Putin defends Crimean bid to join Russia

Won’t yield a centimeter, Ukrainian premier vows

Ukrainian riot police block the entrance of the regional administrative building during a pro Russian rally in Donetsk, Ukraine, Sunday, March 9, 2014.  Following an extraordinary meeting of the Ukrainian government, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced he would be flying later this week to the United States for high-level talks on "resolution of the situation in Ukraine," the Interfax news agency reported Sunday. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
Ukrainian riot police block the entrance of the regional administrative building during a pro Russian rally in Donetsk, Ukraine, Sunday, March 9, 2014. Following an extraordinary meeting of the Ukrainian government, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced he would be flying later this week to the United States for high-level talks on "resolution of the situation in Ukraine," the Interfax news agency reported Sunday. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

KIEV, Ukraine - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday defended the separatist drive in the disputed Crimean Peninsula as in keeping with international law, but Ukraine’s prime minister vowed not to relinquish “a single centimeter” of his country’s territory.

Over the weekend, the Kremlin beefed up its military presence in Crimea, a part of Ukraine since 1954. Pro-Russia forces are pushing for a vote in favor of reunification with Moscow in a referendum the local parliament has scheduled for next Sunday.

President Barack Obama has warned that the vote would violate international law. But in Moscow, Putin made it clear that he supports the referendum in phone calls with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

“The steps taken by the legitimate leadership of Crimea are based on the norms of international law and aim to ensure the legal interests of the population of the peninsula,” said Putin, according to the Kremlin.

After a Sunday meeting of the Ukrainian government, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced that he will meet with Obama in Washington on Wednesday about a “resolution of the situation in Ukraine,” the Interfax news agency reported. The White House confirmed the meeting.

“Our country and our people are facing the biggest challenges in the history of modern independent Ukraine,” the prime minister said earlier in the day. “Will we be able to deal with these challenges? There should only be one answer to this question and that is: yes.”

Vice President Joe Biden cut short his trip to Latin America, forgoing a planned stop in the Dominican Republic so he can attend Wednesday’s meeting, an aide to Biden said. Biden had been the White House’s prime point of contact with Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, before Yanukovych fled to Russia last month after violent clashes in Kiev.

The White House said Biden planned to reschedule his trip to the Dominican Republic.

Obama’s White House meeting with Yatsenyuk will focus on options to peacefully resolve Russia’s military intervention in the Ukrainian region of Crimea, the White House said, adding that the resolution must respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The United States would not recognize a referendum by Crimea to leave Ukraine, and a shift of that region to Russia “is not a done deal,” a U.S. national security official said Sunday.

“If there is a referendum and it votes to move Crimea out of Ukraine and to Russia, we won’t recognize it and most of the world won’t either,” deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

“Were that to happen, the isolation of Russia, the cost that it would pay, would increase significantly from where they are now,” he said.

Blinken said sanctions have taken an economic toll on Russia.

“We’ve seen Russian markets go down substantially, the ruble go down, and investors sitting on the fence. So Russia’s paying a price for this,” Blinken said on CNN’s State of the Union.

He expressed hope for a peaceful resolution.

“I think the door is clearly open to resolving this diplomatically,” Blinken said.

Back in Ukraine on Sunday, citizens commemorated the 200th anniversary of the birth of the country’s greatest poet, Taras Shevchenko, a son of peasant serfs who is a national hero and is considered the father of modern Ukrainian literature.

“This is our land,” Yatsenyuk told a crowd gathered at the Kiev statue of Shevchenko. “Our fathers and grandfathers have spilled their blood for this land. And we won’t budge a single centimeter from Ukrainian land. Let Russia and its president know this.”

“We’re one country, one family, and we’re here together with our kobzar [bard] Taras,” said acting President Oleksandr Turchynov.

Later, Ukrainians in the tens of thousands gathered in Kiev’s center for a multifaith prayer meeting to display unity and honor Shevchenko. One of the speakers, formerly imprisoned Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, almost burst into tears as he implored the crowd to believe not all Russians support their country’s recent actions in Ukraine.

“I want you to know there is a completely different Russia,” Khodorkovsky said.

In the eastern city of Luhansk, however, people who gathered in a square to celebrate Shevchenko’s birthday were attacked by pro-Russia protesters, and some were beaten up, according to local media reports.

Chanting “Russia! Russia!” the demonstrators then broke through a police barricade and took over the local government building, where they raised the Russian flag and demanded a citywide referendum on joining Russia, Channel 5 and other local media reported.

But it’s Crimea, a strategic peninsula in the Black Sea, that has become the chief flash point in the battle for Ukraine, where three months of protests prompted by Yanukovych’s decision to ditch a significant treaty with the 28-nation European Union after strong pressure from Russia led to his downfall.

A majority of people in Crimea identify with Russia, and Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet is based in Sevastopol, as is Kiev’s.

In Simferopol, Crimea’s capital, a crowd of more than 4,000 people turned out Sunday to endorse unification with Russia. On Lenin Square, a naval band played World War II songs as old women sang along, and dozens of tricolor Russian flags fluttered in the cold wind.

“Russians are our brothers,” Crimean parliament speaker Vladimir Konstantinov said. He asked the crowd how it would vote in next Sunday’s referendum.

“Russia! Russia!” came the loud answer.

“We are going back home to the motherland,” Konstantinov said.

Across town, at a park where a large bust of Shevchenko stands, about 500 people, some wearing yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flags on their shoulders like capes, came out to oppose unification with Russia.

They chanted “No to the referendum!” and “Ukraine!” People handed out fliers, one of which listed the economic woes that joining Russia would supposedly cause.

“We will not allow a foreign boot that wants to stand on the heads of our children,” said one of the speakers, Alla Petrova. “The people are not scared. We are not scared to come out here and speak.”

Some pro-Russians drove by, shouting “Moscow, Moscow!” from their cars, but there was no trouble.

Associated Press reporters in Crimea said all Ukrainian television channels appeared to have been taken off the air by Sunday evening, save for one that appeared to be rebroadcasting programs from Moscow-based Russia-24.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who appeared on the BBC on Sunday morning, described Russia’s entering Crimea as a “big miscalculation.”

He also said the referendum was happening “ridiculously quickly.” Hague added, “The world will not be able to regard that as free or fair.”

During his conversations with Cameron and Merkel, Putin criticized the Western leaders for what he said was their failure to press the new government in Kiev to curb ultranationalist and radical forces.

But the Kremlin also said that despite their differences, the three leaders expressed an interest in reducing tensions and normalizing the situation in Ukraine as soon as possible. Information for this article was contributed by John-Thor Dahlburg, Lynn Berry, Danica Kirka, Tim Sullivan, Mike Eckel, Josh Lederman and Darlene Superville of The Associated Press and by Jim Puzzanghera of the Los Angeles Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/10/2014

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