Obama: Crimean Referendum Violation of International Law
by VOA News March 06, 2014
Speaking at the White House on the escalating crisis in Ukraine, President Barack Obama has condemned a secession initiative put forth by Russian-backed lawmakers in Ukraine's Crimea, calling it a violation of International Law. He also reiterates the West's backing of Ukraine's new government.
Obama spoke after lawmakers in Crimea voted to join Russia via a local referendum, in a move likely to further escalate tensions over the peninsula.
Thursday's vote by the Moscow-backed Crimean parliament comes as U.S. and European leaders continue emergency talks on how to get Russia to back down from its military incursion into Crimea. U.S. lawmakers are also meeting Thursday to discuss potential economic sanctions against Russia.
Russia has denied that it has sent any troops to Crimea in addition to those already stationed there as part of its Black Sea fleet, a claim challenged both by the West and Ukraine's new leadership in Kyiv.
The parliament of Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula with a majority ethnic Russian population, said Thursday it is scheduling a referendum on joining Russia for March 16. In a statement on its website, the parliament announced it had asked Moscow "to start the procedure" for allowing Crimea to join the Russian Federation.
Commenting on the development, a senior U.S. official said any decisions about the future of Crimea must involve the Ukrainian government in Kyiv.
"With respect to the referendum that was announced, it is the belief of the United States that decisions about Crimea or any part of Ukraine need to be made with the government in Kyiv," the official told reporters.
Ukraine's new prime minster, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, has said the referendum on Crimea's status is 'illegitimate' and has 'no legal grounds.'
'Crimea is, was and will be an integral part of Ukraine,' he added.
The criticism was echoed by Ukraine's interim President Oleksandr Turchynov who, citing article 73 of Ukraine's constitution, said that any such referendum would have to be conducted nationwide. Speaking on Ukrainian television, he accused Russia of orchestrating the referendum initiative, which he called a 'farce.'
Ukraine to defend itself
Ukraine's armed forces will act if Russian military intervention escalates any further into Ukraine's territory, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk told a news conference on Thursday.
"In case of further escalation and military intervention into the Ukrainian territory by foreign forces, the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian military will act in accordance with the constitution and laws," Yatsenyuk said in Brussels.
"We are ready to protect our country," he said.
Ukrainian forces have so far not responded to the Russian takeover of the Crimean peninsula. But this could change if the Russian intervention escalated, he said.
Yatsenyuk, who came to Brussels to discuss the crisis with the leaders of the 28 countries of the European Union, said the talks with EU leaders were only about political and peaceful means of resolving the conflict.
US diplomacy
Meanwhile, direct efforts to end the crisis continue, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry having met again with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Rome. But Lavrov said after the meeting there is still no agreement between Moscow and Washington.
Kerry held a series of discussions Wednesday with Lavrov, British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Ukrainian interim Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia. The Russian and Ukrainian ministers did not meet face-to-face during Wednesday's flurry of negotiations, and Kerry said he had not expected they would.
Ukraine's crisis began when protests erupted in late November after then-President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a deal with the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia. What began as peaceful demonstrations eventually turned deadly as protesters clashed with police. Yanukovych fled the country last month.
US slaps sanctions on officials
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered the freezing of U.S. assets and a ban on travel into the United States of those involved in the Russian military intervention into the Crimea region of Ukraine. Obama signed an executive order aimed at punishing those Russians and Ukrainians responsible for a Russian move into Crimea.
The order, the White House said in a statement, is 'a flexible tool that will allow us to sanction those who are most directly involved in destabilizing Ukraine, including the military intervention in Crimea, and does not preclude further steps should the situation deteriorate.'
In addition, the State Department is putting in place visa bans on a number of officials and individuals responsible for or complicit in threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
The Obama order targets any assets held in the United States by 'individuals and entities' responsible for the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, threatening its territorial integrity or seeking to assert governmental authority over any part of Ukraine without authorization from the Ukrainian government in Kyiv. The White House also said it is prepared to consider additional steps and sanctions as necessary.
US Navy destroyer heads to Black Sea
A U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer, is heading to the Black Sea for what the U.S. military on Thursday described as a "routine" deployment that was scheduled well before the crisis in Ukraine.
The announcement came a day after the Pentagon unveiled plans to put more U.S. fighter jets on a NATO air patrol mission in the Baltics, moving to reassure allies alarmed by Russia's effective seizure Crimea.
The U.S. Navy said in a statement that the destroyer left Greece on Thursday en route to the Black Sea and would conduct training with Romanian and Bulgarian naval forces.
NATO appeals to Russia
NATO urged Russia on Thursday to call back to bases its forces in Crimea, saying it stood by Ukraine's territorial integrity in the face of the greatest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War.
