DEVELOPMENTS
— Pro-Russia forces in Slovyansk said they were holding an American journalist, saying he was suspected of spying for Ukrainian ultra-nationalists. Simon Ostrovsky, a journalist for Brooklyn-based Vice News, has not been seen since early Tuesday.
— Dutch, British and Danish fighter jets scrambled after a pair of Russian bombers approached their airspace over the North Sea. The Russian TU-95 Bear jets were escorted by the NATO members’ aircraft until they departed.
— To reassure other eastern European countries that are alarmed by Russia’s pressure on Ukraine, a detachment of about 150 U.S. Army paratroopers arrived in northwestern Poland on Wednesday to take part in joint training exercises, Western officials said. U.S. officials said more troops — a total of 600 U.S. soldiers — would be sent in the next few days for similar exercises in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
News services
Russia’s foreign minister warned Wednesday that attacks on Russian citizens or interests in Ukraine would bring a firm response and drew a comparison to the circumstances that opened the war with Georgia in 2008.
“Russian citizens being attacked is an attack against the Russian Federation,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, a day after Ukraine announced it was re-launching a campaign against pro-Kremlin insurgents occupying government facilities in the mostly Russian-speaking east.
“If we were attacked, we could certainly respond,” Lavrov said, speaking on the Kremlin-funded satellite TV channel RT.
Lavrov’s warning came as the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a separate statement demanding that Ukraine pull its armed forces out of the crisis-ridden region.
“If our interests, our legitimate interests, the interests of Russians have been attacked directly, like they were in South Ossetia, I do not see any other way but to respond in full accordance with international law,” Lavrov said, referring to the 2008 war that led to the republic of South Ossetia breaking away from Georgia.
In that conflict, Russia launched an invasion of Georgia after it unleashed an artillery attack on the capital of the separatist region, where Russian peacekeeping forces were stationed. Unlike the conflict with Georgia, Russia has denied having troops or agents in eastern Ukraine.
The Russian warnings came as an accord reached last week in Geneva to defuse the Ukraine crisis continued to crumble, with pro-Russian insurgents in the east defying calls for all sides to disarm and to vacate the buildings they are occupying.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, ordered resumption of an “anti-terrorist operation” against the pro-Russia forces. However, the highly publicized move produced little action on the ground Wednesday.
A previous campaign to reclaim seized buildings showed few results before it was suspended last week. Ukrainian forces claimed to have regained control of one small airport, but insurgents also seized armored vehicles and reports said some Ukrainian soldiers had switched sides.
“Security forces are in a state of disorganization and demoralization,” said Kiev-based political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko. “Today, most of them don’t want to fight for anyone because they don’t know who is going to win tomorrow and how all of this will end.”
The army is underfunded and poorly equipped after years of corruption and mismanagement under Viktor Yanukovych, the Russia-friendly president who fled the country in February after months of protests.
Yanukovych’s ouster sparked wide anger in his support base in Ukraine’s east. The insurgents, who say that Ukraine’s post-Yanukovych government consists of nationalists who will suppress the east’s large Russian-speaking population, are demanding regional autonomy or even annexation by Russia, like the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea last month.
The insurgents, who Kiev and the West claim have Russian backing and direction, have occupied buildings in at least 10 eastern cities.
It’s a strategy that Eugene Rumer, director of the Russia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says appears to be “spreading across the map like ink blots.”
“They are a long ways away from merging into a large area, but this strategy is proving quite effective at challenging the power and authority of the Kiev government, undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity and spreading the insurgency over a vast region that otherwise the Russian military would struggle to occupy and control,” he wrote in an analysis.
In analyst Fesenko’s view, it’s impossible for Ukraine to restore control over the insurgent region by force.
“Now the task is to block the spread of the separatist virus,” he said.
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