International
Manu Brabo/AP
As Ukrainian forces enter the second stage of what the government calls an “anti-terrorist” campaign to stamp out pro-Russian rebels in the east, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned Kyiv on Friday that it would face retribution for the five rebels killed by Ukrainian soldiers a day earlier.
Ukrainian government forces “are waging a war on their own people,” Lavrov said at a meeting of diplomats. “This is a bloody crime, and those who pushed the army to do that will pay, I am sure, and will face justice.”
A few hours later, Ukraine’s interim Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk fired back at that accusation, and at Lavrov’s earlier comparison of the crisis in Ukraine to Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008. Lavrov had indicated that Moscow could be forced to intervene on the part of pro-Russian separatists in the same way it did in Georgia.
“Attempts at military conflict in Ukraine will lead to a military conflict in Europe,” Yatsenyuk told a cabinet meeting broadcast live and translated by Reuters. “The world has not yet forgotten World War II, but Russia already wants to start World War III.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, warned that any violence against pro-Russian militia in Ukraine would necessitate “consequences.”
“[The confrontations] are just a punitive operation and will, of course, incur consequences for the people making these decisions, including on our interstate relations,” Putin said in a televised meeting with regional media on Friday.
Russia and Ukraine reached an agreement last week in Geneva that called on all parties in the country to lay down arms and vacate public buildings. Pro-Russian militias have been occupying government buildings in more than 10 cities in eastern Ukraine, and the nationalist Right Sector movement is still in control of two public buildings in Kyiv.
But tensions have not eased, and on Friday there were scattered reports of more violence. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said a grenade fired from a launcher caused an explosion in a helicopter at an airfield outside the eastern city of Kramatorsk. Deputy Minister Vasyl Krutov said the pilot was injured.
Ukrainian forces clashed with pro-Russian armed groups as they closed in on the city of Slovyansk on Thursday, seizing checkpoints and setting up roadblocks as helicopters circled overhead. On Friday a bus carrying international observers in the city from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was seized. The Ukrainian Ministry of Interior blamed the capture on pro-Russian armed groups.
The separatist self-declared mayor of Slovyansk told Reuters the mediators were being held because they were believed to have a spy among them from the pro-Western government in Kyiv.
"People who come here as observers bringing with them a real spy: It's not appropriate," Vyacheslav Ponomaryov said in front of a security service building occupied by separatists where the Ukrainian government said the observers were being detained.
In southeastern Ukraine, seven people were injured by a blast at a checkpoint set up by local authorities and pro-Ukraine activists outside the Black Sea port of Odessa. Local police spokesman Volodymyr Shablienko said unknown men threw a grenade at the checkpoint.
In a message posted to Facebook, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said the mission to take back buildings occupied by pro-Russian armed groups was ongoing. “ATO [anti-terrorist operation] continues. Terrorists should beware around the clock. Civilians have nothing to fear,” he said.
Serhiy Pashinskiy, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, reiterated his remarks, saying they were attempting to encircle the city of Slovyansk, where the five rebels were killed on Thursday and where pro-Russian rebels have been particularly active.
Meanwhile, Lavrov on Friday accused the West of plotting to control Ukraine and said the pro-Russian armed groups in the southeast would lay down their arms only if the Ukrainian government clears out the Maidan protest camp in Kyiv. “The West wants — and this is how it all began — to seize control of Ukraine because of their own political ambitions, not in the interests of the Ukrainian people,” he said.
The West has accused Russia of orchestrating the unrest in Ukraine’s east and failing to use its influence on the pro-Russian militia groups, though Moscow denies it has stoked separatism in mainland Ukraine and that it therefore could not compel armed individuals to lay down their arms.
After a phone call on Friday among President Barack Obama and the Italian, French, German and British heads of government, the White House released a statement reiterating Obama’s comments from the day before that additional targeted sanctions were on the table if Russia’s forays into eastern Ukraine continued.
Members of the European Union on Friday strongly urged Russia to do its part to defuse the crisis and floated the idea of imposing sanctions, something they have been reluctant to do thus far.
Though the EU, which has close economic ties to Russia and depends on Kremlin-run Gazprom for 30 percent of its natural gas, has done little to directly pressure Russia during the crisis, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that if tensions are not resolved, “it is right to be prepared for new sanctions.” But the spokesman said Merkel urged more dialogue in a conversation with Putin on Friday.
On Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry issued a forceful rebuke of Russia’s actions, saying Moscow had failed to uphold the Geneva agreement.
“For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction,” Kerry said. “Not a single Russian official — not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons and get out of the Ukrainian buildings.”
“The window to change course is closing,” he added, citing Obama’s earlier comments that Washington was ready to impose new sanctions on Russia, on top of those imposed after Moscow recognized a referendum in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and annexed it weeks later. Kerry said Russia was using propaganda to hide what it was trying to do in eastern Ukraine — destabilize the region and undermine next month’s Ukrainian presidential elections — and denounced Moscow’s “threatening movement” of troops to Ukraine’s border.
In a separate development on Friday, the International Criminal Court opened a preliminary examination in Ukraine over alleged crimes committed from November 2013 through February 2014, when dozens were killed in clashes — part of a mass uprising that toppled Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych and called for greater European integration.
Al Jazeera and wire services
A vocal minority in Ukraine's east wants to join Russia, and Kiev has so far been unable to put down the separatists.
De-escalation agreed to in Geneva has not materialized in eastern parts of the country, which faces a separatist crisis
Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has struggled with its domestic politics
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