World powers warn Russia against Crimea ‘annexation’

KIEV, Ukraine – Leading world powers warned Wednesday, March 13, against Russia’s “annexation” of Crimea as the Ukrainian premier prepared to seek US President Barack Obama’s help against the Kremlin’s expansionist threat. (READ: Ukraine seeks US help after Putin talks tough on Crimea)

The first meeting between Obama and Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk comes with the nation on the EU’s eastern border in danger of breaking apart when the predominantly ethnic Russian region holds a Moscow-backed referendumSunday on switching over to Kremlin rule.

Ukraine’s acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said his heavily outnumbered army would never try to seize back the Black Sea peninsula from Russian troops who made their land grab days after the February 22 ouster in Kiev of pro-Kremlin leader Viktor Yanukovych.

“We cannot launch a military operation in Crimea, as we would expose the eastern border and Ukraine would not be protected,” Turchynov said in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP).

But Turchynov also said Russian President Vladimir Putin had so far resisted intense international pressure and refused all contacts with Kiev aimed at resolving the worst breakdown in East-West relations since the Cold War.

Putin’s growing diplomatic isolation intensified when the Group of Seven (G7) industrialised nations issued a joint call on Russia “to cease all efforts to change the status of Crimea contrary to Ukrainian law and in violation of international law.”

“The annexation of Crimea could have grave implications for the legal order that protects the unity and sovereignty of all states,” said the statement from countries accounting for more than 60% of global wealth.

French President Francois Hollande, whose government said sanctions could be imposed on Russia as early as this week, also said any annexation would be “unacceptable.”

Russia’s first military involvement in a neighbouring nation since its brief 2008 war with Georgia has sparked an explosive security crisis and exposed previous rifts between Western allies over ways to deal with Putin’s undisguised efforts to rebuild vestiges of the Soviet state.

Washington has imposed travel bans and asset freezes on Russians held responsible for violating the territorial integrity of the culturally splintered nation of 46 million people.

But the European Union – its financial and energy sectors much more dependent on Russia than those of the United States – has only threatened tougher measures after taking the lighter step of suspending free travel and broad economic treaty talks.

The standoff has also seen US Secretary of State John Kerry deliver a snub of immense diplomatic proportions by refusing a visit to Moscow that could have included a meeting with the Kremlin chief.

Yet the international community’s almost unanimous rejection of the referendum’s legitimacy has done little to slow Russia’s attempt to redraw Europe’s post-war borders by absorbing a region that was handed to Ukraine as a “gift” when it was still a Soviet republic in 1954.

Russia’s parliament is due on March 21 to consider legislation to simplify the procedure under which Moscow can annex a part of another country that has proclaimed independence – as Crimean lawmakers did Tuesday.

Oval Office handshake

The White House is leaving no doubt about the message it intends to send to Russia with the visit of Yatsenyuk – a premier Moscow considers illegitimate.

He will be greeted by Obama in the Oval Office – a symbol of US power – like any other foreign leader and also meet Vice President Joe Biden who rushed back from a trip to South America to join the talks.

Washington said Yatsenyuk’s reception was intended to show that it believed that Kiev’s interim government has been playing a responsible role in the crisis.

“We strongly support Ukraine, the Ukrainian people and the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian government,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

But Carney also stressed that the White House was still offering the Kremlin an “off ramp” for ending the dispute without any bloodshed and with Ukraine’s territorial integrity held intact.

Yatsenyuk will also use the chance to iron out the details of a $35-billion (25-billion Euro) aid package he says his nation’s teetering economy needs to stay afloat over the coming two years after being mismanaged by Yanukovych – now living in self-imposed exile in Russia.

Ukraine ‘will not attack’

Ukraine’s soldiers and marines have won plaudits from Western leaders for refusing to open fire against Russian troops and Kremlin-backed militia who have encircled their bases and kept their ships from going out to sea.

Acting president Turchynov said that as commander in chief he understood fully the futility of launching an all-out war against a much larger invading force that had nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of additional troops stationed just inside Russia.

“Significant tank units are massed near Ukraine’s eastern border,” Turchynov told AFP.

“They’re provoking us to have a pretext to intervene on the Ukrainian mainland… (but) we cannot follow the scenario written by the Kremlin.”

Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council chief Andriy Parubiy added to the tinderbox atmosphere by noting that Russia’s forces stood “just a few hours away from Kiev.”

Putin has accused Turchynov and Yatsenyuk of rising to power through an “unconstitutional coup” that came at the apex of three months of pro-Western protests in which 100 people died.

Turchynov for his part rubbished as “madness” Putin’s claim that Russian-speakers in the southeast of Europe’s largest country by landmass needed his army’s “protection” from the harassment they faced with the rise of new and more nationalist leaders to power in Kiev last month. – Rappler.com