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Ukraine’s Europe-Leaning Leaders Prepare To Form Coalition After Vote

Ukraine’s Europe-Leaning Leaders Prepare To Form Coalition After Vote

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

KIEV, Ukraine — Political leaders who won strong voter endorsement for their pledges of reform and closer ties with Western Europe began work Monday on forming a parliamentary coalition to deliver on those promises. Russian officials grudgingly said they would accept the results of Sunday’s elections for Ukraine’s Supreme Council that will give a trio of pro-Europe parties a majority and the power to steer their troubled nation into the West’s democratic fold.

With most of the vote counted late Monday, political movements headed by President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, and a new alliance of young activists had at least 54 percent of the vote locked up for their expected coalition.

Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, whose Fatherland Party placed sixth with 5.7 percent, has also promised to join forces with the Europe-leaning leaders.

Even as it demonstrated Ukrainians’ commitment to fight the endemic corruption that has placed their country on par with Nigeria, the decisive pro-Europe vote also was likely to further agitate Russian President Vladimir Putin and his proxies in eastern Ukraine who have been rebelling against governance from Kiev.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the vote could help focus Ukrainian leaders on “the real problems” they face instead of “swinging to the East or West,” according to an interview carried by Russia’s LifeNews television. Russia is pleased that Ukraine now has a government “that’s not fighting itself” and can concentrate on restoring unity to the country, Lavrov said.

Lavrov’s deputy, Grigory Karasin, was less sanguine on the election outcome.

“We are waiting for the official results while there is rather contradictory data,” Karasin told the Interfax news agency. “But it is already clear that, despite the rude and dirty campaigning, the elections took place.”

Separatist gunmen backed by Russia control significant areas of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. They blocked voting in their territory on Sunday, as did the new Russian government in Crimea, the military stronghold seized and annexed by Moscow this year. That has served to further diminish the voice that pro-Russia eastern politicians had in Ukraine’s political affairs before the ouster in February of Kremlin-allied President Viktor Yanukovich.

Poroshenko praised Ukrainians for their endorsement of his reform course and the country’s goal to eventually secure membership in the European Union.

“For the first time in the history of Ukraine, the ruling parties gained more than 50 percent of votes. It is impressive,” he said in a statement posted on the presidential website. “It is a vote of trust the Ukrainian people gave to the political parties to immediately begin the process of reforms.”

Poroshenko Bloc leader Yuriy Lutsenko told journalists that the faction was already in talks with the parties sharing the president’s priorities of restoring peace in the embattled eastern regions and cleaning up the country’s finances and reputation.

The tumultuous events of the last 11 months left Yanukovich’s Party of Regions in disarray. Some politicians of the former ruling party ran under a new pro-Russia alliance called the Opposition Bloc, which won about 10 percent of Sunday’s vote. But the Communist Party, their allies in the quest to retain and even strengthen economic and political collaboration with Russia, failed to get enough votes in the balloting for party slates and, for the first time in modern Ukrainian history, will not be represented in the legislature.

The Kiev government’s inability to open polling places for at least 4 million registered voters was among the failings of balloting carried out amid civil war and economic disaster, according to election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. But the observers said the vote was overall fair and legitimate.

Political analysts say they recognize the risk of a unified turn westward further antagonizing the Kremlin, which has insisted on Eastern Europe remaining in Moscow’s political orbit. But they insist that the course toward Western Europe is Ukraine’s to define, not Russia’s, and that Putin will have to come to some accommodation with Kiev to provide for Russians in Crimea and Ukraine’s east.

“I don’t see how relations between our states can be worse when we are already at war,” said historian and Ukraine Voters Committee Chairman Oleksiy Koshel.

He said Moscow’s plan to build a bridge from mainland Russia to the Crimean peninsula across the tempestuous Kerch Strait to create a supply line would be expensive, time-consuming and unreliable. Pragmatism, Koshel said, will compel Putin to agree to scrap the bridge project in exchange for Ukraine supplying electricity, drinking water and heating fuel to a Crimea region at least nominally within the Ukrainian state.

That would be a face-saving way of providing for the largely Russian community in Crimea and sparing Moscow billions in investment that would only add to Russia’s economic woes amid Western sanctions and falling oil prices, Koshel said.

Russian provocations in the east have decreased since a European-brokered Sept. 5 cease-fire, but they have not ended, and a swift surge in shelling of government positions on the eastern front was noted immediately after the elections, said Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.

AFP Photo/Genya Savilov

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Ukraine President: Russian Forces Have Invaded

Ukraine President: Russian Forces Have Invaded

By Isabel Gorst, Los Angeles Times

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called a snap meeting of his security council on Thursday, declaring that Russian forces had invaded Ukraine.

Poroshenko summoned the council as pro-Russian separatist rebels tightened their grip on the town of Novoazovsk in southern Ukraine, opening a new front in the months long battle with Ukrainian government troops.

