Alarm bells as Russian troops mobilised on border
US urges Putin to end ‘provocative rhetoric and actions’. Russian President Vladimir Putin has alarmed the West by mobilising Russian troops on Ukraine’s border as ethnic violence flared in Crimea.
The Defence Ministry in Moscow said 150,000 troops from Russia’s western and central military sectors would undergo ‘‘combat readiness checks’’.
There were also reports that Russia’s 3rd Guards Spetsnaz Brigade, based in the city of Togliatti, were being prepared for deployment to protect Russian military bases in Crimea.
The Kremlin’s move unnerved Washington sufficiently to prompt the White House to rush out a statement from Air Force One.
‘‘We urge outside actors in the region to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, to end provocative rhetoric and actions,’’ said a spokesman, as President Barack Obama was flying from Washington to Minneapolis.
US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that the struggle for Ukraine’s future should not be regarded as an extension of the Cold War. ‘‘This is not Rocky IV,’’ he said.
Thousands of ethnic Russians, who form the majority in Ukraine’s Crimea region, demonstrated for independence yesterday. They scuffled with Crimean Tatars, who support the new government in Kiev.
Crimea is home to part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which Moscow said it was taking steps to secure.
In Kiev’s Independence Square, Ukraine’s interim leadership unveiled the new prime minister. Arseniy Yatsenyuk is the deputy head of Yuliya Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party, and has been one of the main political leaders of the protests that toppled President Viktor Yanukovich.
Yatsenyuk, 39, will today begin trying to negotiate a US$35 billion lifeline to save the country from bankruptcy.
The Government that was presented to those in the square included many former members of Tymoshenko’s government after the Orange Revolution in 2004, as well as activists who have risen to prominence in the current protests. They were named in front of a packed crowd on Independence Square – an unusual and risky move, given the boos that had greeted opposition leaders for signing a peace deal with Yanukovich last week.
The ousted president has not been seen since he left Kiev last week. There were reports in the Russian media yesterday that he had reached Moscow.
The respected business newspaper RBK reported that he had spent Tuesday night in a restaurant of the Hotel Ukraine, a Stalinist skyscraper where an uncle of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is believed to be a longterm guest. Yanukovich has since moved to a suburban, state-owned sanatorium, the newspaper said.
Separately, LifeNews, a news agency with close ties to the police and security services, announced that he arrived in Moscow on Tuesday night.
As tensions rose between Moscow and Kiev, three former Ukrainian Presidents accused the Kremlin of interfering directly in Crimea, the southern peninsula. Leonid Kravchuk, Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko said in a joint statement: ‘‘Russia, which has repeatedly described attempts by our international partners to settle the situation in a political way as interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs, has currently resorted to direct interference in Crimea’s political affairs.’’
The tension in Crimea highlights the divisions that run through this country of 46 million people, and underscores fears that the mainly Russian-speaking east and south will not recognise the interim authorities’ legitimacy.
The trouble erupted when Crimean Tatars clashed with proMoscow demonstrators outside the regional parliament building in Simferopol. The protesters shouted and attacked each other with stones and bottles, as police and leaders of both rallies struggled to keep the two groups apart. Officials said at least 20 people were injured.
Crimean Tatars are descendants of the Mongol Golden Horde whose more recent ancestors were branded enemies of the Soviet Union and deported en masse to Siberia and Central Asia by Stalin in 1944. Repatriation began in earnest only in the 1990s, and they remain largely hostile to Moscow.
They chanted ‘‘Putin is a dictator’’ and ‘‘Crimea is not Russia’’. Ethnic Russians who had come to demonstrate against the changes in Kiev responded with shouts of praise for the Berkut, the elite special forces riot police blamed for the deaths of scores of protesters last week, and abolished by the acting Interior Minister yesterday.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, called on Europe’s democracy watchdog, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe , to ‘‘decisively condemn the rise of nationalist and neo-fascist sentiment in the west of the country’’.
Ukraine needs billions of euros in emergency aid, and its currency, the hryvnia, yesterday fell to a new low against the dollar, having lost 28 per cent of its value since the protests began three months ago.