Putin signs annexation of Crimea

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday formally completed the annexation of Crimea, signing into law bills passed by the Russian parliament reclaiming the contested province from Ukraine.

Hours earlier, Ukraine’s acting prime minister signed a political association agreement with the European Union. The pact has been opposed by Moscow, and its rejection in November by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych prompted the uprising that led to his overthrow in February.

The EU and the United States have frozen assets and limited the travel of a number of close associates of Putin for their part in Crimea’s annexation.

Putin responded to the moves by barring nine U.S. officials and legislators from Moscow. But on Friday, he said he did not see the immediate need for further reprisals, while leaving open the door for more later on.

With evident sarcasm, he also said in televised remarks that he would open an account at a Russian bank targeted by the U.S. measures, even as the first effects on the country’s economy became clear.

Russia’s stock market opened sharply lower Friday as a second rating agency, Fitch, followed Standard & Poor’s in warning that it would downgrade the country’s credit rating in the wake of the punitive U.S. response to Russia’s move to annex Crimea.

Visa and MasterCard ceased operations with Bank Rossiya, one of the corporations targeted Thursday by the sanctions for its purported role as a “personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation.”

Putin, meeting with members of his national security council, suggested in televised remarks that the government was still coming to grips with the effect of the sanctions, mostly aimed at government officials and businessmen who have grown rich since Putin rose to power more than 14 years ago.

EU leaders added 12 people to their list of 21 officials they are hitting with visa bans and asset freezes. It said Friday that the 12 include Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and three others who were on the U.S. list of targets this week.

The EU list also includes television anchor Dmitry Kiselyov, described as “the central figure of the government propaganda supporting the deployment of Russian forces in Ukraine.”

Also on the list are high-ranking military officials, including two deputy commanders of the Black Sea Fleet, which is based on the Crimean Peninsula.

Some of those attending the meeting with Putin on Friday were among those affected, including Putin’s chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov.

“We should distance ourselves from them,” Putin joked, his face showing no emotion. “They compromise us.”

When Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said the ministry was prepared to draft unspecified retaliatory measures, however, Putin demurred. “I think we should refrain from taking steps in response for now,” he said.

Putin was speaking as the upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, ratified a treaty signed this week to formally annex Crimea. The lower house, the Duma, took a similar step Thursday.

Putin made it final by signing the treaty later Friday, ending six days of maneuvers that began with a hastily arranged referendum among Crimeans, who voted in favor of secession Sunday.

The European agreement signed Friday by interim Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was part of an earlier deal abandoned by Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president at the time, in favor of a bailout by Russia. His action helped precipitate his downfall after weeks of protests in central Kiev.

Yatsenyuk signed the central part of a so-called association agreement with EU officials and with leaders of the body’s 28 nations on the fringe of their summit meeting in Brussels. While the pact allows the two sides to deepen their economic and political collaboration, more detailed elements of the deal concerning free trade will be signed only after Ukraine’s presidential election, scheduled for May.

“This deal meets the aspirations of millions of Ukrainians that want to be a part of the European Union,” said Yatsenyuk, a leader of the protest movement that ousted Yanukovych.

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, said the agreement would offer Ukrainians a “European way of life” and would recognize “the aspirations of the people of Ukraine to live in a country governed by values, by democracy and the rule of law, where all citizens have a stake in national prosperity.”

The agreement includes security and defense cooperation, Yatsenyuk said. In exchange for the EU pact, Ukraine’s government is promising economic changes.

Amid its political crisis, Ukraine is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, struggling to pay off billions of dollars in debts in the coming months.

The U.S. and the EU have pledged to quickly offer a bailout. The U.S. Senate is expected to consider a loan package next week.

“In the long term, the biggest challenge will be to build a strong Ukrainian economy, rooted in strong institutions that respect the rule of law,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said at the EU summit.

