Published on Feb 18, 2014
The deadly violence and mayhem
gripping Kiev signals an escalation in the more than two months of
protests against the pro-Russia Ukrainian government. Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institution and Adrian Karatnycky of the
Atlantic Council join Gwen Ifill to discuss the root causes of the
unrest, the leverage of the West and the outside forces pushing Ukraine
into battle.
TRANSCRIPT
GWEN IFILL: The mayhem and deadly violence today in Kiev marked an escalation of the more than two months of sporadic protests against the government in Ukraine that has ensnared Europe, Russia and the U.S.A few moments ago, the official death toll climbed to at least 18.
STEVEN PIFER, former U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine: Well, the original cause of these demonstrations was the decision by President Yanukovych in November to slow down Ukraine’s effort to draw closer to the European Union by an association agreement.
But since then, I think it’s grown. You now have people out there who are unhappy about the corruption they have seen, which has grown worse under President Yanukovych’s tenure. They’re unhappy about the authoritarian tendencies they have seen in the government.
So you have got a lot of grievances out there that are represented by these people in Maidan Nezalezhnosti, that central square in Kiev.
GWEN IFILL: Adrian Karatnycky, I know that you and probably Ambassador Pifer and I have all been glued to this live feed we have been watching all day of the protest in the main square there. We’re looking at it live right now.
What do you think is the reason for this crackdown now, when we thought it had eased for a while?
ADRIAN KARATNYCKY, the Atlantic Council: Well, I do think that there — there was a pent-up anger on the part of the demonstrators who want a resolution after three months of peaceful protests.
And they marched peacefully today, and they were met with assault and attacks, initially from gangs that have been hired by the government to beat up the opposition. The police then joined the melee and violence spiraled. So I think what initially started as a show of force to press the government into a constitutional reform that would allow the country to move away from a highly centralized system and would be one of the key elements in leading to an accommodation was the initial reason for the protest.
And the protest disintegrated in the face of violence and broke down. I should say that many of the — in the last weeks, thousands of Ukrainian oppositionists have been organizing into very disciplined, organized self-defense groups. Several thousand of them are on the public square in Maidan in the face of violence which initially claimed five people in mid-January and terrible beatings of hundreds and thousands of people, concussions of people, abductions of dozens of people, death squads operating.
And so there was sort of a movement towards self-defense. And this is now likely to accelerate in the face of this violence.
GWEN IFILL: So, Steven Pifer, where is the U.S. in this? We know that the ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, to Ukraine, the U.S. ambassador, has been tweeting non-stop all day, very, very critical of the government there.
And we hear late this afternoon that Vice President Biden called the President Yanukovych and told him to step back from the brink. Does the U.S. have leverage?
STEVEN PIFER: Well, I think, first of all, you have seen a judgment by the U.S. government that the primary responsibility for today’s violence and the primary responsibility for stopping this lies with the Yanukovych government.
I think that’s very clear from what you have heard both from the ambassador and also from the White House’s statement. Now, I think at the end of the day, the responsibility for resolving this crises rests on Ukraine. Ukrainians have to solve it.
But the United States and the European Union, I believe, do have some leverage. And that would be through the use of targeted visa and financial sanctions. That would be used with two goals. One goal would be to make clear that anyone who engages in the use of force or violence is going to be punished in terms of no visas to travel to the West.
And then second — a second sort of sanctions that would aim at those in that inner circle around Mr. Yanukovych, making clear that they would be subject to visa and financial sanctions if they did not encourage Mr. Yanukovych to begin to engage in a real, genuine dialogue and stop the use of force.
A lot of those people, they like to travel to Vienna, they like to travel to London, they keep their money in Western banks. If that became endangered, they might well then begin to apply some pressure on Mr. Yanukovych to bring this violence to an end and get a genuine dialogue under way.
GWEN IFILL: Adrian Karatnycky, we that know Russia has played a pretty big role in one part of this, releasing $2 billion in promised money to help the government earlier this week or earlier this month.
I guess the question now is whether this is indeed a proxy war in some ways between Russia and the U.S., taking opposite sides of a fight that’s playing out in Maidan Square.
ADRIAN KARATNYCKY: I don’t think it’s a proxy war between the U.S. and the E.U. on one side and Russia on the other.
But I do think Russia is very deeply engaged. It is well-known from my sources, which are close to the intelligence community, that Russian advisers are working with the ministry of internal affairs and gaming the attacks on the public square.
And I believe that the Russians have all along miscalculated the nature and the depth of public anger, as has Mr. Yanukovych. And I think that their — this miscalculation can lead to a catastrophic loss of life that will not end up in the quelling of protests.
As we speak now in the western district of Ukraine, militia officers are taken over peacefully where militia people are simply leaving, or violently if they’re resisting. That means weapons of substantial proportion are going to be in the hands of the public. There are three million firearms that are held by citizens legally in the Ukraine.
