Russia has no plans of a military action in southeastern Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks with his US counterpart John Kerry in London. “Russia has… no plans to invade southeastern Ukraine. There are no reasons that prevent us from showing transparency [on the Ukrainian issue],” he said.
Lavrov said on Friday that Crimea "means immeasurably more" to Russia than the Comoro Islands mean to France or the Falklands do to Britain. "Whether there are any precedents in international law or not - there surely are, - everyone realizes, and I say so in all responsibility, what Crimea means to Russia, and that it means immeasurably more than the Comoros do to France or the Falklands to Britain," Lavrov said.
Russia reserved the right to ensure the safety of all Russians in Ukraine, the country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement following clashes between demonstrators in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Bloody clashes in the city of Donetsk that ended with a murder and multiple wounded proves Kiev does not control the situation in Ukraine, Russia’s Foreign Ministry stated, stressing Moscow reserves right to protect compatriots. The statement echoed Moscow’s tried-and-tested tactic of citing concern over the safety of ethnic Russians and Russian passport-holders to justify military intervention in former Soviet countries, and signaled a possible expansion of the crisis in Ukraine, where Russian involvement has so far been confined to the country’s Crimean Peninsula. Clashes in the eastern city of Donetsk between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian demonstrators led to at least one fatality and 26 people seeking treatment at area hospitals for injuries.
“We have repeatedly stated that those who came to power in Kiev must disarm the militants, provide security to the population and ensure people’s legitimate right to rally. “Unfortunately, as shown by the events in Ukraine, this is not happening, the Kiev authorities do not control the situation in the country,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry declared. “Russia is aware of its responsibility for the life of compatriots and citizens in Ukraine and reserves the right to take these people under protection,” ended the statement.
Russia is ready to allow Ukrainian military planes to fly over its territory if the latter fulfills its payment obligations, said the head of the Directorate for International Military Cooperation of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Sergey Koshelev. He added that no politics should be involved. “I would like to confirm that we are ready to fulfill our obligations under the Open Skies Treaty and are looking forward to a similar approach from those requesting to fly over our territory,” Koshelev said. Ukraine directed a request through the OSCE for an "emergency observation flight" from 17 to 21 March over Russian territory within the framework of the Open Skies Treaty.
Polling data provided by the state-owned All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, or VTsIOM showed a spike in the Russian president's popularity. According to VTsIOM, Putin’s approval rating, thanks largely to his handling of Ukraine, hit 71 percent 13 March 2014 -- its highest level since the 68 percent approval rating registered during his May 2012 inauguration.
Gregor Gysi, a parliamentary head of the Left Party, the largest lower-house opposition party in Germany - the successor of the community party from former East Germany - [the SPD is in coalition with the CDU] – spoke out against German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s support of the new Ukrainian government. “They formed a new government..... Immediately recognized by president Obama by the EU and German government as well. Miss Merkel! The vice- prime minister, the defense minister, minister of agriculture, environment minister, the attorney general.. They are fascists!” he stated. Gysi was furious that Germany is doing nothing to address the extreme right threat in Ukraine. "With fascists in Ukraine we are doing nothing. Svoboda party has tight contacts with NPD and other Nazi parties in Europe.. The leader of this party, Oleg Tyagnibok, has recalled that literally.”
Ukraine Crisis - 13 March 2014
Ukraine's acting president said that Russian forces were concentrated on the border “ready to invade” but he believed international efforts could end Moscow's “aggression” and avert the risk of war. Oleksandr Turchynov told a local television channel that, when Russian forces took over the southern region of Crimea last week, other units were concentrated on Ukraine's eastern border “ready for an invasion of the territory of Ukraine at any moment.... We are doing all we can to avoid war, whether in Crimea or in any other region of Ukraine,” he said, adding that Ukraine's own armed forces were in a state of full combat readiness.
Russia announced it had started military exercises near the border with Ukraine in what is likely to be seen as a show of force in the standoff with Kyiv and the West over Crimea. Separately, the ministry said Russia had sent six Su-27 jet fighters and three military transport planes to ally Belarus, responding to a request prompted by joint U.S.-Polish exercises in NATO nation Poland. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed exercises had begun in the Southern Military District near the Ukrainian border, involving 8,500 artillery men. Drills were also being held in the Belgorod and Kursk regions, which border Ukraine.
