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Ukraine Vows To Save Shaky Truce Despite Rebel Raids

Ukraine Vows To Save Shaky Truce Despite Rebel Raids

SLAVYANSK (Ukraine) (AFP) – Ukraine’s new Western-backed leaders vowed on Wednesday to stick by their unilateral ceasefire and pursue peace talks despite the downing by pro-Russian militia of an army helicopter in the strife-torn separatist east.

The death of nine servicemen outside the rebel bastion of Slavyansk and loss of two troops in sporadic attacks prompted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to threaten to unleash a powerful new military campaign in the Russified rustbelt.

An AFP team in Slavyansk heard a wave of shelling being launched by Ukrainian forces who have effectively surrounded the devastated city of nearly 120,000 on Wednesday morning.

Their assault was met with extended rounds of anti-aircraft and heavy machine gun fire that echoed through deserted city streets.

“This is the calm before the storm that begins once the ceasefire ends,” said a 42-year-old rebel who is simply known to his unit as “Oleksandr the Soldier.”

Poroshenko’s ominous warning dented hopes of the sides mediating an end to 11 weeks of guerrilla warfare that has killed more than 435 people and brought the ex-Soviet nation to the brink of collapse.

Kiev’s temporary ceasefire was picked up by rebel commanders on Monday but was due to expire on Friday morning after just two rounds of inconclusive talks.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said he told his counterparts in Brussels on Wednesday that Kiev had thus far kept to its pledge to hold fire despite dozens of rebel raids.

“We are committed to do our utmost to achieve the de-escalation of the situation,” Klimkin said during a meeting of top diplomats from the 28 NATO member states.

But a separatist leader in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic said after a second round of peace talks with Kiev that the truce was holding in name only.

“There is no ceasefire,” Oleksandr Borodai said after a second round-table meeting with Kiev representatives in the regional hub of Donetsk since Monday.

“We are seeking peace. But for now, all the consultations have been useless,” Borodai told reporters.

Putin has urged both sides to extend the truce and pushed senators to revoke his March 1 authorization to invade his western neighbor in a bid to “protect” ethnic Russians from the nationalists now in power in Kiev.

Russia’s rubber-stamp upper chamber approved Putin’s request on Wednesday in a 153-1 vote.

But Kiev and Washington still accuse Putin of covertly arming the rebels in retaliation for the February ouster of a pro-Russian administration that abruptly ditched an historic EU agreement and preferred closer ties with Moscow instead.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Brussels that Russia must still take “many concrete” steps to end the crisis.

Poroshenko will sign the final chapters of that pact in Brussels on Friday despite the strong likelihood that Russia will follow up a cut in gas deliveries it imposed on June 16 with punishing new trade barriers.

“The near-term economic impact of this agreement will depend very much on how Russia responds,” economists at London’s Capital Economic consultancy said in a research note.

“However, the agreement, coupled with Ukraine’s $17 billion IMF deal, should act as an anchor for much-needed economic and political reforms which would boost growth over a medium-term horizon,” it added in a report.

Poroshenko will also introduce to parliament on Thursday a draft of a new constitution that expands some regional powers but stops well short of creating a federation that Putin had hoped would give the east a chance to build much closer ties with Moscow.

The Ukrainian leader had German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande join him for a conference call with Putin that Paris said lasted more than an hour but whose details were not immediately released.

The French presidency said Hollande and Merkel “encouraged” Putin and Poroshenko to “work together, especially in order to put in place a mechanism to oversee the truce.”

NATO foreign ministers huddled in Brussels amid pleas from ex-Soviet satellite nations for the Alliance to beef up its military presence along Russia’s western frontier.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen noted entering the meeting that the Alliance intended to “review our relations with Russia and decide what to do next.”

“I regret to say that we see no signs that Russia is respecting its international commitments,” NATO’s top civilian official said.

©afp.com / John MacDougall

 

After Ukraine Election, Turmoil Continues In East

After Ukraine Election, Turmoil Continues In East

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

KIEV, Ukraine — Petro Poroshenko has yet to be declared winner of Ukraine’s presidential election, but the challenges facing the presumed new leader were on dauntingly full display Monday.