“Today the president’s place is in Kiev,” he said.

“I have decided to cancel my visit to Turkey because of the sharp escalation of the situation in the Donetsk region … as Russian forces have entered Ukraine,” he added.

Two columns of Russian tanks and military vehicles fired Grad missiles at a border post in southeastern Ukraine, then rolled into the country Thursday as overmatched border guards fled, the Associated Press quoted a top Ukrainian official as saying.

Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security Council, said the missiles from Russia were fired about 11 a.m. and about an hour and a half later the vehicles began an attack. They entered Ukraine from Veselo-Voznesenka, just across the border from Novoazovsk in the Rostov region in Russia.

A top NATO official said at least 1,000 Russian troops have poured into Ukraine with sophisticated equipment and have been in direct “contact” with Ukrainian soldiers, resulting in casualties, the news service reported. He called that a conservative estimate and said an additional 20,000 Russian troops were right over the border in Russia.

Novoazovsk had until recently escaped the conflict raging further north in Donetsk but came under heavy fire this week as separatist forces pressed into the city.

Ukrainian officials would be calling for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council and a meeting of the European Commission to discuss the escalating crisis, Poroshenko’s media service said.

As tensions rose in Kiev, Russian state television broadcast an interview with a Ukrainian rebel leader who claimed that thousands of Russian citizens were fighting alongside the separatists in southeast Ukraine as volunteers.

Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk Peoples Republic, said many of the Russians who had joined the rebels’ ranks were retired military personnel or soldiers on leave.

“They are fighting with us understanding that it is their duty,” he said.

Arseniy Yatseniuk, Ukraine’s prime minister, appealed to the West for support, urging the United States, European Union, and the G7 countries to freeze Russian assets until Moscow halted military support for the separatists.

Ukraine accuses Russia of sending troops and military equipment across the border to support the rebels, who have lost ground to government troops in recent weeks and have opened up a new front in the southern Donetsk region bordering the Azov and Black Seas. Russia has repeatedly denied military involvement in the conflict in southeast Ukraine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to demand an explanation of reports that Russian troops had invaded Ukraine, according to her office.

The Kremlin media service said Putin had informed Merkel that Russia was planning to follow up on the delivery of humanitarian aid to Donetsk last week with another aid mission to the embattled region.

Zakharchenko said accusations by Kiev and the West that Russia had invaded Ukraine were a ploy to justify the Ukrainian military’s onslaught on rebel strongholds in Luhansk and Donetsk.

Between 3,000 and 4,000 Russian citizens had fought as volunteers alongside the separatist rebels in southeast Ukraine. “Some have gone home, more have stayed,” he said.

Among the volunteers are Russian servicemen on leave, who choose to give up their vacations to join “their brothers in the fight for freedom.”

Zakharchenko admitted that some of the Russian fighters had been killed in battle, adding weight to a spate of media reports describing the secret burials of soldiers in Russia. The Kremlin has dismissed the reports as “‘rumors.”

This story has been updated.

AFP Photo/Francisco Leong

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Fears Over Russian Troop Increase At Ukraine Border

Fears Over Russian Troop Increase At Ukraine Border

Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) – Fears that Russia was massing troops on Ukraine’s border grew on Wednesday ahead of a visit by NATO’s secretary general, as an air strike hit the main eastern city where Kiev troops are besieging rebels.

NATO and Poland both warned that Russia may be gearing up to invade its former Soviet neighbor, despite strong denials from Moscow.

The first air strike on rebel-held bastion Donetsk came as Ukrainian forces said they were preparing to liberate the city, although they also reported their highest death toll in weeks in the face of fierce rebel bombardments.

On Wednesday, NATO warned that Russia had increased the number of “combat-ready” troops on its border with Ukraine to 20,000 from 12,000 in mid-July.

“This is a dangerous situation,” NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said, warning that “Russia could use the pretext of a humanitarian or peacekeeping mission as an excuse to send troops into eastern Ukraine.”

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said “the threat of a direct intervention (by Russia into Ukraine) is certainly greater than it was even a few days ago.”

Moscow said those making the claims about their troop movements were “selling soap bubbles”.

“Movements of such forces of thousands of troops and equipment are not possible in such a short time,” said Russian defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenikov.

Against this backdrop, Kiev said NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen will visit on Thursday at the invitation of President Petro Poroshenko.

The visit is meant to discuss NATO-Ukraine partnership but Rasmussen has also ratcheted up the rhetoric lately, saying in an interview on Sunday that NATO would draw up new defence plans in the face of “Russia’s aggression”.

The West accuses Russia of supporting and instigating the insurgency in eastern Ukraine, sending tensions with Moscow soaring to their highest point since the Cold War.

The U.S. and European Union have slapped a range of tough sanctions on Moscow, with Switzerland, Japan and Canada following suit, potentially pushing Russia’s fragile economy towards recession.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin struck back on Wednesday with import bans and restrictions on agricultural products from countries that have targeted Moscow.

