http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-struggle-amongst-oligarchs-in-ukraine.html ) I have a very different take on the story. Now I see it as the struggle by the common people of Ukraine against the corruption of the oligarchs that were ruling them in cooperation with the oligarchs controlling Russia with putin. putin's Russia and the corporate / bank-financial cabals of the West have escalated this from a national revolution holding out the promise of freedom and democracy to a dangerous geopolitical crisis.
Video|2:39
Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
In Crimea, Speaking out on Referendum
In Yalta and Simferopol, Crimean citizens
spoke about the planned referendum on whether to break from Ukraine and
join the Russian Federation.
MOSCOW
— Leaders of both houses of Russia’s Parliament said on Friday that
they would support a vote by Crimea to break away from Ukraine and
become a new region of the Russian Federation, the first public signal
that the Kremlin was backing the secessionist move that Ukraine, the
United States and other countries have denounced as a violation of
international law.
Russia
also raised pressure on the financially stressed interim central
government in Kiev, which Russia has refused to recognize since the
pro-Kremlin former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, fled last month.
Gazprom, the Russian energy company that supplies Ukraine with gas,
warned it might shut off exports unless Ukraine paid $1.89 billion that
it owes. “We cannot deliver gas for free,” Russia news agencies quoted
Gazprom’s chief executive Alexei Miller as saying.
Gazprom
cut gas to Ukraine for nearly two weeks in January 2009, causing severe
economic problems for Ukraine and European customers who depend on
Gazprom supplies delivered via Ukraine pipelines.
Video|2:10
Credit Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times
Obama Delivers Statement on Ukraine
President Obama said, “Any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government of Ukraine.”
Valentina
I. Matviyenko, the chairwoman of the upper house, the Federation
Council, compared the Crimea secession vote to a scheduled referendum in
Scotland on whether to become independent from Britain, omitting the
fact that London has agreed to the ballot. Ukraine’s new interim leaders
have fiercely opposed splintering the country.
The speaker of the lower house, Sergei Y. Naryshkin, echoed Ms. Matviyenko’s remarks.
“We will respect the historic choice of the people of Crimea,” he said.
The
remarks by the leaders, both close political allies of President
Vladimir V. Putin, came a day after Crimea’s regional assembly voted
behind closed doors to secede from Ukraine and to hold a referendum on
March 16 for voters in the region to ratify the decision. On Friday a
delegation of lawmakers from Crimea arrived in Moscow to lay the
groundwork for joining Russia, winning strong endorsements from senior
lawmakers.
“We
admire your fortitude and courage,” Ms. Matviyenko told them, according
to Interfax news agency. “Many threats have been made against you;
there were threats of attacks, in particular, against the Black Sea
Fleet, but you endured that and protected your people.”
In
another telling sign of official Russian support for the Crimean
referendum, delegation representatives were cheered at a “We are
together” rally organized in central Moscow that was shown at length on
state television, with songs and chants of “Russia, Moscow, Crimea.”
News agencies quoted the police as saying the rally was attended 60,000
people.
The
developments underscored how quickly the crisis was evolving. Only
three days earlier, Mr. Putin said he did not foresee the possibility of
Crimea becoming part of Russia, though he cited the independence of
Kosovo as a precedent. “We will in no way provoke any such decision and
will not breed such sentiments,” he said.
The
Kremlin has not yet directly addressed the possibility of Crimea’s
secession. Even if the referendum proceeds as planned and Crimea
residents approve, it remains unclear what would happen next.
The
move to break away from Ukraine was swiftly denounced by the fledgling
national government in Kiev, which said it would invalidate the decision
and dissolve the Crimean Parliament, and by President Obama in
Washington, where the United States government on Thursday announced
sanctions in response to Russia’s military occupation of the Crimean
Peninsula.
“Any
discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate
government of Ukraine,” Mr. Obama said at the White House. “In 2014, we
are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of
democratic leaders.”