Pro-Russia gunmen who claim control of nearly 15 percent of the country invaded the international airport in Donetsk after thwarting voter participation in the election Sunday to choose a head of state to succeed ousted Kremlin ally Viktor Yanukovich.

Masked militants toting heavy weapons set up positions at the modern glass-and-steel terminal at Donetsk Sergei Prokofiev International Airport, built as the city of a million’s stylish welcome mat for the 2012 European soccer championships.

Ukraine’s interim leaders deployed helicopter gunships and ground reinforcements to regain control of the airport in midafternoon, and a spokesman for the Defense Ministry’s beleaguered “anti-terrorist operation” said government forces had wiped out a gun emplacement of the rebels and secured the runway, control tower and access to the facility.

Still, the airport remained closed to commercial flights for safety reasons and was apparently destined for the kind of armed standoff that persists in a dozen towns and cities of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Poroshenko, the 48-year-old billionaire who has been a player in two previous Ukrainian governments, compared the pro-Russia militants to Somali pirates — elected by no one and pursuing their own selfish interests. He said the government in Kiev would never negotiate with terrorists, but he acknowledged that the tense and deadly standoff was unlikely to ease without the involvement of Russian leaders.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued an early assurance that the Kremlin was “ready for dialogue” with the presumed winner of the election. Poroshenko has production and marketing interests in Russia, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has intimated that he could do business with him.

But Lavrov’s tentative olive branch was offered with the warning that Kiev must cease its military campaign to retake control of the militant-occupied areas in Ukraine’s east.

“We cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that the so-called anti-terrorist operation did not end,” Lavrov said of the Kremlin’s insistence that Sunday’s election couldn’t be considered valid if violence was being waged against the Russian-speaking eastern regions. Failure to halt the operation now that Kiev has new leadership in sight “will be a huge mistake,” he warned.

The attack by Ukrainian air force troops later Monday was likely to anger the Kremlin, which has sought to cast Kiev’s efforts to recover authority in the east as evidence that it is bent on repressing the Russian-speaking minority in the Donbass region, where Soviet-era industrial integration remains.

International affairs experts who were in Ukraine to observe the election portrayed the vote as an inspiring triumph of civic spirit and commitment to democracy over the nationalist aggression driving the separatists in the east.

“The majority of the country was able to vote in a most orderly and disciplined way and made their voice absolutely clear,” said former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, head of the National Democratic Institute, which sent dozens of observers to oversee the voting.

Sidestepping a question about whether stricter sanctions against Moscow were in order for its alleged backing of the militants who prevented Donetsk and Luhansk voters from casting ballots, Albright said it was “important to focus on the main story here, that the way people voted made clear they want a moral country.”

Jane Harman, the longtime California congresswoman who now heads the Wilson Center think tank in Washington, said it was time for some “tough love” for Ukraine, which has squandered previous opportunities to build a country committed to democracy and the rule of law.

Noting that the public fervor for change was betrayed after the country proclaimed its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, and again when the 2004 Orange Revolution deteriorated into strangling corruption, Harman said Poroshenko’s mandate to create a new Ukraine might be the last chance for the country to seize the opportunity for reform with Western assistance.

“It’s either third time’s the charm or three strikes and you’re out,” said Harman, a Los Angeles Democrat.

Asked how the outbreak of Russian nationalist aggression in eastern Ukraine could be reversed, she said Poroshenko and his incoming team of leaders were obliged to set the country on a clear course for economic recovery, which would be the envy of those now aligned with Russia, which has been hit by Western sanctions for its seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and its attempts to wrest Luhansk and Donetsk from Ukraine.

Whether Putin’s recent conciliatory statements about working with Ukraine’s newly elected leader are to be trusted, Harman balked at the idea that the Kremlin is controlling Ukraine’s future.

“The conversation should be about Ukraine, not about Putin,” she said, expressing the hope that Poroshenko can build an inclusive government to address the Russian-speaking minority’s concerns while honoring the mandate given him by Ukrainian voters fed up with life in a dysfunctional state nearly a quarter of a century after independence.

