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Ukraine mobilised for war
on Sunday and Washington threatened to isolate Russia economically after
President Vladimir Putin declared he had the right to invade his neighbour in
Moscow's biggest confrontation with the West since the Cold War.
"This is not a
threat: this is actually the declaration of war to my country," Ukrainian
Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said in English. Yatsenuik heads a pro-Western
government that took power in the former Soviet republic when its Moscow-backed
president, Viktor Yanukovich, was ousted last week.
Putin secured permission
from his parliament on Saturday to use military force to protect Russian
citizens in Ukraine and told U.S. President Barack Obama he had the right to
defend Russian interests and nationals, spurning Western pleas not to
intervene.
Russian forces have
already bloodlessly seized Crimea, an isolated Black Sea peninsula where Moscow
has a naval base.
On Sunday, they
surrounded several small Ukrainian military outposts there and demanded the Ukrainian
troops disarm. Some refused, leading to standoffs, although no shots were
fired.
As Western countries
considered how to respond to the crisis, the United States said it was focused
on economic, diplomatic and political measures, but made clear it was not
seriously considering military action.
U.S. Secretary of State
John Kerry will visit Kiev on Tuesday to show "strong support for
Ukrainian sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and the right of
the Ukrainian people to determine their own future, without outside
interference or provocation," the State Department said in a statement.
MORE DEMONSTRATIONS IN
EASTERN UKRAINE
With Russian forces in
control of majority ethnic Russian Crimea, the focus is shifting to eastern
swaths of Ukraine, where most ethnic Ukrainians speak Russian as a native
language.
Those areas saw more
demonstrations on Sunday after violent protests on Saturday, and pro-Moscow
activists hoisted flags for a second day at government buildings and called for
Russia to defend them.
Russia has staged war
games with 150,000 troops along the land border, but they have so far not
crossed. Kiev said Russia had sent hundreds of its citizens across the border
to stage the protests.
Ukraine's security
council ordered the general staff to immediately put all armed forces on
highest alert. But Kiev's small and under-equipped military is seen as no match
for Russia's superpower might.
The Defence Ministry was
ordered to stage a call-up of reserves, meaning theoretically all men up to 40 in
a country with universal male conscription, though Ukraine would struggle to
find extra guns or uniforms for significant numbers of them.
Kerry condemned Russia
for what he called an "incredible act of aggression" and brandished
the threat of economic sanctions.
"You just don't, in
the 21st century, behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on
a completely trumped-up pretext," Kerry told the CBS programme "Face
the Nation".
He said Moscow still had
a "right set of choices" to defuse the crisis. Otherwise, G8
countries and other nations were prepared to "to go to the hilt to isolate
Russia".
"They are prepared
to isolate Russia economically. The rouble is already going down. Russia has
major economic challenges," he said. He mentioned visa bans, asset freezes
and trade isolation as possible steps.
Obama discussed the
Ukraine crisis in calls with allies, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel
and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Cameron said they agreed Russia would
pay "significant costs" unless it changed course.
Analysts said U.S.
economic sanctions would likely have little impact on Russia unless they were
paired with strong measures by major European nations, which have deeper trade
ties with Moscow and are dependent on Russian gas.
Ukraine's envoy to the
United Nations said Kiev would ask for international military support if Russia
expanded its military action in his country.
At Kiev's Independence
Square, where anti-Yanukovich protesters had camped out for months, thousands
demonstrated against Russian military action. Speakers delivered rousing
orations and placards read: "Putin, hands off Ukraine!"
"If there is a need
to protect the nation, we will go and defend the nation," said Oleh, an
advertising executive cooking over an open fire at the square where he has been
camped for three months. "If Putin wants to take Ukraine for himself, he
will fail. We want to live freely and we will live freely."
The new government
announced it had fired the head of the navy and launched a treason case against
him for surrendering Ukraine's naval headquarters to Russian forces in the
Crimean port of Sevastopol, where Moscow has a major naval base.
REACTION FROM THE WEST
Obama spoke to Putin for
90 minutes by telephone on Saturday after the Russian leader declared he had
the right to intervene and quickly secured unanimous approval from his
parliament.
The Kremlin said Putin
told Obama that Russian speakers were under threat from Ukraine's new leaders,
who took over after Yanukovich fled huge protests against his repression and
rejection of a trade deal with the European Union.
