Putin Announces Pullback From Ukraine Border

Putin Announces Pullback From Ukraine Border

... Excerpt

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin, faced with rising violence in southeastern Ukraine that threatened to draw in the Russian Army at great cost and prompt severe new Western economic sanctions, pressed pause on Wednesday in what had started to look like an inevitable march toward war.

But it remained unclear to analysts and political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic whether he was truly reversing course on Ukraine or if this was just another of his judo-inspired feints.

 

 

Using a far less ominous tone than in previous remarks about Ukraine, Mr. Putin told a news conference at the Kremlin that Russia had withdrawn its troops from along the border and that he had asked separatists to drop plans for a referendum on sovereignty this Sunday. Russia would even accept Ukraine’s presidential election on May 25, he said, if demands for autonomy from the country’s east were recognized.


Mr. Putin said Russia wanted to spur mediation efforts led by the Europeans. He said he did not know whether talks between the warring sides in Ukraine were “realistic,” but was determined to give them a chance, in particular a suggestion from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany that the factions engage in a round-table discussion.

“I simply believe that if we want to find a long-term solution to the crisis in Ukraine, open, honest and equal dialogue is the only possible option,” he said.

 

While Western governments welcomed Mr. Putin’s apparent about-face, there was also abundant skepticism, based in part on his record in Crimea. Mr. Putin repeatedly denied that Russia’s soldiers were involved in the region, only to admit later that they were.

 

A White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, told reporters traveling with President Obama aboard Air Force One that while the United States would welcome a Russian military pullback, “there has been no evidence that such a withdrawal has taken place.” NATO officials confirmed that on Wednesday, saying they saw no troop movements.

 

Senior British officials also reacted warily to Mr. Putin’s announcement, noting that he had once before announced a sizable troop withdrawal from the border, in a phone call with Ms. