Masked Forces at 2 Airports in Crimea; Russia Disavows Move
By ANDREW HIGGINS and PATRICK REEVEL
Of uncertain allegiance, the uniformed men with assault rifles fueled
concerns about possible Russian military intervention or a separatist
rebellion in a region with stronger historical ties to Russia than to
Ukraine’s central government in Kiev.
Mourners at a funeral in Kiev. The Crimea region of Ukraine was in turmoil Friday when armed men patrolled two airports.
SIMFEROPOL,
Ukraine — Armed men of uncertain allegiance took up positions at two
airports here in Ukraine’s Crimean region on Friday, fueling concerns
about possible Russian military intervention or a separatist rebellion
in a region with stronger historical ties to Russia than to Ukraine’s
central government in Kiev.
Although
there were no confrontations or bloodshed by evening, the appearance of
a large number of masked men with assault rifles unnerved residents and
travelers, who were buffeted by warnings from Kiev of military meddling
by Moscow and statements from the deposed Ukrainian president, Viktor
F. Yanukovych, that the country had been taken over by fascists and
“bandits.”
In
Simferopol, the regional capital of Crimea, men dressed in camouflage
and carrying assault rifles moved into position at the international
airport and a second airfield nearby. Their military uniforms bore no
insignia and it was not clear who they were or who was commanding them.
They declined to answer questions, but did not interfere with normal
airport operations.
Video|2:22
Credit Pavel Golovkin/Associated Press
Yanukovych Speaks Out After Ouster
Viktor F. Yanukovych appeared in public for
the first time since he was ousted as Ukraine’s president. He spoke in
Russian and said he would not give up the fight for his country’s
future.
Reuters
reported that about 20 armed men wearing the uniform of Russia’s Black
Sea Fleet surrounded a Ukrainian border guard post near the port city of
Sevastopol, 50 miles southwest of Simferopol.
Moscow
denied that its forces had moved into Crimea and attributed the
presence of troops there to “internal political processes in Ukraine,”
according to a statement from the foreign ministry. It said it had not
violated agreements not to intervene in Ukrainian affairs.
Armored
personnel carriers with Russian markings appeared on roads Friday
outside Simferopol, sometimes alone but at other times in long columns
of military vehicles. It was unclear whether the movements signaled a
Russian push to occupy the city, a show of strength aimed at cowing far
less numerous Ukrainian forces in the region, or simply a routine
rotation of Russian hardware.
Russia
has numerous military facilities in Crimea, the most important of which
is the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, in Sevastopol. Its military
vehicles regularly move around the peninsula, but Friday’s activity was
more intense than usual, according to local residents.
There
were no immediate signs of panic in Simferopol, which has a large
ethnic Russian population and has generally supported Moscow’s line that
Kiev, 400 miles to the north, has been overrun by fascists who pose a
grave threat to the interests of Ukraine’s Russian speakers.
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The
only visible military presence in the center of the city were
unidentified gunmen who seized the regional Parliament building and a
government office complex this week. But Simferopol swirled with rumors,
all unconfirmed, that Russian troops had seized Crimea’s main
television station, the central post office and other strategic
locations. Residents also exchanged information, apparently more
grounded in reality, about sightings of Russian military transport
planes landing at airports.
“This
is an open but unannounced aggression by the Russian Federation against
the territory of Ukraine,” said Refat Chubarov, the leader of Crimea’s
indigenous population of Tatars, a Muslim Turkic people, and a strong
advocate of the region’s remaining part of Ukrainian territory. He said
Russian military helicopters had flouted Ukrainian sovereignty by flying
into Crimea without permission.
In
Kiev, the speaker of Parliament, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, who is now the
acting president of Ukraine, convened a meeting of the National
Security and Defense Council to discuss the situation in Crimea.
Announcing
the meeting in Parliament, Mr. Turchynov said, “Terrorists with
automatic weapons, judged by our special services to be professional
soldiers, tried to take control of the airport in Crimea.”
Mr.
Yanukovych, in a news conference Friday in Rostov-on-Don, in southern
Russia not far from Crimea, said the region should remain part of
Ukraine, despite its historic, linguistic and cultural ties to Russia.
“I think that everything that has happened in Crimea is a natural
reaction to the gangster coup that happened in Kiev,” he said.
Video|0:48
Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times
Pro-Russia Forces Protest in Crimea
Crimeans supporting Russia marched into a
square in front of the barricaded regional parliament building, waving
flags and chanting, “Rossiya, Rossiya.”
He
added, “People of Crimea don’t want to submit and they will not submit
to Bandera thugs,” referring to a World War II-era nationalist leader,
Stepan Bandera, who was vilified by the Soviet Union.
