Наблюдение за военными учениями
3 марта 2014 года, 19:20
Владимир Путин наблюдал за военными учениями на Кирилловском полигоне в Ленинградской области. Главу государства сопровождали Министр обороны Сергей Шойгу, командующий войсками Западного военного округа Анатолий Сидоров и начальник Главного управления боевой подготовки Вооружённых Сил Иван Бувальцев.
Russia Seizes Border Posts in Crimea
Ukraine accused the Kremlin of violently seizing border posts and making moves to significantly expand its forces in Crimea, while Russia's currency and stock markets plunged. 10:27 AM
March 2, 2014 11:07 p.m. ET
Russia has moved military vehicles into place along its border with Crimea as tensions with Ukraine escalate. WSJ Moscow Bureau Chief Greg White joins the News Hub to discuss. Photo: AP.
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine—A week ago, Dmitry Polonsky was a fringe political activist in the Ukrainian province of Crimea, signing up middle-aged men rankled by the new authorities in Kiev to a small pro-Russia militia.
Russia has taken advantage of the new, weak government in Kiev by swiftly moving its troops into the Ukrainian province of Crimea. James Marson explains the events that led to this standoff.
Today, as thousands of Russian troops swarm through Crimea, Mr. Polonsky's star is rising. He introduces himself as an adviser to Crimea's new prime minister. His Russian Unity party, though holding only three of 100 seats in the regional assembly, is the de facto authority in the Black Sea peninsula that has cut itself off from mainland Ukraine. On Sunday, the party's leader said he would be raising an army to defend Crimea against invasion from Kiev.
"The government of Crimea will be owned by Crimeans," Mr. Polonsky told a gathering Sunday, as Russian flags waved above the crowd.
The sudden rise of Russian Unity shows how the Kremlin, faced with a pro-Europe uprising in Kiev that emerged victorious, responded by helping push a once-marginal group of Russian nationalists into power—a feat of political stagecraft that played out like clockwork under the cover of chaos.
The turn of events in Crimea shows how adroitly Moscow has used old allies and long-simmering resentments to fill a power vacuum left by the Feb. 22 overthrow of Ukraine's Russian-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych . By potentially transforming Crimea into a dubious unrecognized republic and destabilizing Ukraine's east, Moscow has gained a crucial lever of power over the new, weak government in Kiev.
Russian solders walk as a local resident holds a Russian flag outside of a Ukrainian military base outside of Simferopol, Ukraine, on Sunday. Associated Press
In seizing control of Crimea, long an autonomous region of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putinappears for the moment to have reversed what looked like a major political setback. But he has also provoked perhaps the largest rift between Moscow and the West since the fall of the Soviet Union. With Ukrainian and Russian troops facing one another at bases in Crimea, he also risks a shooting war.
Mr. Putin has said that Russia is defending threats to Russians and to Russian-speakers in Crimea. Moscow says it reserves the right to defend Russian citizens as well as "compatriots"—a vague term the Kremlin uses to refer to residents of the former Soviet Union.
Even before Ukraine's new interim leader had picked a cabinet to regain control of the country last week, Crimea was on a path toward independence, in a seemingly choreographed string of events that saw Crimea's assembly building seized by unknown gunmen. They presided over a closed-door session where deputies kicked out the old Crimean leadership and appointed a new, Moscow-friendly leader.
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Ukraine Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull his troops out of Crimea saying, "we are on the brink of disaster." Photo: Getty Images
Hundreds of Russian troops surrounded a Ukranian military base in Crimean town of Perevalnoe early Sunday morning. Photo: Getty Images
Russia has over the past week funneled thousands of troops into Crimea. Some came directly from Sochi, where they had been providing security for the Olympic Games.
The U.S. said the troop influx continued Sunday, as Russian infantry units surrounded the vastly outnumbered Ukrainian military on bases in the peninsula. Ukrainian military officials said Russian soldiers have been arriving by the thousands aboard troop ships and Ilyushin aircraft. They estimated the number of Russian forces now on the peninsula at 13,000.
Mr. Putin's argument that Russia is protecting Russians is one few Western governments accept, as there have been no signs of systematic attacks on Russians inside Ukraine, and especially not in Crimea, which is overwhelmingly Russian-speaking. But with Western leaders so far only expressing moral outrage, Mr. Putin appears to be betting he can face down the West in a part of the world he views as vital to Russia's security and economy.
Mr. Putin has fought bitterly to defend what the Kremlin calls its "sphere of privileged interests" in former Soviet countries. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has inserted itself into ethnic conflicts with neighboring states to assert its influence. In 2008 it invaded the former Soviet republic of Georgia to defend the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
Mr. Putin is taking a much bigger gamble in Ukraine because the loss of influence there could deal a blow to his presidency. Many Russians still struggle to see Ukraine as an independent country, given bonds of history and religious ties.
Crimea is even closer, having been Russian territory until 1954, when Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to Ukraine, then a Soviet republic. When the Soviet Union collapsed Crimea remained part of newly independent Ukraine, despite its majority of ethnic Russians.
Mr. Putin long cultivated a close relationship with Mr. Yanukovych, the deposed Ukrainian president. He even traveled to Ukraine to campaign for Mr. Yanukovych in 2004, before the Ukrainian's disastrous defeat after botched efforts to win the polling through what was widely alleged to be vote fraud.