Russia last year put heavy pressure on Yanukovych to reject the original EU deal, fearing it would torpedo efforts by Putin to form a Moscow-dominated customs union made up of former Soviet lands.

TENSIONS HEIGHTEN

The formalities of Crimea’s annexation on Friday followed a campaign by Russian special forces to take over military installations in the region, effectively forcing the Ukrainian authorities to capitulate by signaling the withdrawal of their 25,000 troops and dependents from Crimea.

Meanwhile, the massing of Russian troops near Ukraine’s border and protests by pro-Russian activists in the east and south of Ukraine have raised concerns that Putin may push farther into the second most populous former Soviet republic.

The White House is skeptical that recent Russian troop movements on Ukraine’s borders are merely training exercises, as the Russian government has claimed, the national security adviser, Susan Rice, said Friday.

“We have indeed been taking note of developments along Ukraine’s border, including the Russian border,” Rice said.

“The Russians have stated that they are intending military exercises,” she said. “Obviously, given their past practice and the gap between what they have said and what they have done, we are watching it with skepticism.”

President Barack Obama will meet with NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday, an opportunity to reassure Eastern European members of the alliance, including the Baltic states, which have become especially alarmed by Putin’s moves.

On Friday, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, visiting NATO allies Estonia, Lithuania and Poland, announced France’s willingness to support an alliance air-patrol mission in the Baltic states, echoing offers by the United States and Britain.

“France has heard the requests of its allies, and I told my Estonian colleague that France is ready to strengthen air defenses … by sending four fighters from the French air force,” Le Drian said.

Russia on Friday accepted the deployment of an international monitoring team to Ukraine that officials said will have free access to regions throughout the country. But a senior Russian envoy said that doesn’t include Crimea, which his country claims as its own.

The development followed more than a week of stonewalling by Russia of a push by all other members of the 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to send such a mission, which they hope will prevent an escalation of tensions in Ukraine’s east and south - regions that have large Russian-speaking populations.

Friday’s decision called for advance teams to be deployed within 24 hours.

The mission, which has a six-month mandate, initially will consist of 100 observers. Up to 400 extra monitors could be deployed if necessary.

The security organization said the civilian observer team will gather information and report on the security situation “throughout the country.”

Andrei Kelin, Russia’s chief envoy to the organization, said the Crimean Peninsula was off limits for the observers because “Crimea is a part of the Russian Federation.”

But U.S. chief envoy Daniel Baer said that because “Crimea is Ukraine … they should have access to Crimea.”

In Berlin, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that although the decision on the monitors is “not the end of the crisis … it is a step that helps support our efforts toward de-escalation.”

Two previous observer teams - unarmed military missions - didn’t need Russian approval because they were asked for by Ukraine under a special provision exempting them from the normal consensus decisions the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe works through.

Those teams returned without carrying out their mission of monitoring Crimea after being repeatedly stopped from entering by pro-Russian forces.

Also Friday, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic arrived in the Crimean capital, Simferopol, on a two-day visit to lay the groundwork for a U.N. human-rights monitoring mission in the peninsula, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

The U.N. has four international monitors and seven national monitors in Ukraine - a number that will increase - and is already operating in two major cities in the pro-Russian east, Donetsk and Kharkiv, Dujarric said.

Information for this article was contributed by Steven Lee Myers, Alan Cowell, Andrew Higgins and Mark Landler of The New York Times; by Mike Corder, Raf Casert, Vladimir Isachenkov, Maria Danilova, John-Thor Dahlburg, Nataliya Vasilyeva, Cassandra Vinograd, Angela Charlton, George Jahn, Geir Moulson, Edith M. Lederer, Philipp Jenne, Jim Kuhnhenn, Jari Tanner and Jamey Keaten of The Associated Press; and by James G. Neuger, Ilya Arkhipov, Olga Tanas, John Walcott, Julianna Goldman, Torrey Clark, Ewa Krukowska, Patrick Donahue and Ian Wishart of Bloomberg News.