Latest Updates on the Crisis in Ukraine
Ukraine’s ousted president, Viktor
Yanukovych, made his first public appearance in a week on Friday,
telling journalists in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don that he remains
in office, as our colleague Steven Lee Myers reports.
Mr. Yanukovych said he had not asked
for military assistance from Russia amid growing concerns over a
possible showdown between Ukraine’s fledgling government and the
Kremlin, as armed men in military uniforms took up positions at two Crimean airports.
Ukraine’s acting president later accused Russia of “an act of naked
aggression” by deploying troops in unmarked uniforms to Crimea under the
pretext of military exercises.
7:56 P.M. Bloggers Mock Yanukovych’s Futile Effort to Snap Pen
Amid all the tension of the day in Ukraine
and Russia, one moment near the end of Viktor Yanukovych’s news
conference did inspire laughter from some observers.
As Brian Ries reports for Mashable, video edited into a loop
and posted on YouTube shows that when Mr. Yanukovych was given the
floor to make a closing statement, he began by saying, “I’d like to
address all the people of Ukraine.” But after saying only “first of
all,” the deposed president paused, dropped his head momentarily and
then tried, and failed, to snap the pen he was holding in his hands.
A moment from Viktor Yanukovych’s news conference on Friday put on a loop by a video blogger.
He then managed to regain his composure and apologized to the Ukrainian people for losing control of the country.
Before long, the same moment captured in the
video loop was also transformed into an Internet meme by Russian
bloggers, who mocked the enraged Mr. Yanukovych as a pale imitation of the Incredible Hulk.
— Robert Mackey
7:31 P.M. Instagram Evidence of Troop Buildup in Crimea
Like their compatriots in Kiev,
young Ukrainians in Crimea have documented the spike in tensions on the
peninsula from their phones by posting images and brief video clips on
Instagram.
One Crimean who captured the troop buildup on Friday, Maria Zaborovska, describes herself on Instagram as a “Huge supporter of Maidan,” as the Kiev protest movement is known.
At about 9 a.m. local time on Friday she uploaded video
and wrote in a caption: “Armed men with automatic weapon next to the
building of the Simferopol airport. And the comment from Russian side is
‘these are just precautions!!!!’ I just hope ordinary people understand
what’s going on and what it can turn into.”
Three hours later, she reported in a photo caption:
“About 30 armed men have left the airport in unknown direction. The
rest has stayed in the building of the restaurant next to the airport.”
Late Friday, a user of the social network named Eldar Rustamov filed video recorded from his car of armored personnel carriers on the streets of Simferopol, the regional capital.
— Robert Mackey
6:49 P.M. Rough Reception for Billionaire Envoy From Kiev
Video shot by Nikolaus von Twickel of D.P.A. showed
a pro-Russian mob surrounding an envoy of the Kiev government on Friday
night in Crimea.
As Patrick Reevell reported
from Simferopol for The Times earlier, after the airport in Crimea’s
regional capital was taken over by soldiers in balaclavas, Petro
Poroshenko, a billionaire member of Parliament, arrived to negotiate
with the regional Parliament on behalf of the national government in
Kiev.
Nikolaus von Twickel, a correspondent for Germany’s Deutsche Presse-Agentur, reported in text and video that Mr. Poroshenko, “Ukraine’s chocolate king,”
received a sour welcome from an angry mob of about 500 pro-Russian
activists who surrounded him outside the regional Parliament.
According to the German correspondent:
Poroshenko wanted to talk to the activists, but they would have nothing of that. The crowd, made up of men and women of all ages, yelled “Poroshenko go home” and “Russia!” before starting to push him off the square.What followed, were dramatic and highly symbolic scenes on the streets of this otherwise lazy southern town. With just a handful of police officers and aides around him, Poroshenko started to walk quicker and quicker, while the angry mob behind him chanted “Berkut, Berkut,” the Ukrainian name of the country’s riot police, which the new leaders in Kiev declared dissolved earlier this week.He sometimes stopped, breathless, debating with the officers which way to go further. At one point he managed to tell Ukrainian reporters, “I came with peace, I want dialogue,” before rushing ahead again, while the crowd was pushing and yelling from behind.Eventually, he was put into a taxi and driven off.
— Robert Mackey
6:14 P.M. Anti-Semitic Graffiti in Crimea
Russia’s foreign ministry has described the
coalition of Western-looking protesters in Kiev and the Ukrainian
nationalists who took power last week in stark terms that draw on the
narrative of World War II, as neo-Nazis and fascists.