©afp.com / Genya Savilov

Pro-Russia Militants Wage Deadly Offensive As Ukraine Election Nears

Pro-Russia Militants Wage Deadly Offensive As Ukraine Election Nears

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

KIEV, Ukraine — Pro-Russia separatists vowing to disrupt Sunday’s presidential election in Ukraine launched a fresh attack Thursday against the Kiev government’s beleaguered forces, killing at least 13 soldiers but failing to take control of more territory in the eastern regions, Ukrainian officials reported.

The assault by armed rebels on a checkpoint in the village of Blahodatne, about 20 miles southeast of militant-occupied Donetsk, also left at least 30 people wounded, the Defense Ministry and acting President Oleksandr Turchinov told journalists in Kiev.

The attack coincided with an attempt by at least 60 heavily armed militants in a convoy of trucks to enter Ukraine’s Luhansk region from Russia via the Krasnodon border crossing, said Andriy Parubiy, head of the National Security and Defense Council.

“This was a huge operation prepared for today, but there and everywhere else the enemy was repelled,” Parubiy said of the blocked convoy and another attempted incursion that brought gunmen from Russia to Ukraine’s border by train.

“I can’t imagine that these operations can be taking place without the approval of the highest authorities in Russia,” Parubiy said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Ukrainian officials and their Western allies accuse of instigating the separatist violence in an attempt to destabilize Ukraine, has denied involvement in the unrest since it began more than two months ago. In recent days he has insisted that Russia won’t interfere with Sunday’s election, even expressing hope that it leads to resolution of the conflict.

Ukrainians are going to the polls to choose a new president. The country has been ruled by an interim government since President Viktor Yanukovich, a key Moscow ally, fled to Russia in February following months of protests against his rule.

Putin said during a visit to China this week that he had ordered Russian troops to pull back from Ukraine’s border on Monday to “create additional, favorable conditions” in which Ukrainians can vote for a new president.

NATO officials, who have estimated Moscow’s troop buildup at 40,000, said they had seen no sign of a withdrawal underway as of Wednesday. On Thursday, an alliance general said there was some evidence of a pullback in the works but said the Kremlin’s presence remained intimidating.

“The force that remains on the border is very large, and it’s very capable and remains in a very coercive posture,” U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, the supreme allied commander for Europe, told a news conference in Brussels.

The checkpoint attack Thursday brought the highest death toll suffered by the Ukrainian troops in a single incident since Kiev launched its “anti-terrorist offensive” in early April in an attempt to retake government buildings, police stations and broadcast facilities occupied by the separatists.

The militants’ moves in March to seize territory in the largely Russian-speaking east and south of Ukraine followed a Russian military invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in late February and its annexation to Russia on March 18 after a dubious referendum.

The armed separatists control more than a dozen venues in two eastern Ukrainian regions — Luhansk and Donetsk — and have blocked and threatened election workers trying to set up polling places for Sunday’s presidential vote. But they don’t fully control the two regions, which are home to 6.5 million people, or about 15 percent of Ukraine’s population, noted Parubiy.

Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who are in Ukraine to report on security issues and election preparations, agree.

Veteran German diplomat and OSCE special envoy Wolfgang Ishinger expressed hope that polling places can operate in as much of Donetsk and Luhansk regions as possible on Sunday and urged the separatists to cease interference with the vote.

“I have to say I haven’t met a single serious person who believes Donbass (the Donetsk mining and industrial basin) would be better off cut off as a separate entity,” Ishinger said, adding that it was his personal impression that the gunmen’s control of the region has less popular support than the militants contend.

Matthew Schofield/MCT

Kremlin Backing Rebels In Push For Power-Sharing Reforms

Kremlin Backing Rebels In Push For Power-Sharing Reforms

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

The Kremlin’s top diplomat signaled Tuesday that Russia won’t recognize the results of Ukraine’s May 25 presidential election unless it is preceded by a “national dialogue” on redistributing power to the regions and an end to Ukrainian troops’ efforts to retake eastern territory seized by pro-Russia rebels.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also accused Ukraine’s interim government in Kiev of “fascism” and pointed to Friday’s deadly confrontation in the Black Sea port of Odessa as evidence of the Western-allied leadership’s brutal intentions toward Russians and other minorities.

