Kerry Warns Moscow to Respect Ukraine's Territorial Integrity
By Lukas I. Alpert
Updated Feb. 26, 2014 2:41 p.m. ET
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ukrainian police try to separate pro-Russia separatists from supporters of Ukraine's new leaders in Crimea. REUTERS
MOSCOW—President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered surprise military exercises for 150,000 troops in Russia, including some based less than 200 miles from Ukraine, where the ouster of the president has left a political vacuum.
The test of combat readiness applies to ground, air defense and tank units as well as Russia's Northern and Baltic fleets. It is among the largest such exercises the country has undertaken in recent years, and comes amid rising displeasure in Moscow with developments in Ukraine.
Since pro-Western protesters in Ukraine overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych last weekend, Russia has recalled its ambassador from Kiev, suspended a $15 billion bailout package and threatened to raise natural gas prices and impose trade sanctions. Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Monday that the situation posed a threat to Russian interests in the former Soviet republic.
Ukraine's acting interior minister, Arsen Avakov, talking with supporters in front of the Ukrainian Parliament in Kiev, on Feb. 22. European Pressphoto Agency
Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the exercise had been planed months ago and had nothing to do with the unrest in Ukraine—in which more than 80 people were killed in clashes with police last week. Another senior defense official told local news agencies that the ministry didn't see the unrest in Ukraine as a reason to delay the exercise.
But the timing of the show of strength is certain to heighten concerns over the possibility of military intervention in Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine, particularly Crimea, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia needed to "be very careful" in its next steps.
"We are not looking for confrontation. But we are making it clear that every country should respect the territorial integrity here, the sovereignty of Ukraine. Russia has said it would do that and we think it's important that Russia keeps its word," he said on NBC television.
On Wednesday, tense, competing protests between pro-Russian and pro-Western residents erupted in Simferopol, the regional capital, where the local parliament discussed Crimea's future.
"What kind of signal does this send to the most-extreme factions on the ground? This is likely only to inflame passions rather than cool them," said Eugene Rumer, director of the Russia program at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The announcement of the military exercises sent the ruble to new lows against the euro and Russian exchanges tumbling.
The last large-scale, military-readiness test was held in May and involved 160,000 soldiers, tanks and aircraft in Siberia. Russia also staged a test of 80,000 soldiers in February 2013, as well as several smaller drills in the Black Sea and in central Russia.
Senior Russian officials in recent days have said that military intervention wasn't on the table; "Such a scenario is impossible," Valentina Matvienko, the head of Russia's upper house, said Wednesday.
But Andrey Klimov, deputy chairman of the international affairs committee in Russia's parliament, said Russia had a responsibility to protect its military assets in Ukraine. "The Russian army must be prepared to use our forces to protect its own bases even if there just a 1% probability that something might happen to our people there," he said.
Defense ministers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, meeting in Brussels, offered their support for "Ukrainian sovereignty and independence, territorial integrity, democratic development and the principle of inviolability of frontiers."
At a news conference, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen didn't explicitly criticize the military drill, nor did he address the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO—something Russia vehemently opposes.
But Mr. Rasmussen reiterated the allies' position that Kiev should be able to make its own security arrangements. "Every nation has an inherent right to decide for itself when it comes to alliances and foreign and security policies," he said.
The newest military tests involve units in Russia's Western and Central military districts.
Russia is broken into four large military districts spanning from the Far East to its European borders. The western district is based in St. Petersburg and stretches from Russia's western arctic to its border with Ukraine and Belarus. The central district is based in Yekaterinburg and stretches from Siberia to just west of the Ural Mountains.
The exercises began Wednesday and are scheduled to last until Monday. They will be conducted in two parts, Mr. Shoigu said. The first will involve spot checks of combat readiness. The second part will involve operational and tactical exercises with the 6th Army, based in St. Petersburg; the 20th Army, based in Voronezh, some 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the Ukrainian border; and the 2nd Army in Samara, near the Kazakh border.
"The Supreme Commander [Vladimir Putin] has ordered a test of the ability of our troops to respond in crisis situations that threaten the military security of the country including terrorist, biological and man-made threats," Mr. Shoigu said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow, said that Russia was likely preparing itself should the situation in Ukraine worsen.
"The Russian political and military leadership must be prepared for different scenarios. This does not mean they will use them. But the whole experience of the last 20 years shows that one must be prepared for any possibility, up to military intervention," he said.
Poland's foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski recalled the Budapest agreement of 1994, under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal after the fall of communism.
"Russia, along with the United States of America and United Kingdom, agreed to guarantee Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for the latter's decision to cease being nuclear superpower," he said. "I think we should be heatedly reminding our Russian partners of that fact."
—
Julian E. Barnes contributed to this article.
Corrections & Amplifications
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was speaking on Wednesday. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said he was speaking on Thursday.
Write to Lukas I. Alpert at lukas.alpert@wsj.com
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