SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine - Masked gunmen stormed the parliament in Ukraine’s Crimea region Thursday as Russian fighter jets scrambled to patrol borders, and the newly formed national government pledged to prevent a national breakup with strong backing from the West.
As gunmen wearing unmarked camouflage uniforms erected a sign reading “Crimea is Russia” in Simferopol, the regional capital,Ukraine’s interim prime minister declared the territory would continue to be a part of Ukraine.
Early today, the Interfax news agency reported that about 50 armed men in military uniforms seized the Simferopol airport.
Witnesses told Interfax they were the same men who seized government buildings in the city.
The report could not immediately be confirmed. A later Interfax report, datelined Moscow, quoted an airport representative as saying the men apologized and left and that the airport was operating normally.
A woman who answered the phone at the airport said, “No comment,” and the airport’s website listed the morning’s first flight, to Moscow, as boarding on schedule.
Moscow granted shelter to Ukraine’s fugitive president, Viktor Yanukovych, state media said. He was said to be holed up in a luxury government retreat and to have scheduled a news conference for today near the Ukrainian border.
Yanukovych, whose abandonment of closer ties to Europe in favor of a bailout loan from Russia set off three months of protests, fled by helicopter last week as his allies deserted him.
The exit was a severe blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader has long dreamed of pulling Ukraine - considered the cradle of Russian civilization - closer into Moscow’s orbit.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that Russia has told the United States it will respect the sovereignty of Ukraine and that military exercises near the Russian-Ukraine border are not a prelude to intervention.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov assured Kerry that the buildup was scheduled previously and was unrelated to the recent unrest in Ukraine.
But the dispatch of Russian fighter jets Thursday to patrol borders and drills by some 150,000 Russian troops - almost the entirety of its force in the western part of the country - sparked fear that Russia would intervene, leading to a wider conflict.
Kerry also said Moscow was “concerned” about the takeover in Crimea and that Lavrov “disclaimed that it had anything to do with any formal Russian initiative.”
“They don’t want to see a breakdown into violence,” Kerry said. Even so, he struck a skeptical tone, noting that Russia can’t credibly claim to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity if it also is encouraging a separatist movement.
For Ukraine’s neighbors, the specter of Ukraine breaking up evoked memories of centuries of bloody fighting.
“Regional conflicts begin this way,” said Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, calling the confrontation “a very dangerous game.”
INTERIM GOVERNMENT
Thursday’s developments posed an immediate challenge to Ukraine’s new authorities as they named an interim government for the country, whose population is divided in loyalties between Russia and the West.
Crimea, which was seized by Russian forces in the 18th century under Catherine the Great, was once the crown jewel in the Russian and Soviet empires.
It became part of Ukraine in 1954 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred jurisdiction from Russia - a move that was a formality until the 1991 Soviet collapse meant Crimea landed in an independent Ukraine.
In the national capital, Kiev, the new prime minister said Ukraine’s future lies in the European Union, but with friendly relations with Russia.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, named Thursday in a boisterous parliamentary session, now faces the difficult task of restoring stability in the country. The 39-year-old served as economy minister, foreign minister and parliamentary speaker before Yanukovych took office in 2010.
Shortly before the lawmakers chose him, Yatsenyuk insisted the country wouldn’t accept the secession of Crimea. The Black Sea territory, he declared, “has been and will be a part of Ukraine.”
In Crimea’s capital, gunmen toting rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles raised the Russian flag over the regional parliament building Thursday. They wore black and orange ribbons, a Russian symbol of victory in World War II.
Oleksandr Turchynov, who stepped in as acting president after Yanukovych’s flight, condemned the assault as a “crime against the government of Ukraine.” He warned that any move by Russian troops off their base in Crimea “will be considered a military aggression.”
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based in Sevastopol, on the Crimean coast. Simferopol is inland.
Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s acting interior minister, said the new government was taking unspecified measures “to counter the extremists’ actions and prevent an escalation of an armed conflict in the center of the city.”
“Provocateurs are on the march,” Avakov said, making his announcement, as he has others, on Facebook. “It’s a time for cool heads, the healthy consolidation of forces, and careful action.”
The escalating conflict further hurt Ukraine’s troubled finances, prompting Western leaders to prepare an emergency financial package.
