Acting president blames ‘Kremlin agents’ for organising violent demonstrations
THE IRISH TIMES
Ukrainian servicemen are pictured at the entrance to a base in the village of Lyubimovka, near Sevastopol today. Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters
Sat, Mar 15, 2014, 18:32
Ukraine has accused “Kremlin agents” of fomenting deadly violence in Russian-speaking cities and urged people not to rise to provocations its new leaders fear Moscow may use to justify a further invasion after its takeover of Crimea.
From his speaker’s chair in parliament, acting president Oleksander Turchinov referred to three deaths in two days in Donetsk and Kharkiv and said there was “a real danger” of invasion by Russian troops across Ukraine’s eastern border.
Addressing members of the party of the pro-Moscow president who was ousted in last month’s Kiev uprising, Mr Turchinov said: “You know as well as we do who is organising mass protests in eastern Ukraine - it is Kremlin agents who are organising and funding them, who are causing people to be murdered.”
Two men, described by police as pro-Russian demonstrators, were shot dead in a fight in Kharkiv late last night. A Ukrainian nationalist was stabbed to death when pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine demonstrators clashed in Donetsk on Thursday.
Mr Turchinov, quoted by local media, closed the parliamentary session by saying: “The situation is very dangerous. I’m not exaggerating. There is a real danger from threats of invasion of Ukrainian territory and we will reconvene on Monday at 10.”
Other members of the Western-backed interim administration, which Russian president Vladimir Putin says supports Ukrainian ultra-nationalists hostile to ethnic Russians, urged people in the east not to be drawn into violence stirred up by Moscow.
Russian forces occupied Crimea two weeks ago, triggering an ominous confrontation with Western powers, after Mr Putin said he would protect Crimea’s ethnic Russian majority and compatriots elsewhere in Ukraine. As Crimeans vote in a referendum tomorrow that could bring annexation by Moscow, Kiev fears Russia could widen the scope of its takeover by moving troops into the east.
The interior minister accused ousted president Viktor Yanukovich of promoting unrest with “extremist Russian forces”. Arsen Avakov issued an appeal on Facebook: “Don‘t let them manipulate you! Stop this hysteria ... This isn‘t a game of toy soldiers - this is a real conflict and people’s real lives.”
Kharkiv clash
Two men, aged 21 and 30, were killed by buckshot late last night when pro-Russian demonstrators besieged an office of the far-right Ukrainian nationalist group Right Sector, which rose to prominence fighting riot police in Kiev over the winter.
Police said 32 Right Sector activists and six pro-Russian demonstrators were detained and a number of weapons seized.
A spokesman for Right Sector in Kharkiv said his group had been besieged in their office overnight by pro-Russian activists firing shotguns and rifles and throwing petrol bombs and stun grenades. Avakov said both sides had used firearms.
Kharkiv governor Ihor Baluta, newly appointed by the interim authorities in Kiev, said the “well-planned provocation by pro-Russian activists” began when unidentified men in a minibus provoked a confrontation with pro-Russia demonstrators and then drove off. When pursuing demonstrators caught up with the vehicle, it was parked outside the nationalists’ building.
The Right Sector spokesman, quoted by Interfax-Ukraine news agency, said his group had taken no part in the initial clash and believed the minibus was left outside its office by others.
The prominence of groups like Right Sector in positions of influence in Kiev, and measures such as a short-lived move last month to end the use of Russian as an official language, have led Russia to accuse leaders of a “coup” in Ukraine of planning to impose “fascism” and discriminate against Russian-speakers.
In Moscow, a senior foreign ministry official with responsibility for human rights issues, Konstantin Dolgov, said on Twitter that the arrest in Kharkiv of people he described as “neo-fascist militants” must be followed by wider action to “neutralise and punish rampant extremists”.
Western powers, preparing economic sanctions against Russia over Crimea, largely dismiss Russia’s characterisation of the new authorities in Kiev as the successors of Nazi-allied Ukrainian forces which fought the Red Army in World War Two.
The Russian foreign ministry responded to the death of a demonstrator in Donetsk on Thursday evening by warning that Moscow had a right to protect its compatriots in Ukraine - though the dead man in that city was identified by officials as an activist of a right-wing Ukrainian nationalist party.
Russian forces have been conducting large-scale exercises close to Ukraine‘s eastern frontier but Moscow’s foreign minister said yesterday it had no plans to invade.
Authorities in Kharkiv banned political gatherings that were planned in the city over the weekend. In Donetsk, hundreds of people rallied in Lenin Square, flying Russian flags and calling for a referendum in the region similar to that in Crimea.
Reuters
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