USA TODAY International Edition
All eyes on Russia,
Analysts voice concern over Russia’s role
As Ukraine’s parliament voted Saturday to impeach the country’s president, replace key ministers, and hold elections much sooner than government and opposition leaders agreed just a day earlier, analysts say the country remains on a precarious cusp and vulnerable to separatist elements and Russian intervention.
“The problem is the situation is moving very fast, and there are so many actors not accountable to national governments that the situation will remain extremely dangerous for the next few months,” said Andrew Weiss, a White House expert on Russia and Ukraine under president Bill Clinton. “It’s uncertain what Russia actually wants to emerge from the chaos of the past week. We are in uncharted waters.”
Russia is worried less about instability in Ukraine than about a Ukraine inching closer to the European Union. That would threaten Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan to create a Eurasian union, dominated by Russia and Ukraine, said Janusz Bugajski, a foreign policy analyst in Washington.
The United States should issue “a very strong message to Moscow not to intervene with Ukrainian military or paramilitaries or to support separatists anywhere in Ukraine,” Bugajski said. “It needs to be a strong message from Brussels and Washington ( that) any intervention will be unacceptable and there will be consequences from the West.”
The White House issued a statement Saturday afternoon noting that the U. S. is “closely monitoring developments” as well as voicing support for the Ukraine people in determining their country’s fate.
“Going forward, we will work with our allies, with Russia, and with appropriate European and international organizations to support a strong, prosperous, unified, and democratic Ukraine,” the statement read, adding that the administration wishes former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was released from a prison hospital Saturday, “a speedy recovery.”
Tymoshenko said Saturday that she will challenge Ukraine’s Russian- backed president, Viktor Yanukovych, who had left the capital. The Rada, the country’s parliament, sacked him and replaced the minister of the interior whose security forces were implicated in the violence that resulted in more than 80 deaths last week. The defense minister and attorney general were also voted out.
Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign minister on Saturday accused Ukraine’s opposition of failing to fulfill its side of a peace deal intended to end the nation’s political crisis, and urged Western mediators to intervene.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called his German, French and Polish counterparts, who helped broker Friday’s agreement between Yanukovych and the opposition. Yanukovych agreed to hold early elections in December and surrender much of his powers, but opposition supporters have sought his immediate dismissal. Parliament voted Saturday to move the elections to May.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Lavrov urged his counterparts to use their influence with the Ukrainian opposition, which he said “not only has failed to ful- fill any of its obligations, but keeps making new demands under the influence of armed extremists and rioters.”
Lavrov’s angry words raise the prospect that Moscow may try to disrupt Ukraine’s transition to a European, rather than Russian, orientation, Bugajski said.
It could “put an economic squeeze” on Ukraine by withholding or raising prices on natural gas sales that Ukrainians use to heat their homes, abandoning a $ 15 billion aid package Russia agreed to in November to persuade Yanukovych from joining a trade alliance with the European Union, Bugajski said. And it could support separatism, particularly in Crimea, a majority ethnic Russian province that is home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
President Obama spoke to Putin on Friday, but “there’s not been any strong statement by the European Union or the U. S. deterring Russia, telling them any intervention will be unacceptable and there will be consequences from the West,” Bugajski said.