Russia says it's ready for Crimea annexation
In escalation of crisis, Russian leaders back vote for secession.
MOSCOW — Russia signaled for the first time Friday that it was prepared to annex Crimea, significantly intensifying its confrontation with the West over the political crisis in Ukraine and threatening to undermine a system of respect for national boundaries that has helped keep the peace in Europe and elsewhere for decades.
Leaders of both houses of Russia’s Parliament said they would support a vote by Crimeans to break away from Ukraine and become a region of the Russian Federation, ignoring sanctions threats and warnings from the United States and other countries that a vote for secession would violate Ukraine’s Constitution and international law.
There was no sign Friday that Russian armed forces were relaxing their tight clench on the Crimean Peninsula, with military bases surrounded and border crossings under strict control. There were news reports late Friday that pro-Russian militants had smashed through the gates of a Ukrainian air force base in the port of Sevastopol housing 100 Ukrainian troops but that no shots had been fired.
Even as tensions flared between Russian and Ukrainian forces, the moves by Russia raised the specter of a pro-
tracted conflict over the status of Crimea, which Russian forces occupied a week ago, calling into question not only Russia’s relations with the West but also post-Cold War agreements on the sovereignty of the nations that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The developments underscored how quickly the crisis has evolved. Earlier this week, President Vladimir Putin of Russia had said he did not foresee the possibility that the Crimean Peninsula would become part of Russia, but on Friday leaders of both houses of Russia’s Parliament welcomed a delegation from Crimea’s regional assembly and declared that they would support a vote to break away from Ukraine, now scheduled for March 16.
The referendum — barely a week away — has been denounced by the fledgling national government in Kiev, which said it would invalidate the outcome and dissolve the Crimean Parliament. President Barack Obama has also rejected the referendum, and the U.S. government announced sanctions Thursday in response to Russia’s de facto military occupation of the Crimean Peninsula.
Russia denounced those sanctions in a blunt rejoinder Friday evening, posted on the Foreign Ministry website. The statement said that Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, had spoken by telephone with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and warned that “hasty and ill-considered steps” to impose sanctions on Russia officials “would inevitably backfire on the United States itself.”
Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that Lavrov and Kerry would meet again soon. A senior State Department official traveling with Kerry, who was flying back to Washington after a trip to Europe and the Middle East, confirmed that Kerry had spoken with Lavrov but said it was unclear when they would meet again.
The Russians also sent menacing economic signals to the financially stressed interim central government in Kiev, which Russia has refused to recognize. Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, which supplies Ukraine with most of its gas, warned that it might shut off supplies unless Ukraine paid $1.89 billion that it owes the company.
“We cannot deliver gas for free,” Russia news agencies quoted Gazprom’s chief executive Alexei Miller as saying.
Gazprom cut off gas to Ukraine for nearly two weeks in January 2009, causing severe economic problems for Ukraine and for European customers elsewhere who were dependent on supplies delivered through Ukraine.
Valentina Matviyenko, chairwoman of the upper house of the Russian Parliament, the Federation Council, compared the planned referendum in Crimea to one scheduled to be held in Scotland on whether to become independent from Britain. She did not mention that the national government in Britain had agreed to hold a referendum, while the Ukrainian government has not.
The speaker of the Russian lower house, Sergei Naryshkin, echoed Matviyenko’s remarks. “We will respect the historic choice of the people of Crimea,” he said.
The remarks by the legislative leaders, both close allies of Putin, came a day after Crimea’s regional as- sembly voted behind closed doors to secede from Ukraine and apply to join the Russian Federation, and to hold a referendum for voters in the region to ratify the decision. On Friday, a delegation of lawmakers from Crimea arrived in Moscow to lay the groundwork for joining Russia, winning strong endorsements from senior lawmakers.
“We admire your fortitude and courage,” Matviyenko told them, according to Interfax news agency. “Many threats have been made against you; there were threats of attacks, in particular, against the Black Sea Fleet, but you endured that and protected your people.”
In another telling sign of official Russian support, the Crimean delegates were cheered at a rally in central Moscow that was shown at length on Russian state television, with songs and chants of “Russia, Moscow, Crimea.” News agencies quoted the police as saying the rally was attended by 60,000 people.
Even if the referendum proceeds as planned and Crimea res- idents approve of secession from Ukraine, it is unclear what would happen next.
“Any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government of Ukraine,” Obama said Thursday at the White House.
“In 2014, we are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders.”
With Washington and Moscow trading angry accusations of hypocrisy on the issue of respecting state sovereignty, validating Crimea’s secession would carry pointed political risks for Putin, given longstanding demands for independence from Russia by its own similarly autonomous republics in the Caucasus, including Dagestan and Chechnya.
Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, noted the parallel in a sharp post on Twitter.
“If Russian government endorses Crimean referendum,” McFaul wrote, using abbreviations needed for a 140-character limit, “will they also allow/en- dorse similar votes in republics in the Russian Federation?”
The West, which has insisted that the Ukrainian people are entitled to decide their future without interference from Russia, faces similar challenges as it seeks to explain why the people of Crimea should not necessarily decide their own fate.
The U.S. and its European allies typically support self-determination but have opposed independence for regions in their own borders, such as Scotland from Britain or Catalonia from Spain.