Just as Kiev gets a new government led by Arseniy Yatseniuk and is about to create a semblance of order out of chaos, a string of intense news keeps coming from Crimea and Russia.
Editorial: Russia seeking to split Ukraine via Crimea
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For several reasons, Crimea is a totally logical spot through which Russia is clearly attempting to destabilise Ukraine. Ukrainian people’s victory over Mr Yanukovych was also a defeat for Mr Putin – not in his interests to see a democratic Slavic state with a strong civil society, rather a corrupt vassal. Now, attempt is underway to divide Ukraine internally, by sabre-rattling.
«Russia, who has always called the attempts by our foreign partners to regulate the situation by political means «interference in Ukrainian internal affairs», is right now directly interfering in the political life of Crimea,» three former presidents of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Leonid Kravchuk, said already the day before yesterday.
«I am addressing the leadership of Russian Black Sea fleet with this demand: all servicemen are to remain inside the territory determined by the Ukrainian-Russian treaty. Any movement of troops outside the said territory shall be treated as military aggression,» acting Ukrainian president Oleksandr Turchynov said in Verkhovna Rada, the country’s parliament yesterday. As we know, Sevastopol, Crimea is home to a Russian naval base, the contract for which continuance was one of the first steps by Mr Yanukovych after becoming president.
The US Secretary of State John Kerry said: «I don’t think there should be any doubt that whatever military intervention violating the sovereign territorial integrity of Ukraine would be a great and grave mistake. Should such a decision be made, I don’t think this would be a cheap decision. I believe it would be a very costly decision.» Basically the same warning was echoed by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, secretary-general of NATO.
About a hundred – according to descriptions – combatants of unknown origin, yet well equipped, seized the Crimean parliamentary building in Simferopol. At the command of Mr Putin, the day before yesterday, Russia launched a sudden and large scale battle-readiness test in her Western and Central military regions i.e. the very regions from which the territory of Ukraine may be threatened.
Naturally, Russia is also employing the so-called soft power. The same man who, during the Bronze Nights, promptly hastened to Tallinn and met with Edgar Savisaar – the Russian Duma member Leonid Slutski – now paid a visit to Crimea. There, he has talked about distributing Russian passports, as happened on the territories separated from Georgia.
Among other things, Mr Slutski said that Russian media needs to start operating at a totally new level in Ukraine, and especially so in Crimea. Obviously, then, the Kremlin doesn’t see their current ability to affect Ukrainian society as sufficient.