As Ukraine Talks Resume, Putin and Poroshenko Trade Barbs
By Neil MacFarquhar, NY Times, Sept. 1, 2014
MOSCOW--The presidents of Russia and Ukraine traded indirect barbs on Monday about the possibility of a peace settlement in the contested southeastern provinces of Ukraine, as mediators began a renewed effort to hammer out a deal.
President Vladimir V. Putin accused Kiev of seeking to avoid talks that could lead to some degree of autonomy for southeastern Ukraine, and again defended the region’s separatists, who are widely considered to be proxies fighting for Moscow’s interests.
“The current Kiev authorities don’t want to hold a substantive political dialogue with the east of their country,” Mr. Putin told the BBC during a visit to Siberia.
For the second time in three days, Mr. Putin endorsed the work of the militias fighting against the Ukrainian military. He said they were trying to push the military away from population centers in the east to prevent the shelling of residential districts. In addition, he accused European nations, among others, of ignoring the fact that Ukrainian government forces were shelling civilians.
Yet Mr. Putin also called the resumption of settlement talks in Minsk, Belarus, on Monday, a “very important process.”
A peace plan outlined by President Petro O. Poroshenko in discussions with Mr. Putin last week would start with a cease-fire and include the release of all detainees, the withdrawal of all Russian arms and soldiers and joint patrols along the border. The patrols would include peacekeepers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is participating in the Minsk talks.
Despite professing to want to work with Mr. Poroshenko, Mr. Putin adopted a much harder public stance against Ukraine beginning on Friday. On Sunday, he used an ambiguous reference to “statehood” for the southeast, intimating that the region might become independent, although his spokesman said the president meant autonomy within a unified Ukraine.
In Kiev on Monday, Mr. Poroshenko implicitly accused Russia of undertaking a direct assault on his country that caused a critical shift in the fighting in the southeast.
“Direct, unconcealed aggression has been launched against Ukraine from a neighboring country,” he said in a speech at the military academy in Kiev, according to a summary posted on the presidential website. “It radically changes the situation in the conflict area.” Government forces suffered major setbacks against the separatists as a result, he said.
The strategic southern city of Mariupol has been bracing for an attack by the separatists since they opened a new southern front last week, designed to relieve pressure on rebel holdouts in Donetsk and Luhansk.
The last attempt to establish a cease-fire failed, but the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said that such an agreement was the priority for the meeting in Minsk on Monday. “I expect that the talks scheduled for today will be, first of all, focused on the arrangement of an immediate, unconditional cease-fire,” he said in an address to students on Monday.
Andrei Purgin, a representative for the Russian-backed separatists, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that their main goal was to seek recognition of an independent state in eastern Ukraine. They would also be ready to discuss a cease-fire, at least a temporary one, and the exchange of prisoners, he said.
In Kiev, Col. Andriy Lysenko, the spokesman for the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, said on Sunday that an initial exchange of captives over the weekend, involving nine Russian commandos and 63 Ukrainian soldiers, was a step toward easing tensions before the talks.
Colonel Lysenko also confirmed on Monday that the first sea battle with the separatists had erupted on Sunday, with separatists firing artillery at a Ukrainian ship in the Azov Sea. One cutter was sunk, he said, but another cutter rescued the crew.
Russia has repeatedly denied deploying arms or troops into Ukraine, claiming that any soldiers who ended up there strayed over the border accidentally. It also denies arming the separatists and says it is merely defending the interests of the area’s substantial Russian-speaking population. A senior local commander has said that up to 4,000 Russian “volunteers” had fought alongside the separatists.
