WITH MILITARY MOVES SEEN IN UKRAINE, OBAMA WARNS RUSSIA
DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, MARK LANDLER and ALISON SMALE
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s fragile new government accused Russia of trying to provoke a military conflict by invading the Crimea region on Friday, while in Washington President Obama issued a stern warning to the Kremlin about respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty, in an effort to preclude a full-scale military escalation.
American officials did not directly confirm a series of public statements by senior Ukrainian officials, including the acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, that Russian troops were being deployed to Crimea, where Russia has a major naval base, in violation of the two countries’ agreements there.
Mr. Obama, however, cited “reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine,” and he said, “Any violation of Ukrainian sovereignty would be deeply destabilizing.”
“There will be costs,” Mr. Obama said in a hastily arranged statement from the White House.
Credit Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times
President Obama said any intervention militarily in Ukraine would be “deeply destabilizing.”
Video|3:07
Obama Warns Russia on Ukraine
“The Russian Federation began an unvarnished aggression against our country,” Mr. Turchynov said in televised remarks on Friday evening. “Under the guise of military exercises, they entered troops into the autonomous Republic of Crimea.”
He said that Russian forces had captured the regional Parliament and the headquarters of the regional government, and that they had seized other targets, including vital communications hubs, as well as blocked unspecified Ukrainian military assets.
American officials said they believed that unusual helicopter movements over Crimea were evidence that a military intervention was underway, but cautioned that they did not know the scale of the operation or the Russians’ motives.
Russia on Friday denied that it had encroached on Ukrainian territory or would do so. After an emergency meeting on Ukraine at the United Nations Security Council, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, said that any troop movements were in line with arrangements that allow it to station soldiers in the area.
“We have an agreement with Ukraine on the presence of the Russian Black Sea fleet and we operate under this agreement,” Mr. Churkin said.
Still, the developments in Crimea sent Ukraine’s interim government, which was appointed recently, deep into crisis mode as it confronted the prospect of an armed effort to split off Crimea, an autonomous region with close historic ties to Russia, from the Ukrainian mainland.
Analysts said the reported moves in the area had parallels to steps Russia took before a war with Georgia in 2008 over the largely ethnic Russian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There was little to indicate if President Vladimir V. Putin intended to escalate the challenge to Ukraine beyond nonviolent provocation of the mostly pro-Russian population in the region.
Mr. Turchynov, the acting president, also made comparisons to Georgia. “They are provoking us into military conflict,” he said. “They began annexation of territory.”
In his address, Mr. Turchynov added, “I personally appeal to President Putin, demanding that he immediately stop the provocation and withdraw troops.”
The crisis in Crimea is the latest a series of rapidly unfurling events that began when scores of people were killed in Kiev last week during a severe escalation of civic unrest that had been underway since late November.
Protests started after Russia pressured Viktor F. Yanukovych, then the president, to back away from political and free-trade agreements with the European Union that he had long promised to sign, setting off an East-West confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War.
After the recent killings, Mr. Yanukovych reached a tentative truce with opposition leaders in talks brokered by the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland, but within 24 hours he fled Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, and an overwhelming majority of lawmakers voted to strip him of power, saying he had abandoned his position.
On Friday, a week later, Mr. Yanukovych resurfaced for a news conference in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, in which he said he was still the legitimate president and urged Russia not to intervene militarily in Crimea.
Mr. Obama’s warning suggested a deepening uncertainty among American officials about Mr. Putin’s intentions in the region despite a series of high-level contacts in recent days, including a telephone call between the two presidents one week ago. Mr. Yanukovych was an ally of Russia, and his toppling has left the Kremlin grappling for a response.
While American officials said that intelligence indicated that a Russian operation was underway, Mr. Obama stopped short of calling it an invasion. Part of the confusion, one official said, was that Russia routinely moves troops between military bases in Crimea.
Another American official said that intelligence reports from the region were “all over the place,” but that the administration believed that Russia had moved some of its forces into Ukraine, while some of the movement, officials said, seemed to be an increase in protective measures around Russian military installations.
Continue reading the main story
Though he threatened an unspecified cost to Russia, Mr. Obama has limited options to respond to an intervention. Officials said he could cancel his participation in a Group of 8 meeting in Sochi, Russia, in June. The administration could also break off talks on a potential trade agreement. Russia sent a delegation to Washington this week to explore closer trade and commercial ties.
Crimea, a multiethnic region that was granted a large degree of autonomy after Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union, has long been a source of tension with Russia and is home to some of Russia’s most important military installations, including the headquarters of its Black Sea naval fleet.
As other nations reacted with consternation to the developments in Crimea, the Kremlin was largely silent.
Russian state television reported that Russian troops had arrived to secure the airport at Belbek, which is close to the Russian naval base, but officials did not confirm that information. The identity of gunmen who appeared at the Simferopol airport and at roadblocks on major roadways also remained unclear.
While movement of Russian military vehicles, equipment and personnel is common in the Crimea, Friday’s activity was extremely unusual, local residents said. It involved a number of strange components, including the deployment of heavily armed soldiers, wearing uniforms with no identifying marks, at the region’s two main airports.
Before dawn, at Simferopol’s international airport, the soldiers initially posted themselves outside an administrative building, and through much of the day they did not interfere with departing or arriving flights.
By evening, however, the usual flight in from Kiev was canceled, and it was unclear whether any flights would go through Crimean airspace over the weekend. Similarly mysterious gunmen also appeared at the second airport, which is used for civil and military flights.
Journalists spotted a convoy of nine Russian armored personnel carriers on a road between the port city of Sevastopol, the site of Russia’s main naval base, and Simferopol, a city of about 250,000 people. There were also unconfirmed reports that several planes carrying thousands of Russian soldiers had arrived in Crimea on Friday night.
Even more unusual, a Ukrainian telecommunications company, Ukrtelecom, said unknown people had seized control of several communications hubs, disrupting telephone and Internet service between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine. In a statement, the company pleaded with law enforcement agencies to take control of the situation.
While Western governments at first seemed hesitant to draw conclusions, officials in the new provisional government in Kiev said early Friday morning that they suspected Russian interference.
Mr. Turchynov, who is also the speaker of Parliament, immediately convened a meeting of the newly formed National Security and Defense Council to discuss the events in the south.
David M. Herszenhorn reported from Kiev, Mark Landler from Washington, and Alison Smale from Simferopol, Ukraine. Reporting was contributed by Patrick Reevell and Noah Sneider from Simferopol, Oksana Lyachnyska from Kiev, Somini Sengupta from the United Nations, and Michael D. Shear, Michael R. Gordon, Thom Shanker and Mark Mazzetti from Washington..png)