SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine - With Viktor Yanukovych on the run, Ukraine’s interim government drew up a warrant Monday for the fugitive president’s arrest in the killing of anti-government protesters last week, and Russia issued its strongest condemnation yet of the new leaders in Kiev, deriding them as “Kalashnikov-toting people in black masks.”
Parliament Speaker Oleksandr Turchinov, the interim president, moved quickly to open a dialogue with the West, saying at a meeting with European Union foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton that the course toward closer integration with Europe and financial assistance from the EU were “key factors of stable and democratic development of Ukraine.”
In a statement released by his office, Turchinov said Ukraine and the EU should immediately revisit the closer ties that Yanukovych abandoned in November in favor of a $15 billion bailout loan from Russia that set off a wave of protests. Within weeks, the protests expanded to include furor over corruption and human-rights abuses, leading to calls for Yanukovych’s resignation.
The Obama administration signaled Monday it no longer recognizes Yanukovych as Ukraine’s president. The shift of support for opposition leaders in Kiev came even as U.S. officials sought to assure Russia that it does not have to be shut out of a future relationship with a new Ukrainian government.
U.S. officials said the International Monetary Fund was considering an aid package as high as $15 billion to help stabilize a new, transitional government in Kiev. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. would provide additional aid to complement the IMF, aimed at fostering Ukrainian economic stability, but it was not immediately clear how much money it would provide. Officials later said any U.S. assistance would seek to help Ukraine through political changes, in part though investing more in health and education.
“Yanukovych left Kiev. He took his furniture, packed his bags, and we don’t have more information on his whereabouts,” State Department spokesman Jen Psaki told reporters. “So there are officials who have stepped in and are acting in response to that leadership gap at the moment.”
Carney said that although Yanukovych “was a democratically elected leader, his actions have undermined his legitimacy, and he is not actively leading the country at present.”
Yanukovych, who fled Kiev on Saturday after the opposition took over government buildings, has reportedly gone to the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, a pro-Russia area.
Calls are mounting in Ukraine to put Yanukovych on trial after a tumultuous presidency in which he amassed powers, enriched his allies and family and cracked down on protesters. Anger boiled over last week after 82 people, primarily demonstrators, were killed in clashes with security forces in the bloodiest violence in Ukraine’s post-Soviet history.
Acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakhov said on his official Facebook page that a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Yanukovych and several other officials regarding the “mass killing of civilians.”
In addition to the murder charges, there have been calls for prosecution of Yanukovych on corruption charges after the discovery of astonishing trappings of wealth at his abandoned presidential residence in a national park outside of Kiev. Throughout the weekend, curious and angry members of the public streamed to the compound to gawk at the collections of expensive modern and antique cars, the private zoo and other gauche accouterments.
As journalists scoured the compound, sorting through a trove of documents that had been partly burned or dumped in a river, local news media began reporting allegations of embezzlement and corruption, and new details about Yanukovych’s personal life emerged.
Yanukovych and his family were known to have accumulated vast wealth during his time in office, and he was believed to have access to at least one yacht that might ferry him out of Ukraine.
Yanukovych’s last public appearance was in a televised interview Saturday from Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, a base of his support, where he insisted he was still president and would not leave the country.
He then tried to fly out of Donetsk but was stopped and went to Crimea on Sunday, Avakhov said.
There, Yanukovych freed his official security detail from its duties and drove to an unknown location, turning off all forms of communication, Avakhov said.
“Yanukovych has disappeared,” he added.
Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, which had supported him until lawmakers began defecting over last week’s mass killings in Kiev, issued a statement Sunday saying the country had been deceived, robbed and betrayed. “All responsibility for this lies with Yanukovych,” the party wrote. “We condemn the flight and cowardice of Yanukovych. We condemn the betrayal.”
Security has tightened along Ukraine’s borders, the Interfax news agency quoted the State Border Guard service as saying.
Turchinov, the parliament speaker, is now nominally in charge of this strategic country of 46 million whose ailing economy faces the risk of default and whose loyalties are sharply torn between Europe and longtime ruler Russia. He said he hopes to form a new coalition government by today.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev strongly condemned the new authorities, saying they came to power as a result of an “armed mutiny” and their legitimacy is causing “big doubts.”
Medvedev suggested that economic agreements with Ukraine could be renegotiated and declared that instability there was “a real threat to our interests and to our citizens’ lives and health.”
Medvedev wouldn’t saywhat action Russia might take to protect its interests.
“If you consider Kalashnikov-toting people in black masks who are roaming Kiev to be the government, then it will be hard for us to work with that government,” Medvedev said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website that an agreement announced Friday aimed at easing the crisis, brokered by the European Union, had been used “only as a cover to promote a scenario of forced change of power in Ukraine.” That agreement, which would have kept Yanukovych in power until later this year, quickly unraveled as street protesters in Kiev demanded that he resign immediately.
“A course has been set to use dictatorial and sometimes terrorist methods to suppress dissenters in various regions,” the Foreign Ministry statement said, alluding to areas in Ukraine’s east and south where pro-Russian sentiment is stronger and Russian is widely spoken.
Although Russia has questioned the new government’s legitimacy, European Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly referred to Turchinov as the “interim president.”
NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, Gen. Philip Breedlove, discussed Ukraine with Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces, and they agreed to keep each other informed about developments in the country.
Tensions, meanwhile, have been mounting in Crimea in southern Ukraine. Russia maintains a large naval base in Sevastopol that has strained relations between the countries for two decades.
Pro-Russian protesters gathered in front of City Hall in Sevastopol on Monday chanting “Russia! Russia!”
“Extremists have seized power in Kiev, and we must defend Crimea. Russia must help us with that,” said Anataly Mareta, head of a Cossack militia in Sevastopol.
The head of the city administration in Sevastopol quit Monday amid the turmoil, and protesters replaced a Ukrainian flag near the City Hall building with a Russian flag.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position on the turmoil in Ukraine will be crucial to the future of Crimea and to Ukraine. Putin spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel by telephone Sunday, and the German government said the two agreed that Ukraine’s “territorial integrity must be respected.”
As president, Yanukovych consolidated power and wealth, curbed free speech and oversaw the imprisonment of his top political rival, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. But as protesters took control of the capital over the weekend, many allies turned against him, and Tymoshenko, the charismatic heroine of the 2004 Orange Revolution, is back on the political scene after being freed from prison over the weekend.
The current protest movement in Ukraine has been in large part a fight for the country’s economic future.
Ukraine has a large potential consumer market, an educated workforce, a significant industrial base and good natural resources, in particular rich farmland. Yet its economy is in tatters because of corruption, bad governing and shortsighted reliance on cheap gas from Russia.
Meanwhile, the parliament voted to dismiss more of Yanukovych’s lieutenants and replace them with new ones. They named a new head of the central bank, a new chief of the nation’s top security agency, a new head of the foreign intelligence service and a new chief prosecutor.
Information for this article was contributed by Maria Danilova, Yuras Karmanau, Angela Charlton, Jim Heintz, Dusan Stojanovic, Vladimir Isachenkov, Juergen Baetz, Lara Jakes and Robert Reid of The Associated Press; and by David M. Herszenhorn, Rick Gladstone and Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/25/2014