Russia does not rule out reciprocal action if sanctions are imposed by the US and European countries, a senior Russian economic official said. “We hope that there will only be targeted political sanctions, and not a broad package affecting economic trade,” Deputy Economic Development Minister Alexei Likhachev said. The United States and the European Union have a combined Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) Gross Domestic Product of around $30 trillion, while that of Russia is about $2 trillion. In official exchange rate [OER terms], the Russian economy is only slightly larger than that of Italy.
The Russian stock market hit a four-and-a-half-year low on Thursday and is down 20 percent since mid-February. The cost of insuring Moscow's debt against default rose to its highest level in nearly two years and is up by more than a third this month. The crisis has already forced several Russian firms to put plans on hold for public offerings to raise cash abroad. Yet none of that appears to have slowed down President Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine's parliament voted to create a 60,000-strong National Guard as a step to strengthen defense. The move, supported by 262 parliamentarians, basically recreates the Guard Ukraine used to have back from 1991 to 2000. The new National Guard would be created on the basis of internal troops.
Ukraine’s 450-member parliament has voted in support of revising the electoral law ahead of presidential elections. A simple majority of 226 MPs out of 309 present for the vote supported the changes, which included a ban on taking pictures or video of voters, as well as a ban on taking “selfies” while casting ballots. Other changes apply to presidential campaigns’ start and finish dates. No other major changes have been made.
The United States and the European Union will respond on Monday with a "serious series of steps" against Russia if a referendum on Ukraine's Crimea region goes ahead on Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said. Kerry told a congressional hearing he hoped to avoid such steps, which include sanctions, through discussions with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, in London on Friday. "If there is no sign of any capacity to be able to move forward and resolve this issue there will be a very serious series of steps in Europe and here with respect to the options that are available to us," Kerry said in testimony on the State Department's 2015 budget request.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Russia risks "massive" political and economic damage if it does not change course in the Ukraine crisis. In a speech to the German parliament Thursday, Merkel said Ukraine's territorial integrity is "not up for discussion." She also said the European Union will impose sanctions on Russia if it does not move to set up a contact group to discuss the Crimea crisis.
Merkel said “35% of our needs in gas are covered at the expense of Russian gas, this is not dependence”. Angela Merkel reminded, German companies have long-term contracts with Russia on supply of natural gas. At the same time, she stressed, Germany stakes on different sources of gas supply and the additional use of other energy carriers. Despite the aggravation of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict in Crimea, the German government head does not think that it will have negative consequences for security of energy supplies from Russia to Europe. “The Russian party even in the times of the “cold war” was a stable supplier (of gas - Ed.) and has its own economic interest in this,” she noted.
Of all the EU states, Latvia will suffer most if the EU imposes sanctions against Russia, Latvian Finance Minister Vyacheslav Dombrovsky told journalists. “I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that of all the EU states, it is Latvia that has the biggest share in economic relations with Russia. Should the sanctions [against Russian in connection with the Ukrainian crisis] be imposed… we will feel their consequences the most,” Dombrovsky said, as quoted by Delfi. According to the minister, 43 percent of Latvian agricultural/food exports go to Russia, and 70 percent of all the transit traffic is connected to Russia. Moreover, Latvia is “fully dependent” on Russian natural gas imports. The fact that over 35% of all Latvians (and 50% of the residents of the capital, Riga) have Russian as their first language gives rise to two separate media spaces in Latvia; one in Latvian and one in Russian.
Ukraine Crisis - 12 March 2014
President Barack Obama said March 12, 2014 that the U.S. and its allies would be forced to apply a cost to Russia if it presses ahead with a referendum on Sunday that would effectively annex Crimea. His comments came in a White House meeting with Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. With the prime minister sitting beside him Obama said "We will stand with Ukraine." This was Obama's first meeting with Yatsenyuk and was meant to underscore U.S. support for the new government and the Ukrainian people. The president referred to Russia's military presence in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula as a threat to Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty. He also said Washington "completely rejects" the Russia-backed referendum that would have Crimea secede from Ukraine. He said the vote, "patched together in a few weeks," is a violation of international law.
