SIMFEROPOL,
Ukraine — Russian armed forces seized control of Ukraine’s Crimean
Peninsula on Saturday, as the Russian Parliament granted President
Vladimir V. Putin broad authority to use military force in response to
the political upheaval in Ukraine that dislodged a Kremlin ally and
installed a new, staunchly pro-Western government.
Russian
troops stripped of identifying insignia but using military vehicles
bearing the license plates of Russia’s Black Sea force swarmed the major
thoroughfares of Crimea, encircled government buildings, closed the
main airport and seized communication hubs, solidifying what began on
Friday as a covert effort to control the largely pro-Russian region.
In
Moscow, Mr. Putin convened the upper house of Parliament to grant him
authority to use force to protect Russian citizens and soldiers not only
in Crimea but throughout Ukraine. Both actions — military and
parliamentary — were a direct rebuff to President Obama, who on Friday
pointedly warned Russia to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Mr.
Obama accused Russia on Saturday of a “breach of international law” and
condemned the country’s military intervention, calling it a “clear
violation” of Ukrainian sovereignty.
In
Crimea, scores of heavily armed soldiers fanned out across the center
of the regional capital, Simferopol. They wore green camouflage uniforms
with no identifying marks, but spoke Russian and were clearly part of a
Russian mobilization. In Balaklava, a district of Sevastopol, a long
column of military vehicles blocking the road to a border post bore
Russian plates.
Large
pro-Russia crowds rallied in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk
and Kharkiv, where there were reports of violence. In Kiev, the
Ukrainian capital, fears grew within the new provisional government that
separatist upheaval would fracture the country just days after a winter
of civil unrest had ended with the ouster of President Viktor F.
Yanukovych, the Kremlin ally who fled to Russia.
In
addition to the risk of open war, it was a day of frayed nerves and
set-piece political appeals that recalled ethnic conflicts of past
decades in the former Soviet bloc, from the Balkans to the Caucasus.
Mr.
Obama, who had warned Russia on Friday that “there will be costs” if it
violated Ukraine’s sovereignty, spoke with Mr. Putin for 90 minutes on
Saturday, according to the White House, and urged him to withdraw his
forces back to their bases in Crimea and to stop “any interference” in
other parts of Ukraine.
In
a statement afterward, the White House said the United States would
suspend participation in preparatory meetings for the G-8 economic
conference to be held in Sochi, Russia, in June, and warned of “greater
political and economic isolation” for Russia.
The
Kremlin offered its own description of the call, in which it said Mr.
Putin spoke of “a real threat to the lives and health of Russian
citizens” in Ukraine, and warned that “in case of any further spread of
violence to Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Russia retains the right to
protect its interests and the Russian-speaking population of those
areas.”
In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron said that “there can be no excuse for outside military intervention” in Ukraine.
Canada
said it was recalling its ambassador from Moscow and, like the United
States, suspending preparations for the G-8 meeting.
At
the United Nations, the Security Council held an emergency meeting on
Ukraine for the second time in two days. The American ambassador,
Samantha Power, called for an international observer mission, urged
Russia to “stand down” and took a dig at the Russian ambassador, Vitaly
I. Churkin, on the issue of state sovereignty, which the Kremlin
frequently invokes in criticizing the West over its handling of Syria
and other disputes.
“Russian actions in Ukraine are violating the sovereignty of Ukraine and pose a threat to peace and security,” she said.
The
secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, also spoke with Mr. Putin on Saturday
and described himself as “gravely concerned” and urged Mr. Putin to
negotiate with officials in Kiev.
Mr.
Yanukovych’s refusal, under Russian pressure, to sign new political and
free trade agreements with the European Union last fall set off the
civil unrest that last month led to the deaths of more than 80 people,
and ultimately unraveled his presidency. The country’s new interim
government has said it will revive those accords.
Ukraine’s
acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, said at a briefing in Kiev on
Saturday evening that he had ordered Ukraine’s armed forces “to full
combat readiness.” A Ukrainian military official in Crimea said
Ukrainian soldiers had been told to “open fire” if they came under
attack by Russian troops or others though it was unlikely they could
pose a serious challenge to Russian forces.
Officials
in Kiev demanded that Russia pull back its forces, and confine them to
the military installations in Crimea that Russia has long leased from
Ukraine.
“The
presence of Russian troops in Crimea now is unacceptable,” said acting
Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk. Decrying the Russian deployment as a
“provocation,” he added, “We call on the government of the Russian
Federation to immediately withdraw its troops, return to the place of
deployment and stop provoking civil and military confrontation in
Ukraine.”
Sergey
Tigipko, a former deputy prime minister of Ukraine and one-time ally of
Mr. Yanukovych, said he flew to Moscow in hopes of brokering a truce.
