Kremlin Sought Crimea Before Ukrainian Government’s Fall, Russian Paper Says - NYT
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MOSCOW — The Russian government laid plans to annex Crimea and invade southeastern Ukraineweeks before the government fell in Kiev, a Russian newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing a Kremlin memo.
Russia has long contended that it acted without premeditation in Crimea, seeking to protect Russian speakers who were under threat of attack and to stave off what it suspected was an attempt by NATO to move its forces into the region.
A report in Novaya Gazeta, one of the few independent voices still publishing in Russia, said that the Kremlin had concluded by Feb. 4, 2014, long before President Viktor F. Yanukovych of Ukraine resigned, that he would fall and that Russia would have an opportunity to annex Crimea.
The Kremlin said in a memo that Mr. Yanukovych’s presidency was “bankrupt” and that the central administration was paralyzed, Novaya Gazeta said.
With Ukraine likely to break into two — a pro-European west and a pro-Russian east combined with Crimea — Moscow had to act quickly, the report said, particularly given that the Yanukovych government could soon fall.
The latest updates to the current visual survey of the continuing dispute, with maps and satellite imagery showing rebel and military movement.
Russia should take advantage of the “centrifugal forces” tearing the country apart in order to merge the east with the rest of Russia, the report said. “The dominant regions for the application of force should be Crimea and the Kharkiv region,” it said, particularly given that strong groups there endorsed the idea of joining Russia.
The authenticity of the memo could not be independently verified. Novaya Gazeta said that a conservative Russian oligarch, Konstantin V. Malofeev, was the mastermind behind the document. The newspaper quoted Mr. Malofeev’s communications team as having denied his involvement.
The Kremlin spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment. State-controlled television and other official news outlets largely ignored the report.
The report said that oligarchs in Ukraine, who are not tempered by bureaucracy as much as their Russian counterparts, had lost control of the demonstrations in the central square in Kiev known as the Maidan. The report said that the commanders in the square were “presumably controlled not by the groups of oligarchs, but to a great extent by Polish and British secret services.”
Russia has since switched tactics, blaming the United States for the protests.
The report was also dismissive of the Ukrainian leader’s chances of bringing the situation under control.
“President Yanukovych is not a very charismatic person,” it said. “He is afraid to give up the presidential post and at the same time is prepared to trade the security officers for guarantees of keeping the post and of immunity after resignation.”
Moscow should abandon the Ukrainian leader, the report suggested. “There is no sense in further Russian political, diplomatic, financial or media support for the regime,” it said.
The potentially explosive report emerged as the cease-fire in southeastern Ukraine seemed to be taking hold.
In Kiev, the military said that for a second night in a row cease-fire violations had “significantly decreased,” and that the previous 24 hours had been the quietest since the Feb. 12 signing of a cease-fire in Minsk, Belarus.
Donetsk, Luhansk and the Mariupol area experienced no shooting, it said. In the past 24 hours, separatist forces have fired mortar rounds or other shells just 15 times and light weapons four times, the Ukrainian military said.
Yet concerns about the strength of the truce remained, with the Ukrainian military spokesman saying it could not move to the next stage — the withdrawal of heavy weapons — as long as the separatists continued fighting.
“For now, there is still no order on the withdrawal of weapons, as the fighters have not yet fulfilled the first point of the Minsk agreement, to cease fire,” said Andriy Lysenko, the military spokesman.
The unease was also reflected elsewhere, with France, which helped negotiate the cease-fire, threatening new sanctions if fighting erupted around the strategic southern Ukrainian port of Mariupol.
“The problem today is particularly around Mariupol,” the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told France Info radio. “We’ve told the Russians clearly that if there was a separatist attack in the direction of Mariupol, things would change completely, including in terms of sanctions.”
The comments came after the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine met in Paris on Tuesday but made little progress in solidifying the agreement known as Minsk II. Violations on the ground would mean that Europe would again raise the question of sanctions, Mr. Fabius said.
Rebel forces said that they had already begun withdrawing heavy weapons, including 100 howitzers pulled back from the front during the first day of operations on Tuesday. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe issued a statement saying it could not confirm withdrawals from either side because it did not have a thorough accounting of the weapons there before the cease-fire.
But the rebel forces said the organization would soon be able to monitor the withdrawal.
There has been a kind of unspoken contest in Ukraine about whether the economic situation or the low-grade war was the worst news, and the economy seemed to edge out the conflict on Wednesday.
With the Ukrainian currency falling precipitously against the dollar, the central bank on Wednesday banned banks from buying foreign currency for the rest of this week, Reuters reported.
Correction: February 25, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated the date a cease-fire was signed in Minsk, Belarus. It was Feb. 12, not May 12.
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Novaya Gazeta said that Moscow had concluded by February 2014, before President Viktor F. Yanukovych of Ukraine resigned, that Russia would have an opportunity to seize the territory.
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World leaders have been "shameful and ineffective" in failing to protect civilians from armed groups like Islamic State (IS), according to Amnesty International's annual report. Duration: 01:10.
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The Vatican said Wednesday that Pope Francis “absolutely did not intend to offend the Mexican people” when he appeared to express concern that drug trafficking was making his native Argentina resemble Mexico.
Over the weekend, the Pope wrote in an email to Argentine lawmaker and friend Gustavo Vera, “Hopefully we are in time to avoid Mexicanization,” referring to the country’s drug trade, the Associated Press reports. After Vera published the email on the website for his organization, the Alameda Foundation, Mexico formally complained that the Pope was unnecessarily “stigmatizing Mexico” despite the country’s efforts to battle drug cartels there.
In response, the Vatican sent Mexico’s ambassador an official note and said the Pope’s choice of words were taken from a informal, private email that merely borrowed language Vera himself had used as lawmaker battling Argentina’s own drug trade.
“The Pope intended only to emphasize the seriousness of the phenomenon of the drug trafficking that afflicts Mexico and other countries in Latin America,” Vatican spokesperson Rev. Federico Lombardi said. “It is precisely this importance that has made the fight against drug trafficking a priority for the government.”
[AP]
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