After Mr. Yanukovych came to power in Kiev in 2010, powerful businessmen and politicians from his home region of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine took up prominent posts in Crimea. But when support for Mr. Yanukovych collapsed after deadly clashes in Kiev last month, so did the rule of his allies. Leaders in Kiev were too far away and distracted with consolidating power to fill the vacuum in a distant region such as Crimea.
Moscow, however, had for years cultivated contacts in Crimea, and in recent months appears to have been laying the groundwork to take a bigger role. Vladislav Surkov, a top Kremlin political strategist, visited last month before Mr. Yanukovych's fall to meet with local leaders. Mustafa Jemilev, a deputy in Ukraine's parliament, said Moscow had long been funding pro-Russia groups and giving them a media platform.
The leader of a Russian nationalist party with ties to the Kremlin came to Crimea and signed a cooperation pact with Sergei Aksyonov, the head of the Russian Unity party and then one of its three deputies in the regional assembly.
After Mr. Yanukovych fled Kiev on Feb. 21, Russian Unity sprang into action. It started signing up people for self-defense militias at a rally two days later to defend the region from the new government in Kiev. These volunteers, called to protest or stand guard in a moment's notice, would become a critical means of presenting the change in power as the people's will.
Mr. Aksyonov allied with Vladimir Konstantinov, speaker of the local assembly. Though Mr. Konstantinov belonged to Mr. Yanukovych's party, he quickly broke ranks with it and made the first widely broadcast comments about Crimean separatism even before the rally, saying the region would break off and seek to rejoin Russia in the event of a Ukrainian collapse.
The same day, a crowd gathered in Crimea's most Russian-dominated city, Sevastopol, and by a show of hands declared their support for a Russian citizen, Alexei Chaly, as the new de facto mayor. The next day an angry crowd of nationalists effectively installed Mr. Chaly as mayor by threatening to storm the city administration. The city council held an emergency vote that confirmed his authority.
The political passions then moved to Simferopol, Crimea's regional capital. Hundreds of Crimean Tatars, an ethnic minority that supports the new rulers in Kiev, rallied outside the regional parliamentto support Ukraine's territorial integrity. Russian nationalists mobilized an opposing protest.
One man died of a heart attack after someone released pepper spray and the crowds collided. But widespread violence was averted, and the Tatars returned to their hometowns.
Before dawn the next morning, truckloads of unidentified men with guns showed up and took control of the Crimean parliament building. They also seized the executive branch building. Police walled off half of downtown Simferopol.
What initially seemed like a chaotic seizure of buildings by random armed radicals, throwing the city into uncertainty, started to exhibit signs of a carefully plotted takeover.
Anatoly Mogilyov, the Crimean prime minister from Donetsk appointed by Mr. Yanukovych, showed up to try to negotiate, but one militant said he wasn't "authorized" to do so, according to local media reports. The gunmen nevertheless allowed Mr. Konstantinov to convene an emergency session of parliament.
It wasn't public. Outsiders couldn't enter to determine whether there was a quorum or how many people voted. But its decision was announced to a group of roaring Russian nationalists gathered outside: The deputies had fired Mr. Mogilyov and replaced him with the leader of the Russian Unity party, Mr. Aksyonov.
They also voted to hold a referendum on Crimean statehood, initially set for May 25 but now slated for March 30.
The following morning, heavily armed troops without insignia or markings on their vehicles took up positions around Crimea's main airports and other installations. They gradually fanned out through much of the peninsula. Ukrainian officials said they were Russian troops and demanded they return to the Russia's Black Sea Fleet base in Sevastopol. Moscow ignored them.
By Saturday, Mr. Aksyonov was in full control. Russian state television arrived at his office for a live feed, where he said he had appealed to Russia to help him "bring order" to the peninsula.
Citing the large numbers of armed men and military equipment coursing through the roads without insignia, he said he asked Moscow to send troops. Troops from the Black Sea Fleet also would help provide security for "vital facilities" across Crimea, he said, even though by then they were already there.
Russia's Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying Kiev-allied gunmen tried to take control of the Crimean Interior Ministry in Simferopol in an attack that resulted in casualties. A top official at the local special forces unit and people who live next to the building said no such attack occurred.
In Moscow, sleepy parliamentarians were rousted for emergency sessions Saturday. They approved appeals to Mr. Putin to "take all possible measures" in Ukraine. Mr. Putin responded with a formal request for the authorization to deploy troops "until the normalization of the social-political situation." The vote in favor was unanimous.
By that time, arriving Russian troops no longer bothered to hide the license plates on their vehicles, which showed their origin. The Kremlin maintained that it hadn't given the order to invade and said the troops were simply providing security for the Black Sea Fleet base at the tip of the peninsula.
Russian flags went up on the border between Crimea and mainland Ukraine, as local units of riot police loyal to Russia started checking cars alongside volunteer militiamen with guns. The Russian troops fanned out further on Sunday, surrounding all military installations in Crimea controlled by the Ukrainian army to prevent them from responding.
Meanwhile, in Kiev, Ukraine's new government fired its top naval officer after only one day in the job after he swore allegiance on national television to the new separatist leaders in Crimea. It wasn't immediately clear whether other Ukrainian naval officers followed Rear Admiral Denis Berezovsky to defect to the side of the pro-Russian Crimean authorities...
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