Joined by other leaders, the G-7 is calling on Russia to cease all efforts to change the status of Ukraine’s peninsula in violation of Ukrainian and international law.“Any such referendum would have no legal effect. Given the lack of adequate preparation and the intimidating presence of Russian troops, it would also be a deeply flawed process which would have no moral force. For all these reasons, we would not recognize the outcome,” said the G-7 statement.
In response to Russia’s actions in Crimea Republican U.S. Senator John McCain has suggested a series of measures Congress should take against Moscow. Among the steps he recommended would be the imposition of sanctions against individuals close to Russian president Vladimir Putin, especially those responsible for human rights abuses and corruption. The senator also suggested the U.S. “start [its] missile defense systems in the Czech Republic and Poland, [and] accelerate the path of Georgia and Moldova into NATO,” – steps McCain believes would “change… Putin’s behavior.” He also called on the Obama administration to stop pushing the “reset button” with Russia and to “understand Putin for what he is: a KGB colonel apparatchik who said the worst disaster of the 20th century was the breakup of the Soviet Union.”
In a confidence-building step, Russia’s Defense Ministry has given permission for a surveillance flight by Ukraine over Russian territory near the border between the countries. Kiev had claimed Moscow was building up its military presence there. “The Ukrainians have asked for an unscheduled observation flight over our territory,” Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov told reporters in Moscow. Russia and Ukraine are entitled to surveillance flights over each other's territories following the Open Skies treaty signed in 1992, but Antonov said that Kiev had never asked for one before, and that Moscow was "under no obligation" to allow it immediately. “We have decided to allow such a flight. We hope that our neighbors are assured that there is no military activity that threatens them on the border.” Antonov vehemently denied a statement Tuesday by Igor Tenyukh, defense minister for the Kiev government, that Russia had amassed more than 220,000 troops, 1,800 tanks and over 400 helicopters in regions adjacent to eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine Crisis - 11 March 2014
The parliament of Crimea declared independence ahead of the popular vote on secession and annexation by Russia. The declaration appeared to be the latest attempt to shore up the legal basis of the upcoming referendum. The text of the declaration, published on the parliament's website, claims that the action is in accordance with international law, specifically citing a 2010 ruling by the International Court of Justice that affirmed Kosovo had the right to declare independence from Serbia.
Pro-Russian forces in Crimea closed the main airport in the regional capital, Simferopol, preventing all flights in and out, except those connecting to Moscow. Ukraine said gunmen have seized a military hospital in Simferopol, the administrative center of Ukraine's autonomous Crimea region. The Crimean parliament on Tuesday banned the activities of nationalist political organizations instrumental in the recent Ukrainian revolution, citing security threats. The blacklist includes the far-right Svoboda party and the neo-Nazi Right Sector movement.
A defiant Viktor Yanukovych, ousted as Ukrainian president, has reiterated from exile that he is still the country's leader and remains commander of the country's armed forces. In a short statement delivered from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, Yanukovych said he is sure the armed forces would refuse to obey any 'criminal orders' and that he intends to return to Kyiv as 'circumstances permit,' saying, 'I am sure it won't be long.'Yanukovych warned that 'dark forces' are working to foment civil war in the troubled former Soviet nation.
The European Commission has adopted a proposal to extend unilateral trade benefits to Ukraine worth nearly 500 million euros ($693 million) a year. EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the move was 'a concrete, tangible' measure of support for Ukraine after the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych. Once member states and the European parliament have given their approval, the decision will unilaterally remove or reduce import duties on a wide range of agricultural and other goods.
Ukraine's State Border Guards said they prevented over 300 Russian citizens from crossing the border on suspicion that they sought to cause more chaos in the Eastern European country. The border guards' website said they did not allow people to cross the border with provocative symbols and items that could be used to cause injuries.
Ukraine Crisis - 10 March 2014
Armed men fired into the air as they took over a Ukrainian naval post in Crimea. Ukraine's Channel 5 television quoted Ukrainian defence official Vladislav Seleznyov as saying the shooting took place in mid-afternoon at a motor pool base near Bakhchisaray. Seleznyov said about 10 "unidentified armed men" in two minibuses drove into the compound and demanded Ukrainian personnel there give them 10 trucks.
