MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday signed an executive order recognizing passports and other documents issued by Russian-backed separatists in southeast Ukraine, a step that brings Moscow closer to recognition of the breakaway republics.
The move triggered protests from Kiev and will provide an early test of President Donald Trump's ability to manage the 3-year-old conflict as it seeks to reassure allies that it will continue to counterbalance Russian influence in Eastern Europe.
The executive order, which was posted Saturday on the Kremlin's website, said those living in areas of southeast Ukraine outside of Kiev's control "can enter and leave the Russian Federation without applying for visas upon showing identification documents (birth certificates for children under the age of 16), issued by the corresponding authorities which are valid in the said districts."
Those authorities are the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, the heavily militarized separatist governments that appeared in 2014 after a revolution in Kiev and Russia's annexation of Crimea.
The West has accused them of serving as Russian proxies and Moscow of supplying them with Russian soldiers and arms.
Like Crimea, they held disputed referendums and sought to join Russia formally, but Moscow demurred. Since then, they have been locked in a grinding conflict with Kiev that has killed more than 10,000, according to the United Nations. A peace process called the Minsk Agreement, agreed upon in 2015, provides steps out of the conflict, but it has largely gone unfulfilled.
"This step by Kremlin completely destroys the Minsk process and is equal to Russia's statement about an exit from that," Oleksandr Turchynov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said in a statement.
A Section on 02/19/2017