Putin reiterated that
stance in a telephone call with Merkel on Sunday, the Kremlin said, adding he
and Merkel agreed that Russia and Germany would continue consultations to seek
the "normalisation" of the situation.
But in a sign of concern
among Russian liberals, members of Putin's own human rights council urged him
on Sunday not to invade Ukraine, saying threats faced by Russians there were
not severe enough to justify sending in troops.
Ukraine, which says it
has no intention of threatening Russian speakers, has appealed for help to
NATO, and directly to Britain and the United States, as co-signatories with
Russia to a 1994 accord guaranteeing Ukraine's security.
After an emergency
meeting of NATO ambassadors in Brussels, the alliance called on Russia to bring
its forces back to bases and refrain from interfering in Ukraine.
Despite expressing
"grave concern", NATO did not agree on any significant measures to
apply pressure to Russia, with the West struggling to come up with a forthright
response that does not risk pushing the region closer to military conflict.
"We urge both parties
to immediately seek a peaceful solution through bilateral dialogue, with
international facilitation ... and through the dispatch of international
observers under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council or the
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe," NATO said in a
statement.
Washington on Saturday
proposed sending monitors to Ukraine under the U.N. or OSCE flags.
So far, the Western
response has been largely symbolic. Obama and others suspended preparations for
a G8 summit in Sochi, where Russia has just finished staging its $50 billion
winter Olympic games. Some countries recalled ambassadors. Britain said its
ministers would stay away from the Paralympics due next in Sochi.
"Right now, I think
we are focused on political, diplomatic and economic options," a senior
U.S. official told reporters.
"Frankly our goal is
to uphold the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, not to have a
military escalation," he added.
German Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged world leaders on Sunday to work to calm the
crisis and defended Russia's membership of the G8, saying it enabled the West
to talk directly with Moscow.
RUSSIANS IN CRIMEA
Ukraine's military is
ill-matched against its neighbour. Britain's International Institute of
Strategic Studies estimates Kiev has fewer than 130,000 troops under arms, with
planes barely ready to fly and few spare parts for a single submarine.
Russia, by contrast, has
spent billions under Putin to upgrade and modernise the capabilities of forces
that were dilapidated after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Moscow's special
units are now seen as equals of the best in the world.
In Crimea, Ukraine's tiny
contingent made no attempt to oppose the Russians, who bore no insignia on
their uniforms but drove vehicles with Russian plates and seized government
buildings, airports and other locations in the past three days.
Kiev said its troops were
encircled in at least three places. It pulled its coast guard vessels out of
Crimean ports. Ukraine said its naval fleet's 10 ships were still in Sevastopol
and remained loyal to Kiev.
Scores of Russian troops
with no insignia were camped outside a base of Ukrainian troops at Perevalnoye,
on a road from Crimea's capital, Simferopol towards the coast.
A representative of the
base commander said troops on both sides had reached agreement so no blood
would be shed.
"We are ready to
protect the grounds and our military equipment," Valery Boiko told Reuters
television. "We hope for a compromise to be reached, a decision, and as
the commander has said, there will be no war."
Igor Mamchev, a Ukrainian
navy colonel at another small base outside Simferopol, told Ukraine's Channel 5
TV that a truckload of Russian troops had arrived at his checkpoint and told
his forces to lay down their arms.
"I replied that, as
I am a member of the armed forces of Ukraine, under orders of the Ukrainian
navy, there could be no discussion of disarmament. In case of any attempt to
enter the military base, we will use all means, up to lethal force."
A unit of Ukrainian
marines was also holed up in a base in the Crimean port of Feodosia, where they
refused to disarm.
Elsewhere on the occupied
peninsula, the Russian troops assumed a lower profile on Sunday after the
pro-Moscow Crimean leader said overnight the situation was now
"normalised".
Putin's justification
citing the need to protect Russian citizens was the same as he used to launch a
2008 invasion of Georgia, where Russian forces seized two breakaway regions.
In Russia,
state-controlled media portray Yanukovich's removal as a coup by dangerous
extremists funded by the West and there has been little sign of dissent with
that line.
In Donetsk, Yanukovich's
home city, the local government building was flying the Russian flag for the
second day on Sunday. The local authorities have called for a referendum on the
region's status, a move Kiev says is illegal. A pro-Russian
"self-defence" unit held a second day of protest, attracting about
1,000 demonstrators carrying Russian flags.
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