Early Friday, images spread online of
graffiti, reading “Death to the Jews,” spray-painted with swastikas on
the door of a synagogue in Simferopol, the Crimean regional capital.
Although this might seem to support the
Russian narrative that Ukraine is overrun with neo-Nazis, the
synagogue’s rabbi reportedly blamed the attack on “provocateurs who are
exploiting the difficult situation in the city and inciting
inter-religious conflict,” in an interview with a local television
channel run by ethnic Tatars, according to The Interpreter,
a site partly financed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Institute of Modern
Russia. Rabbi Mikhail Kapustin also told the Tatar channel, ATR.ua,
“that the vandals would have had to climb a fence to reach the building,
and unfortunately, evaded video surveillance.”
The Radio Free Europe correspondent Tom
Balmforth reported that the head of Crimea’s Jewish community suggested
that the graffiti was not the work of the ultranationalist Right Sector
militants, but someone imitating them to “destabilize Crimea.”
As our colleague David Herszenhorn reported,
Crimea is a multiethnic region of about two million people, “with nearly
60 percent identifying as Russian, nearly 25 percent as Ukrainian, and
about 12 percent as Crimean Tatar, which gives the peninsula a sizable
Muslim population. The Tatars, who in 1944 were deported en masse by
Stalin to Central Asia and have since returned to their homeland, have
little affection for Moscow.”
A Twitter feed set up by the pro-European
protesters in Kiev’s Independence Square, or Maidan, noted on Friday
that a leader of the Crimean Tatar community met with Turkey’s foreign
minister in the Ukrainian capital on Friday.
As Maxim Eristavi, a freelance correspondent
covering Ukraine, noted this week, the historically independent Tatars
have been transformed into fervent Ukrainian patriots this week, against
the sudden threat of forcible integration into Russia.
— Robert Mackey
5:38 P.M. Ukraine Accuses Russia of ‘Act of Naked Aggression’
Ukrainian-language video of Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, speaking about Crimea on Friday.
Responding to the unexplained deployment of
armed men in military uniforms and balaclavas across the Crimean
peninsula on Friday, the speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament, Oleksandr
Turchynov, who is now the acting president, accused Russia of “a naked
act of aggression,” The Kyiv Post reports.
According to a complete translation of his remarks
from Alan Yuhas of The Guardian, Mr. Turchynov said: “Under the
pretense of military exercises, Russia has brought military forces into
the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Not only have they seized Crimea’s
parliament and Council, they’ve tried to take control of civilian
facilities and communications, and tried to block the positions of
Ukrainian forces.”
He continued: “They are provoking us into an
armed conflict. Based on our intelligence, they’re working on scenarios
analogous to Abkhazia, in which they provoke conflict, and then they
start to annex territory.”
Mr. Turchynov also made a personal appeal to
President Vladimir V. Putin to “immediately end this provocation,”
withdraw Russian troops and stick to the terms of a 1994 agreement under
which Ukraine surrendered its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal in
return for security guarantees from Russia, the United States and
Britain.
Journalists in the peninsula have been
photographing the armed men on the streets of Crimea, many in military
and police uniforms, and others in various forms of civilian dress.
— Robert Mackey
4:49 P.M. Video of Obama and Kerry Statements on Ukraine
Updated, 5:44 p.m. | The live video stream of President Obama’s remarks on the crisis in Ukraine has ended. Here is archived video of his complete statement, posted online by PBS Newshour.
Video of President Obama’s remarks on Ukraine on Friday at the White House.
The White House later posted the complete text of Mr. Obama’s remarks online.
Earlier on Friday, Secretary of State John
Kerry said he had spoken with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V.
Lavrov, about the armed men who moved into position near two airports in
Crimea. “We raised the issue of the airports, raised the issue of
armored vehicles, raised the issue of personnel in various places,” Mr.
Kerry told reporters near the end of a news conference with Colombia’s foreign minister.
Video of Secretary of State John Kerry speaking about Ukraine at a news conference on Friday.
Mr. Lavrov asserted that Russia would respect
the sovereignty of Ukraine, Mr. Kerry said. But Mr. Kerry said he had
told his Russia counterpart that “it is important for everybody to be
extremely careful not to inflame the situation.”
