KIEV, Ukraine - Russia and the West maneuvered on Tuesday ahead of a seemingly inevitable clash over Ukraine's plan to hold a presidential election on May 25 that Western powers view as crucial to restoring stability and that the Kremlin says will be illegitimate, particularly if the government in Kiev cannot first stabilize the country.
Senior Russian officials have repeatedly referred to the provisional government in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, as an illegitimate 'junta.' From their perspective, allowing an election to go forward when no pro-Russian candidate has a real chance of winning would seriously weaken the Kremlin's influence in Ukraine. It could also help the West coax the country out of Moscow's orbit.
Russia has made clear that it would like the election to be delayed. The country's foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, pressed the point again on Tuesday, insisting that the interim government end bloodshed and amend the Constitution to devolve power to the regions - and that it do so before Ukrainians are asked to choose a new leader.
Such changes would presumably address the demands by some pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine for a new system of federalization that would weaken the central government in Kiev while expanding the authority of regional and local officials.
'Holding elections in a situation where the armed forces are being used against part of the population is rather unusual,' Mr. Lavrov said on Tuesday at a news conference in Vienna, where about 30 foreign ministers met under the auspices of the Council of Europe to discuss the situation in Ukraine.
'The criteria of any process involving citizen choice are well known to all,' Mr. Lavrov said, according to the Interfax news service. 'Elections and referendums must be free and fair, and they must proceed in a situation excluding violence and under objective and unbiased international monitoring.'
He added, 'Depending on how all of these criteria will be observed, we will shape our attitude to these events.'
At the Vienna meeting, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, said that Russian worries about violence and the elections were disingenuous as the Kremlin was feeding the conflict in Ukraine in an effort to undermine the presidential election. 'Russia is clearly intent on preventing or disrupting those elections,' he told reporters, according to bberitaa.blogspot.com. He added that the foreign ministers at the meeting supported holding the vote without outside interference.
Further complicating the issue, the Ukrainian Parliament decided on Tuesday not to hold a national referendum at the same time as the presidential election. Some leaders in eastern Ukraine who support the provisional government had proposed holding the two the same day to help defuse social and political tensions in the country.
The Parliament vote to put off such a referendum, with some lawmakers citing security concerns, seemed certain to reinforce Russia's contention that the unsettled circumstances would not allow for a legitimate presidential election.
At a news conference after the special closed session of Parliament, Andriy V. Senchenko, a member of the Fatherland party, said that a referendum could not be held amid the current violence. Four Ukrainian soldiers and at least five pro-Russian rebels died on Monday.
'Any referendum should take place when there is a guarantee that the will of the people is not expressed at gunpoint,' Mr. Senchenko said, according to Ukrainian news services.
Mr. Senchenko struggled, however, to explain why the presidential vote could still proceed. He said that while the national result in the presidential election would yield an indisputable victor, a referendum could result in different outcomes in different regions.
'If we have a referendum in that manner, its results can be used for political manipulations by separatists and their coordinators from special intelligence services from the Russian Federation,' Mr. Senchenko said.
Ukraine Crisis in MapsUkraine's interior minister said Tuesday that four government soldiers and about 30 pro-Russian rebels had been killed in clashes a day earlier near the city of Slovyansk. Rebels also forced down a Ukrainian Mi24 helicopter, which was later destroyed, in the town of Krasny Liman, near Slovyansk.
Local residents said the pilots landed because one was wounded by ground fire. Another helicopter evacuated them and a third aircraft, described by witnesses as an attack jet, destroyed the helicopter so that it could not be used by rebels. The husk of the aircraft, with one rotor still attached, was sitting in a shallow swamp on Tuesday and local men were scavenging for scrap.
The rising debate over the presidential election came as officials in Kiev seemed to be girding for violence ahead of a holiday on Friday commemorating victory in World War II.
On Monday, the acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, said that checkpoints had been established at strategic points around the capital to guard against potential attacks.
While the central government convened a meeting of regional officials on Tuesday to discuss a 'decentralization' plan, which is viewed as a potential political solution to the continuing separatist violence, the deputy prime minister in charge of drawing up the proposal also conceded that it would not be ready before the presidential election on May 25.
The 'decentralization' plan is Kiev's answer to the demand by some pro-Russian separatists for 'federalization.' The two plans call for increasing the authority of regional and local governments.
At the meeting of regional leaders on Tuesday in Kiev, officials said that the plan would give local governments substantially more authority over several areas of government services including education, health, sports, culture and road construction.
The developments coincided with mounting Western concern that the fighting in the east could spiral out of control and lead to direct intervention by Russia, which has deployed tens of thousands of troops on its side of the border, supposedly for training exercises.
Late on Monday, the German Foreign Ministry toughened its travel advisory for Ukraine, recommending that German citizens leave eastern and southern Ukraine. On Sunday, the ministry strongly advised Germans against entering those areas.
In a television interview in Paris, President François Hollande of France said that if the May 25 election was not held, 'there would be chaos and the risk of civil war.'
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany suggested in a television interview late Monday that events were now beyond the control of the authorities in Kiev or Moscow.
'I'm convinced that we are struggling against a situation that has taken on a dynamic of its own,' Mr. Steinmeier said. 'There are groups in eastern Ukraine that are not listening' to the central governments in Ukraine and Russia, he said.
In a separate interview with four European newspapers, Mr. Steinmeier said recent violence in the Ukrainian city of Odessa had 'shown us that we are just a few steps away from a military confrontation.' Conflict has reached a point that 'a short time ago we would have considered impossible,' he added.
Posted by Unknown on Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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