Мы возвращаемся к событиям в Крыму. Где украинские моряки и пограничники, невзирая на колоссальное давление, остаются верны присяге. Наш корреспондент Роман Бочкала побывал в штабе украинских ВМС в Севастополе. И вот что он там увидел.
Севастополь, восемь утра, люди с российскими флагами у штаба военно-морских сил. А по ту сторону ограждения - возможно, самый судьбоносный разговор в истории украинских ВМС. Собрались все офицеры. Новоназначенный командующий Сергей Гайдук - сразу расставляет акценты.
Рядом с Гайдуком - его предшественник и вчерашний боевой товарищ, отстраненный от должности командующего ВМС - Денис Березовский.
Видео со встречи, которую никто не должен был видеть, нам передал один из военнослужащих. Березовский пытается склонить личный состав на свою сторону.
Березовский сулит сладкую жизнь и дает время подумать. Они подумали и ответили Березовскому - украинским гимном. На сторону не перешел ни один военный.
Не сумев взять верх пряником, Березовский вместе с группой казаков, прибывших с Кубани, попытался взять верх силой. Они выломали двери в командный пункт. Но дальше украинские военные не пустили нападавших - и выдворили за пределы военного городка.
11 утра, у входа в штаб, собралось еще больше народу. Скандируют: "Севастополь - это Россия". И рвут украинские паспорта.
Между толпой и входом в штаб - военные без опознавательных знаков. Свои действия не комментируют, но констатируют.
Фактически штаб заблокирован, но нам все же удалось попасть внутрь.
Все на позициях. Но обороняться особо нечем. Ведь перед тем, как перейти на сторону крымских властей, бывший командующий ВМС Березовский Отдал приказ вывезти все оружие. Украинские военные оказались практически с голыми руками. Их здесь человек триста.
Мы едем дальше по Севастополю. Российские военные перекрыли некоторые улицы. На дорогах машины спецназначения Черноморского флота.
Роман Бочкала, корреспондент:
- Еще одна напряженная ситуация сегодня возникла в Стрелецкой бухте. Здесь базируются украинские военные корабли. Вот там мы видим ракетный корвет Приднепровье. Сразу за ним - подводная лодка Запорожье. И за ней - корабль управления Донбасс, Ю500. А вот там дальше, на выходе из бухты, как видите, два буксировочных катера. И они стали так на якорь, что не позволить никому выйти из бухты.
Перекрыт и подъезд к кораблям с берега. Но украинские моряки обещают стоять до конца.
Анатолий Бургомистренко, капитан первого ранга:
- Весь особовий склад знаходиться в межах військової частини. Весь особовий склад готовий, і впевнено заявив про це - виконувати свій конституційний обов’язок по захисту народу України.
Роман Бочкала, корреспондент:
- Ну и сейчас одна из самых напряженных ситуаций возле этой воинской части. Она спец назначения. Ее наименование скрыто. Но скажем так это разведчики. Ситуация усложняется тем, что совсем рядом находится российская воинская часть. И вот границы между ними практически стерты. Мы видим, что возле КПП - сейчас подогнали два КрАЗа. Наши военнослужащие держат оборону, над частью развивается украинский флаг.
Российские коллеги дали им время до обеда. Некоторые военные, признаются, что до сих пор не верят в происходящее.
Чтобы было понятно насколько ситуация напряженная вот посмотрите - это украинская воинская часть. 50 метров - и видим ров. А за этим рвом люди в форме российской армии засели с пулеметами. И эти пулеметы направлены в украинских военнослужащих.
Роман Бочкала, корреспондент:
- Сейчас попробуем пообщаться с этими ребятам. Может быть, они не настолько агрессивно настроены, как нам показалось. Здравствуйте, ребята мы могил бы узнать. Кто вы и для чего вы здесь находитесь? Стой! Назад! Ребята, я безоружный. Я журналист.
К воротам украинской базы постоянно кто-то подъезжает. Вот мать одного из военнослужащих.
Елена, мать военнослужащего:
- Несколько дней уже не сплю. Переживаем. У меня сын на службе без конца.
А этот мужчина привез целый фургон песка. Мешки переносят в часть и делают из них укрепления. Здесь все хотят мира, но готовы к войне.
Роман Бочкала, Василий Меновщиков, Подробности, телеканал Интер, из Крыма.
2-го марта в СМИ было распространено видео, на котором предыдущий командующий ВМС Украины контр-адмирал Денис Березовский присягает на верность "жителям Автономной республики Крым и города Севастополя", а также правительству Крыма во главе с Сергеем Аксеновым.
Это правительство центральная власть признала нелегитимным. Как сообщила замсекретаря СНБО Виктория Сюмар, Березовский в это время уже был отстранен от исполнения обязанностей командующего с формулировкой "за неспособность управлять войсками в экстремальных условиях". Таким образом, Березовский, которого и.о. президента Александр Турчинов 1 марта назначил главкомом ВМС, пробыл на этой должности - всего один день. Сейчас в отношении него Генпрокуратура начала уголовное производство по статье "государственная измена".
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'What is this? Is this an invasion?' Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
A recording obtained by the Guardian exposes how Russian officers are leaning on Ukrainian marines to yield. One voice is identified as Igor Turchinyuk (IT), a Russian general. Others are unidentified Ukrainians (UU).
IT "The goal of me coming here … is to carry out the task given by the president of the Russian Federation." UU "What is this? Is it an invasion? Is it a forced peace operation?" IT "It was a request to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin to offer help and bring troops in. (noting he has family roots in Ukraine) I want to talk as one officer to other officers."
UU "Am I a terrorist? Are we causing a threat to the Black Sea fleet of Russia?" IT "We have an order, which we are carrying out."
UU "We have always looked at Russia like an older brother. Do you not think your current behaviour will ruin not only our country but yours?"
IT "The international community trusted Russia to hold the Olympic Games. Not every country in the world is trusted with something like that."
At one point there is a request for anyone among the three dozen officers in the room who wants to follow the order to stand up, and from the subsequent dialogue it is apparent that nobody did.
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В Альянсе считают, что действия России в Украине и вокруг нее могут представлять угрозу соседним странам, которые являются членами организации
По требованию Польши во вторник, 4 марта, состоится чрезвычайное заседание Североатлантического совета в связи с угрозой безопасности и стабильности Евроатлантическому региону, которую несет военная агрессия России в Крыму.
Эту информацию подтвердили в штаб-квартире НАТО, сообщает Укринформ.
"В соответствии со ст. 4 Вашингтонского соглашения (о НАТО, - ред.) генеральный секретарь по требованию Польши объявил о созыве Североатлантического совета на уровне послов 28 стран-членов. По этой статье, союзник может требовать проведения консультаций, если, по его мнению, существует угроза территориальной целостности, политической независимости и безопасности. Усматривается, что события в Украине и вокруг нее могут представлять угрозу соседним странам, которые являются членами Альянса, и иметь прямые последствия для безопасности и стабильности в Евроатлантическом регионе", - заявили в Альянсе.
Напомним, ранее глава миссии Украины при НАТО Игорь Долгов заявил, что Украина ожидает от Альянса не только политических мер в ответ на военную агрессию со стороны России.
Ранее по итогам экстренного заседания в НАТО подтвердили готовность помогать Украине как важному партнеру Альянса.
Согласно последней информации в Севастополе - в Стрелецкой бухте - в очень сложном положении оказались укранские военные корабли - "Хмельницкий", "Славутич" и "Тернополь". Выход в море перекрыт. На месте работает наш корреспондент Михаил Колесников.
- Михаил, так что же сейчас происходит в Стрелецкой бухте?
- Спасибо. Это был Михиал Колесников из Стрелецкой бухты в Севастополе.
Минобороны: Россия незаконно увеличила численность своих войск в Украине до 16 тыс <a href="http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5002/80_main.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5002/80_main.jpg</a> <a href="http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5002/80_tn.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5002/80_tn.jpg</a> 2014-03-03T22:22:19+02:00Политика Порядка 5,5 тыс. войск спецназначения передислоцированы из Российской Федерации на территорию Украины
Россия незаконно ввела в Украину более 5 тысяч военных, фото AFP
На территории Украины в настоящее время находится около 16 тыс. российских военнослужащих, заявил и.о. министра обороны Украины Игорь Тенюх.
"Порядка 5,5 тыс. войск спецназначения передислоцированы из Российской Федерации на территорию Украины. За счет этого численность российских военных увеличена до 16 тыс.", - сказал он в эфире телеканала "Интер" в понедельник вечером.
По словам И.Тенюха, на данный момент общее количество российских военнослужащих, которые прибыли в Украину в период обострения ситуации в Крыму, и тех, которые были в составе Черноморского флота до этого, составляет 16 тыс. человек.
И.о. министра обороны подчеркнул, что таким увеличением количества военных на территории Украины ЧФ РФ грубо нарушает действующие соглашения между странами, касающиеся базирования флота в Крыму.
В свою очередь, в Министерстве иностранных дел не исключают, что Россия может осуществить вторжение на украинскую территорию через сухопутный участок границы.