The
fast-moving events began in the morning, when the pro-Russia prime
minister of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, declared that he had sole control
over the military and the police, and appealed to Mr. Putin for Russian
help in safeguarding the region. He also said a public referendum on
independence would be held on March 30.
Rostov-on-Don
50 Miles
Don
River
UKRAINE
Sea of
Azov
RUSSIA
CRIMEA
Simferopol
Airport
Simferopol
Belbek Airport
Sevastopol
Black Sea
The
Kremlin quickly issued a statement saying that Mr. Aksyonov’s plea
“would not be ignored,” and within hours the upper chamber of Russia’s
Parliament had authorized military action.
The
authorization cited Crimea, where Russia maintains important military
installations, but covered the use of force in the entire “territory of
Ukraine.” Parliament also asked Mr. Putin to withdraw Russia’s
ambassador to the United States.
By
nightfall, the scores of armed men in uniform who first appeared on
Crimea’s streets on Friday had melted away from the darkened center of
Simferopol, vanishing as mysteriously as they arrived.
For
the new government in Kiev, the tensions in Crimea created an even more
dire and immediate emergency than the looming financial disaster that
they had intended to focus on in their first days in office.
A
$15 billion bailout that Mr. Yanukovych secured from Russia has been
suspended because of the political upheaval, and Ukraine is in desperate
need of financial assistance. Mr. Yatsenyuk, the acting prime minister,
had said that the government’s first responsibility was to begin
negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and start to put in
place the economic reforms and painful austerity measures that the fund
requested in exchange for help.
In Crimea, however, officials said they did not recognize the new government, and declared that they had taken control.
Mr.
Aksyonov, the regional prime minister, said he was ordering the
regional armed forces, the Interior Ministry troops, the Security
Service, border guards and other ministries under his direct control. “I
ask anyone who disagrees to leave the service,” he said.
As
soldiers mobilized across the peninsula, the region’s two main airports
were closed, with civilian flights canceled, and they were guarded by
heavily armed men in military uniforms.
Similar
forces surrounded the regional Parliament building and the rest of the
government complex in downtown Simferopol, as well as numerous other
strategic locations, including communication hubs and a main bus
station.
Near
the entrance to Balaklava, the site of a Ukrainian customs and border
post near Sevastopol, the column of military vehicles with Russian
plates included 10 troop trucks, with 30 soldiers in each, two military
ambulances and five armored vehicles.
Soldiers,
wearing masks and carrying automatic rifles, stood on the road keeping
people away from the convoy, while some local residents gathered in a
nearby square waving Russian flags and shouting, “Russia! Russia!”
As with the troops in downtown Simferopol, the soldiers did not have markings on their uniforms.
There
were also other unconfirmed reports of additional Russian military
forces arriving in Crimea, including Russian ships landing in Fedosiya,
in eastern Crimea.
Crimea,
while part of Ukraine, has enjoyed a large degree of autonomy under an
agreement with the federal government in Kiev since shortly after
Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union.
The
strategically important peninsula, which has been the subject of
military disputes for centuries, has strong historic, linguistic and
cultural ties to Russia. The population of roughly two million is
predominantly Russian, followed by a large number of Ukrainians and
Crimean Tatars, people of Turkic-Muslim origin.
In
eastern Ukraine, which is also heavily pro-Russian, demonstrators in
Kharkiv rallied and then seized control of a government building,
pulling down the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag and raising the blue,
white and red Russian one. Scores of people were injured as protesters
scuffled with supporters of the new government in Kiev.
In
Donetsk, also in the east, several thousand people held a rally in the
city center, local news agencies reported, with many chanting
pro-Russian slogans and demanding a public referendum on secession from
Ukraine.
In
Moscow, the parliamentary debate on authorizing military action was
perfunctory, but laced with remarks that echoed the worst days of the
Cold War. Underscoring the extent to which the crisis has become part of
Russia’s broader grievances against the West, lawmakers focused on Mr.
Obama and the United States as much as on the fate of Russians in
Ukraine.
“All
this is being done under the guise of democracy, as the West says,”
Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, one member of Parliament, said during the debate.
“They tore apart Yugoslavia, routed Egypt, Libya, Iraq and so on, and
all this under the false guise of peaceful demonstrations.” He added,
“So we must be ready in case they will unleash the dogs on us.”
Yuri
L. Vorobyov, the body’s deputy chairman, said Mr. Obama’s warning on
Friday was a cause for Russia to act. “I believe that these words of the
U.S. president are a direct threat,” he said. “He has crossed the red
line and insulted the Russian people.”
Correction: March 1, 2014
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the ousted Ukrainian president. He is Viktor F. Yanukovych, not Yanuovych.
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the ousted Ukrainian president. He is Viktor F. Yanukovych, not Yanuovych.
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