Hours
after the United States announced the first punitive actions against
specific Russians, Mr. Obama contacted Mr. Putin. The two leaders spoke
for an hour by telephone and, according to the White House, Mr. Obama
urged Mr. Putin to authorize direct talks with Ukraine’s new,
pro-Western government, permit the entry of international monitors and
return his forces to the bases that Russia leases in Crimea.
Early
Friday, the Kremlin released a statement offering a starkly different
account of the phone call, and emphasizing Russia’s view that the new
government in Kiev is illegitimate.
“In
the course of the discussion there emerged differences in approaches
and assessments of the causes which brought about the current crisis and
the resulting state of affairs,” the statement said. “Vladimir Putin,
for his part, noted that this had occurred as a result of an
anti-constitutional coup, which does not have a national mandate.”
The
Kremlin went on to say that the current Ukrainian leadership had
imposed “absolutely illegitimate decisions” on the eastern and
southeastern regions of the country. “Russia cannot ignore appeals
connected to this, calls for help, and acts appropriately, in accordance
with international law,” the statement said.
Mr.
Putin, the statement said, appreciated the importance of the
Russian-American relationship to global security, and added that
bilateral ties “should not be sacrificed for individual — albeit rather
important — international problems.”
In
Kiev, the leader of the Right Sector movement, Dmytro Yarosh, will run
for president of Ukraine, the chairman of the local branch of the
movement, Andriy Tarasenko, said on Friday. The nationalist group, which
was important in the fight for Kiev’s Independence Square, will rename
itself at a congress in a week and participate in elections at all
levels, Mr. Tarasenko said.
Right
Sector has been controversial for its semi-military organization, but
it has also refrained from working in eastern Ukraine, where its
presence could be seen as a provocation by Russia. But Mr. Tarasenko
said that the group was prepared to fight, in Crimea and elsewhere, “if
the Kremlin tramples on us further.” He added, “Accordingly, we are
conducting mobilization and are preparing to repel foreign aggression.”
Arseniy
P. Yatsenyuk, the interim prime minister of Ukraine, said on Friday
that he had requested a second telephone conversation with the Russian
prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev. The two men last spoke on Saturday,
which was the only high-level contact between Moscow and the new
authorities in Kiev.
Ukraine
is ready for talks with Russia, Mr. Yatsenyuk said, but Moscow must
first withdraw its troops, abide by international agreements and halt
its support for “separatists and terrorists in Crimea.” He repeated
Ukraine’s position that a referendum in Crimea is both illegal and
unconstitutional. “No one in the civilized world will recognize the
results of a so-called referendum carried out by these so-called
authorities,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said.
With
Washington and Moscow trading angry accusations of hypocrisy on the
issue of respecting state sovereignty, validating Crimea’s secession
would carry pointed political risks for Mr. Putin, given longstanding
demands for independence from Russia by its own similarly autonomous
republics in the Caucasus, including Dagestan and Chechnya.
Michael A. McFaul, the former American ambassador to Russia, noted
the parallel in a sharp post on Twitter. “If Russian government
endorses Crimean referendum,” Mr. McFaul wrote, using abbreviations
needed for a 140-character limit, “will they also allow/endorse similar
votes in republics in the Russian Federation?”
The
West, which has insisted that the Ukrainian people are entitled to
decide their future without interference from Russia, faces similar
challenges as it seeks to explain why the people of Crimea should not
necessarily decide their own fate.
The
United States and its European allies typically support
self-determination but have opposed independence for regions in their
own borders, like Scotland from Britain or Catalonia from Spain.
There
was no sign on Friday that Russian armed forces were relaxing their
tight clench on the Crimean peninsula, with military bases surrounded
and border crossings under strict control. For the second consecutive
day, an observer mission from the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe, the 57-member organization that includes both
Ukraine and Russia, was prevented from entering Crimea at a checkpoint blocked by armed men.