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Российские военнослужащие блокируют украинские военные корабли - Турчинов
Богомолец: Солдаты в Крыму нуждаются в поддержке и помощи
В МИД не исключают, что Россия планирует вторжение не только в Крым
В Крыму поднимают триколоры, набирают добровольцев и держат солдат в блокаде
Куницын: Ситуация в Крыму - очень тяжелая
Российские военнослужащие блокируют украинские военные корабли - Турчинов
Богомолец: Солдаты в Крыму нуждаются в поддержке и помощи
В МИД не исключают, что Россия планирует вторжение не только в Крым
В Крыму поднимают триколоры, набирают добровольцев и держат солдат в блокаде
Вы сейчас просматриваете новость "Минобороны: Россия незаконно увеличила численность своих войск в Украине до 16 тыс". Другие Новости политики смотрите в блоке "Последние новости"
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Western leaders from President Barack Obama to Chancellor Angela Merkel are telling Russia not to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty. Vladimir Putin’s response as he prepares for military conflict: What about ours?
Putin has been warning the U.S. and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization states for at least six years not to impede Russian interests in Ukraine, particularly in Crimea, where the Black Sea Fleet has been based since its founding by Catherine the Great in 1783 after the Ottoman Empire ceded the peninsula.
Putin told a closed NATO summit in Romania in 2008 that the military alliance was threatening Ukraine’s very existence by courting it as a member, according to a secret cable published by Wikileaks. Putin said Ukraine’s borders were “sewn together” after World War II and its claims to Crimea, which belonged to Russia until Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine in 1954, are legally dubious, Kurt Volker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO at the time, said in the cable.
Four months later, Putin demonstrated his willingness to back up words with actions by sending Russian troops to war against Georgia, another former Soviet state, over two Russian-speaking regions seeking independence.
Related:
Now, in Putin’s eyes, it’s the U.S. and the European Union who are pushing Ukraine to the brink of armed conflict by supporting the overthrow of Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych. Elected four years ago, Yanukovych was deposed by lawmakers on Feb. 22 after clashes with protesters in Kiev left at least 82 people dead, the worst violence the country has witnessed since World War II. Russia’s Foreign Ministry called it a “coup” by “fascists” carried out at Russia’s expense.
Russian Language
What pushed Putin to ask Russia’s parliament for approval to use troops in Ukraine was a decision, unnoticed by much of the western media, made by Ukraine’s parliament the next day, according toSergei Markov, a Kremlin adviser who’s now the director of the Institute for Political Studies in the Russian capital. That’s when lawmakers voted to overturn legislation making Russian an official language.
Even though acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said he’d veto the change, the move created “major fears” in the mainly Russian-speaking eastern part of the country, Markov said by phone. In Ukraine, “the West is seeking to create an anti-Russia,” Markov said. “Putin doesn’t want to wait and see what happens, so he may engage in a small war now to protect Russia’s interests and avoid a big war in the future.”
‘Russian Chauvinism’
In the wake of the Orange Revolution, which prevented Yanukovych from coming to power after rigged elections in 2004, pro-Russian forces, “with funding and direction from Moscow,” embarked upon a multiyear effort to stoke communal tensions in Crimea and “prevent Ukraine’s movement west into institutions like NATO and the EU,” according to another leaked cable from the U.S. State Department.
“They have done so by cynically fanning ethnic Russian chauvinism towards Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians, through manipulation of issues like the status of the Russian language, NATO, and an alleged Tatar threat to ‘Slavs,’” Sheila Gwaltney, then the No. 2 official at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, said in the 2006 cable.
Gwaltney is now the top U.S. official in Moscow, after the departure of Ambassador Michael McFaullast month. The U.S. Embassy’s press service in Moscow had no immediate comment when contacted by phone today.
Airports Seized
Ukraine mobilized its army reserves yesterday and called for foreign observers in Crimea after Russian-speaking forces seized control of government buildings and airports. Russians comprise 59 percent of Crimea’s population of about 2 million, with 24 percent Ukrainian and 12 percent Tatar, 2001 census data show. Russians make up 17 percent of Ukraine’s total population of 45 million.
Russian-speaking gunmen arrived outside Ukraine’s infantry base in Privolnoye in Crimea yesterday, continuing a pattern of intimidation around key facilities that started last week. Before Yanukovych’s ouster, Russia had about 15,000 sailors and soldiers stationed permanently at bases that support the Black Sea Fleet in and around Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea.
Ukraine’s defense minister said Russia sent 6,000 more soldiers into Crimea within a 24-hour period over the weekend and that number is increasing “every hour” according to Yuriy Sergeyev, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations. The new government in Kiev said efforts to speak with Russia’s Foreign Ministry were ignored.
Olympic Gold
Russian fighter jets violated Ukrainian airspace and more ships arrived, border guards and the Defense Ministry said today. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is traveling to Kiev after discussing sanctions against Russia with EU officials.
While Putin said over the weekend that Russia may take action if it sees unrest in other Russian-speaking regions in eastern Ukraine, the president hasn’t made that decision yet, his spokesman,Dmitry Peskov, said by phone.
The uprising coincided with the end of one of Putin’s greatest triumphs -- the Sochi Winter Olympics, where Russian athletes regained the glory of their Soviet predecessors by topping the medals table.
That success helped lift the former KGB colonel’s public approval rating to 67.7 percent on Feb. 23, a 7 percentage point increase from the previous month and the highest since May 2012, when he was inaugurated for a third time, according to a poll by the state-run All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion, known as VTsIOM. With the term extended to six years from four, Putin, first elected in 2000, may stay in power until 2024 if he runs and wins again in 2018.
Arrests, Propaganda
Putin, 61, who once described the breakup of the Soviet Union as the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, was named “Person of the Year” in December by the Times of London for helping avert U.S. strikes against Syria. That effort “propelled the president back into the front ranks of effective world statesmen,” the Times said.
Putin is taking no chances with his legacy at home, where last week seven people were sentenced to as long as four years in prison for violence during a 2012 rally against him. His most vocal opponent,Alexey Navalny, was confined to his home and barred from using the Internet or speaking to the public for two months. Navalny was one of 600 protesters detained at two anti-Putin rallies on Feb. 24.
Russian state television stations, the most popular in the country, are in propaganda overdrive as the Kremlin seeks to rally the population behind Putin’s toughening stance on Ukraine, according to Katri Pynnoniemi, an analyst at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki.
‘Hero-City’
“Sevastopol is a hero-city in Russia’s national consciousness and official Russian media is now exploiting that,” Pynnoniemi said by e-mail. “This is a legacy from Russia’s military victory over the Nazis and it’s being exploited in the Russian official parlance to de-legitimize Ukraine’s newly elected government.”
Sevastopol, a symbol of Russian heroism not unlike the Alamo for Americans, has been under siege by western forces before -- first by the British and the French during the Crimean War in the 1850s and then by Nazi forces in 1941-1942.
The road to revolution in Ukraine, which has endured three recessions since 2008, started in Kiev in November, when Yanukovych pulled out of a free-trade deal with the EU, opting instead for $15 billion of Russian aid and cheaper gas. The ousted leader, who is now in Russia, also pursued closer ties with Putin’s customs union with Kazakhstan and Belarus.
G-8 Preparations
Ukraine depends on Russia for 60 percent of its gas and is the main transit route for OAO Gazprom’s shipments to Europe, where the state-run company has a quarter of the market. Russia halted gas flows to Ukraine in 2006 and 2009 -- before Yanukovych’s presidency -- amid disputes over prices and volumes, leading to shortages throughout Europe.
The U.S., the U.K. and Canada responded to Russia’s move on Crimea by suspending preparations due to take place in Russia this week for a meeting of the Group of Eight industrial nations in June in Sochi, the Black Sea resort that hosted the Winter Olympics. The U.S. called on Russia to withdraw its forces to bases in Crimea, refrain from interfering elsewhere in Ukraine and conduct “direct engagement” with the new government. The U.K. said it won’t send government ministers to watch the Paralympics.
None of the rhetoric or action announced to date is likely to impress Putin, Amanda Paul, an analyst at the European Policy Center in Brussels, said in an interview.
“President Putin doesn’t really care what the rest of the world thinks about his foreign policy,” Paul said by phone. “Ukraine is a neighbor country that Russia views as indivisible from itself. Russia is prepared to go to any length to stop Ukraine’s deeper integration with Europe.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Brad Cook in St. Petersburg at bcook7@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Hellmuth Tromm at htromm@bloomberg.net
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Diplomatic Sparring
WATCH: Thousands protest Russian actions in Ukraine's Sumy.
EU Sanctions
WATCH: Troops, Believed To Be Russian, Surround Ukrainian Base In Crimea
ussian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin has said that Ukraine's ousted President Viktor Yanukovych sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin requesting that he use the Russian military to restore law and order in his country.
Churkin was speaking at an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting on Ukraine, which Russia called for to set out in greater detail its policy after being threatened by U.S. and EU sanctions.
Churkin held up a copy of the letter for council members to see.
Speaking from the White House earlier, U.S. President Barack Obama said Russia is "on the wrong side of history" on Ukraine and that Russian actions violate international law.
Obama said Russia's decision to deploy troops in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula would prove a "costly proposition for Moscow" and added the situation in Crimea was "deeply troubling."
He urged Putin to allow international monitors to mediate a deal that would be acceptable to Ukraine's people.
Obama also called on the U.S. Congress to provide an assistance package to the Ukrainian people quickly.
Meanwhile, Russia's Black Sea fleet has denied it plans to launch an assault on Ukrainian military units unless they surrender by dawn on March 4.
Interfax quoted a Black Sea Fleet spokesman as saying claims of an ultimatum by Ukraine's military were "utter nonsense."
Earlier, it was reported that Ukraine's Defense Ministry said that the commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet Aleksandr Vitko had given Ukrainian military forces stationed in Crimea until 0500 local time on March 4 to surrender or face attack.
The state of Ukraine's armed forces on the Crimean peninsula is unclear.