As demonstrators staged rival rallies in Crimea and throughout Ukraine, street violence flared in Sevastopol when pro-Russian activists and Cossacks attacked a group of Ukrainians. In the ethnic Russian eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, the Kyiv Post said 7,000 demonstrators in Lenin Square tore down a Ukrainian flag, replacing it with the Russian tricolor ensign and chanting "Putin our president" and "referendum."
Russia's Foreign Ministry expressed concern at what it terms the "lawlessness" affecting Russians and Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine. The ministry's statement mentioned an incident in Kharkiv on March 8, during which it says masked men linked to the ultranationalist Right Sector group -- in "connivance" with the new government in Kyiv -- opened fire on peaceful protesters. Kharkiv police acknowledged a minor incident but said the only link to Right Sector came from an anonymous phone call. According to eyewitness reports, some seven or eight masked people drove a mini-van to a Saturday rally in central Kharkov, which was demanding a regional referendum on whether it should follow Crimea’s suit and seek joining Russia. The men armed with bats and handguns ambushed three activists, who were returning from the rally. The Russian Foreign Ministry also complained that police in Dnepropetrovsk had detained seven Russian journalists.
Ukrainian Air Force considered the issue of meeting with international experts within preparation to the Multinational Exercises of AF units Safe Sky 2014 scheduled for May-July with involvement of MiG-29, Su-27 of Ukraine’s AF and Polish AF MiG-29 and F-16. The participants would work out the tactical approaches of detection, interception of air targets, etc. It was also planned to discuss with international experts the issues of realization of air situation data exchange program and specify the list of entry points for air traffic.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's defense department said armed men in uniforms surrounded and seized a Crimean naval base at Chernomorskoye, and a military hospital in Simferopol. The New York Times newspaper reported police interrupted an interview with a local man in Chernomorskoye, threatening its reporters and seizing their notes. Reporters Without Borders said Monday that unidentified gunmen seized two female Ukrainian journalists in Crimea. The group warned that attacks on the media were attempts to turn the region into a "black hole for news."
Ukraine Crisis - 09 March 2014
Ukraine's acting defense minister said Kyiv had no plans to send armed forces to Crimea. Acting Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh said that Ukrainian troops are performing training exercises, but they are strictly limited involving only troop movements from one base to another. “No movements, no departures for Crimea by the armed forces are foreseen. They are doing their routine work which the armed have always had,” he said.
Tenyukh was responding to media reports about Ukrainian troop movements after Russian forces took control of Crimea. Tenyuh said the personnel and vehicles traveled to military training grounds as part of large-scale exercises held in order to determine the combat readiness of the troops.
Russian forces tightened their grip on Crimea despite a US warning to Moscow that annexing the region would close the door to diplomacy. Russians took over a Ukrainian border post on the western edge of Crimea, trapping about 30 personnel inside. A Ukrainian military spokesman (Oleh Slobodyan) said Russian forces now controlled 11 border guard posts across Crimea.
Center for Military and Political Investigations head Dmytro Tymchuk said that "representatives of the self-proclaimed Crimean authorities" have ordered Ukrainian troops at a missile-defense regiment in Yevpatoriya (about 70 kilometers north of Sevastopol on Crimea's western coast) to "lay down their weapons" by 6 p.m. local time, or "a storming of the installation will be carried out."
Ukraine's leaders vowed not to give up "a single centimeter" of territory to Russia as thousands rallied at rival pro- and anti-Moscow demonstrations, and tensions remained high over the deepening crisis in Crimea. In Donetsk demonstrators marched to the regional administration building -- which was seized twice by pro-Russian demonstrators in the past week -- where they took down the Ukraine flag outside and hoisted the Russian one. He said demonstrators chanted, "Referendum," "Russia, Russia" and, "Donetsk is a Russian city." Plans to hold a pro-Ukrainian rally later were abandoned amid concerns of violence by pro-Russian activists. Thousands anti-Maidan demonstrators rallying in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk blocked and occupied the regional administration building, hoisting a Russian flag on its top. The protesters demanded Mikhail Bolotskikh, the region’s head, picked by the Kiev government, to step down.
More than 3,500 people travelling from Russia into Ukraine have been refused entry since March 3, according to first deputy head of the Ukrainian Border Guard, Pavel Shisholin. “As of today, more than 3.5 thousand people, including 16 journalists, were not allowed to enter, as they were unwanted on the territory of Ukraine,” Shisholin said at a session of the Kiev government.