— Michael Gordon and Robert Mackey
2:52 P.M. Mobile, Telephone and Internet Access Cut Off in Crimea
Mobile, landline and Internet access has been cut off in parts of the Crimea region, according to a statement from Ukrtelecom, the Ukrainian National Telecommunications operator.
The company said on Friday that “unknown
people seized several communications hubs in Crimea” and damaged
fiber-optic cable belonging to the company. As a result, the company
said it had “lost the technical capacity to provide connection between
the peninsula and the rest of Ukraine and probably across the peninsula,
too.”
Ukrtelecom added that “communications
services are vital to sustain essential support systems in the peninsula
including first aid, fire and rescue services.”
Gazeta.ru reported that armed men, bearing no insignia, took over the Ukrtelecom building in Sevastopol.
— Noah Sneider
2:25 P.M. Ukraine Airline Says Airspace Closed in Crimea Region
Ukrainian International, Ukraine’s biggest airline, said on Friday that it had canceled flights into and out of the Crimea region because the airspace had been closed.
The main airport in Crimea, the Simferopol
International Airport, was taken over by armed men overnight, as our
colleagues, Andrew Higgins and Patrick Reevell, report from Simferopol.
They said the men also took up positions at a
nearby airfield, fueling concerns about a possible Russian military
intervention or a separatist rebellion in a region with stronger
historical ties to Russia than to Ukraine’s central government in Kiev.
The masked men, dressed in camouflage uniforms that bore no insignia and carrying assault rifles, declined to answer questions.
2:13 P.M. U.N. Security Council to Meet Friday on Ukraine
The United Nations Security Council is
holding private consultations on Friday afternoon to discuss the crisis
in Ukraine, according to a report by The Associated Press.
A United Nations spokesman, Martin Nesirky, said the council had scheduled a meeting Friday afternoon.
1:41 P.M. Ukraine Seeks Extradition of Yanukovych From Russia
Hours after the ousted president Viktor F.
Yanukovych made his first public appearance in a week in southern
Russia, Ukrainian government officials revealed that they had started
efforts for his extradition from Russia, according to Reuters.
The prosecutor general’s office said that Mr.
Yanukovych is wanted in Ukraine for mass murder following the deaths of
about 100 people in clashes with police and security forces during
three months of protests.
Earlier on Friday, Mr. Yanukovych said that
he was forced to leave the country and that he wanted to return if his
safety could be ensured.
1:22 P.M. U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine Shows Support on Twitter
The United States has played an important
role in Ukraine, trying to find a balance between supporting
pro-democracy forces and seeking to avoid a Cold War-style confrontation
with Russia.
On Friday, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, the United States ambassador to Ukraine, wrote on his Twitter feed @GeoffPyatt
that he was “overwhelmed” by his first visit to Hrushevskoho Street, in
central Kiev where some of the pitched battles of the revolution took
place in recent days.
He also sent a message of support on Twitter to the new economy minister in Ukraine, Pavlo Sheremeta.
On Feb. 18 Mr. Pyatt was filmed stepping into the law and order void by personally directing traffic, as he attempted to make his way to meetings in another part of town.
The United States secretary of state, John
Kerry, has not specified what the United States was prepared to do in
response to a Russian military intervention in Ukraine, focusing instead
on what he said the Russians would sacrifice, as our colleague Michael
Gordon wrote in his contribution to this report.
– Dan Bilefsky
12:15 P.M. Top Negotiator From Kiev Barred From Building in Crimea
Petro Poroshenko,
a pro-Western businessman, member of Parliament in Kiev and
presidential candidate, arrived in Simferopol on Friday to hold
negotiations with members of the regional Parliament. But he was blocked
from getting into the building.
In remarks to reporters at the airport, he
said that the presence of foreign troops was absolutely unacceptable and
that Crimea was Ukrainian territory.
He said his trip was his own initiative, but
was approved by the acting president. “I am the official fully empowered
representative of the Verkhovna Rada to conduct these negotiations,” he
said.
He said he felt his most important mission
was “to do everything not to allow an escalation of violence” and to
stress to the Crimeans that they were fellow Ukrainians and that Ukraine
must be whole.
“We must preserve the sovereign territorial unity of Ukraine,” he said.
“Crimea is part of Ukraine’s territory and here Ukrainian law functions and will continue to function.”
He said that the armed men had tried to block two of his aides leaving the airport and had tried to block his own exit.
