U.S. and NATO Warn Russia Against Further Intervention in Ukraine
By ANDREW HIGGINS and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
Pro-Russia protesters built barricades Tuesday in Donetsk, Ukraine.
Secretary of State John Kerry accused the Kremlin of fomenting unrest in
eastern Ukraine, and NATO’s leader said another incursion by Russia
“would have grave consequences.”
Europe
U.S. and NATO Warn Russia Against Further Intervention in Ukraine
Russia’s Supporters Pile High the Barricades in East Ukraine
DONETSK,
Ukraine — As the government in Kiev moved to reassert control over
pro-Russian protesters across eastern Ukraine, the United States and
NATO issued stern warnings to Moscow about further intervention in the
country’s affairs amid continuing fears of an eventual Russian
incursion.
Secretary
of State John Kerry accused the Kremlin of fomenting the unrest,
calling the protests the work of saboteurs whose machinations were as
“ham-handed as they are transparent.” Speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
he added: “No one should be fooled — and believe me, no one is fooled —
by what could potentially be a contrived pretext for military
intervention just as we saw in Crimea. It is clear that Russian special
forces and agents have been the catalysts behind the chaos of the last
24 hours.”
The secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said Russia would be making a “historic mistake”
by going into Ukraine, and he urged the Kremlin to “step back.” At a
news conference in Paris, he said any such actions “would have grave
consequences for our relationship with Russia” and “would further
isolate Russia internationally.”
Video|1:50
Credit Oleg Shishkov/European Pressphoto Agency
Officials on Unrest in Ukraine
Officials from the United States, Russia and
Britain discussed the growing unrest and violence in the Ukrainian
cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk.
In
Moscow, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Tuesday
denied the accusations of Russian meddling in Ukraine. He said Russia
would seek talks on the Ukrainian political crisis that could involve
the United States, the European Union and “all the political forces in
Ukraine,” which should include representatives of the southeastern
region.
But
none of that was soothing nerves rattled by days of protests here,
orchestrated or otherwise. With pro-Russian demonstrators having been
expelled from a government building in the eastern city of Kharkiv and
the government determined to end the protests across the south and east,
separatist protesters here in the east’s biggest urban center
reinforced barricades outside the occupied regional administration
building and vowed to stand firm, setting up a possibly violent
showdown.
The
operation in Kharkiv was announced by Ukraine’s acting interior
minister, Arsen Avakov, who had traveled to the city to supervise the
action. He wrote on Facebook that the building was retaken “without
firing a shot, grenades, or other special weapons,” and that the troops
were part of a broader redeployment in the region to contain unrest that
Ukraine has accused Russia of orchestrating.
The
Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement in response to the use of
the Interior Ministry troops, accusing Ukraine’s government of embedding
nationalist militants from the group Right Sector and private American
mercenaries from a company called Greystone in its forces in the east.
The statement said the American contractors were disguised as members of
a Ukrainian military unit called Falcon.
A
private American security company formerly affiliated with Greystone,
called Academi, issued a statement in mid-March saying its employees
were not working in Ukraine, after similar allegations surfaced in the
Russian news media. But it was unclear what role, if any, Greystone had
in Ukraine.
The
ministry, which has denounced the government in Kiev as the
illegitimate product of a coup, warned against the use of military force
in eastern Ukraine. “We call immediately for the halt of any military
preparations, which risk the outbreak of civil war,” it said in its
statement.
Pro-Russian
demonstrators seized government buildings Sunday evening in several
eastern cities, including Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk, posing a
challenge for the authorities in Kiev, who wrested power from the former
president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, using similar tactics. Russian troops
are deployed along the border nearby, and the Kremlin has warned that it
is prepared to intervene again in Ukraine to protect the many ethnic
Russians living there, as it had in Crimea in the south.
Provoking
an attack is evidently the fervent wish of the pro-Russian activists
here, who on Monday declared the creation of an independent People’s
Republic of Donetsk and waved Russian flags and the black, red and blue
standard of their new state, which even Moscow has shown no inclination
to recognize.
Between
blasts of Soviet martial music dating from World War II, they pleaded
with a crowd of predominantly older supporters gathered in a square
below to resist any move by Ukrainian authorities to retake the building
and snuff out their new state. No weapons were visible, but a security
adviser to the Ukrainian government said about 30 Kalashnikov rifles and
a number of grenades had been seized by protesters who briefly took
control of the Donetsk headquarters of Ukraine’s state security service.
Ukrainian Interior Ministry troops took back the security agency
building late Monday.
Ukraine Crisis in Maps
“Comrades,
beware of provocateurs and get ready to defend yourselves from the
fascists,” a middle-aged man in an orange hard hat screamed through a
bullhorn, echoing Russia’s line that Ukraine fell to neo-Nazi extremists
after the flight of Mr. Yanukovych in late February.
Bands
of pro-Russia youths, however, mimicked the tactics of the pro-Europe
protest movement that led to Mr. Yanukovch’s departure. As rumors spread
of an impending crackdown, they formed self-defense teams armed with
clubs and metal rods, dug up paving stones to hurl at troops in the
event of a government attack and piled rubber tires and sandbags around
the entrance of the occupied multistory regional administration
building.