Ukraine’s Finance Ministry has said it needs $35 billion over the next two years to avoid default. Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, dropped to a new record low, trading 11.25 to the U.S. dollar on Thursday.
The International Monetary Fund said Thursday that it was “ready to respond” to Ukraine’s bid for financial assistance. The European Union also was considering emergency loans for the country, which is the chief conduit of Russian natural gas to western Europe.
IMF chief Christine Lagarde said in the organization’s first official statement on Ukraine’s crisis that it was in talks with its partners on “how best to help Ukraine at this critical moment in its history.”
Western leaders also expressed support for the new Ukrainian leadership. Vice President Joe Biden told the new prime minister Thursday that the U.S. welcomes the formation of the country’s new government.
The German and British leaders gave the new government their blessing as well, while warning Russia not to interfere.
“Every country should respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Ukraine,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in London.
NATO defense ministers met in Brussels, and U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel emerged appealing for calm.
“These are difficult times,” he said, “but these are times for cool, wise leadership on Russia’s side and everyone’s side.” YANUKOVYCH’S STATEMENT
In his statement, Yanukovych warned that the largely Russian regions in eastern and southern Ukraine, including Crimea, would “not accept the anarchy and outright lawlessness” that has gripped the country.
“I continue to consider myself the lawful head ofthe Ukrainian government, elected on the basis of the free expression of the will of Ukrainian citizens,” he said in the statement, according to two news agencies, RIA Novosti and Itar-Tass.
Yanukovych fled Ukraine shortly after riot police attacked protesters in Kiev’s central square in clashes that killed dozens of people.
The news organizations said the fugitive leader was staying at the Kremlin-run Barvikha retreat just outside Moscow, though spokesmen for Putin and for the department that runs the resort said they had no information about Yanukovych’s whereabouts.
“I have to ask Russia to ensure my personal safety from extremists,” Yanukovych’s statement read, according to the Russian news agencies. Shortly after, an unnamed Russian official was quoted as saying the request had been granted.
Yanukovych has not been seen publicly since Saturday, when he also insisted he remained the legitimately elected president - a position backed by Russia. Legal experts said his flight and the appointment of a new government make that stance moot.
Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry voiced concern about the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine and vowed to protect their interests.
Putin on Thursday asked the government to consider providing humanitarian assistance to Crimea.
The raid in Simferopol took place just hours after thousands of Crimean Tatars, the region’s minority indigenous Turkic population, and a separate throng of ethnic Russians staged competing rallies outside Crimea’s regional parliament.
The rallies, which ended in a melee and left several people injured, disrupted a session of the regional parliament that hard-line pro-Russia groups had hoped would declare Crimea’s secession from Ukraine.
The regional parliament called an emergency session on the issue for this afternoon.
Refat Chubalov, a member of the assembly and leader of Crimea’s ethnic Tatar minority, said he had not been informed about the session and warned that any vote to separate Crimea from Ukraine would be “very dangerous.”
He blamed pro-Russian forces for the early-morning seizure of government buildings, describing the action as “a direct interference in the affairs of Crimea and of Ukraine.”
A pro-Russian activist who gave only his first name, Maxim, said it was unclear who seized the buildings.
He said he and other activists had been camped overnight outside the parliament building in Simferopol when about 50 men wearing flak jackets and carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers and sniper rifles took over the building.
“Our activists were sitting there all night calmly, building the barricades,” he said. “At 5 o’clock unknown men turned up and went to the building. They got into the courtyard and put everyone on the ground.”
“They were asking who we were. When we said we stand for the Russian language and Russia, they said: ‘Don’t be afraid. We’re with you.’ Then they began to storm the building bringing down the doors,” he said. “They didn’t look like volunteers or amateurs; they were professionals. This was clearly a well-organized operation.”
“Who are they?” he added. “Nobody knows.” Information for this article was contributed by Dalton Bennett, Maria Danilova, Karl Ritter, Nataliya Vasilyeva, Laura Mills, Jill Lawless, Lara Jakes and Matthew Lee of The Associated Press and by Andrew Higgins, Steven Lee Myers, David M. Herszenhorn,Andrew E. Kramer, Andrew Roth and Alan Cowell of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/28/2014