When he drove up to the Parliament’s
building, he was not allowed to enter. He soon departed, with
demonstrators waving Russian flags, proudly claiming they had chased him
away. “Nobody wants to talk to him,” said a young woman among the crowd
of a few dozen.
— Patrick Reevell
12:05 P.M. Ukraine Diplomat Wants Quick E.U. Association Agreement
As my colleagues Steven Erlanger and David M. Herszenhorn reported this week, the European Union is weighing options for support for the new Ukraine.
Late last year, Viktor F. Yanukovych, then
the Ukrainian president, chose to reject a customs union and association
agreement with Brussels and turn to Moscow instead for a big loan. His
choice created a popular, pro-European reaction that led to his
downfall.
On Friday, the Ukrainian ambassador to the European Union, Kostiantyn Yeliseyev, was quoted by the EUObserver,
a Brussels-based publication, as calling on the European Union to sign
an association agreement with Ukraine “in the next few weeks” to
minimize the risk of more “Russian tricks.”
He said Moscow was at fault for the latest
breakout of instability in Crimea. “You understand who is doing it: This
is a provocation initiated by Moscow, of course, and we are very much
concerned,” he was quoted as saying in the interview published on
Friday.
Mr. Yeliseyev also told the publication that
the Ukrainian embassy in Brussels had taken down the portrait of the now
ousted Mr. Yanukovych from its lobby.
The ambassador also said, according to the
report, that he was told by the former Ukrainian foreign minister, but
refused, to threaten to re-impose visa restrictions for some European
Union countries as a negotiating tactic, and to tell European
counterparts that the protesters were far-right radicals.
“I don’t want to be seen as trying to avoid
any blame, but in my view, my main job was here, in Brussels,” Mr.
Yeliseyev said. “One of my main concerns was to tell the truth to our
European colleagues, to do the utmost not to discredit ourselves as
diplomats.”
– Dan Bilefsky
11:47 A.M. Concern From the Weimar Triangle
At his news conference in Russia on Friday,
Viktor Yanukovych said that he felt “duped” by the other parties to the
interim agreement he signed last week with Ukrainian opposition leaders
that would have kept him in office until December. That deal was
brokered during talks led by three European foreign ministers — from
France, Germany and Poland — and a Russian envoy, Vladimir Lukin, who
was sent to Kiev from Moscow at Mr. Yanukovych’s request by President
Vladimir V. Putin.
A photograph of the signed agreement posted online last week by Mustafa Nayyem — an Afghan-Ukrainian journalist who played an important role in starting the protest in Kiev’s Independence Square
— seemed to show that the Russian envoy, Mr. Lukin, did not sign the
agreement as a witness, unlike the three European foreign ministers.
After the protesters in the square rejected the deal
and insisted that Mr. Yanukovych had to go, however, Russia blamed the
Europeans for not insisting on the implementation of the agreement by
Ukraine’s opposition leaders.
On Friday, the three European foreign
ministers — Laurent Fabius of France, Radosław Sikorski of Poland and
Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany — released a new statement endorsing the government formed by Ukraine’s Parliament this week after the president fled the capital and went into hiding.
We take note of the formation of a transitional government in Ukraine supported by a broad majority of votes in the Ukrainian parliament. This transitional government will have to face immense challenges in order to improve the standards of living of the citizens of Ukraine which can be only achieved through the implementation of the transition and modernization reforms, including fight with corruption, and respect for democratic values. We are ready to support Ukraine in these efforts.
The foreign ministers of the three nations, who call their block the Weimar Triangle, also expressed concern about the standoff in Crimea.
— Robert Mackey
11:26 A.M. Radio Free Europe Primer on Ukraine Cabinet
Radio Free Europe, which is financed by the American government and is following developments on its live blog, has assembled a primer
on the members of the new Ukrainian government, as the cabinet faces
the challenge of trying to restore political and economic order at a
time of deep uncertainty.
– Dan Bilefsky
10:52 A.M. Video of Entire Yanukovych News Conference
The state-owned Russian broadcaster Russia Today has uploaded video of Viktor F. Yanukovych’s entire news conference, with its own simultaneous translation into English, to YouTube.
Video of Viktor Yanukovych’s news conference on Friday from the Russian state broadcaster RT.
Of interest to Kremlinologists is the fact
that the network, which was set up to present the viewpoint of Russia’s
government, referred to Mr. Yanukovych in an onscreen caption as
Ukraine’s “ousted leader.”
