LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
• Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized Crimea as an independent state, a potential precursor to absorbing the peninsula into Russia.
• The United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on some of Putin’s deputies, officials of Crimea’s breakaway government and fugitive ex-Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich. But experts said the measures would likely be ineffectual.
• Financial markets rose in apparent relief that there would not be economic sanctions.
• With Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s eastern border, Ukraine President Oleksandr Turchynov vowed to fight back, if necessary.
News services
Ignoring the toughest sanctions against Moscow since the end of the Cold War, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula as an “independent and sovereign country” on Monday, a bold challenge to Washington that escalates one of Europe’s worst security crises in years.
The brief decree posted on the Kremlin’s website came just hours after the United States and the European Union announced asset freezes and other sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian officials involved in the Crimean crisis. President Barack Obama had warned that more would come if Russia didn’t stop interfering in Ukraine, and Putin’s move clearly forces his hand.
The West has struggled to find leverage to force Moscow to back off in the Ukraine turmoil, of which Crimea is only a part, and analysts saw Monday’s sanctions as mostly ineffectual.
Moscow showed no signs of flinching in the dispute that has roiled Ukraine since Russian troops took effective control of the strategic Black Sea peninsula last month, and it supported the Sunday referendum that overwhelmingly called for annexation by Russia. Recognizing Crimea as independent is likely an interim step in absorbing the region.
Crimea became part of Russia in the 18th century, and remained so until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to Ukraine in 1954. Both Russia and Crimea’s majority ethnic Russian population see annexation as correcting a historic insult.
Ukraine’s turmoil — which began in November with a wave of protests against President Viktor Yanukovych and accelerated after he fled to Russia in late February — has become Europe’s most severe security crisis in years.
Russia, like Yanukovych himself, characterizes his ouster as a coup, and alleges the new authorities om Kiev are fascist-minded and likely to crack down on Ukraine’s ethnic Russian population. Pro-Russia demonstrations have broken out in several cities in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border, where the Kremlin has been massing troops.
Fearing Russia is prepared to risk violence to make a land-grab, the West has consistently spoken out against Russia’s actions but has run into a wall of resistance from Moscow.
Reacting to Monday’s sanctions, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov declared they were “a reflection of a pathological unwillingness to acknowledge reality and a desire to impose on everyone one-sided and unbalanced approaches that absolutely ignore reality.”
“I think the decree of the president of the United States was written by some joker,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, one of the individuals hit by the sanctions, said on his Twitter account.
The White House imposed asset freezes on him and six other officials, including Putin’s close ally Valentina Matvienko, who is speaker of the upper house of parliament, and Vladislav Surkov, one of Putin’s top ideological aides. The Treasury Department also targeted Yanukovych, Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov and two other top figures.
The EU’s foreign ministers slapped travel bans and asset freezes against 21 officials from Russia and Ukraine.
“We need to show solidarity with Ukraine, and therefore Russia leaves us no choice,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters in Brussels.
Despite Obama’s vow of tougher measures, stock markets in Russia and Europe rose sharply, reflecting relief that trade and business ties were spared.
“I guess the market view is that Russia forced their case in Crimea, pushed through the referendum, and the Western reaction was muted, so that this opens the way for future Russian intervention in Ukraine,” said Tim Ash, an analyst who follows Ukraine at Standard Bank PLC.
In Kiev, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov vowed that Ukraine will not give up Crimea.
“We are ready for negotiations, but we will never resign ourselves to the annexation of our land,” a somber Turchynov said in a televised address to the nation. “We will do everything in order to avoid war and the loss of human lives. We will be doing everything to solve the conflict through diplomatic means. But the military threat to our state is real.”
The Crimean parliament declared that all Ukrainian state property on the peninsula will be nationalized and become the property of the Crimean Republic. It gave no further details. Lawmakers also asked the United Nations and other nations to recognize it and began work on setting up a central bank with $30 million in support from Russia.
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