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| Demonstrators waved Russian flags as they gathered in Red Square in Moscow on Friday, in support of a delegation of Crimean lawmakers who visited Russian legislators. Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press |
N.Y. TIMES
Russia signaled for the first time on Friday that it was prepared to annex the Crimea region of Ukraine, significantly intensifying its confrontation with the West over the political crisis in Ukraine and threatening to undermine a system of respect for national boundaries that has helped keep the peace in Europe and elsewhere for decades.
Leaders
of both houses of Russia’s Parliament said that they would support a
vote by Crimeans to break away from Ukraine and become a region of the
Russian Federation, ignoring sanction threats and warnings, from the
United States and other countries, that a vote for secession would
violate Ukraine’s Constitution and international law. The Russian
message was yet another in a series of political and military actions
undertaken over the past week that outraged the West, even while the
Kremlin’s final intentions remained unclear.
As new tensions flared between Russian and Ukrainian forces in Crimea,
the moves by Russia raised the specter of a protracted conflict over the
status of the region, which Russian forces occupied last weekend,
calling into question not only Russia’s relations with the West but also
post-Cold War agreements on the sovereignty of the nations that emerged
from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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| An anti-government protester holds an Ukrainian national flag as he walks in front of a roadblock in Kiev's Independent square |
The
developments underscored how quickly the crisis has evolved. Earlier
this week, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had said he did not
foresee the possibility of the Crimean Peninsula becoming part of
Russia. But on Friday, Russia’s parliamentary leaders, both strong
allies of Mr. Putin, welcomed a delegation from Crimea’s regional
assembly and declared that they would support a vote to break away from
Ukraine, now scheduled for March 16.
The
referendum has been denounced by the fledgling national government in
Kiev, which said it would invalidate the outcome and dissolve the
Crimean Parliament. President Obama has also rejected the referendum,
and the United States government announced sanctions on Thursday in
response to Russia’s de facto military occupation.
Russia denounced those sanctions in a blunt rejoinder on Friday evening, posted on the Foreign Ministry website....The Russians also sent menacing economic signals to the financially ailing interim central government in Kiev, which Russia has refused to recognize. Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, which supplies Ukraine with most of its gas, warned that it might shut off supplies unless Ukraine paid $1.89 billion owed to the company.
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Valentina I. Matviyenko, the chairwoman of the upper house of the Russian Parliament, the Federation Council, compared the planned referendum in Crimea to Scotland’s scheduled vote on whether to become independent from Britain. She did not mention that the national government in Britain had agreed to hold a referendum, while the Ukrainian government has not.The speaker of the Russian lower house, Sergei Y. Naryshkin, echoed Ms. Matviyenko’s remarks. “We will respect the historic choice of the people of Crimea,” he said.
Their assertions came a day after Crimea’s regional assembly voted in a closed session to secede from Ukraine and apply to join the Russian Federation, and to hold a referendum for voters in the region to ratify the decision....In another telling sign of Russian government support, the Crimean delegates were cheered at an officially sanctioned rally in central Moscow that was shown at length on Russian state television, with songs and chants of “Russia, Moscow, Crimea.”....
Even
if the referendum proceeds, it was unclear what would happen next,
given the wide gap between the positions of Russia and the West — most
notably between Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama, who spoke for an hour by phone
on Thursday night.
According
to the White House, Mr. Obama urged Mr. Putin to authorize direct talks
with Ukraine’s new government, permit the entry of international
monitors and return his forces to the bases that Russia leases in
Crimea.
In
a statement, the Kremlin offered a starkly different account of the
phone call, emphasizing Russia’s view that the new government in Kiev
had no authority because it was the result of what Mr. Putin called an
anticonstitutional coup last month that had ousted Viktor F. Yanukovych,
the pro-Kremlin president.
The
official Russian account of the phone call went on to say that the
current Ukrainian leadership had imposed “absolutely illegitimate
decisions” on the eastern and southeastern regions of the country, where
pro-Russian sentiment is widespread. “Russia cannot ignore appeals
connected to this, calls for help, and acts appropriately, in accordance
with international law,” the statement said.
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In
Kiev, anti-Russian sentiment was hardening. The Right Sector movement, a
nationalist group that was important in the deadly protests last month
that drove Mr. Yanukovych from power, announced that its leader, Dmytro
Yarosh, would run for president. Andriy Tarasenko, chairman of its local
branch, also said the group was prepared to fight, in Crimea and
elsewhere, “if the Kremlin tramples on us further.”
With
Washington and Moscow trading heated 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.
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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 within
their own borders, like Scotland in Britain or Catalonia in Spain.