— Robert Mackey
10:48 A.M. New Ukraine Minister Takes Public Transportation
As people in Ukraine continued to express shock at the lavish lifestyle, of Mr. Yanukovych, some members of the new government were taking a more frugal approach.
There was no tinted-windowed, chauffeur-driven Mercedes for Ukraine’s new economy minister, Pavlo Sheremeta,
whose decision to ride the subway to the office on his first day of
work was viewed as “mind-blowing” by some local voters, according to a
tweet by Maxim Eristavi, a freelance correspondent covering Ukraine.
– Dan Bilefsky
10:47 A.M. Ousted President’s Swiss Bank Accounts Frozen
Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein on
Friday moved to freeze the bank accounts of nearly 20 Ukrainians,
including the ousted former president Viktor F. Yanukovych and his son
Oleksander, while the European Union readied targeted financial and
travel sanctions for a swath of Ukrainian nationals deemed responsible
for the recent violence in the country.
The Geneva prosecutor’s office said it also
opened a penal investigation into “severe money laundering” by Mr.
Yanukovych and his son, after the police on Thursday searched a company
in Switzerland owned by the son and removed documents. No further
details were immediately available.
Austria said it was acting at the request of
Ukraine’s new prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, who accused the
Yanukovych government Thursday of draining state coffers. Mr. Yatsenyuk
said that loans worth $37 billion had gone missing while Mr. Yanukovych
was in power, and that a further $70 billion had been taken out of
Ukraine’s financial system and placed into offshore accounts.
European Union ministers last week voted at
an emergency meeting to place asset freezes and visa bans on individuals
thought responsible for the violence that has swept through Ukraine,
but a legal framework has not yet been put into place.
“To close this gap, we are taking care that
no movement of currency from accounts can take place,” said Martin
Weiss, a spokesman for Austria’s foreign ministry. He declined to name
the individuals or a total monetary amount, but said those affected were
suspected of “human rights violations and corruption.”
“This is a security measure for the time
being” until a specific European Union list of individuals is issued, he
added. “With this freeze, we will stop every movement in those
accounts.”
On Wednesday, Ukraine’s new prosecutor
general, Oleh Makhnytsky, said he was contacting international
organizations to help trace foreign bank accounts and assets held by by
Mr. Yanukovych, his aides and those close to them. Among the officials
being investigated were former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and Mr.
Yanukovych’s chief of staff, Andriy Klyuev, Mr. Makhnytsky said.
Austria’s foreign minister, Sebastian Kurz,
said the violence in Ukraine should not go unpunished. “Europe must not
look away when people are being shot in its own backyard,” he told
Austrian news agencies Thursday.
This month, Rebecca Harms of Germany, a
European Union Parliament member, said some Ukrainian politicians or
their family members may have Austrian passports or longer term
residence permits. Mr. Weiss said there was so far no evidence of that.
The Swiss government also declined to name a
figure in relation to the assets, but said it moved to block all assets
in Switzerland of Mr. Yanukovych and his entourage “to avoid the risk of
any misappropriation of financial assets of the Ukrainian state.”
Ukraine would ultimately be responsible for
demonstrating “the illicit origin of the frozen assets,” said
Pierre-Alain Eltschinger, a spokesman for the Swiss foreign ministry.
— Liz Alderman
10:31 A.M. Mixed Signals From Moscow Over Status of Crimea
Video said to show Russian military helicopters flying over Crimea on Friday.
One day after masked gunmen vowing loyalty to
Russia seized the Parliament building in Simferopol, the capital of
Crimea, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based under a lease
agreement with Ukraine, reports suggest that neither side is backing
down from the confrontation over the special status of the ethnically mixed region.
Video of a warm reception in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol for the visiting Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
As tensions spiked, with video of Russian helicopters in the air over the peninsula, and the ultranationalist Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky paying a visit to the city of Sevastopol, a deputy in Ukraine’s Parliament proposed canceling the lease agreement, according to a report from the Russian news agency Itar-Tass, translated by The Interpreter, a website partly funded by the dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Mr. Zhirinovsky, as the Guardian
correspondent Shaun Walker points out, is not known for his diplomatic
language. In 2006, he responded to criticism of Russia’s Ukraine policy
from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by calling her “a very cruel, offended woman who lacks men’s attention,” who should be raped by “a company of soldiers.”