The interim government in Kyiv appointed Denis Berezovsky to be commander of the Navy but Berezovsky announced on March 2 he was supporting the pro-Russian self-declared Crimean government.
LIVE BLOG: Ukraine In Crisis
Berezovsky was quickly sacked and as of March 3 naval officers were reportedly backing Kyiv's new selection for commander Serhiy Haiduk.
Ukraine's acting President Oleksander Turchinov said Russia's military presence was growing in Crimea and urged Moscow to halt what it called aggression and piracy.
Turchinov said the situation was difficult in the south and east of the country, where there are many Russian speakers, but that the Ukrainian authorities had matters there under control.
He told a news briefing that Russia's Black Sea Fleet had trapped Ukrainian navy vessels in the bay of Sevastopol, where the Russian fleet has a base
Diplomatic Sparring
Russia and Western nations have exchanged sharp criticisms over the situation in Ukraine.
The top U.S. diplomat in Europe says that "advance teams" from the OSCE will start deploying in Ukraine late on March 3, but Russian objections mean the pan-European rights body has yet to agree on a full-scale mission.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, talking in Vienna on the sidelines of a special meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, called on Russia to make "the right choice."
The State Department said Secretary of State John Kerry is due to leave Washington later on March 3 to travel to Kyiv.
WATCH: Thousands protest Russian actions in Ukraine's Sumy.
EU Sanctions
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton says European Union member states have agreed to consider targeted sanctions against Russia if Moscow does not "deescalate" the threat of military action against Ukraine.
Ashton, speaking after an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers on March 3 in Brussels, said the EU strongly condemned what she called "clear violation" of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity by Russia.
She called on Russia to withdraw its troops back to bases, and urged Moscow to agree to Ukraine's request for consultations.
Ashton said she would hold talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on March 4 in Madrid, before traveling to Kyiv on March 5.
WATCH: Troops, Believed To Be Russian, Surround Ukrainian Base In Crimea
With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters
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A Ukrainian soldier stands inside a Ukrainian military base in Crimea as unidentified soldiers, assumed to be Russian, encircle the base. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty
Ordinary Russians are sharply divided over Vladimir Putin's military manoeuvres in Crimea in recent days, with competing rallies in Moscow and furious arguments on social media.
But experts say most people will probably support the government line, since a majority views Crimea as part of Russia – and the transfer of power in Ukraine as a western-backed coup.
Denis Volkov, of the independent polling organisation Levada Centre, said that although in the past most Russians opposed military intervention in other countries, the fact that no open conflict had broken out in Crimea thus far made the Russian move easier to justify.
"Many see Putin as the one who returned some of Russia's strengths [after the Soviet breakup], and I think he will use this idea of the loss of the Soviet Union to drum up support with Crimea," Volkov said.
While Angela Merkel said at the weekend that Putin was not in touch with reality, many Russians would disagree. The latest Levada poll conducted from 21-25 February found that most Russians regard the new government in Kiev negatively: 43% called the political upheaval in Ukraine a "violent coup" and 23% called it a civil war.
Moreover, 45% blamed western influence for bringing people on to the streets of Kiev, where the "Euromaidan" protests that were originally in favour of further European integration later turned into a general condemnation of the corrupt regime.
A September poll by the state-run survey centre VTsIOM found that 56% of Russians considered Crimea, which Russia seized from the Tatars in the 18th century, to be a part of Russia. The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave the territory to Ukraine in 1954, but ethnic Russians still make up 59% of Crimea's population of 2 million, while 12% are Tatars, according to 2001 census data.
An informal Facebook poll this weekend asking whether the Russian military should be intervening in Crimea drew heated arguments from both sides and descended into debaters accusing each other of illiteracy and treason.
"If soldiers hadn't showed up in Crimea, things could have escalated into Russian-Tatar pogroms," Alexander Zheleznyak, a Moscow-based travel journalist who grew up in the Crimea, told the Guardian.
"No matter what you think of Putin, right now he's taken the responsibility on himself and stopped senseless beatings in Crimea," Zheleznyak said, referring to reports that two people died in clashes between rival pro-Russian and Tatar activists outside the Crimean parliament last week.
Masha Lipman, of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, said that for most Russians, the perception that "anti-Russian nationalists and fascists took power leads to the feeling that we need to save and protect our own."
Few people were thinking of the geopolitical implications as Putin struggles against the integration of Ukraine, a key ally, with the European Union and the possible eastwards expansion of Nato, she said.
"We assume that Putin wants revenge for this, that he's not ready to make peace with this move, and achieving superiority is extremely important for him," she said.
Hundreds gathered on Sunday in central Moscow under the slogan "No to war!" but were overshadowed by a larger protest to support "the brother people of Ukraine", where some attendees were accused of being paid to participate. Police broke up the peace rally and detained 361 people
"We need to protect people from fascism, from evil. We support Putin," Dmitry Enteo, a Russian Orthodox activist, told people at the pro-government rally, the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported.
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William Hague, right, speaks during a meeting with the Ukrainian interim prime minister in Kiev (AFP)
"It's very clear from today's discussions that the situation on the ground in Ukraine is now very serious indeed, with other reports coming through of fears of intervention by Russia in eastern Ukraine. We obviously hope very much that those reports prove to be unfounded," he said.
"There is now a very narrow window of opportunity available for Russia to de-escalate the situation."
EU foreign ministers "strongly" condemned a "clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity by acts of aggression by Russian armed forces"and held out the threat of future sanctions by the end of the week.
"The EU calls on Russia to immediately withdraw its armed forces to the areas of their permanent stationing," said a statement.
"The EU and those member states who are participants of G8, have decided for the time being to suspend their participation in activities associated with the preparations for the G8 Summit in Sochi in June.
"In the absence of de-escalating steps by Russia, the EU shall decide about consequences for bilateral relations between the EU and Russia and will consider further targeted measures."
Without a return to barracks for Russia's forces, an emergency meeting of EU leaders on Thursday morning will suspend talks to ease visa requirements for Russians and could agree sanctions, including an arms embargo or asset freezes.
The ultimatum and 48-hour dealine will be conveyed to Russia by Baroness Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, during talks in Madrid on Tuesday with Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister.
Ban Ki-moon, right, speaks with Sergei Lavrov during a meeting in Geneva (AFP)
"Those who try to interpret the situation as a type of aggression and threaten sanctions and boycotts, are the same who consistently have encouraged Ukraine refuse dialogue and have ultimately polarised Ukrainian society," said Mr Lavrov.
EU nations once under Soviet occupation, such as Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Czech Republic, went into the talks demanding support for US proposals for sanctions against Russia.
Germany, Italy and a group of other countries with close economic ties with Russia, including a dependency on Russia gas supplies, took a softer line expressing EU divisions that are expected to emerge again later in the week.
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US president Barack Obama on Monday called Russia’s actions in Ukraine a violation of international law that place Russia on “the wrong side of history” as the State Department prepared to draw up sanctions against Moscow.
Obama said he expected to work with Congress on a package of economic assistance to Ukraine and warned Russia of worldwide isolation if it persisted with its aggression.
“The strong condemnation that Russian has received around the world indicates the degree to which Russia is on the wrong side of history,” he said in brief remarks to reporters during a meeting with the Israeli prime minister in the Oval Office.
“There are two paths that Russia can take at this point. Actions on the ground in Crimea are deeply troubling but what is also true is that over time, this will be a costly proposition for Russia. Now is the time to consider whether they can further their interests with diplomacy as opposed to force.”
He added that if Russia continues on present path, the US will take a “series of steps – economic, diplomatic – that will isolate Russia.”
His comments came hours after state department officials said it was “highly likely” that the US would impose sanctions against Moscow unless Russia changes course and withdraws its troops from Crimea.
The White House was reviewing its entire portfolio of trade and co-operation with Russia, preparing a raft of possible US sanctions targeting senior government and military officials implicated in the invasion of the Ukrainian peninsula.
“At this point we’re not just considering sanctions, given the action Russia is taking,” said Jen Psaki, the State Department’s press secretary. “It is likely that we will put those in place and we are preparing that right now.”
Officials from the US Treasury and State Department were understood to be drafting possible visa travel bans and asset freezes that would be presented to US president Barack Obama in the coming hours. “We are likely moving down that path as things proceed,” Psaki said. “We are far more forward on this than we were even yesterday.”
Obama is expected to use his his executive authority to bypass the US Congress to quickly target senior Russian officials, as doubts emerged over the ability of the Washington to rally support from Europe.
“The most important thing is for us – the United States – to make sure that we don’t go off without the European community,” the majority leader in the Senate, Democrat Harry Reid, told Politico. “We have to work with them. Their interests are really paramount if we are going to do sanctions of some kind. We have to have them on board with us.”
The secretary of state, John Kerry, was preparing to fly to Kiev as a gesture of support for Ukraine’s new government. He was faced with persuading European allies dependent on their economic relationship with Russia to go further than introducing travel restrictions.
Some £34bn was wiped off the value of companies on the Moscow stock exchange on Monday after Russia suffered one of the biggest falls in its stock market in recent history.
The market crash, which hurt the energy industry hardest, came as Russian troops bedded into the Crimean peninsula and adopted an increasingly bellicose stance. According to one report, the commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Alexander Vitko, ordered Ukrainian military forces in Crimea to surrender by 3pm GMT or face attack, though this was subsequently denied by authorities in Moscow.
