Putin orders Russian troops on Ukraine border exercises back to bases

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered tens of thousands of Russian troops participating in military exercises near Ukraine’s border to return to their bases at the same time as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was on his way to Kiev.

Tensions remained high in the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, with troops loyal to Moscow firing warning shots at protesting Ukrainian soldiers a day after Russia cranked up the pressure for Ukraine’s government to return to a Feb. 21 agreement to create a new unity government and hold early elections.

It was not clear if Putin’s move was an attempt to heed the West’s call to de-escalate the crisis that has put Ukraine’s future on the line.

It came as Kerry was on his way to Kiev to meet with the new Ukrainian leadership that deposed a pro-Russian president and has accused Moscow of a military invasion. The Kremlin, which does not recognize the new Ukrainian leadership, insists it made the move in order to protect millions of Russians living there.

On Tuesday pro-Russian troops who had taken control of the Belbek air base in Crimea fired warning shots into the air as about 300 Ukrainian soldiers, who previously manned the airfield, demanded their jobs back.

About a dozen Russian soldiers at the base warned the Ukrainians, who were marching unarmed, not to approach. They fired several warning shots into the air and said they would shoot the Ukrainians if they continued to march toward them.

There was no fighting elsewhere in Crimea early on Tuesday. A supposed Russian ultimatum for two Ukrainian warships to surrender or be seized passed without action from either side as the two ships remained anchored in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Vladimir Anikin said late Monday that no ultimatum had been issued.

Earlier on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Ukraine should return to an agreement signed last month by pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovich to hold early elections and surrender some powers. Yanukovich fled Ukraine last week after sealing the pact with the opposition.

“Instead of a promised national unity government,” said Lavrov during a U.N. Human Rights Council session in Geneva, “a government of the victors has been created.”

Russian troops cemented their hold on Ukraine’s strategic Crimean Peninsula after a tense weekend, controlling all Ukrainian border posts there as well as all military facilities and a key ferry terminal. 

Tensions rose Monday when Interfax reported that Moscow demanded that the crew of two Ukrainian warships immediately surrender or have their craft stormed and seized. The report cited Maksim Prauta, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman.

The ultimatum, the agency said, was issued by Alexander Vitko, the fleet’s commander.

However, the agency also quoted an official at Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters as denying that the ultimatum had been issued and saying the report was “complete nonsense.” The fleet has a base in Crimea under an agreement with Ukraine.

Amid heightened tensions, the United States said it was considering a “broad range of options” for sanctions it could impose on Russia if Moscow refuses to defuse tensions in Ukraine. 

Warning of a “dangerous escalation,” Barack Obama’s administration said Washington would hold Moscow directly accountable for any threat to Ukraine’s navy. Russia is “on the wrong side of history” in Ukraine, President Barack Obama said, adding that continued military action would be “a costly proposition for Russia.”

Ukrainian interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Monday stepped up pleas to the West for political and economic help and said that Crimea remains part of his country. But he conceded that for Ukraine, military options are off the table for now.

“Any attempt of Russia to grab Crimea will have no success at all. Give us some time,” Yatsenyuk said at a news conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who is visiting Kiev.

“For today, no military options (are) on the table,” Yatsenyuk added, saying what his country urgently needs is economic and political support.

Pro-Russia soldiers seized the ferry terminal in the Ukrainian city of Kerch, about 12 miles by sea from Russia, intensifying fears that Moscow will send even more troops to the peninsula. The move comes as the U.S. and European governments are trying to figure out ways to halt and reverse the Russian incursion.

The soldiers at the terminal refused to identify themselves Monday, but they spoke Russian, and the vehicles transporting them had Russian license plates.

The moves escalated fears in the Ukrainian capital and beyond that Russia might seek to expand its control by seizing other parts of eastern Ukraine, the country’s industrial powerhouse and agricultural breadbasket. Faced with fears of more Russian aggression, Ukraine’s new government has moved to consolidate its authority, naming new regional governors in the pro-Russia east, picked from the country’s wealthy businessmen.

The Crimean Peninsula was part of Russian territory until 1954. Russia’s Black Sea Fleet pays Ukraine millions annually to be stationed at the Crimean port of Sevastopol, and nearly 60 percent of Crimea’s residents identify themselves as Russian.

Senior officials in the Obama administration said the United States believes Russia has complete operational control of Crimea and more than 6,000 troops in the region. Kerry is expected to visit Kiev on Tuesday to answer Yatsenyuk’s request for support.

Washington has called a meeting Wednesday of the United Kingdom and the Russian and Ukrainian governments, signatories of the 1994 Budapest agreement that aimed to preserve Ukraine’s self-determination. Moscow has offered no sign its representatives will attend.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland will attend a high-level meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an intergovernmental body that aims to address geopolitical conflict.

“We will be looking at what we can do immediately to get monitors into eastern Ukraine, where we could have flash points to get monitors to the (existing) flash point now on the Crimean Peninsula between the area where the Russians are occupying and the rest of Ukraine,” a senior State Department official said in a news release.

Nuland will aim to “propose and scope a much broader OSCE mission that could go in to replace Russian military forces if the Russians can be persuaded to pull back,” the news release said.

Despite the latest incursions, Russian State Secretary and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Grigory Karasin said on Russia 1 television channel late Sunday, “No one in Russia wants war with Ukraine.”

“We shall support all forces that advocate strengthening bilateral relations,” Karasin said. Still, foreign minister Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s position that Russian troops in Crimea are providing necessary protection for Russians living there.  

“This is a question of defending our citizens and compatriots, ensuring human rights, especially the right to life,” Lavrov said in Geneva.

At his conference with Yatsenyuk, Hague said, “The world cannot just allow this to happen.” But he ruled out military action.

“The U.K. is not discussing military options. Our concentration is on diplomatic and economic pressure.”

Tension between Ukraine and Moscow escalated rapidly after pro-Russian Yanukovich was pushed out by a protest movement led by people who wanted closer ties with the European Union. Yanukovich fled to Russia after more than 80 demonstrators were killed near Kiev's central square. He says he is still president. Since then, troops that Ukraine says are Russian soldiers have moved into Crimea, patrolling airports, smashing equipment at an airbase and besieging Ukrainian military installations.

Outrage over Russia's military moves has mounted in world capitals, with Kerry calling on Vladimir Putin to pull back from "an incredible act of aggression."

Hague said it was urgent to get Russia and Ukraine "in direct communication with each other" and told the BBC that Moscow would face "significant costs" for taking control of Crimea.

The former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, who held office from 2004 to 2013, during which Russia went war with the country over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, told Al Jazeera that Putin had told him, "'Your friends in the West promised you lots of nice things, but they never deliver. Well, I don’t, I don’t promise you nice things at all, but I always deliver.'"

Still, Saakashvili is confident that, unlike the situation in Georgia in 2008, the crisis in Ukraine will ultimately force Putin out of power. While Putin is all about "being strong," Saakashvili said he's taken on too much this time. 

"There is no way he can carry through," Saakashvili said. "The world, in general, not only the Western powers, are not really going to tolerate this kind of behavior from the country which doesn’t have adequate resources to do this."

He added that it will "signify the end of Putin, but it will be messy."

Russia has already paid a financial price for its military actions in Ukraine, with stocks, bonds and the ruble plunging on Monday as Putin's forces tightened their grip on the Russian-speaking Crimea.

The Moscow stock market fell by 11.3 percent, wiping nearly $60 billion off the value of Russian companies in a day, and the central bank spent $10 billion of its reserves to prop up the ruble as investors took fright at escalating tensions with the West over the former Soviet republic.

Al Jazeera and wire services