Russian President Vladimir Putin says Ukrainian operations in the east are reminiscent of the Nazi siege of Leningrad during the World War II. (Reuters)
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday hailed pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine as “insurgents” battling an army that he likened to Nazi invaders during World War II, and the Ukrainian government raised the prospect of joining NATO as it seeks help in repelling what it calls an outright Russian military invasion of its territory.
In a statement published on the Kremlin’s Web site early Friday, Putin also called on the separatists to release trapped Ukrainian soldiers. The double-edged appeal — couched as a humanitarian gesture but apparently aimed at helping the rebels consolidate control — came a day after Kiev said Russian soldiers, tanks and heavy artillery had begun rolling into southeastern Ukraine to reverse recent Ukrainian military gains.
“I’m calling on insurgents to open a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainian troops who were surrounded in order to avoid senseless deaths,” Putin said in remarks addressed to “Novorossiya,” or New Russia, a politically loaded term used by the separatists for the part of eastern Ukraine that they want to become part of the Russian Federation.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Friday that Ukraine may seek to join NATO. He said the government has submitted a bill to parliament that would repeal the country’s “non-bloc status,” the Interfax news agency reported.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian military, Col. Andriy Lysenko, told reporters Friday that Russia continues to send troops and materiel across the border, including tanks with inscriptions such as “We are going to Kiev.”
Putin did not answer accusations from both the Ukrainian government and the West about Russia’s military presence in southeastern Ukraine.
He praised the separatists instead, calling them “insurgents” who had undermined “Kiev’s military operation, which threatened lives of the residents of Donbas and has already led to a colossal death toll among civilians” — a reference to the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donets Basin, or Donbas, whose unofficial capital is rebel-held Donetsk.
The Ukrainian military responded quickly, saying Putin’s call for a corridor for encircled Ukrainian troops showed that the separatists are “led and controlled directly from the Kremlin.”
Pro-Russian separatists said they would comply with the request from the Kremlin. But it was unclear whether Kiev would accept the offer.
Appearing at a youth forum later Friday, Putin said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had agreed to a swap of prisoners that would include sending 10 captured Russian paratroopers back to Russia.
An advocacy group called Soldiers’ Mothers has been pressing Russian authorities for answers on the fate of troops believed to be fighting in Ukraine. Russia responded by putting the Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg on a government list of foreign agents.
In the same appearance, Putin compared the tactics of the Ukrainian army to those of Nazi forces that besieged Leningrad during World War II. Recalling one of the most emotional chapters of Russian history, he said the recent Ukrainian offensive against pro-Russian rebels reminded him of “the events of the Second World War, when the Nazi occupiers, the troops, surrounded our cities — for example, Leningrad — and point-blank shot at these settlements and their inhabitants.” He added: “It’s awful. It’s a disaster.”
Russian military allegedly enters and attacks Ukrainian forces.
Putin said Russia was far from being drawn into a full-scale, regional conflict. “We neither want, nor are we going to” get involved in such a war, he said. Nevertheless, he said, Russia plans to keep developing its nuclear and defense arsenal to “feel safe, but not to threaten anyone in particular.”
He added that he hoped rising political tensions in the region do not complicate Russia’s plans to host the World Cup in 2018.
Although he skirted the issue of Russian military involvement in Ukraine, Putin’s remarks directly addressing the separatists and his disparaging comments about Ukrainian forces served to escalate the rhetoric surrounding the crisis at a time when Moscow and Kiev are supposed to be talking to each other about prisoner swaps, humanitarian relief convoys and other matters.
Putin also said that Ukraine should not fear federalization within the country, asserting that Russia itself would be moving toward more federalization, possibly by shifting some central government authorities to Siberia. That declaration comes barely two weeks after activists calling for more federalism in Siberia were detained and protests on the subject were banned.
However, Russia would not “meddle” with Ukraine’s internal affairs, Putin added.
The Ukrainian government said well-armed detachments of Russian soldiers captured key towns, burned buildings and sent the underequipped Ukrainian forces into full retreat Thursday — a show of military force that the United States now considers an invasion in all but name.
In a news briefing Friday, Lysenko, the Ukrainian military spokesman, expressed alarm about Russia’s intentions, citing what he said were menacing inscriptions on tanks and artillery shells.
“I assure you that on our shells, we won’t have any messages like ‘to Moscow’ or ‘on to Moscow,’ ” Lysenko said. “We are not aggressors; we’re just trying to liberate Ukrainian lands. . . . We don’t even think of crossing the borders and occupying someone’s land.”
Lysenko said the Ukrainian army, after having retreated from the southeastern coastal town of Novoazovsk, was ready to defend the key port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov about 28 miles farther west.
A total of 2,593 people have been killed in the fighting there since mid-April, a senior U.N. human rights official said Friday. The dead include civilians as well as Ukrainian and separatist forces.
“The trend is clear and alarming,” Ivan Simonovic, U.N. assistant secretary general for human rights, told journalists in Kiev. “There is a significant increase in the death toll in the east.”
Simonovic said the number would be close to 3,000 if the 298 victims of downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 were counted. He said civilian casualties would continue to rise “as each side increases its strength, through mobilization, better organization, or the deployment of new fighters and more sophisticated weapons and support from outside.”
Simonovic had sharp words for both sides about their humanitarian records.
“Armed groups continue to commit abductions, physical and psychological torture,” Simonovic said of the separatists, whose tactics he said were aimed at terrorizing the population under their control.
But he added that the United Nations has also heard “disturbing reports of violations committed by battalions under government control.”
Simonovic detailed various injustices, from parading Ukrainian prisoners of war down the streets of Donetsk on Ukraine’s independence day to leaving refugees without adequate access to education or shelter as the country heads into winter.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry criticized the U.N. official for repeating “fabrications against the militia forces of Donetsk and Luhansk” but commended him for addressing “the criminal actions of the Ukrainian army” — although the ministry maintained that his report did not go far enough.
“The number of victims and the level of violence in the Donbas have reached such an extent that the mission was forced to admit the obvious,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said. “In particular, U.N. observers began to speak openly about the alarming numbers of deaths among the civilian population, including children, as a result of Kiev’s punitive action.”
U.S. officials began saying privately for the first time Thursday that they consider the escalation of recent days tantamount to a Russian invasion, but President Obama stopped short of using the term at a news conference late in the afternoon. He said the United States will continue to rely on sanctions in an effort to deter Russia.
“There is no doubt that this is not a homegrown, indigenous uprising in eastern Ukraine. The separatists are backed, trained, armed, financed by Russia,” Obama said.
Russian actions will be a main topic for the summit of NATO leaders next week in Wales, Obama said.
In response Friday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry against accused the United States of hypocrisy — this time for what it called U.S. disregard for civilians in eastern Ukraine.
“In any other conflict, whether in the Middle East, Africa or anywhere else, the West has consistently opposed actions causing harm to civilians,” the ministry said on its Web site. “It is only in relation to southeastern Ukraine that it holds a diametrically opposite line, in gross violation of international humanitarian law.”
The Russian Defense Ministry asserted Thursday that no Russian military units had taken part in action in Ukraine, according to Interfax. Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that lists of Russian military units circulating on the Internet are fake. Russia has previously admitted that 10 of its paratroopers were captured in Ukraine but said they were there because they wandered into the country by mistake.
Branigin reported from Washington. Annie Gowen in Kiev, Anne Gearan and Karen DeYoung in Washington and Daniela Deane in Rome contributed to this report.
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