Red Square cheers go up over Crimea

Demonstrators waving Russian flags Friday gather at Red Square in Moscow as Russia rallied support for a Crimean bid to secede from Ukraine. One leader in Russia’s parliament assured Crimean leaders that the region would be welcomed as “an absolutely equal subject of the Russian Federation.”
Demonstrators waving Russian flags Friday gather at Red Square in Moscow as Russia rallied support for a Crimean bid to secede from Ukraine. One leader in Russia’s parliament assured Crimean leaders that the region would be welcomed as “an absolutely equal subject of the Russian Federation.”

MOSCOW - Russia was swept up in patriotic fervor Friday favoring Crimea’s return to its territory, with tens of thousands of people in Red Square waving flags and chanting “Crimea is Russia!” as a parliamentary leader declared that the peninsula would be welcomed as an “equal subject” of Russia.


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The semiautonomous region belongs to Ukraine, but Crimea’s parliament has called a March 16 referendum on whether it should join Russia, a move President Barack Obama has called a violation of international law.

The referendum also has been denounced by the fledgling national government in Kiev, which said it would invalidate the outcome and dissolve the Crimean parliament.

Tensions in Crimea were heightened late in the evening when pro-Russian forces tried to seize a Ukrainian military base in the port city of Sevastopol, according to the Ukrainian branch of the Interfax news agency. No shots were fired, but stun grenades were thrown, according to the report, citing Ukrainian officials.

About 100 Ukrainian troops are stationed at the base and they barricaded themselves inside one of their barracks as their commander began negotiations, the report said. Crimea’s pro-Moscow leader denied any confrontation at the base.

photo

AP

A man carries bouquets of flowers Friday as riot police stand at the entrance to the regional administrative building in Donetsk, Ukraine, after clashes with protesters there Thursday.

In the week since Russia seized control of Crimea, Russian troops have been neutralizing and disarming Ukrainian military bases on the Black Sea peninsula. Some Ukrainian units, however, have refused to surrender.

Crimea’s new leader has said pro-Russian forces numbering more than 11,000 control all access to the region and have blockaded all military bases that haven’t yet surrendered.

The strategic peninsula has become the flash point in the battle for Ukraine, where three months of protests sent President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing to Russia. Moscow calls the new Ukrainian government illegitimate and has seized control of Crimea, where it has a major naval base on the Black Sea.

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that his country has no intention of annexing Crimea, he insisted that its residents have the right to determine the region’s status in the referendum.

Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, made clear Friday that the country would welcome Crimea if it votes in the referendum to join its neighbor. About 60 percent of Crimea’s population identifies itself as Russian.

“If the decision is made, then [Crimea] will become an absolutely equal subject of the Russian Federation,” Matvienko said during a visit from the chairman of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov. She spoke of mistreatment of Russian-speaking residents in Ukraine’s east and south, which has been Moscow’s primary argument for intervention in Ukraine.

The speaker of the Russian lower house, Sergei Naryshkin, echoed Matvienko’s remarks. “We will respect the historic choice of the people of Crimea,” he said.

The Russian parliament is scrambling to make it easier for Crimea to join Russia. Russia’s Constitution allows the country to annex territory only by an agreement “initiated … by the given foreign government.” That would entail signing an agreement with the new authorities in Kiev, whom Moscow doesn’t recognize.

New legislation would sidestep that requirement, according to members of the parliament, who initially said a bill could be passed as soon as next week but have since indicated that they will wait until after the referendum.

On the other side of Red Square from the parliament building, 65,000 people gathered at a Kremlin-organized rally in support of Crimea.

“We always knew that Russia would not abandon us,” Konstantinov shouted from the stage. He also called on Moscow not to forget other Russia-leaning regions in Ukraine.

“We must not leave the Ukrainian people at the mercy of those Nazi bandits,” he said, referring to the new government in Kiev.

Russian state gas company Gazprom also increased the pressure Friday on Ukraine’s new government, which owes $1.89 billion for Russian natural gas.

Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller said that if Ukraine doesn’t pay off its debt, “there is a risk of returning to the situation of the beginning of 2009” when Russia cut off supplies to Europe because of a pricing dispute with Ukraine.