Psaki said that if true, the report would “constitute a dangerous escalation of the situation that we would hold the Russians directly responsible for”.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has so far ignored US demands for him to pull back forces and he appears unperturbed by the prospect of being politically ostracised by western nations. With military action by the US or its allies out of the question, Washington has concluded that its most effective leverage will be economic.
Privately, one US official said the chances of Russian withdrawal from Crimea are slim. However the Obama administration hopes that a concerted multilateral set of sanctions could change the calculus for Putin, and prevent any further incursion into Ukrainian territory.
Another official confirmed the US was specifically looking at “the vulnerability of Russian banks” with ties to London and Geneva.
Diplomats and foreign policy analysts questioned whether EU states, particularly Germany, would countenance the kinds of far-ranging economic punishment, such as Iran-style trade embargoes or international banking restrictions, that would have the greatest impact on Russia. Part of the problem is that any cessation to trade, particularly in the energy sector, could be as acutely felt in European capitals as Moscow.
One European diplomat told the Guardian: “I expect we will not be 100% in line with the suggestions made by the US so far in relation to sanctions. In the EU there are all sorts of different views about how the problem should be tackled. We might be of the opinion that in order to keep talks with Russian open, we should not yet resort to sanctions at such an early stage.”
The source added that the consequences of imposing sanctions are less severe for the US than in the EU, which is significantly more reliant upon Russian trade and gas exports. Japan, a key member of the G8 group of western nations, is also believed to be anxious about punitive measures that could harm the wider global economy.
Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said that with Europe reluctant to endorse a broad sanctions regime, the kinds of measures being contemplated by the White House were unlikely to be more than an “irritation” to Putin.
“The trade the US has with Russia is pretty minimal,” he said. “And Europe is highly unlikely to restrict the trade that matters – in energy. They can cause Russia a little economic pain but not much.”
In Brussels, EU foreign ministers announced the suspension of visa negotiations with Russia, believed to relate to some 80,000 service passport holders Moscow had wanted to be given free movement in Europe.
Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, was drawing up plans for a set of EU sanctions against Russia that would be agreed at an emergency meeting before the end of the week. However most analysts did not believe these would include the kinds of muscular trade embargoes or restrictions to energy purchases that would be needed to tip Russia into a recession.
Nicholas Burns, who was undersecretary of state under George W Bush when Russia intervened militarily in Georgia in 2008, said it was “disconcerting to see Germany sending a signal of lacking resolve”.
“Obviously Putin has won the Crimea through brute force. But if you measure this in years - which you really have to in a struggle like this - then the advantage doesn’t go to Putin,” Burns, also a former US ambassador to Nato, told the Guardian.
“We shouldn’t accept what he’s done, and we should continue to argue against it, but understanding the Russians and knowing what Putin is like, the chances are high Putin will never leave Crimea.”
Fiona Hill, a long-time expert on eastern Europe who directs the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution thinktank, said Putin had been preparing for this moment for years, and effectively inoculated the Russian economy from western sanctions.
She said the Russian president has quietly but systematically adapted the Russian economy over the last decade to make it less susceptible to outside pressure; divesting assets abroad and relocating key economic interests closer to Moscow.
“Putin has successfully spent years reducing Russia’s vulnerabilities to western pressure and leverage,” she said. “At the same time, he has increased Russian leverage abroad, with investments in Europe and the US. And he has pretty much guaranteed we won’t introduce major sanctions because of the harm it will cause to all of our companies now doing business with Russia.”
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Россия сосредотачивает войска у сухопутных границ Украины - данные действия могут свидетельствовать о подготовке российской стороны к вторжению. Об этом пишет ZN.UA.
В Государственной пограничной службе Украины, наблюдается скопление военной техники на территории Российской Федерации вблизи государственной границы в пределах Харьковской, Луганской и Донецкой областей.
Так, напротив участка Харьковского пограничного отряда:
- на железнодорожную станцию Лесники Воронежской обл. РФ прибыло 9 эшелонов военной техники (БТР, БМП), которые разгрузились на территории в/ч 63796 (артиллерийские составы, которые расположены в районе населенного пункта Лиски);
- на стыке отделов "Плетеневка" - "Октябрьское" на направлении Бочково-Ленинское на расстоянии 1,5 - вглубь России от границы находится 5 БТР, 2 автомобиля Урал и полевая кухня. Приграничные наряды РФ ограничивают движение местных жителей в этом направлении.
Напротив участка Донецкого пограничного отряда:
- отдел пограничной службы ФСБ РФ "Весело-Вознесеновка" поднят по команде "Сбор";
- в пункте пропуска "Весело-Вознесеновка - Новоазовск" на въезд в Украину прекращено движение автотранспорта российской регистрации.
Напротив участка Луганского пограничного отряда:
- местные жители на направлении Миллерово - Дяково в 3- от государственной границы наблюдает скопление военной техники;
- в районе стыка Луганской и Донецкой областей в от государственной границы наблюдается скопление военной техники.
В то же время, по информации Генерального консульства Украины в Ростове-на-Дону, губернатор Ростовской области РФ отдал распоряжение относительно развертывания в Куйбышевском районе лагерей (мест) для приема беженцев из Украины.
Данные действия представителей государственной власти РФ могут свидетельствовать о подготовке российской стороны к возможному вторжению на территорию Украины через сухопутную границу, резюмирует издание.
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Куницын: Ситуация в Крыму - очень тяжелая <a href="http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5002/76_main.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5002/76_main.jpg</a> <a href="http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5002/76_tn.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5002/76_tn.jpg</a> 2014-03-03T21:41:40+02:00Политика Единственная структура, которая на сегодняшний день является государственной – это армия
Сергей Куницын
В прямом эфире специального выпуска ток-шоу «Говорить Україна» на телеканале «Украина» новоназначенный представитель президента в Крыму Сергей Куницын рассказал о текущем положении дел в Крыму.
«На самом деле, ситуация очень серьезная. Слава Богу, это еще не война, но я могу сказать, что сам я нахожусь практически на нелегальном положении. У Украины в Крыму остались только вооруженные силы, все остальные органы потеряны. Если говорить об органах государственной власти, то практически мы потеряли МВД, СБУ, управление пограничными войсками: везде в органах сидят люди. Например, СБУ… Офицеры написали рапорта и покинули помещение. На их места приходят либо непонятные люди, либо те, кто нас предал», - заявил Сергей Куницын.
Однако, по словам Сергея Куницына, украинцы должны гордиться военнослужащими, которые, несмотря на тяжелую ситуацию, защищают родину:
«Единственная структура, которая на сегодняшний день является государственной – это армия. Маленькие гарнизоны они взяли, но ни один крупный гарнизон не сдался. По большому счету, это оккупация. Все наши части блокированы. Мы должны снять шляпу перед этими людьми, потому что они защищают нашу родину!», - сказал Сергей Куницын.
Вы сейчас просматриваете новость "Куницын: Ситуация в Крыму - очень тяжелая". ДругиеНовости политики смотрите в блоке "Последние новости"
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В Крыму российские военнослужащие заблокировали большую часть воинских частей Вооруженных Сил Украины, заявил и.о. министра обороны Игорь Тенюх.
"В принципе, сейчас заблокирована большая часть воинских частей на Крымском полуострове", - сказал Тенюх в эфире телеканала "Интер" в понедельник вечером.
По его словам, основной целью таких действий российской стороны является попытка спровоцировать украинских военнослужащих, чтобы они "поддались этой провокации, и тогда уже давно спланированная операция, которая планировалась не один год, вступила в силу".
При этом Тенюх в качестве аналогии напомнил о событиях в Грузии в августе 2008 года: "Вы все помните тот вариант, который был спровоцирован РФ".
"В принципе, сейчас заблокирована большая часть воинских частей на Крымском полуострове", - сказал Тенюх в эфире телеканала "Интер" в понедельник вечером.
По его словам, основной целью таких действий российской стороны является попытка спровоцировать украинских военнослужащих, чтобы они "поддались этой провокации, и тогда уже давно спланированная операция, которая планировалась не один год, вступила в силу".
При этом Тенюх в качестве аналогии напомнил о событиях в Грузии в августе 2008 года: "Вы все помните тот вариант, который был спровоцирован РФ".
Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
KIEV, Ukraine — The besieged new government of Ukraine accused Russian forces of a major escalation in pressure over control of the Crimea on Monday night, saying the Russians had deployed 16,000 troops in the region over the past week and had demanded that Ukrainian forces there surrender within hours or face armed assault.
Russia denied it had issued any ultimatum but was clearly moving to strengthen its grip on Crimea, brushing aside new admonitions from President Obama and European leaders of economic punishment and isolation.
At the United Nations, where the Security Council met for the third time in emergency session since Friday, the Ukraine ambassador, Yuriy Sergeyev, distributed a 3-page letter asserting the Russians had sent 16,000 troops into the Crimean peninsula since Feb. 24. The troops, Mr. Sergeyev wrote, had moved to “seize, block and control crucial governmental and military objects of Ukraine in Crimea.”
The Interfax-Ukrainian news agency quoted an unidentified Ukrainian Defense Ministry official as saying Russia’s Black Sea Fleet commander had set a deadline of 5 a.m. Tuesday — 10 p.m. Monday Eastern time — for Ukrainian forces stationed in Crimea to lay down their weapons. Russia’s Interfax news agency said the Black Sea Fleet had no such plans.
The conflicting reports only further served to worsen tensions in the Ukraine crisis, which has grown drastically in scope within the past few weeks to a new confrontation between Russia and the West reminiscent of low points in the Cold War.