We have already seen some snipers operating on the side of the protesters. Seven police have been killed, two members of the Party of Regions, which is the ruling party, and at the moment the toll is up to 20 demonstrators, including in the last hour 14 people killed in the Maidan, which had previously by agreement been a territory that was — that the government had just last week agreed was a no-go zone. And today they decided to break that agreement and to storm it and to attack the mainly peaceful protesters that have been gathering there for months.
GWEN IFILL: Well, let me ask you both, finally, briefly, what — starting with you Steven Pifer — is there room for renewed dialogue or is this spinning out of control tonight?
STEVEN PIFER: I think it’s on the verge of spinning out of control.
And there was a chance for dialogue. Having a genuine dialogue between Mr. Yanukovych and the opposition was not going to be an easy task. But it has become much more difficult by the decision that’s been taken by the government of Ukraine now to use force to move in on the Maidan like this. There may still be a chance, but it’s a very fleeting one.
GWEN IFILL: Adrian Karatnycky?
ADRIAN KARATNYCKY: I think that the real issue is that there are a number of members of Mr. Yanukovych’s party faction who are linked to large financial — the oligarchs of Ukraine, the businessmen, they have indicated that crossing the line into mass violence and into the declaration — towards the declaration of martial law and the suppression of protests very violently is something that they do not support.
The real question is whether they will act in the next — in the coming days in the parliament to signal their disaffection. That, I think, would lance the boil, so to speak, and would take some of the air out of Mr. Yanukovych’s authority. And I think that that could create the possibility.
But I don’t believe that Mr. Yanukovych, given the steps that he’s taken, is interested in anything but a suppression of these protests. And I think he is gearing up for a terrible battle that could drift into civil war. And I think that the only way to stop him is pressure on the oligarchs and on the business groups to establish their dissension with him and to break ranks and to create some kind of a new process that would put the president on the defensive.
GWEN IFILL: A terrible night in Kiev.
Adrian Karatnycky of the Atlantic Council, Steven Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine, thank you both very much.
STEVEN PIFER: Thank you.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/is-ukraine-spinning-out-of-control
RELATED LINKS
- Opposition leaders rebuff Ukraine president’s olive branch
- Ukraine’s parliament repeals anti-protest law while prime minister resigns
- Examining the push and pull over Ukraine between Russia and the West
UPDATE: Ukraine’s government and opposition call for truce
Anti-government
protesters clash with the police during their storming of Independence
Square in Kiev on February 18, 2014. Photo by Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty
Images
A statement posted on Ukraine’s presidential website confirmed the agreement.
President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych held a meeting with Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Rybak and members of the Working Group on the Settlement of Political Crisis.No further details on the truce or negotiations have been released at this time.
The meeting was attended by Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Andriy Kliuyev, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Andriy Portnov, Acting Minister of Justice Olena Lukash and leaders of opposition parties Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Vitali Klitschko, Oleh Tiahnybok.
Following the meeting, the parties declared:
1. Truce
2. Beginning of negotiations aimed at cessation of bloodshed and stabilization of the situation in the country for the sake of civil peace.
________________
Original story, 11:42 a.m. EST | Violent and deadly clashes in Ukraine have earned several calls for action from Western nations.
The United States, Reuters reports, urged Ukraine’s government to pull its riot police from Independence Square in the country’s capital of Kiev, where dozens were killed in violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement Tuesday. White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said that the U.S. wants the Ukrainian government to call a truce with the protesters and hold discussions with the government opposition.
Several European Union states are also considering sanctions against Ukrainian officials. The foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland will travel to Kiev Thursday in order to examine the situation in the capital and determine if sanctions are necessary before a meeting in Brussels. If sanctioned by the EU, Ukraine officials’ assets would be frozen and they would be forbidden travelling anywhere within the 28 nations that make up the union.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. was also in the discussion of sanctions against, but said there was still time to reach a compromise. “President Yanukovich has the opportunity to make a choice,” said Kerry. “The choice is between protecting the people that he serves … and (the) choice for compromise and dialogue versus violence and mayhem.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/deadly-clashes-ukraine-spur-talks-international-sanctions/
Chief
foreign correspondent Margaret Warner has talked to Assistant Secretary
of State Victoria Nuland about her leaked phone conversation on the
situation in Ukraine. Margaret joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the
possible motivations behind the leak and Russia’s longstanding emotional
and political ties to Ukraine.
TRANSCRIPT
JUDY WOODRUFF: And Margaret joins me now.So, Margaret, what is the real story here?
MARGARET WARNER: Judy, I think, for context, there are two big things going on.
You have this real post-Cold War struggle for influence between the U.S. and the West and Russia over this last major Soviet satellite, in this case a republic, Ukraine, which is still seesawing between aligning with the West or sort of reknitting its ties with Russia and joining this sphere of influence that Putin is trying to rebuild.