On
Thursday, international diplomats raced from meeting to meeting in an
effort to end the standoff. European leaders signaled they might join
American sanctions and Moscow threatened countermeasures as an already
tense situation was made edgier by the start of new Russian military
drills.
European
Union leaders issued a statement in Brussels calling an annexation
referendum “contrary to the Ukrainian Constitution and therefore
illegal.”
In
Kiev, the acting president of Ukraine, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, said
Thursday that the national government would invalidate the decision to
hold the referendum and would dissolve the Crimean Parliament. Crimea,
part of Ukraine since 1954, has enjoyed substantial autonomy since
shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the region’s
Constitution generally defers to the national Ukrainian Constitution on
jurisdictional matters.
Mr.
Turchynov scoffed at the plan for a referendum, noting that Russian
forces had taken control of Crimea’s borders and ports and were blocking
Ukrainian military bases and occupying other security installations.
“This will be a farce,” he said in a televised address. “This will be
false. This will be a crime against the state.” He insisted that Ukraine
would “protect the sanctity of our territory.”
Officials
in Kiev had already declared the Crimean Parliament to be acting
illegally, and a court issued an arrest warrant for Sergei Aksyonov, the
leader of the breakaway effort, who was installed as prime minister of
Crimea after armed men seized the Parliament building last week.
Leaders
of the peninsula’s large Crimean Tatar minority also denounced the
move. “Today’s decision by the Parliament is completely illegal,” said
Refat Chubarov, the leader of the main Tatar organization and a member
of Parliament. He refused to take part in the parliamentary voting on
Thursday because he said it was illegitimate.
“More
troubling for us is that this decision could provoke and lead to
further escalation of tensions,” Mr. Chubarov said in an interview. “A
referendum under the conditions of the presence of foreign troops on the
streets is called something entirely different in world practice — it’s
a coup. It’s the seizure of territory.”
The
sanctions Mr. Obama approved Thursday imposed visa bans on officials
and other individuals deemed responsible for undermining Ukrainian
sovereignty and territorial integrity. The administration would not
disclose the names or number of people penalized, but a senior official
said privately that it would affect just under a dozen people, mostly
Russians but some of them Ukrainian.
Among
those targeted were political figures, policy advisers, security
officials and military officers who played a direct role in the Crimean
crisis, the official said. Any of them seeking to travel to the United
States would be barred, and a few who currently hold American visas will
have them revoked.
Mr.
Obama also signed an executive order laying out a framework for tougher
measures like freezing the assets of individuals and institutions. But
the White House refrained from applying those measures while officials
gathered evidence in the hope that waiting would provide some space for
Russia to reverse course. The House, in the meantime, approved an
economic aid package for the Kiev government and advanced its own
sanctions resolution.
Moscow,
however, gave no indication that it would back down, suggesting that it
would reciprocate with measures seizing American property in Russia.
“The U.S. has the right, and we have the right to respond to it,”
Vladimir Lukin, a Russian envoy who has worked on the Ukrainian crisis,
told Interfax, a Russian news agency. “But all that is, of course, not
making me happy.”
The
European Union took a step toward more serious measures by suspending
talks with Moscow on a wide-ranging political-economic pact and on
liberalizing visa requirements to make it easier for Russians to travel
to Europe. European leaders laid out a three-stage process that, absent
progress, would next move to travel bans, asset seizures and the
cancellation of a planned European Union-Russia summit meeting and
eventually to broader economic measures.
Chancellor
Angela Merkel of Germany, who has been reluctant to move quickly toward
sanctions, said the European Union was looking for concrete evidence
that Russia was trying to calm the situation “in the next few days,” but
she noted that Thursday’s events in Crimea made the need for action
more urgent.
“We
made it very clear that we are absolutely willing to achieve matters by
negotiation,” she said. “We also say, however, that we are ready and
willing, if these hopes were to be dashed and looking at what happened
on Crimea, to adopt sanctions.”
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