Russia has insisted that it does not intend to use Ukraine's crisis to carve up the country or to cut gas supplies to the EU, as Kiev sought to defuse a stand-off with armed pro-Kremlin protesters occupying official buildings.
The US and Nato claim tens of thousands of Moscow’s troops are gathered near Ukraine’s border for a possible push into the country’s largely Russian-speaking southeast, where demonstrators have seized buildings in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
"We cannot have such a desire. It contradicts the core interests of the Russian Federation. We want Ukraine to be whole within its current borders, but whole with full respect for the regions," Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said last night.
Kiev does not believe Moscow’s assurances, having seen it flood Crimea with troops before annexing the Black Sea region last month.
A government deadline for protesters to leave Luhansk’s security service headquarters and Donetsk’s administration building passed yesterday without action being taken, as Ukrainian prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk met regional leaders in Donetsk.
“We need to do everything to allow these people to exit peacefully, put down their weapons, leave the illegally occupied buildings, and not to commit terrorist acts or threaten people’s safety,” he said.
Federal model
The protesters' demands centre on calls for industrial southeast Ukraine either to join Russia or to take on a high degree of autonomy from Kiev. Government officials, who took office after then president Viktor Yanukovich fled violent protests in late February, suggest they are willing to decentralise power to some extent, but not move to the federal model proposed by Moscow.
Kiev says this would make the country ungovernable, dramatically weakening its pro-EU government and empowering eastern areas where Russia has great influence.
“Not everyone understands that the question of federalisation could lead to there being, instead of one Yanukovich, lots of ‘little Yanukovichs’,” Mr Yatsenyuk said.
“They want little Yanukovichs in every region,” he added, apparently referring to Russia and Ukraine’s pro-Moscow separatists. “We won’t allow that.”
Countering Moscow’s claims that his government is a threat to Ukraine’s tens of millions of Russian speakers, Mr Yatsenyuk said – in fluent Russian – that he “will be the first to guarantee the right of every Ukrainian to speak any language they want . . . I have never met any Russian-speaking Ukrainian who would say he wants protection because he is not allowed to speak Russian.”
The buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk were still occupied last night, however, and Mr Lavrov stepped up Moscow’s support for leading figures in Ukraine’s eastern regions by insisting they attend next Thursday’s planned crisis talks between Ukrainian, US, EU and Russian officials.
A day after Russian president Vladimir Putin warned that Russia might cut gas supplies to Ukraine over unpaid bills – potentially jeopardising the flow to the EU – he said yesterday that "we do not intend . . . to shut off the gas for Ukraine . . . We guarantee fulfilment of all our obligations to our European consumers."