“This
is our land, Russian land,” said Oleg Shifkemenko, waving a flag
emblazoned with the word “Rus,” for an ancient Slavic people celebrated
by Russian nationalists. “Russians built the roads here, the railways,
the factories. We built everything, and it is ours, forever.” Despite
his Ukrainian name, he described himself as a “proud Russian.”
But
like many others involved in the unrest, Mr. Shifkemenko expressed
uncertainty over whether the objective is to protect the so-called
People’s Republic of Donetsk, to merge Donetsk with Russia or simply to
gain more autonomy for the region.
Ukrainian
security experts said the pro-Russia camp in Donetsk was bitterly
divided over its goals and scoffed at its attempt to seize power. “They
have no clear idea of what they want,” said Nikolai Yakubovich, an
adviser to the Interior Ministry in Kiev. “It is a nonsense, a dangerous
nonsense.” He said negotiations had started between protest leaders in
Donetsk and the authorities but had been hampered by infighting between
rival pro-Russia factions over their aims.
As
part of its efforts to regain control, the government in Kiev flew
antiterrorism forces to the Donetsk airport on Tuesday and vowed to
prevent eastern Ukraine from going the way of Crimea, where pro-Russia
demonstrations paved the way for a formal annexation by Moscow.
Mr.
Yakubovich said the authorities would hold off on trying to storm the
occupied administration building and focus on undermining the resolve of
those inside by making clear that they face criminal charges with
sentences of up to 15 years if they persist in their actions. “We have
people working to let them know that this is very serious,” he said.
Unlike
the pro-Europe protest movement in Kiev, the stirrings in Donetsk have
so far attracted little support from the middle class and seem dominated
by pensioners nostalgic for the Soviet Union and angry, and often
drunk, young men.
“They
used to sit at home and play games on the computer,” said a 27-year-old
company manager who gave his name only as Oleg. “But now they are here
playing for real.” He said he had not supported the protests in Kiev
against Mr. Yanukovych but also did not support what he called the
“pointless disorder” now unfolding in eastern cities.
The
lack of widespread public support makes the government’s task easier,
but any crackdown that results in serious bloodshed would probably widen
the appeal of the protesters in a mostly Russian-speaking region that
has little liking for leaders in Kiev, who mostly speak Ukrainian.
Among Ukraine’s Jews, the Bigger Worry Is Putin, Not Pogroms
By ANDREW HIGGINS
Despite assertions by Russia, many Ukrainian Jews say there has not been
a resurgence of anti-Semitism since the revolution in February.
Among Ukraine’s Jews, the Bigger Worry Is Putin, Not Pogroms
DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine — From his office atop the world’s biggest Jewish community center,
Shmuel Kaminezki, the chief rabbi of this eastern Ukrainian city, has
followed with dismay Russian claims that Ukraine is now in the hands of
neo-Nazi extremists — and has struggled to calm his panicked 85-year-old
mother in New York.
Raised
in Russia and a regular viewer of Russian television, she “calls every
day to ask, ‘Have the pogroms happened yet?’ ” Rabbi Kaminezki said. He
tells his mother that they have not, and that she should stop watching
Russian TV. “It is a total lie,” he said. “Jews are not in danger in
Ukraine.”
Russia’s
president, Vladimir V. Putin, added his own voice to the scaremongering
in a speech at the Kremlin on March 18, when he described the ouster of
President Viktor F. Yanukovych of Ukraine as an armed coup executed by
“nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites” who “continue to
set the tone in Ukraine to this day.”
But
instead of reeling in panic at any fascist resurgence, the Jewish
community of Dnipropetrovsk, one of the largest in Ukraine, is
celebrating the recent appointment of one of its own, a billionaire
tycoon named Ihor Kolomoysky, as the region’s most powerful official.
Ukraine Crisis in Maps
A visual survey of the continuing dispute, including
satellite images of Russian naval positions and maps showing political,
cultural and economic factors in the crisis.
“They
made a Jew the governor. What kind of anti-Semitism is this?” asked
Solomon Flaks, the 87-year-old chairman of the region’s Council of
Jewish Veterans of the Great Patriotic War, a group of a rapidly
shrinking number of World War II veterans. Since being formed in 1994,
when it had 970 members, the council’s membership has fallen to 103, the
result of old age and emigration to Israel.
A
few Jewish leaders do endorse Russian claims of a resurgence of
anti-Semitism in Ukraine, but they are nearly all outsiders, most
notably Berel Lazar, Moscow’s chief rabbi and a firm ally of the
Kremlin. In an interview
with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month, Rabbi Lazar criticized
Ukrainian Jews for denouncing Mr. Putin and suggested they had played
down the risk of anti-Semitism out of fear for their safety.
Mr.
Kolomoysky, the new governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, derided
Rabbi Lazar’s support for Mr. Putin as Kremlin-orchestrated propaganda.