The second important context point is that the U.S. and the E.U. have actually been working pretty closely together to try and calm the situation in Kiev. As you could see from those videos, they’re getting more violent.
And I talked to Nuland this morning from Kiev, and she said it’s very different than last December, and, in fact she said, we have got extremists in both camps. There are people in government who want to impose martial law and there are people in the opposition who want to throw Molotov cocktails.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You did talk to her. What is she saying about all this?
RELATED LINKS
JUDY WOODRUFF: There they are.
MARGARET WARNER: It’s Nuland and Pyatt with the three members of the opposition all looking at an iPad, ostensibly laughing about it together.
And, in fact, these three opposition figures are very — are very different here. But the danger is, of course, that, as the iPad — as the YouTube video posted, that this opposition will be known as the puppets of Maidan, that is, puppets of the West in Maidan Square.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, how was the call interpreted? One assumes that these diplomats are using secure telephones.
MARGARET WARNER: You would think so.
Well, I don’t have all the details, but this occurred late on a Saturday, two weeks ago Saturday night, on the 25th. And it was very late in Kiev. The implication I get is that perhaps the ambassador wasn’t on a secure phone, he wasn’t at the embassy. And the larger question here is, how secure are these diplomats’ phones?
And so the State Department was pressed on this today. Jen Psaki said they all use these BlackBerrys which are encrypted for data.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The spokeswoman.
MARGARET WARNER: Yes, who we just showed.
They’re encrypted for data, but not for voice. That, of course, raised the question. But she said, no one’s supposed to talk about classified information on one of these cell phones. Well, where do you draw the line? And then the question was raised, well, what about Secretary of State Kerry? Does he not have encrypted voice? And she wouldn’t go there.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, does the U.S. believe that Russia was behind this?
MARGARET WARNER: They don’t — they say they don’t have absolute proof, but really either Russia or the Russian-trained Ukrainian security services.
Really, they both had the opportunity, the capability, and who else has the motive?
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, you know, you mentioned Nuland and salty language. Is that just the way they talk all the time to each other?
MARGARET WARNER: Well, there’s some joke about how she spent — apparently, it’s true — eight months on a Russian fishing trawler when she was 22 years old, and that’s how she learned all these curse words.
Literally, Jen Psaki, the spokeswoman, said that yesterday. But underneath it all, though, the U.S. and the E.U. agree on the objective here, which is to pull Yanukovych back to the West.
They have had real differences on tactics. And behind the scenes, U.S. officials have been complaining since December that the E.U. didn’t recognize the danger. They’re the ones who made the original offer, and they didn’t put enough aid in it for Yanukovych — Ukraine is really hurting financially — that they haven’t stepped in to help the opposition negotiate this deal, and that they won’t — haven’t gotten a package of sanctions ready in case Yanukovych cracks down.
So when you hear that — there is frustration and that came out. There was another leaked call that has Ashton, Catherine Ashton, the E.U. envoy deputy, talking to her ambassador in Ukraine, and they’re complaining about the U.S. pressure. So there’s frustration on both sides.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, you started out talking about this all takes place in the context of a larger push and pull between the United States and Russia. So, step back. Put this in that context. What is going on from a larger standpoint?
MARGARET WARNER: The larger standpoint is that Putin is trying to recreate a center of Russian influence, and he’s got some of these former republics rejoining a kind of customs union and a trade union.
But Ukraine is just key to that. Many Russians — the whole Russian nation sort of started in Kiev. I mean, they have a deep emotional tie to the Ukrainians. There was a recent poll that showed 55 or 60 percent of Russians considered Ukrainians, that they’re one people. So, there is an emotional reason.
But it really has to do with geopolitics. And so this is important to Putin. He handled it quite well in December. He didn’t threaten Yanukovych. Instead, he just gave him $15 billion. But Russia experts I talked to today said they think he senses momentum shifting away from Moscow.
I mean, suddenly, Yanukovych has invited some opposition members into the government. And they wanted to sort of drive a wedge between the U.S. and the E.U. and sow dissension. And we will see. Yanukovych is supposed to see Putin in Sochi.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And Russia — so, so far, Russia is accepting this?
MARGARET WARNER: No. Oh, no.
Russia, in fact, has now held up this aid package until they see what the new government looks like. Nuland had another sort of colorful phrase on the phone to me today. She said, what the Russians do, what Putin does is keeping giving more cocaine in tinier bags for a higher price. She said, we’re offering him the Weight Watchers plan, a little pain at the beginning, and then he can be sleek and beautiful, meaning an IMF package, which will be painful, a lot of reforms required.
So, I would say the struggle very much continues. And a lot is up to Yanukovych. It could end in bloodshed.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, colorful, but serious, too.
MARGARET WARNER: Yes, serious stuff.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Margaret, thank you.
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