Russian parliament approves troop deployment in
Ukraine
Vladimir Putin's proposal
given go-ahead as fear of new cold war grows and UN security council holds
emergency talks
Shaun Walker in Kiev and Harriet Salem in Simferopol
The Observer, Saturday 1 March 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/02/russia-parliament-approves-military-ukraine-vladimir-putin
Vladimir Putin gave the green light for an invasion of
Ukraine on Saturday as the upper house of the Russian parliament unanimously
approved his request to send troops into the neighbouring state.
After several days in which Russia appeared to be stealthily
laying the groundwork for intervention in the Crimean peninsula, the move came
suddenly and decisively. The Kremlin said Putin wanted to introduce troops into
Ukraine "until the sociopolitical situation is normalised".
Less than an hour later, in a hastily convened extraordinary
sitting of Russia's Federation Council that was laced with cold war rhetoric,
senators voted unanimously to support Putin's proposal and proposed withdrawing
Russia's ambassador to the US in protest at an "insult to the Russian
people" from Barack Obama.
In Kiev, the acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, who has
been in power since president Viktor Yanukovych fled a week ago, convened a
special session of the cabinet, and spoke by telephone with the US secretary of
state, John Kerry.
Former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, a
leading candidate in presidential elections set for 25 May, called for
parliament to convene and order a full mobilisation of the army. He also said
Ukraine should consider cancelling the lease agreement with Moscow by which
Russia's Black Sea fleet is stationed in the Crimean city of Sevastopol. The
lease runs until 2042, and part of Russia's action has been cloaked in rhetoric
about defending the base.
The United Nations security council was due to hold an
emergency session to discuss Ukraine on Saturday night. In London, William
Hague said that Russia's ambassador to Britain had been summoned to the Foreign
Office.
The Russian decree does not limit the use of troops to
Crimea, specifying only that Russian military could be deployed "on
Ukrainian territory", and the big question is how far the Kremlin wants to
go. So far, Putin's statement only talks about "protecting the interests
of Russian citizens and compatriots", but there are fears that Moscow is
planning a full-scale annexation of Crimea, with its majority ethnic Russian
population.
Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said that no
decision to implement the decree had yet been taken.
Ominously, there were also clashes in the major eastern
Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Donetsk on Saturday, with the deputy mayor of
Kharkiv saying that 97 people had been injured in clashes between supporters of
the new government in Kiev and pro-Russian demonstrators.
The decisive move by Putin comes after two days during which
the Kremlin's motives were unclear. Armed men seized the Crimean parliament on
Thursday and the peninsula's airports on Friday, but claimed to be members of
locally organised "self-defence squads" rather than Russian troops.
As late as Friday, the foreign ministry was insisting that no irregular troop
movements were taking place, despite reports of thousands of Russian military
personnel landing in Crimea. Putin has not spoken directly about Ukraine all
week.
Ukraine had already accused Russia of a "military
invasion and occupation" of Crimea, and that could now become official.
Michael McFaul, until last week the US ambassador to Russia, castigated the
Kremlin: "Russian companies and banks with business in the west will
suffer as a result of reckless Putin decision. Will they speak up?" he
tweeted.
But the parliamentary session appeared to foresee the
barrage of western criticism and roundly dismissed it in advance. Senator
Nikolai Ryzhkov said Russia should be prepared for the west to "unleash
their dogs on us", but should not listen: "We are obliged to defend
Crimea, we are obliged to defend the people there. They ruined Yugoslavia,
Egypt, Libya, Iraq, all in the name of western democracy. It's not even double standards,
it's political cynicism."
Late on Friday night, Obama told Russia there would be
"costs" for any intervention in Ukraine. The statement was condemned
by many in the US for being short on concrete threats, but one senator in the
Federation Council said it "crossed a red line" and "insulted
the Russian people". The parliamentary body said it would prepare a note
to Putin asking for the Russian ambassador to the US to be withdrawn.
Ryzhkov said a "brown plague" had seized Kiev, and
much of the Russian rhetoric has been based on protecting Russians from ethnic
cleansing. There was even talk of "preventing genocide" in the
Federation Council debate.
Ukraine's new government does include far-right groups, and
one of the first laws it passed rescinded provisions for regions with large
Russian-speaking populations to use Russian as a second official language.
However, actual signs of violence have been limited. The
Russian foreign ministry claimed on Saturday that armed men "from
Kiev" had tried to seize the government building in the Crimean capital,
Simferopol, but had been repulsed by self-defence units, who took casualties.
On the ground, however, nobody could offer any evidence of such an attack.
Yanukovych, who gave a press conference in the southern
Russian city of Rostov on Friday at which he claimed he was still the
legitimate president, has called the new government Nazis. His role is now
unclear, but the Federation Council said he had approved the use of Russian
troops. He fled after signing a compromise agreement with opposition leaders,
in the presence of three EU foreign ministers. Russia has blasted the EU for
failing to keep the opposition to its side of the bargain and says it still
considers Yanukovych the legitimate president.
Yanukovych's flight from Kiev was the culmination of three
months of protest, ending with 82 people being killed in clashes with riot
police. Ukraine's new government has disbanded the Berkut riot police involved
in clashes with protesters, while Russia has announced it will give them
Russian passports. The first of them collected passports at a Russian consulate
in Crimea on Saturday.
In Crimea on Saturday, there were more pro-Russia rallies,
and the region already appeared under the control of Russian troops and
pro-Russian militias, who were patrolling the airports, parliaments and roads
in and out of the region.
