WRAPUP 4-Ukraine peace deal falters as rebels show no sign of surrender
(Adds Kerry-Lavrov call, Slaviansk barricades reinforced)
* Biden expected to offer symbolic support in Kyiv
* Pro-Russia separatists reinforce barricades
* Mediator meets self-proclaimed “people’s mayor”
* Kerry tells Lavrov to call for end to occupations
* Lavrov tells Kerry to restrain Kyiv “hotheads”
By Richard Balmforth and Aleksandar Vasovic
KYIV/SLAVIANSK, Ukraine, April 21 (Reuters) – An agreement
to avert wider conflict in Ukraine was faltering on Monday, with
pro-Moscow separatist gunmen showing no sign of surrendering
government buildings they have seized.
U.S. and European officials say they will hold Moscow
responsible and impose new economic sanctions if the separatists
do not clear out of government buildings they have occupied
across swathes of eastern Ukraine over the past two weeks.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Kyiv, where he is
expected to announce a package of technical assistance. The
visit is likely to be more important as a symbol of support than
for any specific promises Biden makes in public.
“He will call for urgent implementation of the agreement
reached in Geneva last week while also making clear … that
there will be mounting costs for Russia if they choose a
destabilising rather than constructive course in the days
ahead,” a senior administration official told reporters.
Russia, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States
signed off on the agreement in Geneva on Thursday designed to
lower tension in the worst confrontation between Russia and the
West since the Cold War. The agreement calls for occupied
buildings to be vacated under the auspices of envoys from the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
But no sooner had the accord been signed than both sides
accused the other of breaking it, while the pro-Moscow rebels
disavowed the pledge to withdraw from occupied buildings.
An OSCE mediator, Mark Etherington, held his first meeting
with the leader of separatists in Slaviansk, a town which rebels
have turned into a heavily-fortified redoubt. Etherington said
he had asked the pro-Russian self-proclaimed “people’s mayor” of
the town, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, whether he would comply with
the Geneva agreement, but gave no hint about the response.
Ponomaryov later told a news conference: “We did not
negotiate, we talked. We told them our position, what happened
here, and they told us about their plans.”
Etherington said he had also asked about people being held
in Slaviansk, including the woman who was serving as mayor until
the uprising. Her fate has not been made clear.
In other signs the Geneva accord was far from being
implemented, activists in Slaviansk brought up trucks laden with
sand and were filling sandbags to reinforce their barricades. In
nearby Kramatorsk, local media showed masked gunmen taking over
the office of the SBU security service in the town, and leading
away a civilian identified as the local police chief.
Separatists told Reuters they would not disarm until Right
Sector, a Ukrainian nationalist group based in Western Ukraine,
did so first.
“Who should surrender weapons first? Let us see Right Sector
disarm first, let them make the first step and we will follow,”
said Yevgeny Gordik, a member of a separatist militia. “We need
dialogue. This is not dialogue. It is monologue.”
Russia says Right Sector members have threatened Russian
speakers. Kyiv and Western countries say the threat is largely
invented by Russian state-run media to justify Moscow’s
intervention and cause alarm in Russian speaking areas.
Moscow blames Right Sector for a shooting on Easter Sunday
morning, when at least three people were killed at a checkpoint
manned by armed separatists. Right Sector denies involvement,
while Kyiv said Russia provoked the violence.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged his Russian
counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Monday to help implement the Geneva
deal, including by “publicly calling on separatists to vacate
illegal buildings and checkpoints”, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
In its account of their telephone conversation, the Russian
Foreign Ministry said Lavrov had called on Kerry to “influence
Kyiv, not let hotheads there provoke a bloody conflict” and to
encourage it “to fulfil its obligations unflaggingly”.
One European diplomat said the deal was a way for Russian
President Vladimir Putin to buy time and undermine momentum
towards tougher sanctions: “Talks and compromises are just part
of his tactics,” said the diplomat. “He wants to have Ukraine.”
SOLDIERS FREED
The Slaviansk separatists released around a dozen Ukrainian
soldiers in blue uniforms on Monday, without making clear the
circumstances under which they had been held. Gordik said
armoured vehicles that were surrendered by a column of Ukrainian
paratroops last week would stay in the town.
Putin announced last month that Moscow has the right to
intervene in its neighbours to protect Russian speakers. He then
annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
Moscow has since massed tens of thousands of troops on the
Ukrainian border, and Kyiv and its Western allies say Russian
agents are directing the uprising in the east, including the
“green men” – heavily armed, masked gunmen in unmarked uniforms.
In his latest move, likely to be seen by the West as a
further threat to the post-Cold War order, Putin signed a law on
Monday making it easier for Russian speakers across the former
Soviet Union to obtain Russian citizenship.
Eastern Ukraine is largely Russian-speaking and many
residents are suspicious of the pro-European government that
took power in Kyiv in February when Moscow-backed President
Viktor Yanukovich fled the country after mass protests.
Separatists have declared an independent “People’s Republic
of Donetsk” in the east’s biggest province and have named
themselves to official posts in towns and cities, setting up
checkpoints and flying Russian flags over government buildings.
There is also some support for Ukrainian unity in the
region, but pro-Kyiv activists have had a lower profile since
the separatists took up arms.
One activist who helped organise a unity rally in Rubizhne,
a town in the eastern Luhansk region, told Ukraine’s Channel 5
television that separatists attacked it, forcing the rally to
disperse. Local police said a policeman was hurt when
unidentified people tried to disrupt the rally.
In the regional capital Luhansk, Interfax-Ukraine news
agency said a meeting of about 3,000 people in the local SBU
headquarters had elected a “people’s governor” and voted to hold
a two-stage referendum next month on union with Russia.
Ukraine announced an operation to retake rebel-held
territory earlier this month, but that modest effort largely
collapsed in disarray.
Kyiv has declared an “Easter truce”, though it is far from
clear it could muster any real force if it tried. The army is
ill-equipped, untested and untrained for domestic operations,
while the government in Kyiv doubts the loyalty of the police.
The United States and EU have imposed visa bans and asset
freezes on some Russians over the annexation of Crimea, measures
explicitly designed not to have wider economic impact and which
have been mocked as pointless by Moscow.
Washington and Brussels both say they are working on tougher
measures they will impose unless Russia’s allies in eastern
Ukraine back down, although building a consensus is tricky in
Europe where many countries rely on Russian energy exports.
The OSCE, a European security body that includes both NATO
members and Russia, has so far deployed around 100 monitors and
mediators in Ukraine and expects their number to rise.
An OSCE spokesman said the mediators were visiting
separatist-occupied buildings with copies of last week’s Geneva
accord to explain it to the people inside.
“It’s a mixed experience dealing with checkpoints and so
forth and there is a varying reaction to teams. There is a
hardened attitude in Donetsk or Slaviansk but some other areas
are more accommodating,” spokesman Michael Bociurkiw said. “When
teams go to smaller centres people are more willing to talk.”
(Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets, Alastair Macdonald and
Jeff Mason in Kyiv, Dmitry Madorsky in Slaviansk, Alissa de
Carbonnel in Donetsk, Doina Chiacu in Washington, Steve
Gutterman and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; writing by Peter
Graff and Philippa Fletcher; editing by David Stamp)