BALTIMORE, Maryland February 28, 2014 - Even as Russian Strong Man Vladimir Putin continues trying to intimidate the fledgling government in Ukraine, sending heavily armed squads into Crimea, where they occupied at least two government buildings and the area's two large airports, the new government in Kiev has reached out to Turkey in an effort to normalize relations with another key neighbor in this combustible part of Eastern Europe. And the move may have paid instant dividends for Ukraine, as the Turkish Foreign Minister today released a statement that said the Crimean Peninsula is part of Ukraine, and not Russia. Late Friday the BBC reported that Putin had assured England and Germany that he saw no further escalation in Ukraine. Yet at 4:30 pm Eastern Standard Time Fox News reported a massive troop deployment along the Ukrainian-Russian border and a 2,000-man troop landing in Crimea. John Kerry, the USA Secretary of State, was said to be extremely concerned by the news of the Russian build up.
Ahmet Davutoğlu, the Turkish Foreign Minister, said today that his government attaches great importance to the territorial integrity and stability of Ukraine. Davutoglu's statement, reported in the Ankara newspaper "Today's Zaman," came one day after acting Ukrainian leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk sent a message to Ankara urging increased trade between the two nations. In fact, it may have been those quickly warming relations between Turkey and Ukraine's new government that sparked Putin's stunt in Crimea. Heavily armed military squads making only token efforts to hide their Russian military origins have seized control of key government buildings and two airports in Crimea. While these squads continued perimeter and interior patrols of the two airports in Simferopol and Sevastopol, both continued to operate, with aircraft taking off and landing. One of the armed men at Belek, the combined military and civilian airport at Sevastopol, told a reporter for The Guardian (of London) that one purpose of their presence was to prevent "fighters" from outside of Crimea from flying into the region. Representatives of the new Ukraine government were due to arrive in Crimea today, but there is no word whether their plans had changed in view of the armed incursions. Wikipedia has a complete list of the new Ukrainian government Ministers who were introduced in Kiev's Independence Square at a gathering of "tens of thousands" of citizens earlier this week. See the Wikipedia list at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_February_2014_National_Unity_Government. The crowd estimate was provided by the Kiev Post, which corroborated the estimate with pictures of the massive gathering.
Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych appeared at a press conference in the Russian city of Rostov-na-Don on Friday, where he claimed to still be the President. Speaking in Russian and not Ukrainian, Yanukovych said he fled Kiev because of threats of violence against him and his family. As for the warrant that the new government has issued for his arrest, Yanukovych vehemently denied giving orders for the police to shoot at demonstrators. The resulting violence left at least 80 people dead. Yanukovych blamed the leaders of the Euromaidan movement for inciting violence. Though denying giving any order to shoot at demonstrators, Yanukovych commented that the police held back their fire for as long as possible, and only did resort to shooting when they came under direct attack by the demonstrators.
Only demonstrators were killed. There has been no claim of fatalities among the police.
Among the over twenty new government ministers named this week, only three were identified as Euromaidan activists. The Euromaidan movement seeks to align Ukraine with the EU, while ethnic Russian elements seek closer ties with Putin and Russia. Yanukovych initially announced his intention to seek closer ties with the EU but later announced that he would seek much closer ties with Putin and Russia. That announcement touched off three months of increasingly large and agitated demonstrations in Kiev, Ukraine's capital city. Yanukovych initially tried to strong-arm the demonstrators by dispatching riot police, but the move backfired when violence erupted. After the violence, an agreement was reached between Yanukovych and the demonstrators that called for early elections. At his press conference on Friday, Yanukovych said he had no intentions of participating in those elections and if they take place they will be illegitimate. But later in the news conference he suggested that the early election might serve as a referendum on the political viability of Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister who was sent to prison by a judge after she was convicted of malfeasance in office. The charges stemmed from an agreement with Russia concerning natural gas that she signed and which later allegedly led to Ukraine suffering some $20 million in losses. Tymoshenko was freed from prison during the demonstrations and, while said to be ill, is expected to run for office in the upcoming elections, now scheduled in May. Tymoshenko is the head of the Batkivshchyna political party. The other expected candidate for Prime Minister in those elections is Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing champion who has been involved in Ukrainian politics for several years. He has run in the past for Mayor of Kiev, but was defeated. Klitschko and his political party, Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform, were heavily involved in the Euromaidan demonstrations and offers were made to him to be part of the new government, but differences between him and Tymoshenko's
A recurring theme in the Yanukovych press conference was what he charged was the role of the West, and in particular the United States, in fomenting problems in Kiev and in Ukraine in general. He praised Russia as a true friend and essential trading partner. He urged Putin to act to stabilize Ukraine, the exact thing that most of the rest of the world does not want. Yanukovych provided no specific examples of what these outside western or American influences are or how they are fomenting unrest. No arrests of western nationals or even locals supposedly working for the west have been announced. Yanukovych said that to date Putin has exhibited uncommon patience. Around the world, government spokespeople urged Putin to refrain from any military response to developments in Ukraine. The United States initially scoffed at the notion that the Ukraine represented another chapter in the Cold War, a war many thought was over. Of late, however, the United States has amplified the tone of its warnings to Putin to stay out of Ukraine. NPR reported today that Kerry spoke with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and received assurances that Russia will not intervene militarily in Ukraine. But Kerry did not say whether that agreement extended specifically to the autonomous Crimean republic. And, Kerry added to NPR, he will watch events in the coming days to see whether the actions of Russia corroborate Lavrov's assurances.
In Switzerland, meanwhile, it was revealed that government authorities have opened a criminal investigation into alleged money laundering by Yanukovych and his family. and have frozen the Swiss assets of Yanukovych and eleven other former ministers in the Ukrainian government. The allegations were reported by the press in Switzerland and picked up by the Kiev Post and by Bloomberg news. Back in Kiev, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament claims to have possession of documents showing that Yanukovych's top law enforcement official approved of written plans that would have killed far more than the estimated 80 persons reported dead. Calling the expected outcome of these plans a "bloodbath," the lawmaker, Hennadii Moskal, identified the minister, who he said had also fled and was now a fugitive, as Interior Minister Valeriy Zakharchenko. The plans that Moskal says he has documents from called for deployment of up to 22,000 policemen, including 2,000 riot police and over 200 elite anti-terror personnel. The anti-terror group included seven snipers, Moskal told the Kiev Post. The plan also called for over one dozen undercover agents to infiltrate the demonstrators and carryout attacks on residents and property and foment further unrest. Witnesses have said that the violence on February 20 that resulted in most of the casualties resulted in part from snipers firing from protected positions behind police lines.
At the heart of the plan described by Moskal was the creation of a task force made up of representatives of the SSU (Security Services of Ukraine), Interior Ministry, and armed forces. The task force was to be charged with implementing the plans described above. Sources have said that the fact that Ukraine's Army remained in their barracks throughout the Euromaidan demonstrations kept violence from escalating.
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