On Friday afternoon, Reuters reported:
“At least 20 men wearing the uniform of Russia’s Black Sea fleet and
carrying automatic rifles surrounded a Ukrainian border guard post,” in
the Crimean port city of Sevastopol.
A Reuters reporter in the Balaklava district saw Ukrainian border police in helmets and riot gear closed inside the border post, with a metal gate pulled shut and metal riot shields placed behind the windows as protection. A serviceman who identified himself as an officer of the Black Sea Fleet told Reuters: “We are here … so as not to have a repeat of the Maidan.”
Earlier on Friday, however, Itar-Tass reported,
in English, that the authorities in Moscow seemed to back away from
confrontation. “Moscow does not see any need to hold immediate bilateral
consultations on Crimea, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported,” the
news agency said. It added that “The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a
note that Russia considers the events in the Autonomous Republic of
Crimea as a result of internal political processes in Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian journalist Myroslava Petsa also
noted that, during a portion of his news conference not broadcast live
on the Russia Today network’s English-language channel, Ukraine’s former
president, Viktor Yanukovych, said that he opposed any invasion.
— Robert Mackey
9:40 A.M. Yanukovych Dismisses Questions About Lavish Home
After more than hour into the news
conference, a reporter asked about Mr. Yanukovych’s house and its lavish
amenities in Mezhigorye, outside of Kiev, prompting a smirk. “That’s
the most important question, right?” he said.
He then maintained that not all of the
property was his, merely the wooden house that he said he bought from
the government for $3.2 million. He said he rented other buildings. He
did not address the zoo, the wooden ship that served as a restaurant,
the greenhouses and golf course, but he suggested that there were other
owners of parts of the facility and that their lawyers would soon be in
touch with the government to reclaim their properties. He did not name
the other owners.
“All the photographs you saw are just nice photographs,” he said, suggesting the scandal was an effort to discredit him.
“I don’t own anything, and I’ve never had
accounts abroad.,” he said, the day the government in Switzerland
announced it would seize accounts linked to Mr. Yanukovych and his
circle. “I’m a public person. Everything I have, everything, was
declared.”
— Steven Lee Myers
9:07 A.M. Yanukovych Says Ukraine Will Decide Tymoshenko’s Future
In response to questions about Yulia V.
Tymoshenko, Mr. Yanukovych said that he did not know whether the former
Prime Minister will run for president.
“I don’t know what will happen to her in the
future,” he said. “I don’t know if she will run for president or not,”
he said. “I think the people of Ukraine will answer this question
whether she has a political future or not.”
He defended the criminal case against her,
stemming from an agreement with Russia to supply natural gas, saying it
had cost the country $20 billion in lost revenue. He also characterized
her prison term as comfortable compared to ordinary convicts. “She was
in a pretty good situation,” he said.
He said her release was a legal issue. “I
have never wished her anything bad,” he said. “I don’t have anything
personal against her.”
— Steve Lee Myers
9:06 A.M. Yanukovych Slips, Confusing Ukraine and Russia
Watching Mr. Yanukovych’s news conference in
Russia from afar, Ukrainian activists and journalists in Kiev just
pointed out that the man who insists he is still Ukraine’s president
just confused his nation with Russia in one reply. Asked about what
support he can expect from Russia’s government, Mr. Yanukovych said
“Ukraine is our strategic partner,” when he clearly intended to say that
Russia is Ukraine’s partner.
The activists in Kiev Independence Square, or
Maidan, immediately pounced in the slip, pointing it out on their
Twitter feed, as did reporters in Ukraine, including Myroslava Petsa of
Ukraine’s Channel 5, and Christopher Miller of the Kyiv Post.
Mr. Yanukovych also said that, knowing the
character of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, ” I am surprised that
he has remained silent.”
— Robert Mackey
9:04 A.M. Yanukovych Denies Ordering Force Against Protesters
Mr. Yanukovych denied that he had ever
ordered the police or interior troops to use force against protesters,
saying the police had remained unarmed until “the very last point.”
In reference to clashes that erupted on Feb.
18, he claimed that the police armed themselves only after protesters
started using weapons.
“Authority is not worth a drop of blood,” he said.
— Steven Lee Myers
8:56 A.M. Yanukovych Will Not Run For President
Mr. Yanukovych said he would not run again for president but he would continue to fight for Ukraine.
He said he would return to Ukraine once security for himself and his family has been put in place.
