Moscow is intensifying military activity in and around Ukraine, adding to the concerns of a new government threatened by bankruptcy and rising tension in Crimea. Ukraine’s proposed pro-western cabinet was presented to thousands of people on Kiev’s Independence Square, or Maidan, last night.
Liberal Arseniy Yatsenyuk was nominated as premier, and ministerial candidates include prominent former activists who helped oust President Viktor Yanukovich. At least two were brutally beaten in recent months by thugs allegedly loyal to the ex-leader.
Finance minister Oleksandr Shlapak is tasked with securing urgent western aid to save an economy on the brink of collapse. Earlier yesterday, Russia put its military on high alert near Ukraine and boosted security at its naval base on Crimea's Black Sea coast, as scuffles broke out between thousands of Crimeans protesting for and against Ukraine's revolution.
Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said President Vladimir Putin had ordered military exercises in a western area bordering Ukraine, involving at least 110,000 servicemen, 200 aircraft, 880 tanks and 80 ships. Mr Shoigu insisted the war games were not linked to events in Ukraine, but he also announced that Moscow was "watching carefully what is happening in Crimea . . . We are taking measures to ensure the security of sites, infrastructure and arsenals of the Black Sea fleet."
Ukraine’s new government may seek to change the fleet’s lease on its Sevastopol base, which Mr Yanukovich extended to at least 2042.
Mr Yanukovich and allies fled Kiev last Friday after street battles that killed at least 82 people. He was last seen on Sunday in Crimea, and officials believe he is still in Ukraine.
Tatars
Outside parliament in the Crimean capital Simferopol, about 80km north of Sevastopol, some 5,000 pro-Russian protesters who oppose the revolution jostled with about 10,000 Crimean Tatars who fervently support the uprising. The Tatars suffered severe repression during Soviet times and were exiled en masse to Siberia and central Asia in 1944.
About 250,000 now live in Crimea after returning in the early 1990s, but resentment and fear of Russia – and its allies in Ukraine – remains.
“We want to throw out the whole band of crooks, from Yanukovich down to that mob in there,” said Server Ishankulov (65), in front of a parliament surrounded by a crowd waving blue-and-yellow Tatar and Ukrainian banners. Many Tatars chanted slogans associated with Maidan: “Glory to Ukraine!” and “Down with the gang!”
Gradually, the Tatars were surrounded by pro-Moscow Crimeans and Cossacks waving Russian flags and shouting “Crimea is Russia!”
For hours, the two groups stood toe-to-toe outside parliament and argued over Ukraine’s revolution and future course, the debate occasionally interrupted by a punch or bottle thrown.
“We want to live peacefully and calmly with our Russian language and traditions,” said Alexander Bolshakov (65), a former marine in the Black Sea Fleet. “We don’t [have] any Maidan here, or any fascists from western Ukraine teaching us how to live or telling us that we can only speak Ukrainian,” he added. “We cannot accept that.”
Most of Crimea’s two million residents are ethnic-Russians who share the Kremlin’s belief that extreme nationalists have seized power in Ukraine and plan to reduce use of the Russian language and downgrade ties with Moscow.
Parliament fuelled such fears with one of the first decisions it made after Mr Yanukovich and his ministers fled, when it voted to lower the status of Russian in areas where it is widely spoken. Many supporters of the new government, and EU officials, criticised the move.
Language
Yesterday, activists in western Ukraine said they would speak Russian for a day and those in Russophone areas planned to speak Ukrainian, to show that language was not a major issue for them.
In the Simferopol protests, one person died of a heart attack before demonstrators dispersed. The Tatars burned a Russian flag and cheered after parliament cancelled a session at which they feared pro-Moscow deputies would vote for Crimea to cut ties with Kiev and appeal for protection from Russia. Tension is expected to persist in the region, however.
Refat Chubarov, a Tatar leader, urged his people to form self-defence units with their Ukrainian and Russian neighbours. Anti-Maidan groups in eastern and southern Ukraine have formed similar patrols.
Ukraine’s new leaders yesterday formally disbanded the “Berkut” riot police unit that clashed with demonstrators during three months of anti- government protests in Kiev. Berkut was widely hated in Kiev and central and western Ukraine for its perceived brutality and loyalty to Mr Yanukovich and his allies.
But Berkut officers were welcomed back as heroes last weekend to Crimea, where officials have refused to disband a local unit. Thirty-five Berkut officers fled Kiev with their weapons, and some reports now place them in Sevastopol.