At
the Simferopol airport, the armed men set up positions around a central
administrative building, but they did not appear to enter the
terminals. The airport, by all appearances, was operating normally, with
flights arriving and departing roughly on schedule. There were no
roadblocks or checkpoints on the roads leading to the airport or on the
grounds of the airport.
After
nightfall, Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire member of Parliament, said
outside the airport building that he had come to Crimea to negotiate
with the regional Parliament on behalf of the national government in
Kiev. He said his mission was “to do everything not to allow an
escalation of violence” and to stress to the Crimeans that they were
fellow Ukrainians and that Ukraine must not be divided.
He
referred to the soldiers standing behind him as “foreign” and more than
once gestured toward them with distaste. “What I cannot accept is the
presence here of foreign troops,” he said. “We cannot accept the danger
for Ukraine’s sovereignity and territorial integrity.”
Meanwhile,
another confrontation was underway at a second airport, called Belbek,
that is used for military and some civilian flights.
BELARUS
Striped areas indicate
provinces with significant
Russian-speaking populations.
POLAND
Kiev
Lviv
Dnieper
River
Kharkiv
UKRAINE
Donetsk
Don River
MOLDOVA
Rostov-on-Don
ROMANIA
Sea of
Azov
RUSSIA
CRIMEA
Simferopol
Sevastopol
Danube River
Black Sea
100 Miles
BULGARIA
In
a post on his Facebook page, the interior minister, Arsen Avakov, said
units believed to be affiliated with the Russian military had blocked
access to the airport overnight, with some Ukrainian military personnel
and border guards inside. Mr. Avakov wrote that the men blocking the
airport were also wearing camouflage uniforms with no identifying
insignia, but he added, “They do not hide their affiliation.”
Mr. Avakov said that the airport was not functioning and that “there is no armed conflict yet.”
At
the international airport, Mr. Avakov said, the Ukrainian authorities
confronted the armed men and told them, “You soldiers have no right to
be located here.” The uniformed men responded curtly, “We do not have
instructions to negotiate with you,” he said.
“Tension
is building,” Mr. Avakov wrote, adding: “I regard what is happening as
an armed invasion and occupation in violation of all international
treaties and norms. This is a direct provoking of armed bloodshed on the
territory of a sovereign state.”
Igor
K. Tresilaty, who identified himself as assistant to the general
director at the international airport, said Friday that the soldiers
were remaining in common areas outside the airport, in the restaurant
and in parking lots. He said he did not know who they were and expressed
no curiosity about them, saying only that they looked professional.
“They’re
walking around, but we, nor the police, can’t have any complaint
against them because they’re not violating anything, they’re not
touching anyone,” Mr. Tresilaty said.
Russia’s
Black Sea Fleet denied that its forces were involved in the deployment
at one of the airports. But the national Parliament in Kiev appealed to
Russia to “stop moves that show signs of undermining national
sovereignty” in Ukraine, Reuters reported, and it urged the United
States and Britain to honor commitments made in the early 1990s to
protect the country’s territorial integrity.
Parliament also called on the United Nations Security Council to debate the issue, apparently seeking to broaden the dispute.
The
rapid-fire developments came a day after a well-orchestrated power grab
by pro-Russian forces played out across Simferopol: Armed militants
took control of government buildings; crowds filled the streets chanting
“Russia, Russia,” and legislators called for a vote to redefine
relations with Ukraine. The region is currently autonomous, meaning it
has greater local control over its affairs.
Since
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Crimea, a tinderbox of
ethnic, political and religious divisions, has had repeated outbursts of
pro-Russia fervor that all ultimately fizzled. But the events Thursday
and Friday, coupled with the fragile state of Ukraine’s new and barely
functioning central government, represented a far more serious challenge
to the territorial integrity of the country and an already unsettled
geopolitical balance between Russia and the West.
The
situation here matches in some ways ones that previously played out in
areas like Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where largely pro-Russia
populations broke away from Georgia, a former Soviet republic like
Ukraine, to effectively become Russian protectorates.
The
pace of developments, set largely by well-organized pro-Russia groups
that marched through Simferopol in military-style formations, has
perhaps outrun even Moscow’s capacity for geopolitical machinations.
Having mobilized its air and ground forces around Ukraine on Wednesday
for previously unannounced military exercises in western Russia, Moscow
has raised expectations among its most zealous supporters that it will
intervene to support their cause.
But
any open military intervention would risk plunging Crimea, a vital
outpost for the Russian Navy, into bloody chaos and also undermine
security inside Russia, particularly in heavily Muslim areas.
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