Mr. Obama, who spent much of the weekend working on the crisis, issued a new warning on the consequences to the Kremlin. “What we are also indicating to the Russians is that if, in fact, they continue on the current trajectory that they’re on, that we are examining a whole series of steps – economic, diplomatic – that will isolate Russia and will have a negative impact on Russia’s economy and its status in the world,” he said.
European Union foreign ministers, condemning Russia’s actions, called on Moscow to return its troops to their bases. European Union heads of government will meet in an emergency summit meeting on Thursday to discuss further steps. The foreign ministers threatened to freeze visa liberalization and economic cooperation talks with Russia and boycott a Group of 8 summit in Sochi if Moscow did not take steps to “de-escalate” the situation by the Thursday summit. Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, explained: “The E.U. is saying that it will revise its relations with Russia if there is no de-escalation.”
NATO also called its second emergency meeting on Ukraine in response to a request from Poland under Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which concerns threats to a member state’s security and independence.
Visiting the new government in Kiev, British Foreign Secretary William Hague urged Russia to pull back its forces in Crimea or face “significant costs,” echoing comments made by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who was due here on Tuesday.
Mr. Hague also emphasized diplomacy. “The world cannot just allow this to happen,” he told the BBC. “The world cannot say it’s O.K. in effect to violate the sovereignty of another nation in this way.”
The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, responded that Russia was only protecting its interests and those of Russian citizens in Ukraine. In a Geneva speech, Mr. Lavrov broke from his text to say: “Those who try to interpret the situation as an act of aggression, threaten us with sanctions and boycotts, are the same partners who have been consistently and vigorously encouraging the political powers close to them to declare ultimatums and renounce dialogue, to ignore the concerns of the south and east of Ukraine, and consequently to the polarization of the Ukrainian society.”
The use of Russian troops is necessary “until the normalization of the political situation” in Ukraine, Mr. Lavrov said at an opening of a monthlong session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. “We are talking here about protection of our citizens and compatriots, about protection of the most fundamental of the human rights — the right to live, and nothing more.” But he did not specify what threats Russian citizens faced from Ukraine.
Later at the United Nations Security Council meeting in New York, requested by Russia’s ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, he told fellow members Russia had acted to thwart what he called threats by “ultranationalists” including anti-Semites against Russians and Russian speakers inside Ukraine, assertions that echoed Mr. Lavrov’s comments.
Mr. Churkin also asserted that Russian troops had been requested by Viktor F. Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president who fled on Feb. 22 after an uprising by Ukrainians deeply angered over Mr. Yanukovych's move to deepen relations with Russia. The Kremlin still regards Mr. Yanukovych as Ukraine’s legitimate leader and has not recognized the interim authorities that replaced him.
The Security Council meeting quickly became a venue for East-West diplomatic jibes and rejoinders. The British ambassador, Sir Mark Lyall-Grant, called Russia’s justification “bogus,” while the envoy from Lithuania, Raimonda Murmukaite, told the Council it “resurrects the memory of darkest pages of the 20th century.”
A series of maps that help explain the crisis in Ukraine.
The United States ambassador, Samantha Power, said after Mr. Churkin had spoken: “Listening to the representative of Russia, one might think that Moscow had just become the rapid response arm of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.”
The council took no action, and it remained unclear what — if anything — it might agree to do, since Russia, a permanent member, has veto power.
With the new Kiev government confronted with the loss of Crimea and a worsening economic situation, a team from the International Monetary Fund was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday for a 10-day investigation of the true state of Ukraine’s finances. The government has said that it is prepared to take difficult economic reform measures if necessary to secure a stabilization loan from the fund.
Moscow suspended its offer of economic aid when Mr. Yanukovych was ousted more than a week ago.
Although Crimea was relatively calm on Monday, Russian forces tightened their grip on key military bases and other security facilities throughout the peninsula, including naval installations and outposts of the border police, and stepped up pressure on Ukrainian officials to declare their loyalty to pro-Russian authorities.
At the Azov-Black Sea regional headquarters of the border police in Simferopol, the Crimean regional capital, a half-dozen men in plainclothes, some wearing face-masks but carrying military radios, stood guard outside the front door, where the glass had been smashed out during a siege of the building on Sunday.
At least three large Russian troop carriers were parked outside the building. Although most identifying markers had been removed, one of the trucks bore a black Russian military license plate carried by vehicles attached to the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.
The men at the door refused to identify themselves and did not permit visitors to enter the building. Andrey Bazan, a spokesman for the border patrol, held a news conference on the sidewalk because he was barred from bringing a small group of journalists inside.
Mr. Bazan said that the border police continued to perform their duties, and insisted that nothing all that unusual had transpired, even though some men appeared to be removing uniforms and equipment from the building, including a television set.
“They don’t work here, but today they help, they control things,” Mr. Bazan said. Speaking in Russian, he insisted that he did not know who the men were that guarded the front door. “They speak the same language as I do,” Mr. Bazan said. “But I don"t know where they are from.”
He added, “I don’t consider this a strange situation. At the very least, there was no force. They didn’t beat anyone or mess anyone up.”
As Russia reportedly threatened to take over military installations in Crimea, Ukrainian soldiers prepared for a cold night with an uncertain end.
In Donetsk, however, in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Yanukovych’s native region, a large pro-Russian demonstration led to some violence. About 1,000 pro-Russian demonstrators occupied the first floor of the regional government building that has already been flying the Russian flag for several days. The protesters, waving Russian flags and shouting, “Putin, come!”, were unable to go higher because lifts were disabled and stairwell doors shut. They had entered through a side door after confronting police, who were guarding the front entrance.
The rally seemed the latest in a series in eastern cities that Kiev says are encouraged or even organized by Russia. Most people in the region are ethnic Ukrainians who speak Russian as their native language.
The Donetsk protest leader, Pavel Gubarev, demanded that the parliament in Kiev be declared illegitimate, a pro-Russian governor be accepted in Donetsk and all security forces be put under regional command, much as has happened already in Crimea.
In a statement Monday night, Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, said that officers in Crimea had high morale and would defend themselves if necessary. “Nobody will ever give up Crimea,” he said. He took no questions and did not mention reports of a Russian ultimatum, but said he had spoken Monday with the commanders of army and marine bases on the Crimean peninsula and with the captains of Ukrainian naval ships blockaded in the Sevastopol harbor. He thanked the officers for resisting what he called “provocations” to fight by Russian soldiers.
But he described in detail a conversation with the captain and first mate of the Ternopol, a corvette in Ukraine’s navy, indicating commanders had been threatened with attack. “A very dangerous situation emerged around the Ukrainian navy,” he said. “Russian servicemen have blockaded our naval ships in Sevastopol Bay, they have blocked the exits. Today, threats are coming, saying if the sailors do not surrender the ships and lay down their arms, they will attack our naval vessels.”
Of the conversation with the commanding officers and captain of the blockaded Ternopol, whom Mr. Turchynov identified only by his surname, Captain Kirilov, he said he was told they intended to fight, the same way as anti-Yanukovych protesters in central Kiev did battle last month.
“How could we not take their example?,” Mr. Turchynov quoted the captain as saying. “Will we give up our ship to pirates who constantly threaten us?'”
“The commanders and sailors are prepared to defend their ships, because they defend Ukraine, because the aggression against our state should be stopped,” Mr. Turchynov said.
The uncertainty hit the Russian stock market and the ruble hard on Monday morning. The Russian central bank raised its key lending rate 1.5 percentage points after the ruble fell 2.5 percent against the dollar at the opening of exchange trading on Monday, while the MICEX index of Moscow stocks sank 11 percent. Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, which supplies Europe through Ukraine, was down more than 13 percent in early trading.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s government worked to stem protests in the east, recruiting wealthy eastern businessmen to become provincial governors in an effort to dampen secessionist sentiment there.
In Kharkiv, the eastern city that is the country’s second-largest, a sprawling pro-Russian protest camp occupied the central square, and Russian flags were on display. Many said they would even prefer that Russian troops invade the city, just 20 miles from the border, instead of submitting to Kiev’s rule.
“I would welcome them with flowers,” said Aleksandr Sorokin, 55, a pensioner walking by a phalanx of riot police officers guarding the administration building in Kharkiv. “We do not want to spill blood, but we are willing to do so.”
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“Dude, I don’t need to play these stupid games. I know what you’re trying to do.” With that, Major Matthew Robert Bockholt hung up on me.
More than a month before, I had called U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with a series of basic questions: In how many countries were U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed in 2013? Are manpower levels set to expand to 72,000 in 2014? Is SOCOM still aiming for growth rates of 3%-5% per year? How many training exercises did the command carry out in 2013? Basic stuff.
And for more than a month, I waited for answers. I called. I left messages. I emailed. I waited some more. I started to get the feeling that Special Operations Command didn’t want me to know what its Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs and Delta Force commandos — the men who operate in the hottest of hotspots and most remote locales around the world — were doing.
Then, at the last moment, just before my filing deadline, Special Operations Command got back to me with an answer so incongruous, confusing, and contradictory that I was glad I had given up on SOCOM and tried to figure things out for myself.
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U.S. Special Operations Forces around the world, 2012-2013 (key below article) ©2014 TomDispatch ©Google
I started with a blank map that quickly turned into a global pincushion. It didn’t take long before every continent but Antarctica was bristling with markers indicating special operations forces’ missions, deployments, and interactions with foreign military forces in 2012-2013. With that, the true size and scope of the U.S. military’s secret military began to come into focus. It was, to say the least, vast.