— Steven Lee Myers
8:52 A.M. Yanukovych Apologizes for Allowing ‘Lawlessness’
A prominent journalist from Kommersant asked if he was ashamed of anything that he has done.
“I can tell you I am ashamed,” Mr. Yanukovych replied, somberly.
“What’s more I would like to apologize,” he
went on, mentioning veterans and security officers in particular, “for
the fact that I did not have enough strength to achieve and let this
lawlessness occur.”
— Steven Lee Myers
8:49 A.M. Yanukovych Says He Spoke With Putin by Phone
Mr. Yanukovych said he had not met with President Putin since he arrived in Russia but he said they had spoken by telephone.
He acknowledged that he received assistance
from the Russian authorities to leave Ukraine, but he declined to
specify exactly how he got into the country.
“I got into Russia thanks to patriotic officers,” he said. “That’s what I would say. They did what they had to do.”
— Steven Lee Myers
8:47 A.M. Yanukovych Announces Intention to Return to Ukraine
Viktor F. Yanukovych said he intends to return to Ukraine when his security and the security of his family has been ensured.
— Steven Lee Myers
8:45 A.M. Yanukovych Says He Will Not Ask Russia for Military Aid
Mr. Yanukovych appealed for calm and said he would not ask Russia for military assistance or intervention.
“I think any military action is
unacceptable,” he said. “I have no intention to ask for military
support. I think Ukraine should remain one indivisible country.”
Later in the press conference, he said he was surprised Mr. Putin had not responded to the events in Ukraine. And he said:
“I believe that Russia must and is obliged to act,” he said.
However, Mr. Yanukovych did not say how. When
pressed again during the news conference, he said: “It would be
inappropriate for me at this point to say what Russia should do.”
But he added: “Russia should not remain indifferent and do nothing.”
— Steven Lee Myers
8:35 A.M. Crimea Should Remain Part of Ukraine, Yanukovych Says
Mr. Yanukovych said that Crimea should remain part of Ukraine.
“I think that everything that is happened in Crimea is a natural reaction to the gangster coup that happened in Kiev,” he said.
He added, “People of Crimea don’t want to
submit and they will not submit to Bandera thugs,” referring to the
World-War-II era nationalist leader who was vilified by the Soviet
Union.
— Steven Lee Myers
8:26 A.M. ‘Nobody Deposed Me,’ Yanukovych Insists From Russia
Viktor F. Yanukovych appeared at a news
conference in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, his first
public appearance since Feb. 21, when he negotiated a compromise with
Ukraine’s opposition leaders, brokered by European foreign ministers.
Since then he has appeared only in a video from his political stronghold
in Eastern Ukraine; on Thursday, in a written statement delivered to
Russian news agencies, he declared that he remained the lawfully elected
leader of Ukraine.
“Nobody deposed me,” he said in an opening
statement, speaking in Russian. “I had to leave Ukraine because there
was a direct and imminent threat to my life.” He said that Ukraine had
been taken over by nationalist thugs, with the assistance of the West,
and called for a restoration of the government he once led.
Mr. Yanukovich’s appearance here has been as
shrouded in mystery as his whereabouts over the last week, with various
reports that he has been in Russia for several days already. It seemed
notable that the news conference was not being held in any Russian
government building, but rather in the Vertol Expo center, a new
shopping mall, hotel and exhibition center a fair distance from the
city’s center. Currently there is an exhibition of tractors and other
farm equipment inside and outside the center.
Police officers were posted outside the
entrance to the wing where Mr. Yanukovych was speaking, allowing only
journalists to pass, and at metal detectors at the door. Among the
officers inside were several plain-clothed agents who appeared to be
part of Russia’s diplomatic security service, a protection offered to
all visiting foreign officials.
The conference hall is standing-room only,
with dozens of journalists and at least three dozen television. Four
Ukrainian flags have been placed behind a large wooden desk.
— Steven Lee Myers
8:20 A.M. Yanukovych Speaks
Ukraine’s ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych, speaking Friday at a news conference in Russia.
Ukraine’s ousted president, Viktor
Yanukovych, who fled Kiev last week, is speaking now at a news
conference in Russia, which is being streamed live on the website of RT, the state-funded Russian broadcaster, with simultaneous translation into English provided by the broadcaster set up to present the news from Russia’s perspective to an international audience.
The Guardian correspondent Shaun Walker notes
that the first questions at the news conference have all come from
journalists working for outlets approved by the Russian government.
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