Sources in Russia’s Defense Ministry say officials are considering discontinuing US inspections of national strategic nuclear missile forces, citing “lack of trust” as reason for the move. Inspections had been permitted by the latest START treaty. “Because such inspections are a measure of credibility, in terms of the declared ‘sanctions’ on the part of the US, there cannot be any normal regular bilateral contacts in regard of the [START] treaty,” an unnamed source in the Defense Ministry told several Russian news agencies.
One “does not talk in the language of sanctions in the modern world,” special representative of the Russian President at Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Kirill Barsky, said in a statement published on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website. “In today’s world, which is connected through and through by the binding fabric of globalization, the very idea of international isolation of a large state, let alone that of a world power, should a priori be perceived by any reasonable man as an obvious oddity,” Barsky said.
Ukraine Crisis - 08 March 2014
A convoy of Russian military vehicles entered a base near Crimea's capital Simferopol 08 March 2014. The convoy included eight armored vehicles, two ambulances and gasoline tankers. The vehicles traveled to a military airfield over which a Russian flag flew.
Warning shots were fired when pro-Russian forces refused entry to Crimea of an international monitoring team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. No injuries were reported. The observers returned to the nearby city of Kherson, the OSCE said. It was the third day in a row that a team of observers has been refused entry to the area.
The authorities of the Crimean autonomy were compelled to change the initial referendum question because of Kiev's actions with regard to Crimea, the Crimean Supreme Council's First Deputy Grigory Ioffe told a press conference. The initial question was "about the state independence of Crimea as part of Ukraine" and Crimea "was hoping this wording will be perceived in Kiev normally," he said. "Regrettably, the events that took place forced the Crimean parliament to change this wording," Ioffe said. "You know what happened next: all kinds of trials, mean words, accusations, and inquiries," he said.
Ukraine's Acting Foreign Minister Andrey Deshchytsa has said he is not going to dramatize the situation over a possible reduction in Russian natural gas imports. "As regards the gas supplies, I think Ukrainian will be able to overcome this reduction at the expense of other sources: If Russia stops gas supplies, we shall look for other sources," he said at a briefing.
The situation in eastern regions of Ukraine was becoming more intense. The struggle between supporters and opponents of the Maidan had not stopped; administrative buildings changed hands many times. In Donetsk, by order of the Kiev authorities, "people's Governor" Pavel Gubarev was arrested. When it became clear that Gubarev was taken from Donetsk to Kiev, his supporters surrounded the building of the security service of Ukraine, demanding to release their leader. The fighters of the special division of militia of Ukraine, Berkut, deployed at a base not far from Donetsk refused to obey the order of the Kiev authorities and arrest the protesters.
The situation in the neighbouring Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk was none the better. Tens of thousands of people opposed regional governors appointed by Kiev (both of them were oligarchs included in the 100 richest people of Ukraine, according to the Forbes magazine). The protesters claimed the right to elect regional authorities themselves and demand to hold a referendum on the status of their regions, following the example of Crimea.
According to one perspective, Putin cannot leave the Russian speaking population of the neighboring country without protection. The Director of the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, Valery Korovin, notes: "This will mean the beginning of the end of the Russian statehood, because it will become not only a strategic loss, but also a symbolic event of a military retreat. And in such situations, all internal destructive forces immediately consolidate and mobilize themselves. "The fifth column" begins to feel its innocence, to act confidently, synchronizing with the forces from the outside. This would mean the emergence of nests of rebellion in Russia, consolidation of the "atlanticist" liberal elite and transition to the active phase of the process of disintegration of Russia from the inside," Korovin said.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine says that Russia prepares to deploy air defense systems in Crimea (Ukraine). "According to the information of the Ministry of Defense and law enforcement bodies of Ukraine, for the last 24 hours the situation in Crimea is characterized by further strengthening of military formations of the Armed Forces of Russia, preparation of air defense systems deployment, including air denfese systems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine which are planned to be captured." - said the spokesman of Ukraine's MFA. He added, that the Russian troops are still blocking Ukrainian military bases and detachments of the Armed Forces and State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. As reported, the MFA of Ukraine declares that the recruitment of activists and Cossack organizations in Transnistria region (Moldova) is ongoing in order to destabilize the situation in Odessa region (Ukraine).
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