A review of open source information reveals that in 2012 and 2013, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) were likely deployed to — or training, advising, or operating with the personnel of — more than 100 foreign countries. And that’s probably an undercount. In 2011, then-SOCOM spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch that Special Operations personnel were annually sent to 120 countries around the world. They were in, that is, about 60% of the nations on the planet. “We’re deployed in a number of locations,” was as specific as Bockholt would ever get when I talked to him in the waning days of 2013. And when SOCOM did finally get back to me with an eleventh hour answer, the number offered made almost no sense.
Despite the lack of official cooperation, an analysis by TomDispatch reveals SOCOM to be a command on the make with an already sprawling reach. As Special Operations Command chief Admiral William McRaven put it inSOCOM 2020, his blueprint for the future, it has ambitious aspirations to create “a Global SOF network of like-minded interagency allies and partners.” In other words, in that future now only six years off, it wants to be everywhere.
The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military
Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran (in which eight U.S. service members died), U.S. Special Operations Command was established in 1987. Made up of units from all the service branches, SOCOM is tasked with carrying out Washington’s most specialized and secret missions, including assassinations, counterterrorist raids, special reconnaissance, unconventional warfare, psychological operations, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.
In the post-9/11 era, the command has grown steadily. With about 33,000 personnel in 2001, it is reportedly on track to reach 72,000 in 2014. (About half this number are called, in the jargon of the trade, “badged operators” — SEALs, Rangers, Special Operations Aviators, Green Berets — while the rest are support personnel.) Funding for the command has also jumped exponentially as SOCOM’s baseline budget tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.9 billion between 2001 and 2013. If you add in supplemental funding, it had actually more than quadrupled to $10.4 billion.
Not surprisingly, personnel deployments abroad skyrocketed from 4,900 “man-years” — as the command puts it — in 2001 to 11,500 in 2013. About 11,000 special operators are now working abroad at any one time and on any given day they are in 70 to 80 countries, though the New York Timesreported that, according to statistics provided to them by SOCOM, during one week in March 2013 that number reached 92.
The Global SOF Network
Last year, Admiral McRaven, who previously headed the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC – a clandestine sub-command that specializes in tracking and killing suspected terrorists — touted his vision for special ops globalization. In a statement to the House Armed Services Committee, he said:
“USSOCOM is enhancing its global network of SOF to support our interagency and international partners in order to gain expanded situational awareness of emerging threats and opportunities. The network enables small, persistent presence in critical locations, and facilitates engagement where necessary or appropriate…”
In translation this means that SOCOM is weaving a complex web of alliances with government agencies at home and militaries abroad to ensure that it’s at the center of every conceivable global hotspot and power center. In fact, Special Operations Command has turned the planet into a giant battlefield, divided into many discrete fronts: the self-explanatory SOCAFRICA; the sub-unified command of U.S. Central Command in the Middle East SOCCENT; the European contingent SOCEUR; SOCKOR, which is devoted strictly to Korea; SOCPAC, which covers the rest of the Asia-Pacific region; and SOCSOUTH, which conducts special ops missions in Central and South America and the Caribbean, as well as the globe-trotting JSOC.
Since 2002, SOCOM has also been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces, a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. These include Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines, 500-600 personnel dedicated to supporting counterterrorist operations by Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Abu Sayyaf.
A similar mouthful of an entity is the NATO Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan/Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan, which conducts operations, according to SOCOM, “to enable the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF), and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) to provide the Afghan people a secure and stable environment and to prevent insurgent activities from threatening the authority and sovereignty of GIRoA.” Last year, U.S.-allied Afghan President Hamid Karzai had a different assessment of the “U.S. special force stationed in Wardak province,” which heaccused of “harassing, annoying, torturing, and even murdering innocent people.”
According to the latest statistics made available by ISAF, from October 2012 through March 2013, U.S. and allied forces were involved in 1,464 special operations in Afghanistan, including 167 with U.S. or coalition forces in the lead and 85 that were unilateral ISAF operations. U.S. Special Operations forces are also involved in everything from mentoring lightly armed local security forces under the Village Stability Operations initiative to the training of heavily armed and well-equipped elite Afghan forces — one of whose U.S.-trained officers defected to the insurgency in the fall.
In addition to task forces, there are also Special Operations Command Forward (SOC FWD) elements which, according to the military, “shape and coordinate special operations forces security cooperation and engagement in support of theater special operations command, geographic combatant command, and country team goals and objectives.” These light footprint teams — including SOC FWD Pakistan, SOC FWD Yemen, and SOC FWD Lebanon — offer training and support to local elite troops in foreign hotspots. In Lebanon, for instance, this has meant counterterrorism training for Lebanese Special Ops forces, as well as assistance to the Lebanese Special Forces School to develop indigenous trainers to mentor other Lebanese military personnel.
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Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) briefing slide by Col. Joe Osborne, showing SOC FWD elements
Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) briefing slide by Col. Joe Osborne, showing SOC FWD elements
SOCOM’s reach and global ambitions go further still. TomDispatch’s analysis of McRaven’s first two full years in command reveals a tremendous number of overseas operations. In places like Somalia and Libya, elite troops have carried out clandestine commando raids. In others, they have used airpower to hunt, target, and kill suspected militants. Elsewhere, they have waged an information war using online propaganda. And almost everywhere they have been at work building up and forging ever-tighter ties with foreign militaries through training missions and exercises.
“A lot of what we will do as we go forward in this force is build partner capacity,” McRaven said at the Ronald Reagan Library in November, noting that NATO partners as well as allies in the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America “are absolutely essential to how we’re doing business.”
In March 2013, for example, Navy SEALs conducted joint training exerciseswith Indonesian frogmen. In April and May, U.S. Special Operations personnel joined members of the Malawi Defense Forces for Exercise Epic Guardian. Over three weeks, 1,000 troops engaged in marksmanship, small unit tactics, close quarters combat training, and other activities across three countries — Djibouti, Malawi, and the Seychelles.
In May, American special operators took part in Spring Storm, the Estonian military’s largest annual training exercise. That same month, members of the Peruvian and U.S. special operations forces engaged in joint training missions aimed at trading tactics and improving their ability to conduct joint operations. In July, Green Berets from the Army’s 20th Special Forces Group spent several weeks in Trinidad and Tobago working with members of that tiny nation’s Special Naval Unit and Special Forces Operation Detachment. That Joint Combined Exchange Training exercise, conducted as part of SOCSOUTH’s Theater Security Cooperation program, saw the Americans and their local counterparts take part in pistol and rifle instruction and small unit tactical exercises.
In September, according to media reports, U.S. Special Operations forces joined elite troops from the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations member countries — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), and Cambodia — as well as their counterparts from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, India, and Russia for a US-Indonesian joint-funded counterterrorism exercise held at a training center in Sentul, West Java.
Tactical training was, however, just part of the story. In March 2013, for example, experts from the Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School hosted a week-long working group with top planners from the Centro de Adiestramiento de las Fuerzas Especiales — Mexico’s Special Warfare Center — to aid them in developing their own special forces doctrine.
In October, members of the Norwegian Special Operations Forces traveled to SOCOM’s state-of-the-art Wargame Center at its headquarters on MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to refine crisis response procedures for hostage rescue operations. “NORSOF and Norwegian civilian leadership regularly participate in national field training exercises focused on a scenario like this,” said Norwegian Lieutenant Colonel Petter Hellesen. “What was unique about this exercise was that we were able to gather so many of the Norwegian senior leadership and action officers, civilian and military, in one room with their U.S counterparts.”
MacDill is, in fact, fast becoming a worldwide special ops hub, according to a report by the Tampa Tribune. This past fall, SOCOM quietly started up an International Special Operations Forces Coordination Center that provides long-term residencies for senior-level black ops liaisons from around the world. Already, representatives from 10 nations had joined the command with around 24 more slated to come on board in the next 12-18 months, per McRaven’s global vision.
In the coming years, more and more interactions between U.S. elite forces and their foreign counterparts will undoubtedly take place in Florida, but most will likely still occur — as they do today — overseas. TomDispatch’s analysis of official government documents and news releases as well as press reports indicates that U.S. Special Operations forces were reportedly deployed to or involved with the militaries of 106 nations around the world during 2012-2013.
For years, the command has claimed that divulging the names of these countries would upset foreign allies and endanger U.S. personnel. SOCOM’s Bockholt insisted to me that merely offering the total number would do the same. “You understand that there is information about our military… that is contradictory to reporting,” he told me. “There’s certain things we can’t release to the public for the safety of our service members both at home and abroad. I’m not sure why you’d be interested in reporting that.”
In response, I asked how a mere number could jeopardize the lives of Special Ops personnel, and he responded, “When you work with the partners we work with in the different countries, each country is very particular.” He refused to elaborate further on what this meant or how it pertained to a simple count of countries. Why SOCOM eventually offered me a number, given these supposed dangers, was never explained.
Bringing the War Home
This year, Special Operations Command has plans to make major inroads into yet another country — the United States. The establishment of SOCNORTH in 2014, according to the command, is intended to help “defend North America by outpacing all threats, maintaining faith with our people, and supporting them in their times of greatest need.” Under the auspices of U.S. Northern Command, SOCNORTH will have responsibility for the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and portions of the Caribbean.
