France Withholds Russian Warship, Criticizes Ukraine’s NATO Goal
France ruled out delivery of a
warship to Russia over the conflict in Ukraine and criticized
the government in Kyiv for saying it wants to join NATO.
Conditions for handing over the Mistral helicopter carrier
“have not been met,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius
said in an interview on France Inter radio today. Russia’s
presence in eastern Ukraine was “unacceptable,” he said, and
there were also “serious problems” with statements from
Ukraine’s new government that it sought to join the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization.
France has a contract to sell two Mistrals to Russia, while
President Francois Hollande has said delivery can’t begin until
a Sept. 5 cease-fire agreement is implemented between Ukraine
and pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk
regions. The U.S. and European Union accuse Russia of fueling
the conflict, a charge Russia denies, and Ukraine says Russian
troops and vehicles continue to cross the border into rebel-held
areas.
Russia’s Emergencies Ministry will send 100 trucks with
more than 1,000 tons of humanitarian aid to eastern Ukraine on
Friday, its eighth convoy to the region, RIA Novosti reported
today, citing Deputy Minister Vladimir Stepanov.
NATO Referendum
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the former Soviet
republic will choose at the end of the decade whether to join
NATO in a referendum once it completes policy changes needed for
membership.
“We have worked out an intense plan for the next six
years, so that the country meets the criteria to join the EU and
to join NATO,” Poroshenko said in Kyiv yesterday. “And only
then the Ukrainian people will decide on joining or not joining,
in a referendum.”
Ukraine’s government said Sept. 26 that it seeks NATO
membership in the “short term.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticized the U.S. and EU countries for encroaching
into former communist Europe, saying they have violated
agreements signed at the end of the Cold War and pose a threat
to his country’s national security.
More than 4,300 people have been killed during the
Ukrainian conflict and much of the local infrastructure has been
laid to waste in rebel-held areas.
Two people were killed and eight injured when a shell hit a
bus in Donetsk today, the city council said on its website.
Three died and eight were wounded in attacks yesterday and the
situation in the city is “extremely tense” after a night of
heavy shelling, it said.
Shelling Resumed
Pro-Russian insurgents attacked 17 locations in the Donetsk
and Luhansk regions overnight using mortars, multiple rocket
launch systems and shells, the Ukrainian National Security and
Defense Council said in a statement on Facebook.
Rebels fired 19 times at residential areas in the Luhansk
region alone in the past 24 hours, the council said. Government
forces fired 30 artillery rounds to protect their positions and
civilians, it said, adding that troops near the key port city of
Mariupol have “all means to repel the aggressor.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged Russia to
pull back its forces from eastern Ukraine and respect the wobbly
truce, which has been breached repeatedly since it was signed in
Minsk, Belarus. He also said that the military alliance would
stick by a 2008 decision to let Ukraine join if it eventually
meets the criteria and decides to do so, even if membership
isn’t being discussed now.
“The open door is still open,” Stoltenberg said.
Urges Pullback
“We are calling on Russia to pull back its forces from
eastern Ukraine and to respect the Minsk agreements, and to stop
fueling the conflict by supporting the separatists and use all
its influence on the separatists to make sure they are
respecting the cease-fire,” Stoltenberg told lawmakers from
NATO countries in The Hague yesterday. “We are calling on
Russia to stop violating international law and to respect the
sovereignty of Ukraine.”
Germany’s foreign minister expressed concerns that Russia
is seeking to split up Ukraine by supporting separatists in the
east as Putin defended his stance in the conflict.
“I’m taking Russia at its word that it doesn’t want to
destroy the unity of Ukraine,” Der Spiegel magazine cited the
German minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, as saying in an
interview. “The reality, however, is speaking a different
language.”
Putin defended Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea
peninsula in March and its sympathy for the separatist cause in
eastern Ukraine in an interview with Russia’s Tass news agency.
‘Push Russia’
People in Luhansk “perceive themselves as parts of the
greater Russian world,” Putin said. “As soon as we rise, some
other nations immediately feel the urge to push Russia aside, to
put it ‘where it belongs,’ to slow it down.”
Still, Steinmeier warned against breaking off lines of
communication with Putin, who faced a barrage of criticism over
Ukraine at the Group of 20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, a week
ago and left the talks early. The war of words over Ukraine had
become “dangerously swollen,” Spiegel cited the German
minister as saying.
Georgia condemned a pact between its breakaway region of
Abkhazia and Russia yesterday as an effective takeover of its
territory. Putin pledged to give 5 billion rubles ($111 million)
to Abkhazia next year at a meeting in Sochi with Abkhaz
President Raul Khadzhimba, where they signed a new accord on
alliance and strategic partnership.
To contact the reporters on this story:
Daryna Krasnolutska in Kyiv at
dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net;
Volodymyr Verbyany in Kyiv at
vverbyany1@bloomberg.net;
Gregory Viscusi in Paris at
gviscusi@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
James M. Gomez at
jagomez@bloomberg.net
Tony Halpin, Michael Winfrey