MOSCOW
— Despite repeated vows not to interfere or intervene, President
Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia has now found itself more deeply ensnared
than ever in Ukraine’s worsening political crisis, facing appeals to
support the country’s ethnic Russians, provide haven for its deposed
president and perhaps even undertake a military response. The question
is whether he intended it that way.
Mr. Putin himself has made no public remarks on the turmoil in Ukraine since President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s flight from Kiev last week. That coincided with the end of the Winter Olympics
in Sochi, which officials here have celebrated as proof of the
emergence of a new, powerful and proud Russia nearly a quarter century
after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mr.
Putin’s silence has resulted in confusion over Russia’s policy, even as
the crisis in Ukraine has moved closer to Russia’s own border and
raised concerns about Ukraine’s geopolitical and economic impact on its
neighbor. Russia could stand to lose what it considers a place that is
not only within its sphere of influence but part of its political,
social and historical identity. For now, Mr. Putin’s strategy for
retaining Russia’s influence in a country where the Kremlin has profound
interests, from its largest foreign military base to gas pipelines that
fuel its economy, remains unknown and full of risks. Even so, events
are subtly forcing Moscow’s hand.
Mr.
Yanukovych’s appeal for Russia “to secure my personal safety,” and
reports that he will hold a news conference in the southern Russian city
of Rostov-on-Don on Friday, have made it clear that the Kremlin has
quietly provided at least tacit assistance to a humiliated leader who
has been abandoned even by his own political supporters.
The
seizure of the regional Parliament building in Crimea by masked gunmen
vowing loyalty to Russia, and not Ukraine, has renewed fears that Mr.
Putin could be provoked into a military intervention like the one in 2008
when Russian troops poured into Georgia to defend a breakaway region,
South Ossetia, that it now recognizes as an independent country.
Russian
officials have dismissed such fears as absurd, but at the same time,
Mr. Putin ordered a surprise military exercise involving 150,000 troops
on Ukraine’s doorstep that was clearly intended as a palpable warning
about Russia’s preparedness. It prompted warnings in return from NATO
and the United States that Russia should do nothing provocative and
respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Mr.
Putin has a number of options to influence affairs in Ukraine short of
an armed intervention. Ukraine’s economy is entwined with that of
Russia, which is by far its greatest trading partner, and Ukraine’s
heavy industry is hugely dependent on Russian gas. And the Kremlin can
inflame separatist tensions almost at will, if it so desires,
destabilizing the country. Perhaps Mr. Putin’s most effective weapon,
though, is time, sitting back and watching as the West takes ownership of an economy on the brink of collapse.
Outwardly,
Russia continues to insist that the turmoil in Ukraine is an internal
affair and that neither it nor the United States and Europe should
meddle. Events, however, are quickly overtaking that position.
Mr.
Yanukovych’s flight — apparently to Russia, though his location
remained unknown Thursday — has made it more difficult for the Kremlin
to sustain the detached response it has sought to maintain, despite deep
reservations among Russian officials over Mr. Yanukovych’s handling of
the crisis and the collapse of his authority last weekend.
That
ambivalence was clear on Thursday when Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S.
Peskov, declined to confirm or deny that Russia had extended protection
to Mr. Yanukovych and refused to discuss the matter of his whereabouts
at all, even when pressed in a telephone interview.
“I
think Putin hates Yanukovych,” said Sergei A. Markov, a political
strategist who advises the Kremlin, “but what should he do for a legally
elected president who asks to come to Russia?”
With
Mr. Yanukovych declaring that he is still the lawfully elected leader
of Ukraine and with Parliament approving a new interim government,
Russia now faces the prospect of being the host of a president in exile.
Mr. Markov said that Mr. Yanukovych’s presence in Russia, which is
still unverified, would amount to “asylum by fact,” adding that he
thought Mr. Yanukovych should have stayed in Ukraine and called on the
military and security forces to rally behind him in defiance of the new
leaders in Kiev.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement on Thursday complaining that an agreement
brokered by three European foreign ministers only a week ago was not
being honored. It insisted that the accord, which would leave Mr.
Yanukovych in the presidency until new elections in December, serve as
the basis of a negotiated agreement, even as the Europeans and the
United States moved to recognize the legitimacy of the new interim
government that was formed after Mr. Yanukovych’s escape from Kiev.
“We
are convinced that only such a constitutional framework can ensure the
interests of all political forces and all regions of Ukraine,” the
ministry’s statement said.
In
essence, the statement suggested that Russia still recognized Mr.
Yanukovych as the country’s leader, though no officials have explicitly
said so, even though they have denounced the new interim leaders as
radicals riding to power in an armed fascist coup.
In
the absence of a clear statement of Russia’s intent, the perception of
its strategy has been shaped by rumors, by strident coverage on state
news media and by statements of Russian lawmakers vowing solidarity with
Ukraine’s ethnic Russians and questioning whether Crimea, which the
Soviet Union ceded to Ukraine in 1954, should rightfully be Russia’s.
Three
high-profile members of Russia’s lower house of Parliament arrived in
Crimea on Thursday, visiting the city that is home to Russia’s Black Sea
Fleet. “I arrived in Sevastopol to support residents of Crimea,”
Nikolai Valuev, a former boxing champion who was elected to the
Parliament in 2011, wrote on Twitter. “Friends, Russia is with you.”
He
was joined by the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, and a
former Olympic figure skater, Irina Rodnina, who carried the Olympic
torch on its final leg at the opening ceremony of the Winter Games in
Sochi (and was mired in a controversy over her recent posting of a
doctored and racist photograph of President Obama and his wife,
Michelle), RIA Novosti reported.
Mr.
Valuev, an unmistakable presence at 7 feet 1 inch tall, described the
visit as a fact-finding mission “to personally interact with the
residents to know the situation from the inside.” Like many officials in
Russia, he said the crisis in Ukraine, or at least the foreign news
media reporting on it, was clouded by Western propaganda. “There is an
information war,” he wrote on Twitter.
The
military exercise that began in earnest on Thursday added an ominous
element of volatility. Aleksandr Golts, an independent military analyst
in Moscow, said that the exercise could theoretically — and he
emphasized the word theoretically — disguise a more general mobilization
of Russia’s military in case a conflict erupted over Ukraine.
“In
my view it’s very bad, even if there are no plans to use the military,
that maneuvers are being held with the goal of testing the nerves of
others,” he said.
To
critics, especially in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s hand is seen in many of
the most disturbing turns in the unfolding situation, including the
visits by Russian lawmakers; reports of handing out Russian passports to
Crimea’s citizens, as happened in Georgia’s breakaway regions of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia; and the mysterious seizure of the Parliament
building in Crimea. They see the downward spiraling of events as
evidence that Mr. Putin intends to splinter the country and retake
Crimea as Russian territory.
“We’re not interfering,” Mr. Peskov, the president’s spokesman, said on Thursday. “We’re standing on this position.”
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