Lavrov spoke in Vienna during a gathering of the Council of Europe as fighting between Ukrainian government troops and Russia-allied separatists in eastern Ukraine ground to a tense standoff.

An “anti-terrorist operation” launched weeks ago has made only limited progress in containing the pro-Russian gunmen, said to number about 800 in Slovyansk, the main battleground in an arc of towns and cities along Ukraine’s Russian border where militants man roadblocks to repel the Ukrainian forces.

Ukrainian officials blamed the slow progress in quelling the Slovyansk insurgency on the separatist gunmen’s use of women and other civilians as human shields to deter forceful moves by the Ukrainian troops to retake the town of 125,000 in the Donetsk region.

Ukrainian acting defense minister Mykhailo Koval told a Reuters news agency reporter in Slovyansk that the presence of civilians compelled the government to erect “a gradual blockade, destroying provocateurs and sabotage to prevent injuries among the population.”

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov on Tuesday gave updated casualty figures to journalists covering the escalating conflict in the eastern regions. He said 30 pro-Russia militants had been killed in two days of fighting and that four Ukrainian soldiers died in the sporadic battles.

The Ukrainian troops managed to overrun one checkpoint near Slovyansk, breaking the rebels’ lines of communication, The Associated Press reported.

But other reports from the roiling region said the separatists had surrounded an Interior Ministry base in Donetsk and were preventing security forces from reinforcing the government mission to recover control of the militant-occupied towns and cities.

Lavrov’s speech in Vienna suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin will persist with what Kiev’s interim authorities say is a grand scheme to destabilize the east and south of Ukraine and cast doubts on the legitimacy of the presidential election.

Putin has denounced the acting Ukrainian government ministers as “coup-installed” and lacking any authority to make decisions on behalf of the divided country.

Ukraine’s Interim President Oleksandr Turchinov and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk took power after Kremlin-allied President Viktor Yanukovich was toppled in late February after a three-month rebellion spurred by his decision to abandon an association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union. Yanukovich, rewarded for his loyalty to the Kremlin with a lucrative natural gas discount deal, fled Kiev after agreeing to a power-sharing agreement with the political opposition, which included Turchinov and Yatsenyuk.

Putin sent Russian troops into Ukraine’s Crimea territory days after Yanukovich fled and took refuge in Russia. After the Kremlin forces occupied the Crimean parliament, communications centers and military bases, they backed local nationalists in staging a hastily organized referendum on secession from Ukraine and annexation with Russia.

The Kiev interim government and its Western allies suspect the Kremlin has armed and instigated the pro-Russia rebels occupying about a dozen towns and cities in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and has provoked confrontations elsewhere. On Friday, 46 people were killed in Odessa when rival protest marches for and against Ukrainian unity erupted in street fighting and the firebombing of a multistory building where pro-Russia gunmen had taken up positions on the upper floors.

Accounts in Russia’s state-controlled media have portrayed the Odessa violence as evidence of the Kiev government’s threat to Russians and other minorities in Ukraine, a country of 46 million in which about a quarter of the population is Russian or Russian-speaking.

In his address in Vienna, Lavrov branded the Odessa tragedy “a blatant manifestation of fascism.”

“Defenseless people, including women, were burnt alive in the House of Trade Unions in the city of Odessa,” Lavrov said. “Fire was opened at those who tried to survive by jumping out from the windows. They (unity supporters) were scoffing at corpses.”

Russian officials have also described the government’s ongoing operation to rout separatists from Ukrainian government buildings and communications centers as a campaign targeting minority civilians.

“Holding elections at a time when the army is deployed against part of the population is quite unusual,” Lavrov told a news conference, calling on the Kiev leadership to rescind its orders for retaking the occupied eastern and southern venues.

“We are convinced that there is a way out of the crisis,” Lavrov said. “It can be found exclusively on the basis of a national dialogue” between the Kiev government and the pro-Russia rebels.

Yatsenyuk has spoken in favor of constitutional reforms that would cede power from the central government in Kiev to the regions, allowing them to decide their own economic and foreign policies. But Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman told journalists in Kiev on Tuesday that the complicated redrafting of Ukraine’s governing structure won’t be completed and ready for a public vote until late fall at the earliest.

©afp.com / Alexander Khudoteply