Ukraine’s Crimea region moved toward a referendum tomorrow on joining Russiaafter talks between the top U.S. and Russian diplomats failed to defuse the standoff over the Black Sea peninsula.
As the vote neared, clashes erupted in Kharkiv and Russian troops massed for exercises on the border, stirring concerns of a move to annex eastern Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who met for six hours yesterday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov without a breakthrough, warned that Russia would face consequences if it failed to change course.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “is not prepared to make any decision regarding Ukraine until after the referendum,” Kerry told a reporters after the meeting in London. Russia “will respect the will of the Crimean peoples,” Lavrov said at a separate news conference, adding that there’s “no common vision” on resolving the crisis.
The biggest dispute between Russia and the West since the fall of the Iron Curtain is shaking markets and threatening to upset more than two decades of economic and diplomatic integration between the former Cold War enemies. The U.S. and the European Union are threatening sanctions against Russia if it doesn’t back down from annexing Crimea.
Pro Ukrainian demonstrators protest against the Crimea referendum in Simferopol.
‘Ready to Respond’
“We have obviously not gotten to a situation where Russia has chosen to de-escalate” and that is “regrettable,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters in Washington. “We are pretty late in the game here with regards to the situation in Crimea,” he said, adding that the U.S. stands “ready to respond” should the referendum proceed.
Russia moved more forces into Crimea, bringing the total to about 22,000 soldiers as of yesterday evening, Ukrainian Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh said in a website statement. The troops “may be used for an offensive,” he said.
Kerry said yesterday there’s a better way for Putin to pursue Russia’s “legitimate interests” in Ukraine, the second most populous former Soviet republic. He said the U.S. is concerned about Russian troops in Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and near the Ukrainian border. A freeze in deployments would allow time for further diplomacy, he said, calling for “actions not words.”
Lavrov said “the Russian Federation has no plans to invade,” while expressing outrage over March 13 clashes in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk in which one person was killed and 17 injured, according to the regional government.
A Russian flag flies inside the entrance of Crimea's regional parliament building in Simferopol.
“Militants came to Donetsk from other regions and started fighting with demonstrators,” Lavrov said.
Putin’s Motivation
Putin is driven by deep geopolitical goals and isn’t likely to fear the consequences of sanctions by Western nations, Eugene Rumer, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington policy group, said in a telephone interview.
After watching the North Atlantic Treaty Organization expand and the U.S. build ties with former Soviet Union countries, Russians feel they “have every reason to push back and expand their ‘sphere of privileged interests,’” Rumer said.
“It’s not about keeping Ukraine in Russia’s orbit, it’s about keeping Ukraine from slipping away,” he said. “My guess is he’s betting on not suffering a whole lot in retribution from the U.S. andEurope.”
Kharkiv Clashes
In the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, two people were killed and a police officer wounded in a shootout downtown, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on his Facebook page. The situation there has now “settled” and investigators are working at the scene of the clashes between supporters of the new Ukrainian government and pro-Russian demonstrators after about 30 people were detained, he said.
Two leaders of the pro-Russian group Luhanska Gvardia were put under house arrest in the city of Luhansk, the Interior Ministry said on its website yesterday. They’re accused of seizing local television company TRK IRTA on March 10.
“The confrontation has reached a new level,” parliament Speaker Oleksandr Turchynov said in a website statement late yesterday. “Either the new young democracy wins, or a totalitarian curtain falls on Ukraine.”
Putin’s government contends ethnic Russians in Crimea are at risk after the ouster of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, an assertion that Ukraine’s new leaders deny. The Kremlin supports Crimea’s recently appointed administration, which organized tomorrow’s referendum.
Referendum Turnout
Crimean Premier Sergei Aksenov told reporters in the region’s capital, Simferopol, that the peninsula may become part of Russia next week, though full integration may take a year. Turnout is expected to be more than 80 percent, he said.
“Preparations are already under way to incorporate Crimea into Russia,” Sergei Markov, a Kremlin adviser and vice rector of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics in Moscow, said in a telephone interview from Sevastopol today.
Russian lawmakers are scheduled to consider legislation March 21 that would allow Russia to incorporate parts of countries where the central authority isn’t functioning and local residents want to secede, he said.
The bill isn’t needed to make Crimea part of Russia because the region already declared independence from Kiev, according to Markov. It would allow for the annexation of parts of eastern Ukraine, though Russia would only want to do that if it’s sure “we are welcomed with flowers,” he said.
Markets Slide
Russian stocks posted the biggest weekly drop since May 2012, with the Micex Index (INDEXCF) sliding 7.6 percent to 1,237.43, the lowest level since May 2012. Russia’s 10-year bond fell for a sixth day, driving up the yield by 38 basis points to 9.79 percent, the highest level since 2009. The ruble weakened 0.2 percent to 43.0570 against Bank Rossii’s target basket of dollars and euros yesterday in Moscow. Gold climbed to the highest in sixth months.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of U.S. stocks fell 2 percent this week to 1,841.13, erasing its gains for the year. The UX index of Ukrainian stocks was down 7.1 percent for the week. Even so, Ukrainian Eurobonds and the hryvnia rebounded after Lavrov said Russia had no invasion plans.
The United Nations Security Council will meet today in New York to vote on a draft resolution proposed by the U.S. that stresses the need for political dialogue in Ukraine. The vote’s purpose in the face of a Russian veto is to send a message to Putin that he’s increasingly isolated, said a UN diplomat who asked not to be identified, citing policy.
The text stops short of explicitly blaming or condemning Russia for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty with its moves in Crimea, the diplomat said.
Satellites Targeted
Russian television satellites were targeted through electronic warfare from western Ukraine, RIA Novosti reported, citing the Communications Ministry. People involved in such attacks should “think about the consequences,” the ministry was cited as saying.
Russia may be provoking some of the clashes in Ukraine to justify extending a military incursion, said Oleksiy Haran, a professor of comparative politics at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
“Russia is destabilizing the situation in eastern Ukraine on purpose and is ready to use anything it can,” Haran said by phone. “Provocations are resulting in people’s deaths, and then Russia uses it to begin wide-scale aggression against eastern Ukraine’s regions.”
Biden Visit
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will travel to NATO members Poland and Lithuania on March 17, the day after the Crimea vote, for talks on Ukraine, according to a White House statement. The Pentagon said this week that it would send 12 F-16 aircraft to Poland as a sign of U.S. commitment to defend allies in the region, and the U.S. sent six fighter jets to Lithuania last week.
EU foreign ministers, who meet March 17, the day after the Crimea vote, are poised to impose asset freezes and visa bans on people and “entities” involved in Russia’s seizure of the peninsula, an EU official said. The next stage of sanctions would be weighed at a summit at the end of next week.
“All the detailed preparation that needs to be done is being done,” U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman, Jean-Christophe Gray, told reporters in London.
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