"Ukraine is a valued and long-standing partner for NATO. In these difficult moments NATO stands by Ukraine, NATO stands by Ukraine's sovereignty, integrity and by the fundamental principles of international law," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.
"This crisis is not just about Ukraine, this crisis has serious implications for the security and stability of the Euro-Atlantic area as a whole. We clearly face the gravest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,'' Rasmussen said.
"Above all we call on Russia to step up [to] its international commitments and halt the military escalation in Crimea. We call on Russia to withdraw its forces to their bases and to refrain from any interference elsewhere in Ukraine," he said.
EU sanctions
The European Union has frozen the assets of 18 high-ranking officials of the former Ukrainian government, including ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.
The 28-nation bloc announced the names of those targeted by the sanctions early Thursday, after reaching a decision the night before to impose the punishments on those responsible for embezzlement of state funds.
Yanukovych's son, his former justice minister and several other government ministers are also among those whose assets have been frozen. Yanukovych fled Ukraine last month after protests over his decision to accept an economic aid package from Russia turned deadly.
Crimea still tense
Tension remained high in Ukraine's southern Crimea region, where a senior United Nations envoy on Wednesday was surrounded by a pro-Russian crowd, threatened and forced to get back on his plane and leave the country.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said attempts by Western countries to take action over the Ukraine crisis via democracy watchdog OSCE and the NATO military alliance were not helpful.
'I want to very briefly say that we had a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the situation in Ukraine in relation to the actions that our partners are trying to take via the OSCE, the NATO-Russia council and other international organizations - action that does not help create an atmosphere for dialog and constructive cooperation,' he said in a statement issued by the ministry on Thursday.
A mission of OSCE observers has been stopped from entering Crimea by unidentified men in military fatigues, Poland's defense minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, said.
Following the incident the mission of 43 unarmed observers from 23 OSCE countries was reported as turning back and heading to the Ukrainian city of Kherson, halfway between Odesa and the Crimean peninsula, to decide how to proceed, the Vienna-based security organization and democracy watchdog said.
Russia hands out passports
In a move that may alarm some of Russia's neighbors and the West, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced steps to ease handing out passports to native Russian speakers who have lived in Russia or the former Soviet Union.
Putin has cited the threat to Russian citizens to justify military action in both Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine now.
Concerns the turmoil could spread beyond Crimea remained heightened Thursday, amid clashes between pro-Russian demonstrators and Ukrainian police in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Police took back a government building that had been seized Wednesday by demonstrators. Dozens of people were detained.
Putin has said Russia reserves the right to intervene militarily in other areas of Ukraine if Russian interests or the lives of Russians are in danger.
'Putin's fiction'
Dropping diplomatic niceties on Wednesday, the U.S. State Department published a 'fact sheet' entitled 'President Putin's Fiction: 10 False Claims about Ukraine.'
'As Russia spins a false narrative to justify its illegal actions in Ukraine, the world has not seen such startling Russian fiction since Dostoyevsky wrote, 'The formula 'two plus two equals five' is not without its attractions,'' the State Department said in the document.
Russia on Thursday dismissed the State Department fact sheet as a "primitive distortion of reality," cynicism and double standard.
"It's clear that in Washington, as before, they are unable to accept a situation developing not according to their templates," Alexander Lukashevich, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a statement.
Mood in Kyiv streets
Meanwhile, residents of Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, are condemning what they see as Russia's moves to assert itself in Crimea and other parts of Ukraine.
"Russia now is encroaching on our state, our sovereignty, and violates all sorts of interests of the Ukrainian people in bringing in its troops and by force attempts to coerce us into becoming Russian citizens,' said Olena, a lawyer, who did not give her last name.
Oleksandr Dorofeyev, an engineer, just pleaded for his country to stay together and for peace to prevail.
'We should be all together, the way we are. We should have peace over our heads with as few armed people as possible. I myself don't want to be sleeping with a sidearm. It's simply scary.'
Elsewhere in Ukraine
Ukraine again flew its flag over the government headquarters in the eastern city of Donetsk on Thursday and ejected pro-Moscow demonstrators that occupied it, ending a siege that Kiyv had seen as part of a Russian plan to create a pretext for invasion.
Police said they had taken more than 70 people into custody for questioning after clearing out the regional administration headquarters and another government building.
"The people who were removed from the building did not resist,'' said a local police official.
Later on Thursday, security service agents arrested the protest leader. Pavel Gubarev was led away from his apartment without a fight. The local businessman who called himself the "people's governor" had demanded control over the police and tried to persuade lawmakers to install him as regional boss while his men occupied their meeting hall.
Donetsk is the home city of ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Includes reporting from VOA's Daniel Schearf and Jamie Dettmer in Kyiv. Additional reporting by Reuters.
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