Russia, he said in an interview, has put pressure on Jewish leaders to
fall into line with Moscow’s contention that Ukraine’s government was
toppled in a fascist coup. “Unlike in Russia, Ukraine’s Jewish community
is not a lever of the state,” he said.
Mr.
Kolomoysky, a Russian speaker who has both Israeli and Ukrainian
passports, scoffed at the Kremlin’s pledges to protect Jews,
Russian-speakers and other minorities. “We can protect ourselves. We
don’t need any protection from Russia,” he said. “There is no fascism
here. It does not exist.”
Anti-Semitism
is experienced in daily life, he said, but gets no support or
encouragement from the state, unlike in Russia, where the security
services have tolerated and at times nurtured neo-Nazi nationalist
groups with openly anti-Semitic agendas. Russia’s state-run news media
regularly air the views of Aleksandr A. Prokhanov, the editor of the
Zaftra newspaper, a notorious platform for anti-Semitic conspiracy
theories.
Although
not particularly observant, Mr. Kolomoysky, who is also the president
of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, has poured tens of millions
of dollars into Jewish causes over the years. Together with a fellow
billionaire, Gennadiy Bogolyubov, he financed the Menorah Center, the
seven-towered, $70 million community center here where the veterans’
association, the Dnipropetrovsk Jewish Community and dozens of other
organizations have their offices. Also housed in the building are the
Israeli Consulate, a synagogue, kosher restaurants, a Shabbat-friendly
hotel and a high-tech Holocaust museum.
The
museum skirts the delicate issue of how some Ukrainian nationalists
collaborated with the Nazis when Hitler invaded Ukraine in 1941,
explaining instead how Jews supported Ukraine’s efforts to become an
independent nation.
Before
the Holocaust, Jews made up nearly a third of Dnipropetrovsk’s
population, making it one of the most important centers of Jewish life
and culture in Europe. The city now has 30,000 to 50,000 Jews, a small
fraction of a total population of over a million but enough to sustain a
vibrant community. The World Jewish Congress estimates that there are
more than 250,000 Jews in Ukraine as a whole, the third-largest
population of Jews among European nations.
“This
is an example of a Jewish renaissance,” said Rabbi Kaminezki, a member
of the Lubavitch movement who was born in Israel and studied at a
rabbinical college in Morristown, N.J.
When
protests against Mr. Yanukovych started in November, he said, many Jews
shared the pro-European aspirations of the demonstrators who gathered
in Kiev’s Independence Square, though some worried about the role played
by far-right groups. One such group, Svoboda, stirred particular unease
because of anti-Semitic remarks by its leaders in the past and its
lionization of Ukrainian nationalist heroes who, in some cases, helped
the Nazis and shared their ethnicity-based concept of nationhood.
But
Rabbi Kaminezki said fears of a fascist revival had faded, “as there is
a difference between what these people say to their own crowd and what
they do when they become legitimate political leaders.” Anti-Semitism,
he added, “exists in Ukraine, like everywhere,” but it has shown no sign
of increasing since Mr. Yanukovych lost power.
After
a series of unsolved anti-Semitic attacks since his ouster, including
an assault on a rabbi and his wife in Kiev, the new head of Ukraine’s
state security service told Jewish leaders that he would reopen a
special unit to fight xenophobia and anti-Semitism that had been shut
down under Mr. Yanukovych.
Even
Right Sector, a coalition of ultranationalist and in some cases
neo-Nazi organizations, has made an effort to distance itself from
anti-Semitism. In late February, its leader, Dmytro Yarosh, pledged
during a meeting with Israel’s ambassador in Kiev to fight all forms of
racism.
Rabbi
Kaminezki said most Jews were far more worried about the Russian troops
massed on Ukraine’s border than about the risk of violence by
anti-Semitic extremists. “Nobody is afraid of fascists, but everyone is
afraid of war with Russia,” he said, noting that there has been an
upsurge of interest among local Jews in moving to Israel because of
worry about an armed conflict.
Mr.
Putin stoked such fears when, in his Kremlin address, he not only
claimed Crimea as Russian territory but complained that “large sections
of the historical south of Russia,” an area that includes Dnipropetrovsk
and other parts of eastern Ukraine, had wrongly been incorporated into
the territory of what until 1991 was the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist
Republic.
Mr.
Flaks, of the veterans’ association, said he did not expect a conflict
with Russia but worried that Mr. Putin underestimated the determination
of Ukrainians, including Jews, to defend their country.
In a recent open letter
to Mr. Putin, representatives of more than 20 Ukrainian Jewish
organizations noted their country’s political instability but told him
not to act on Russian pledges to “protect” threatened minorities. “This
threat is coming from the Russian government, namely from you
personally. It is your policy of inciting separatism and crude pressure
placed on Ukraine that threatens us and all Ukrainian people,” the
letter said.
The
protest movement that overthrew Mr. Yanukovych, the letter added,
included some unsavory nationalist groups, “but even the most marginal
do not show anti-Semitism” and are “well controlled by civil society and
the new Ukrainian government — which is more than can be said for the
Russian neo-Nazis, who are encouraged by your security forces.”
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