EU seeks sphere of influence in Ukraine: Russia
MOSCOW Russia accused the European Union on Friday of seeking to create a “sphere of influence” on its borders by pressing Ukraine to choose closer ties with the Western bloc at the expense of relations with Moscow.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sharpened Russian allegations of Western interference in its neighbour’s turbulent affairs at a joint news conference after talks with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Steinmeier had said that “no one should have an interest in lighting the fuse on the powder keg” and Ukraine must not become a “geopolitical chess game”. He said it was up to the conflicting parties in Kyiv to find a solution.
Russia and the EU have exchanged recriminations since Kyiv’s decision in November to shelve plans to sign a trade agreement with Brussels and to seek closer links with Russia instead, a move that sparked mass unrest in Ukraine.
The protests, in which at least six people have been killed, led President Viktor Yanukovych to sack his prime minister and he has until the end of this month to name a successor.
Ukrainian authorities on Friday provisionally freed the last 234 detained protesters under an amnesty offer aimed at defusing protracted street unrest, but activists decried the move as a sham and pressed for further concessions.
Yanukovych’s government has fixed Monday as the deadline for all occupied municipal buildings to be cleared of protesters and barricades to be removed from city centre roads in Kyiv in exchange for the release of the detainees and a possible future pardon.
In many respects, the showdown over Ukraine is about reordering power and influence in Europe following the 1991 collapse of the Communist Soviet Union. The EU’s enlargement process of the past decade has drawn in several former Soviet republics and former East European satellites of Moscow.
Moscow has pushed back, and is now trying to set up its own Eurasian customs union to rival the EU, preferably with Ukraine, a sprawling country of 46 million with whom it shares deep historical and cultural roots.
Lavrov warned the West against interceding in the crisis, saying Ukrainians should be left to solve their own affairs.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet Ukrainian opposition leaders Vitaly Klitschko and Arseny Yatsenyuk in Berlin on Monday, her spokesman said.
During talks in Moscow on Thursday evening and Friday Steinmeier and Lavrov discussed the possibility of an international organisation mandated to mediate between the conflicting sides in Ukraine.
Germany has suggested the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as one possibility. The OSCE, the continent’s main rights watchdog, is now under a Swiss presidency and counts Russia, Ukraine and European Union countries as members. Ukraine would have to ask for such mediation, however.
Meanwhile, a source in the delegation of Steinmeier said Russian President Vladimir Putin would welcome closer economic ties between the Europe Union and Ukraine. “Putin said steps towards economic convergence between the EU and Ukraine were welcome,” the source said on Friday.