Although Moscow has already halted some food imports from a number of European countries, it had previously denied these measures were linked to the conflict.

Russia generally imports a third of its food from abroad, according to state statistics. The list of products to be banned was being drawn up, a government spokeswoman said.

Meanwhile, fighting continued to rage on Wednesday in Ukraine’s industrial east, where the main rebel-city of Donetsk was hit by its first air strike since Ukrainian forces heavily bombarded the airport in May.

Kiev denied it was behind the early morning strike, which caused damage but no casualties.

Ukraine’s military has made major advances over the past month and says it has almost cut off Donetsk from the Russian border and second rebel bastion of Lugansk.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Ukrainian operation in the east told AFP that “the noose is tightening” around remaining rebel bastions and that government forces were preparing for their “liberation”.

The military also reported that 18 soldiers had been killed and 54 injured in fighting over the past 24 hours, the highest daily toll in weeks.

Some 1,300 people have been killed since April, according to the UN.

Civilians have been hit hardest, with over 285,000 fleeing their homes over the past few months, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), which warned of “a massive exodus” if fighting intensifies.

Local authorities in Lugansk said there was still no power, running water, phone connections or fuel on Wednesday, while food supplies were running low and rubbish disposal was becoming a growing concern.

At the UN in New York the previous day, Russia’s representative deplored the “disastrous” humanitarian situation in east Ukraine and called for “immediate action” to help the population.

Kiev quickly dismissed the offer.

“The ‘peacekeeping contingent’ that has stood at the Ukrainian-Russian border for more than five months, is hardly peacekeeping. Its intervention will be considered a direct attack,” a spokesman for Poroshenko said.

Tensions soared following the July 17 downing of Malaysian flight MH17. The US accuses the rebels of attacking the jet with a missile supplied by Russia.

International investigators have been combing the vast crash site for clues and body parts over the past week. They again had to break off their work early on Wednesday due to shooting in the area, Ukraine’s government said.

Dutch police leading the mission appealed to the local population for further help in recovering remains and belongings of the 298 victims of the downed flight.

AFP Photo/Dimitar Dilkoff

Ukrainian Troops, Pro-Russia Rebels Regroup For Fight Over Donetsk

Ukrainian Troops, Pro-Russia Rebels Regroup For Fight Over Donetsk

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

Ukraine’s new defense minister said Tuesday that peace talks will occur only after the pro-Russia rebels holed up in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk completely disarm.

“There will be no more unilateral cease-fire,” Defense Minister Valery Heletey said in a statement posted on the ministry website, reflecting the emboldened posture of Ukraine’s military since its troops managed to recover a handful of important rebel strongholds in recent days.

While a fierce showdown appeared in the offing, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said his troops would refrain from using heavy artillery or airstrikes in Donetsk, a city of 1 million residents where the gunmen fighting to join Russia occupy the 10-story regional government headquarters and other buildings in the city center.

Since government forces succeeded in recent days to drive the militants from Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, and other towns in the Donetsk region that they held for three months, many of the gunmen have fled to central Donetsk to regroup and collaborate with the putative rebel government. Alexander Borodai, one of the self-styled leaders of the proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, told Russian media during a visit to Moscow on Tuesday that the separatists were not taking refuge in Donetsk but, rather, planning a counteroffensive.

“We’re not preparing ourselves for a siege. We are preparing ourselves for action,” Borodai was quoted as saying by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru.

Igor Strelkov, the Russian special forces veteran who commanded the separatist operations in Slovyansk, cast the rebels’ retreat over the weekend as a strategic move to spare the civilian population from further hazard. Dozens of fighters as well as civilians were killed around the city in the heavy artillery exchanges between rebels and government forces.

“The (Ukrainian) National Guard are getting revenge for their numerous losses on the locals,” Strelkov was quoted as saying by Russian website LifeNews and by state-controlled Russia Today television.

Although Strelkov and other Russian mercenaries have made no secret of their involvement in the fighting in eastern Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has steadfastly denied Kiev’s accusations that Russia is supporting the separatist rebellion that has left nearly 500 dead since April.

Poroshenko, who has been in office a month, had proclaimed a unilateral cease-fire on June 20 but ended it last week, saying that rebel forces had violated the truce more than 100 times. At least 47 Ukrainian troops died in attacks during the 10 days that the government claimed to be halting its offensive, although the separatists accused the Kiev forces of also violating the cease-fire.

As rebels retreated from the towns recovered by government forces over the past four days, bridges and other transportation infrastructure have been destroyed on the routes into Donetsk, presumably to frustrate the advance of government troops. On Tuesday, a blast damaged a railroad line near Horlivka, between Slovyansk and Donetsk, the online Ukrainian news site Ostrov reported.

AFP Photo / Anatoliy Stepanov

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