US warns Russia against Ukraine grab amid break-up fears
Merkel, Putin agree to uphold Ukraine’s territorial integrity • Ex-PM Tymoshenko says she will not lead interim government
KIEV (Reuters) – The United States and European allies warned Russia not to send forces into Ukraine on Sunday as rival neighbors, east and west of the former Soviet Republic, said a power vacuum in Kiev must not let the country break apart. A day after Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovich fled to the Russian-speaking east, parliament named newly appointed speaker Oleksander Turchinov as interim head of state. An ally of Yulia Tymoshenko, who had been a prominent rival of Yanukovich, Turchinov aims to swear in a government by Tuesday that will be able to provide authority until a presidential election, set to take place on May 25. With battle- hardened, pro-Western protesters, in control of central Kiev and determined to hold their leaders to account, lawmakers rushed through decisions to cement their power, display their rejection of rampant corruption and bring to book officials who ordered police to fire on Independence Square. But whoever takes charge as interim prime minister faces a huge challenge to satisfy popular expectations and will find an economy in deep crisis – even if the EU makes good on new offers of aid, which might help make up for loans that Russia has frozen. Scuffles in Russian-speaking Crimea, and some eastern cities, between supporters of the pro-EU order in Kiev and those anxious to stay close to Moscow revived fears of separatism, which a week earlier were focused on the west, where Ukrainian nationalists had disowned Yanukovich and proclaimed self-rule. US President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, was asked on US television about the possibility of Russia sending troops to Ukraine, which President Vladimir Putin had
hoped Yanukovich would keep closely allied to Moscow. “That would be a grave mistake,” Rice said. “It’s not in the interests of Ukraine or of Russia or of Europe or the United States to see a country split. It’s in nobody’s interest to see violence return and the situation escalate.” Putin spoke on Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose foreign minister had brokered a short-lived truce in Kiev on Friday. They agreed Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” must be maintained, Merkel’s spokesman said. British Foreign Secretary William Hague told BBC it would be a mistake for Russia to “send in the tanks” to defend its interests on the Crimea peninsula, where Moscow bases its Black Sea Fleet. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is set to travel to Ukraine on Monday to discuss economic help, the EU said. The United States has also promised help. But budgets are tight and international creditors may remain wary of Yanukovich’s opponents, whose years in government were no economic success story. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to his office, told US Secretary of State John Kerry the opposition had “seized power” by force by ignoring the EU-brokered truce on Friday that left Yanukovich in office for the time being. Lavrov said that power-sharing agreement should be revived. However, even lawmakers from Yanukovich’s own party voted for his removal on Saturday and issued a statement blaming him and his entourage for the crisis. In a mark of passions dividing Ukrainians along a historic fault line between Russian and Ukrainian cultures, local television in Kerch, in eastern Crimea, showed a crowd hauling down the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag in front of the town hall and hoisting the white, blue and red Russian tricolor. In a hectic round of voting in parliament, lawmakers rushed in some crowd-pleasing measures against the ousted administration, conscious that those still occupying Independence Square remain deeply suspicious of the political class. They stripped Yanukovich of his abandoned country home near Kiev. Parliament-appointed security officials announced legal moves against members of the ousted administration and those responsible for police attacks on the Maidan last week. Tymoshenko, who had been prime minister following the largely peaceful Orange Revolution of 2004-05,ruled herself out as interim premier, disappointing many in Ukraine who had hoped for an end to the corruption and failed economic policies, which marked the aftermath of Soviet communism. “In these days the most important thing is to form a functioning government,” said Vitaly Klitschko, a possible presidential contender. “We have to take very important steps in order to ensure the survival of the economy, which is in a very bad shape,” he said, denying there had been a coup. “Parliament is the last legal official institution in Ukraine,” Klitschko said. •