While Congressional pushback has thus far thwarted Admiral McRaven’s efforts to create a SOCOM satellite headquarters for the more than 300 special operators working in Washington, D.C. (at the cost of $10 million annually), the command has nonetheless stationed support teams and liaisons all over the capital in a bid to embed itself ever more deeply inside the Beltway. “I have folks in every agency here in Washington, D.C. — from the CIA, to the FBI, to the National Security Agency, to the National Geospatial Agency, to the Defense Intelligence Agency,” McRaven said during a panel discussion at Washington’s Wilson Center in 2013. Referring to the acronyms of the many agencies with which SOCOM has forged ties, McRaven continued: “If there are three letters, and in some cases four, I have a person there. And they have had a reciprocal agreement with us. I have somebody in my headquarters at Tampa.” Speaking at Ronald Reagan Library in November, he put the number of agencies where SOCOM is currently embedded at 38.
“Given the importance of interagency collaboration, USSOCOM is placing greater emphasis on its presence in the National Capital Region to better support coordination and decision making with interagency partners. Thus, USSOCOM began to consolidate its presence in the NCR [National Capitol Region] in early 2012,” McRaven told the House Armed Services Committee last year.
One unsung SOCOM partner is U.S. AID, the government agency devoted to providing civilian foreign aid to countries around the world whose mandate includes the protection of human rights, the prevention of armed conflicts, the provision of humanitarian assistance, and the fostering of “good will abroad.” At a July 2013 conference, Beth Cole, the director of the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation at U.S. AID, explained just how her agency was now quietly aiding the military’s secret military.
“In Yemen, for example, our mission director has SVTCs [secure video teleconferences] with SOCOM personnel on a regular basis now. That didn’t occur two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, five years ago,” Cole said, according to a transcript of the event. But that was only the start. “My office at U.S. AID supports SOF pre-deployment training in preparation for missions throughout the globe… I’m proud that my office and U.S. AID have been providing training support to several hundred Army, Navy, and Marine Special Operations personnel who have been regularly deploying to Afghanistan, and we will continue to do that.”
Cole noted that, in Afghanistan, U.S. AID personnel were sometimes working hand-in-hand on the Village Stability Operation initiative with Special Ops forces. In certain areas, she said, “we can dual-hat some of our field program officers as LNOs [liaison officers] in those Joint Special Operations task forces and be able to execute the development work that we need to do alongside of the Special Operations Forces.” She even suggested taking a close look at whether this melding of her civilian agency and special ops might prove to be a model for operations elsewhere in the world.
Cole also mentioned that her office would be training “a senior person” working for McRaven, the man about to “head the SOF element Lebanon” — possibly a reference to the shadowy SOC FWD Lebanon. U.S. AID would, she said, serve as a facilitator in that country, making “sure that he has those relationships that he needs to be able to deal with what is a very, very, very serious problem for our government and for the people of that region.”
U.S. AID is also serving as a facilitator closer to home. Cole noted that her agency was sending advisors to SOCOM headquarters in Florida and had “arranged meetings for [special operators] with experts, done roundtables for them, immersed them in the environment that we understand before they go out to the mission area and connect them with people on the ground.” All of this points to another emerging trend: SOCOM’s invasion of the civilian sphere.
In remarks before the House Armed Services Committee, Admiral McRaven noted that his Washington operation, the SOCOM NCR, “conducts outreach to academia, non-governmental organizations, industry, and other private sector organizations to get their perspective on complex issues affecting SOF.” Speaking at the Wilson Center, he was even more blunt: “[W]e also have liaison officers with industry and with academia… We put some of our best and brightest in some of the academic institutions so we can understand what academia is thinking about.”
SOCOM’s Information Warfare
Not content with a global presence in the physical world, SOCOM has also taken to cyberspace where it operates the Trans Regional Web Initiative, a network of 10 propaganda websites that are run by various combatant commands and made to look like legitimate news outlets. These shadowy sites — including KhabarSouthAsia.com, Magharebia which targets North Africa, an effort aimed at the Middle East known as Al-Shorfa.com, and another targeting Latin America called <a href="http://Infosurhoy.com" rel="nofollow">Infosurhoy.com</a> — state only in fine print that they are “sponsored by” the U.S. military.
Last June, the Senate Armed Services Committee called out the Trans Regional Web Initiative for “excessive” costs while stating that the “effectiveness of the websites is questionable and the performance metrics do not justify the expense.” In November, SOCOM announced that it was nonetheless seeking to identify industry partners who, under the Initiative, could potentially “develop new websites tailored to foreign audiences.”
Just as SOCOM is working to influence audiences abroad, it is also engaged in stringent information control at home — at least when it comes to me. Major Bockholt made it clear that SOCOM objected to a 2011 article of mine about U.S. Special Operations forces. “Some of that stuff was inconsistent with actual facts,” he told me. I asked what exactly was inconsistent. “Some of the stuff you wrote about JSOC… I think I read some information about indiscriminate killing or things like that.”
I knew right away just the quote he was undoubtedly referring to — a mention of the Joint Special Operations Command’s overseas kill/capture campaign as “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.” Bockholt said that it was indeed “one quote of concern.” The only trouble: I didn’t say it. It was, as I stated very plainly in the piece, the assessment given by John Nagl, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former counterinsurgency adviser to now-retired general and former CIA director David Petraeus.
Bockholt offered no further examples of inconsistencies. I asked if he challenged my characterization of any information from an interview I conducted with then-SOCOM spokesman Colonel Tim Nye. He did not. Instead, he explained that SOCOM had issues with my work in general. “As we look at the characterization of your writing, overall, and I know you’ve had some stuff on Vietnam [an apparent reference to my bestselling book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam] and things like that — because of your style, we have to be very particular on how we answer your questions because of how you tend to use that information.” Bockholt then asked if I was anti-military. I responded that I hold all subjects that I cover to a high standard.
Bockholt next took a verbal swipe at the website where I’m managing editor,TomDispatch.com. Given Special Operations Command’s penchant for dabbling in dubious new sites, I was struck when he said that TomDispatch — which has published original news, analysis, and commentary for more than a decade and won the 2013 Utne Media Award for “best political coverage” — was not a “real outlet.” It was, to me, a daring position to take when SOCOM’s shadowy Middle Eastern news site Al-Shorfa.com actually carries a disclaimer that it “cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information provided.”
With my deadline looming, I was putting the finishing touches on this article when an email arrived from Mike Janssen of SOCOM Public Affairs. It was — finally — a seemingly simple answer to what seemed like an astonishingly straightforward question asked a more than a month before: What was the total number of countries in which Special Operations forces were deployed in 2013? Janssen was concise. His answer: 80.
How, I wondered, could that be? In the midst of McRaven’s Global SOF network initiative, could SOCOM have scaled back their deployments from 120 in 2011 to just 80 last year? And if Special Operations forces were deployed in 92 nations during just one week in 2013, according to official statistics provided to the New York Times, how could they have been present in 12 fewer countries for the entire year? And why, in his March 2013 posture statement to the House Armed Services Committee, would Admiral McRaven mention “annual deployments to over 100 countries?” With minutes to spare, I called Mike Janssen for a clarification. “I don’t have any information on that,” he told me and asked me to submit my question in writing — precisely what I had done more than a month before in an effort to get a timely response to this straightforward and essential question.
Today, Special Operations Command finds itself at a crossroads. It is attempting to influence populations overseas, while at home trying to keep Americans in the dark about its activities; expanding its reach, impact, and influence, while working to remain deep in the shadows; conducting operations all over the globe, while professing only to be operating in “a number of locations”; claiming worldwide deployments have markedly dropped in the last year, when evidence suggests otherwise.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Bockholt said cryptically before he hung up on me — as if the continuing questions of a reporter trying to get answers to basic information after a month of waiting were beyond the pale. In the meantime, whatever Special Operations Command is trying to do globally and at home, Bockholt and others at SOCOM are working to keep it as secret as possible.
Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in theNew York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Nation, on the BBC, and regularlyat TomDispatch. He is the author most recently of the New York Timesbestseller Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (just out in paperback). You can catch his conversation with Bill Moyers about that book by clicking here.
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European Union leaders have called a special summit for Thursday, where they are expected to freeze visa liberalization and economic cooperation talks with Russia if Moscow hasn't taken steps by then to calm the crisis in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.
Before that, NATO allies will hold emergency talks on the crisis on Tuesday, the alliance announced. The meeting was called by Poland, which invoked a NATO rule allowing any ally to consult with the others if it feels its security, territorial integrity or independence are under threat. Poland borders on Ukraine.
In Washington, President Barack Obama said his government will look at a series of economic and diplomatic sanctions that would isolate Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to allow international monitors to mediate a deal in Ukraine acceptable to all Ukrainian people, Obama told reporters before meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Meanwhile, in Moscow a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry dismissed as “total nonsense” Ukrainian statements that Moscow had issued an ultimatum for the surrender of Ukrainian forces in the Crimea.
Interfax-Ukraine reported earlier that Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander Aleksandr Vitko had warned that "a real assault on the units and detachments of the Armed Forces of Ukraine" would begin if the forces did not surrender by 5 A.M on Tuesday.
On Monday night it was reported that armed men had seized a Ukrainian checkpoint at a terminal of the ferry between the Crimea and Russia and that three truckloads of soldiers had crossed to Ukraine from the Russian side.
Ukraine's interim president Oleksander Turchinov said the situation was "difficult" in some regions in the south and east of the country, where there are many Russian speakers, but that the Ukrainian authorities had matters there under control.
He also said Russia's Black Sea Fleet had trapped Ukrainian navy vessels in the bays of Sevastopol, the Crimean port where the Russian fleet has a base.
"The situation in Crimea remains tense and Russia's military presence is growing," Turchinov told a news briefing. "I appeal to Russia's leadership - stop the provocative actions, aggression and piracy. This is a crime and you will answer for it."
