Top Ukrainians Accusing Russia of an Invasion

International New York Times | 28 Feb. 2014

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s fragile new government accused Russia of trying to provoke a military conflict on Friday by invading the Crimea region, while in Washington President Obama issued a stern warning to the Kremlin about respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty, apparently in an effort to preclude a full-scale military escalation. [President Obama, please issue one to Vietnam re Cambodia's sovereignty, too.  Don't just leave it to China to do so.]

American officials did not directly confirm a series of public statements by senior officials in the new Ukrainian government, including its acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, that Russian troops were being deployed to Crimea, where Russia has a major naval base, in violation of the two countries’ agreements there.

Mr. Obama, however, cited “reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine,” and he said, “Any violation of Ukrainian sovereignty would be deeply destabilizing.”

“There will be costs,” Mr. Obama said in a hastily arranged statement from the White House.

The pointed warning came after a day in which military analysts struggled to understand a series of unusual events in Crimea, including a mobilization of armored personnel carriers with Russian markings on the roads of the region’s capital, Simferopol, and a deployment of well-armed masked gunmen at Crimea’s two main airports.

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Armed men patrolled the street outside Simferopol’s airport in the Crimea region of Ukraine on Friday. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

“The Russian Federation began an unvarnished aggression against our country,” Mr. Turchynov said in nationally televised remarks on Friday evening. “Under the guise of military exercises, they entered troops into the autonomous Republic of Crimea.”

He said that Russian forces had captured the regional Parliament, as well as the headquarters of the regional government, and that they had sought to seize other targets, including vital communications hubs, and to block unspecified Ukrainian military assets.

United States officials said they believed that the unusual helicopter movements over Crimea were evidence that a military intervention was underway, but cautioned that they did not know the scale of the operation or the Russians’ motives.

Russia on Friday denied that it had or would encroach on Ukrainian territory, and claimed that any troop movements were in line with arrangements that allow it to station soldiers in the area.

Still, developments in Ukraine sent Ukraine’s interim government, appointed just the day before, deep into crisis mode as it confronted the prospect of an armed effort to split off Crimea, an autonomous region with close historic ties to Russia, from the Ukrainian mainland.

Analysts said the increase in the Russian presence in the area had parallels to steps Russia took before beginning a war with Georgia in 2008 over the largely ethnic Russian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but there was little to indicate whether President Vladimir V. Putin intended to escalate the challenge to Ukraine beyond the so-far nonviolent provocation of the mostly pro-Russian population in the region.

Mr. Turchynov, the acting president, also made comparisons to Georgia.

“They are provoking us into military conflict,” Mr. Turchynov said. “They began annexation of territory.” 

In his address, Mr. Turchynov added, “I personally appeal to President Putin, demanding that he immediately stop the provocation and withdraw troops.” 

The crisis in Crimea, along the Black Sea, is the latest development in a series of rapidly unfurling events that began after scores of people were killed in Kiev last week in a severe escalation of civic unrest that had been underway since late November.

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CCTV Shows Crimean Parliament Takeover

Footage from security cameras showed the moment armed men seized Simferopol’s Parliament building in Ukraine’s Crimea region.

Protests started after Russia pressured Viktor F. Yanukovych, then the president, to back away from sweeping political and free-trade agreements with the European Union that he had long promised to sign, setting off an East-West confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War.

After the recent killings, Mr. Yanukovych reached a tentative truce with opposition leaders in talks brokered by the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland, but within 24 hours he fled the capital, and an overwhelming majority of lawmakers voted to strip him of power, saying he had abandoned his position.

On Friday, a week later, Mr. Yanukovych resurfaced for a news conference in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, in which he said he was still the legitimate president and urged Russia not to intervene militarily in Crimea.

Mr. Obama’s warning suggested a deepening uncertainty among American officials about Mr. Putin’s intentions in the region [as China is worried about Vietnam's intentions in Cambodia] despite a series of high-level contacts in recent days, including a telephone call between the two presidents one week ago. Mr. Yanukovych was an ally of Russia, and his toppling has left the Kremlin grappling for a response.

Washington has struggled to make sense of the events in Crimea. While American officials said that intelligence indicated that a Russian operation was underway, Mr. Obama stopped short of calling it an invasion. Part of the confusion, one official said, was that Russia routinely moves troops between military bases in Crimea.

Another American official said that intelligence reports from the region are “all over the place,” but that the administration believed that Russia had moved some of its forces into Ukraine, while some of the movement, officials said, seemed to be an increase in protective measures around Russian military installations.

Though he threatened an unspecified “cost” to Russia, Mr. Obama appeared to have limited options to respond to an intervention. Officials said he could cancel his participation in a Group of 8 meeting in Sochi, Russia, in June. The administration could also shut down talks on a potential trade agreement. Russia sent a delegation to Washington this week to explore closer trade and commercial ties.

Crimea, a multi-ethnic region that was granted a large degree of autonomy in 1992 after Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union, has long been a source of tension with Russia and is the headquarters of some of Russia’s most important military installations, including the headquarters of its Black Sea naval fleet.

As the international community reacted with consternation to the developments in Crimea, the Kremlin, as enigmatic as ever, remained largely silent.

Russian state television reported that Russian troops at arrived to secure the airport at Belbek, which is close to the Russian navy headquarters, but Russian officials did not confirm that information. The identity of gunmen who appeared at the Simferopol airport and at roadblocks on major roadways also remained unclear.

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An unidentified armed man patrolled in front of the airport in Simferopol, Ukraine, on Friday. Credit Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press

In a statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry acknowledged that the movement of armored vehicles from the base in Sevastapol had occurred “to ensure the security” of Russian forces, but added that the maneuvers were “fully in accordance” with the conditions of its lease, which was extended until 2042 as part of a deal in which Ukraine received discounts on Russian natural gas.

While the movement of Russian military vehicles, equipment and personnel is common in the Crimea, Friday’s activity was extremely unusual, local residents said. It involved a number of strange components, including the deployment of heavily armed soldiers, wearing uniforms with no identifying marks, at the region’s two main airports.

Before dawn, at Simferopol’s international airport, the soldiers initially posted themselves outside an administrative building, and through much of the day they did not interfere with departing or arriving flights.

Journalists spotted a convoy of nine Russian armored personnel carriers on a road between the port city of Sevastopol, Russia’s main naval base, and Simferopol, the Crimean capital, a city of about 250,000. There were also unconfirmed reports that several planes carrying thousands of Russian soldiers had arrived in the Crimea on Friday night.

Even more unusual, a Ukrainian telecommunications company, Ukrtelecom, said “unknown people” had seized control of several communications hubs disrupting telephone and Internet service between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine. In a statement, the company pleaded with law enforcement agencies to take control of the situation.

While Western governments initially seemed hesitant to draw conclusions, officials in the new provisional government in Kiev said early Friday morning that they suspected Russian interference.

Mr. Turchynov, who is speaker of Parliament, immediately convened a meeting of the newly-formed National Security and Defense Council to discuss the events in the south.