Crimean coup is payback by Putin for Ukraine's
revolution
After what Moscow regards as
the western-backed takeover of Kiev, the Kremlin's choreography has been
impressive
Luke Harding
theguardian.com, Friday 28 February 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/28/vladimir-putin-crimean-coup-russia-ukraine
Days after the end of Vladimir Putin's Sochi Olympics, the
borders of Europe are shifting. Or, more accurately, military forces suspected
of acting on Moscow's orders are creating a new cartographic reality on the
ground.
Overnight, alleged undercover Russian special forces seized
control of Simferopol airport, in the administrative capital of Crimea. The
move comes less than 24 hours after a similar squad of shadowy, well-armed,
Russian-speaking gunmen seized Simferopol's parliament building and
administrative complex. If anyone was in doubt what this meant, the gunmen left
a clue. They raised a Russian flag above the parliament building.
Ukraine's interior minister, Arsen Avakov, described the
operations in Crimea in apocalyptic terms. What was unfolding in the south was
"an armed invasion and occupation in violation of all international agreements
and norms", he posted on Facebook. That's certainly how it seems.
Moscow's military moves so far resemble a classically
executed coup: seize control of strategic infrastructure, seal the borders
between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, invoke the need to protect the
peninsula's ethnic Russian majority. The Kremlin's favourite news website,
Lifenews.ru, was on hand to record the historic moment. Its journalists were
allowed to video Russian forces patrolling ostentatiously outside Simferopol
airport.
Wearing khaki uniforms – they had removed their insignia –
and carrying Kalashnikovs, the soldiers seemed relaxed and in control. Other
journalists filming from the road captured Russian helicopters flying into
Crimea from the east. They passed truckloads of Russian reinforcements arriving
from Sevastopol, home to Russia's Black Sea fleet.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in this very Crimean
coup. But Putin's playbook in the coming days and months is easy to predict. On
Thursday, the Crimean parliament announced it would hold a referendum on the
peninsula's future status on 25 May. That is the same day Ukraine goes to the
polls in fresh presidential elections.
The referendum can have only one outcome: a vote to secede
from Ukraine. After that, Crimea can go one of two ways. It could formally join
the Russian Federation. Or, more probably, it might become a sort of giant
version of South Ossetia or Abkhazia, Georgia's two Russian-occupied breakaway
republics – a Kremlin-controlled puppet exclave, with its own local
administration, "protected" by Russian troops and naval frigates.
Either way, this amounts to Moscow's annexation of Crimea, de facto or de jure.
From Putin's perspective, a coup would be payback for what
he regards as the western-backed takeover of Kiev by opposition forces – or
fascists, as the Kremlin media calls them. The Kremlin argument runs something
like this: if armed gangs can seize power in the Ukrainian capital, storming
government buildings, why can't pro-Russian forces do the same thing in Crimea?
(It is another high-stakes manifestation of the Kremlin's favourite doctrine,
"whataboutism". If Kosovo, then Crimea etc.)
There are, of course, signal differences. Despite the
presence of radical Ukrainian nationalists, the vast majority of opposition
demonstrators in Kiev were ordinary citizens. They were fed up with the
corruption and misrule of President Viktor Yanukovych and his clique. It was a
bottom-up revolution. The protesters were armed with little more than homemade
shields, rubbish helmets and molotov cocktails.
In Crimea, by contrast, the shadowy Russian troops are
equipped with the latest gear – they are professionals, not amateur homegrown
revolutionaries. Ukrainian officials point to the GRU, Russian military
intelligence. And the warp-speed tempo of events in Crimea is being dictated
from the top, not the bottom – from Moscow, rather than the street.
The choreography has been impressive. Within hours of the
airport seizure, Russian MPs proposed a bill in the state Duma simplifying
procedures for getting Russian passports to Ukrainians. The goal, the MPs said,
was to protect a "brotherly nation". Russia's most important
opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, meanwhile, has been placed under house
arrest for two months and denied access to the internet. The Kremlin, that most
risk-averse of entities, has everything covered.
It only remains to be seen what role Yanukovych will play in
this fast-moving drama. Despite having fled the country, he insists that he is
still Ukraine's legitimate president. He is giving a press conference on Friday
in the southern Russian town of Rostov-on-Don, close to the Ukrainian border.
This may seem like a bizarre provincial venue. But there is
method here too: Russia refuses to recognise Kiev's new pro-western interim
government as a legitimate partner. It is likely to continue to treat
Yanukovych – whose regime is accused of plundering $70bn (£42bn) from Ukraine's
treasury – as the head of a government-in-exile. It may even seek to return him
to Crimea to continue his "executive" functions. Given Yanukovych's
love of bling, Crimea's sumptuous Livadia Palace – where Stalin, Roosevelt and
Churchill met to discuss Europe's 1945 postwar carve-up – might serve as his
new HQ.
Spare a thought, meanwhile, for Crimea's Tartars. They are
the peninsula's original Turkic-speaking Muslim inhabitants. Well-educated and
politically organised, they now number 300,000, 15% of Crimea's population.
They want to remain part of Ukraine. They support Kiev's new pro-EU leadership.
They also have their own awful folk memories of Russian
colonisation and exile: in 1944, Stalin deported the Tartars and other smaller
groups to central Asia. They mostly came home after the collapse of the Soviet
Union. Understandably, they may now fear being cast once again in the role of
fifth columnists. So far the Kremlin has said nothing about their rights.
All of this presents the west with one of its biggest crises
since the cold war. Russia has mounted a major land grab of a neighbouring
sovereign state. How will the west react?
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