Meeting in Brussels, EU foreign ministers said they had also halted preparations for the G8 summit, which is set for June in the Russian resort of Sochi. Foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the EU would give Russia until Thursday to show clear signs of goodwill, including a willingness to open talks and a withdrawal of Russian troops to their barracks in the Crimea.
"We need to see a return to barracks by those troops that have currently moved (from) where they have been staying," Ashton told reporters after the foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels. "There are serious concerns about overflights, about reports of troops and armed personnel moving."
The seizure of Crimea has created the greatest confrontation between Russia and the West since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, an event Putin once described as the worst geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.
"In the absence of de-escalating steps by Russia, the EU shall decide about consequences for bilateral relations between the EU and Russia, for instance suspending bilateral talks ... on visa matters ... and will consider further targeted measures," the ministers said in a statement.
Russia and the European Union have been discussing visa cooperation since 2007, with Russia keen to have visa-free access to the EU's member states. It is an issue raised at nearly every meeting between Moscow and Brussels.
Moscow, which effectively took control of the Crimea over the weekend, has said it is protecting the lives of Russian citizens and speakers in Ukraine, and appears to be calculating that the West cannot afford to risk a wider conflagration by taking anything approaching military action.
Many Europeans are concerned about pushing Putin too far, mindful of their economic links with Russia, including a heavy dependence on Moscow's gas and oil exports. There is also concern about the time required for sanctions and the legal hurdles that must be cleared.
Russia is the EU's biggest trading partner after the United States and China, with 123 billion euros ($170 billion) of goods exported there in 2012. It is also the EU's most important single energy supplier, accounting for more than a quarter of all EU consumption of oil and gas.
Speaking in Moscow earlier Monday, the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament said that "for now, there is no need" to send the Russian armed forces into Ukraine.
On Saturday, President Vladimir Putin secured the parliament's permission to use the military in Ukraine if he wishes, citing the need to protect Russians in the neighbouring nation.
"The decision ... only gives the right (to use the armed forces), which can be exercised in case of necessity; for now there is no need," State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin told the state-run Rossiya-24 television in an interview.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, pro-Russian demonstrators occupied the regional government building in the eastern city of Donetsk on Monday, as besieged lawmakers voted to hold a referendum, without saying what the public would be asked to decide upon.
The chaotic scene in the heart of Ukraine's Russian-speaking east was one of the boldest actions yet by pro-Russian youths after several days of rallies in eastern and southern cities that Kiev says are organized by Moscow as a pretext to invade.
Talk of Invasion
Russian forces have already taken control of Ukraine's Crimea region, an isolated Black Sea peninsula, and Moscow has threatened to invade Ukraine to protect Russian speakers from what it says is a nationalist new government in Kiev.
Kiev says pro-Russian demonstrations have been organized by Moscow as a pretext to invade. Donestsk is one of the most industrialized parts of Ukraine, producing coal, steel, chemicals and turbines for nuclear plants.
It is also the home city of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president who was toppled in Kiev 10 days ago. Most people in the region are ethnic Ukrainians who speak Russian as their first language. Few now support Yanukovych, though many still look to Russia as an ally.
Pro-Russian demonstrations have been held in several eastern and southern cities since Saturday, in some cases ending with Russian flags raised at regional government buildings.
Kiev says Moscow has organized the demonstrations and sent hundreds of Russian citizens across the frontier to stage them.
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Moscow—
President Obama said on Monday that Russia has violated international law in its military intervention in Ukraine and said the U.S. government has warned it will look at a series of economic and diplomatic sanctions that would isolate Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to allow international monitors to mediate a deal in Ukraine acceptable to all Ukrainian people, Obama told reporters before he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Over time this will be a costly proposition for Russia. And now is the time for them to consider whether they can serve their interests in a way that resorts to diplomacy as opposed to force," Obama said.
EU TELLS RUSSIA TO WITHDRAW
European Union foreign ministers also held out the threat of sanctions against Russia on Monday if Moscow fails to withdraw its troops from Ukraine, while offering to mediate between the two, alongside other international bodies.
At talks on the Ukraine crisis in Brussels, they agreed no deadlines or details about any punitive measures that could be put in place against Russia, but leaders of the bloc's 28 nations will hold an emergency summit on Thursday and could take further decisions.
The EU discussions were convened abruptly after Russian President Vladimir Putin seized the Crimean peninsula and said he had the right to invade Ukraine.
"We need to see a return to barracks by those troops that have currently moved (from) where they have been staying," the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told reporters after the foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels.
"There are serious concerns about overflights, about reports of troops and armed personnel moving."
In Monday's talks, EU governments sought to strike a balance between pressuring Moscow and finding a way to calm the situation.
"We want the situation to de-escalate to the position the troops had before this began," Ashton said.
Europe's approach leaves it at slight odds with the United States, after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry threatened visa bans, asset freezes and trade restrictions against Russia, which he accused of 19th century behavior in Ukraine.
Germany, France and Britain, the EU's most-powerful nations, were advocating mediation, possibly via the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), while not ruling out economic measures if Moscow does not cooperate.
"Crisis diplomacy is not a weakness but it will be more important than ever to not fall into the abyss of military escalation," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters as he arrived in Brussels.
BORDER GUARDS: TRUCKLOADS OF RUSSIAN TROOPS ARRIVE IN CRIMEA BY FERRY
Russian forces seized control of the border guard checkpoint on the Ukrainian side of the ferry crossing between Russia and Crimea, and began bringing in truckloads of soldiers by ferry on Monday evening, Ukrainian border guards said.
Russians have been surrounding the ferry terminal for days but until now had not taken control ofUkraine's border guard station. A border guards spokesman said Russian troops seized it and brought three truckloads of soldiers across.
Meanwhile, at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the crisis, an Russia has deployed roughly 16,000 troops to Ukraine's autonomous region of Crimea since last week, Kiev's U.N. Ambassador Yuriy Sergeyev said.
"Beginning from 24 February, approximately 16,000 Russian troops have been deployed in Crimea by the military ships, helicopters, cargo airplanes from the neighboring territory of the Russian Federation," Sergeyev said Monday.
ENVOY: OUSTED LEADER ASKS PUTIN FOR RUSSIAN MILITARY
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As Moscow tightens its grip on the Crimean Peninsula, Washington is facing up to a harsh reality: InUkraine, there’s a vast imbalance in power and national interests between the United States and a resurgent imperial Russia.
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After the cold war, the influence of the West expanded quickly up to Russia’s borders. Moscow had to accept a unified Germany, as well as NATO memberships for nations that used to be the USSR’s buffer zone, from Poland to Latvia. Now Vladimir Putin has seized on an opportunity to push back: He’s poured thousands of troops into Crimea in an apparent attempt to destabilize a new Western-oriented Ukrainian government.
America’s problem is that it is no longer 1997. Russia is not preoccupied with internal political and economic turmoil. And in past decades, the West expanded its influence beyond the area it is prepared to use force to defend. Mr. Putin understands this – and so do President Obama and his Republican critics.
Thus there’s little saber rattling in Washington. GOP lawmakers are talking about responses that differ only modestly from the Obama administration’s: draw up economic sanctions, put planning for the upcoming G8 summit in Sochi, Russia, on hold, and so forth.
“There [are] not a lot of options on the table,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R) of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Instead, Republicans are using the crisis as an opportunity to talk more broadly about what they say is Mr. Obama’s overall foreign policy weakness. Their question essentially is less “what next?” than “who lost Sevastopol?”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, possible 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R) of Florida said the president erred badly in Syria, allowing Putin to essentially hijack the effort to destroy the regime’s chemical weapons. Obama should not have canceled plans to put missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, said Senator Rubio and other Republicans appearing on Sunday talk shows.
“I think our policy towards Russia under this administration deserves a heavy amount of criticism,” Rubio said.
In multiple appearances over the weekend Secretary of State John Kerry rejected this charge, saying in essence that it’s easy to complain about the music from the balcony when you’re not playing in the orchestra. He ticked off what he said were accomplishments in US-Russian relations, from Russian cooperation in the effort to curb Iran’s nuclear program to progress in US-Russian nuclear arms talks.
“Long ago, we’ve entered into a different phase with Russia,” Secretary Kerry said on NBC.
For Washington, the question now may be less how to react to Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula as what to do to try to stop further Russian expansionism.
Asked what US strategic interests are in Ukraine, Kerry on Sunday said that it’s a sovereign, independent nation, and “we support that sovereignty and that independence.”
“They have been a responsible new independent member of the global community since the implosion of the Soviet Union. We have European Union and NATO interests that border Ukraine,” Kerry said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
This implies that a Russian move out of Crimea into eastern Ukraine itself would be a dire development in US eyes, as it would probably result in the dissolution of the Ukrainian state into pro-Western and pro-Russian halves. It also recognizes that sitting on Ukraine’s western border is Poland, a full NATO member and fiercely anti-Russian nation that is probably looking with trepidation at the uproar to its east.
In this context, NATO leaders should be drawing up prudent contingency plans for the region, writes retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former alliance chief, in Foreign Policy. That could include sharing intelligence with the Ukrainian government, raising the alert status of the NATO Response Force, and sailing naval forces in to the Black Sea.
“Many will consider any level of NATO involvement provocative and potentially inflammatory. Unfortunately, the stakes are high and the Russians are moving. Sitting idle, without at least looking at options, is a mistake for NATO and would itself constitute a signal to Putin – one that he would welcome,” writes Stavridis, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.
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