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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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| Information | | |
Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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21Apr14
Russian Foreign Minister Accuses Kiev of Flouting Ukraine Accord
Russia's foreign minister accused the interim authorities in Kiev on Monday of flagrantly violating the international accord reached last week aimed at defusing the crisis in eastern Ukraine, in remarks that suggested Russia may be further preparing the groundwork for a military intervention.
The accusations made by the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, came as Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived in Kiev in a show of support for its increasingly besieged government, which the Kremlin regards as a result of a Western-backed coup that seized power in late February after months of protests.
Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimean Peninsula last month in response to the crisis in Ukraine, and Mr. Lavrov's accusations suggested the Kremlin was creating a basis to justify a similar territorial grab in eastern Ukraine despite its repeated denials. Thousands of Russian troops have been massed on the border for weeks.
The Obama administration has warned that it will impose increasingly harsh sanctions on Russia if it does not help defuse the crisis in eastern Ukraine. But Mr. Lavrov threw that warning back at the Americans in his angry assertions at a news conference in Moscow.
"Before giving us ultimatums, demanding that we fulfill demands within two or three days with the threat of sanctions, we would urgently call on our American partners to fully accept responsibility for those who they brought to power," Mr. Lavrov told reporters. He said all attempts to isolate Russia would fail, because Russia is "a big, independent power that knows what it wants."
He rejected accusations that Russia is covertly manipulating events in eastern Ukraine and subverting the accord reached in Geneva last Thursday between himself, Secretary of State John Kerry and representatives of Ukraine's interim government and the European Union.
"The authorities are doing nothing, not even lifting a finger, to address the causes behind this deep internal crisis in Ukraine," Mr. Lavrov said. The Geneva agreement, he said, "is not only not being fulfilled, but steps are being taken, primarily by those who seized power in Kiev, that are grossly breaching the agreement reached in Geneva."
Mr. Lavrov blamed the killings of three people in a shootout at a checkpoint in eastern Ukraine on Sunday on the interim government and its sympathizers. "The fact that extremists started to shoot at unarmed civilians is unacceptable," he said.
Mr. Lavrov's criticisms came as new evidence emerged on Monday of violence aimed at pro-Russian militants in eastern Ukraine, with bodies of two members of a Moscow-backed militia pulled from the Donetsk River in Slovyansk.
At the same time, an international observer mission with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was unable to enter Donetsk, an epicenter of pro-Russia separatism, for reasons that were not clear. Russia agreed to the observer mission at Germany's insistence, and the group's inability to reach the area made it all the more difficult to determine why law and order seemed to be unraveling there.
A spokesman for the European organization told the Russian news agency Interfax that the observer mission "could not access this town out of concern for security," without elaborating. Russia and Kiev have blamed each other for the violence.
Vyachislav Ponomaryov, the de facto mayor of Slovyansk appointed by militants, told the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets that he had identified the two corpses pulled from the river as pro-Russian militants.
They had died, he said, from stab wounds and been thrown in the river. Mr. Ponomaryov said the city was under attack by a Ukrainian nationalist group, Right Sector, and the Ukrainian Army, although there has been no clear sign of either since a Ukrainian armored column surrendered to the separatists in a humiliating setback for the central government last week.
Pro-Russian militants have, though, produced for journalists a captured Ukrainian woman they say is Irma Krat, an activist who took part in pro-European Union demonstrations in the capital last winter. The woman had a bag over her head and was pleading for help, the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported, citing social media posts and republishing photographs of the hooded prisoner that had been posted online.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Sunday dismissing the assertion by pro-Russian militants that attackers in and around the city were members of Right Sector. The group also denied any involvement.
The shootout on Sunday at a roadblock run by pro-Russian militants near Slovyansk left at least three people dead, highlighting the fraying in eastern Ukraine of an agreement last week in Geneva in which the United States, Russia and others called on militants to stand down.
Around 2 a.m. on a road lined with blossoming apricot trees, four cars drove toward the checkpoint, according to the pro-Russian militants who control the city. Their occupants opened fire, killing three local men who were standing guard, the militants said.
"We thought nothing would happen because it was the holy night," said Yevgeny Bondarenko, 62, who said he had been there to celebrate Easter with the people at the checkpoint. "Who can we trust now?"
It was unclear whether the shooting was an event staged by provocateurs, an accident or an attack on pro-Russian militants. The difficulty in determining what happened will resonate far beyond Slovyansk: The United States has said it will impose additional sanctions on Russian businessmen, and possibly on a bank or oil company, if the Geneva accord is not heeded. So far, militants have neither budged from the buildings they are occupying nor handed in their guns.
[Source: By Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times, Donetsk, 21Apr14]
 | This document has been published on 22Apr14 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. |