“We cannot deliver gas for free,” Russia news agencies quoted Miller as saying.

The new government, which is struggling to stabilize Ukraine’s finances and failing economy, got encouraging news Friday from the International Monetary Fund, which said economic assistance was on the way.

“I am positively impressed with the authorities’ determination, sense of responsibility and commitment to an agenda of economic reform and transparency, Reza Moghadam, the IMF’s European Department director, said in a statement after a two-day visit. “The IMF stands ready to help the people of Ukraine.”

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the interim prime minister of Ukraine, said Friday that he had requested a second telephone conversation with the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev.

The two men last spoke Saturday, which was the only high-level contact between Moscow and the new authorities in Kiev.

Ukraine is ready for talks with Russia, Yatsenyuk said, but Moscow must first withdraw its troops, abide by international agreements and halt its support for “separatists and terrorists in Crimea.” He repeated Ukraine’s position that a referendum in Crimea is illegal and unconstitutional.

“No one in the civilized world will recognize the results of a so-called referendum carried out by these so called authorities,” Yatsenyuk said.

Russia has denied that its forces are active in Crimea, describing the troops who wear green uniforms without insignia as local “self-defense forces.” But many of the troops, who are armed with advanced heavy weaponry, are being transported by vehicles with Russian license plates.

Hoping to pressure Russia to roll back its military presence, the U.S. imposed financial sanctions and travel bans on Russians and other opponents of the new Kiev government Thursday. The European Union suspended talks with Russia on a wide-ranging economic agreement and on granting Russian citizens visa-free travel to the 28-nation bloc, a long-standing Russian objective.

On Friday, former boxer Vitali Klitschko and magnate Petro Poroshenko, both of whom are seen as likely candidates in Ukraine’s May presidential election, sought more European support to bring Ukraine and its economy under control.

Poroshenko said Ukraine wants the EU and U.S. “to speak in one voice and be on the same wavelength.”

Klitschko, a leader of the protest movement that sent Ukraine’s president fleeing last month, said, “We need a joint position by all EU countries and the United States.”

The cautious EU position reflects divisions within the continent, where many countries have deep trade ties with Russia and depend on Russian gas supplies for energy.

On Friday, Russia slammed the EU for taking an “extremely un-constructive approach” to the Ukraine crisis and pledged to retaliate if the EU imposed sanctions.

“Russia does not accept the language of sanctions and threats, but if they are imposed they will not remain unanswered,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also warned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that U.S. sanctions could backfire, the ministry said in a statement.

In a telephone conversation, Lavrov urged the U.S. not to take “hasty, poorly thought-out steps that could harm Russian-U.S. relations, especially concerning sanctions, which would unavoidably boomerang on the U.S. itself,” the statement said.

In Russia on Friday, Putin opened the Winter Paralympics in Sochi with a solitary Ukrainian athlete taking part in the opening ceremony. The Ukrainian team announced a few hours earlier that it would not boycott the games but said it could pull out if the Crimea situation escalates.

Crimea, part of Ukraine since 1954, has enjoyed substantial autonomy since shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the region’s constitution generally defers to the national Ukrainian Constitution on jurisdictional matters.

Crimea would be the first territory to join Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which broke away from Georgia after a brief 2008 war with Russia, have been recognized as independent by Moscow, but there have been few serious moves to enable them to join Russia.

In the Crimean capital, Simferopol, 75 people turned out Friday for a rally at the local monument to 19th-century Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. They spoke both Ukrainian and Russian but waved Ukrainian flags and released white doves into the rainy sky.

One of those at the protest was native Russian speaker Anton Romanov, who said he opposes the occupation of Crimea by Russian troops.

“I’m against being forced to live in a different country,” he said.

Information for this article was contributed by John-Thor Dahlburg, Laura Mills, Tim Sullivan,Angela Charlton and staff members of The Associated Press; by Steven Lee Myers, David M. Herszenhorn and Rick Gladstone of The New York Times; and by Isabel Gorst, special to The Washington Post.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/08/2014

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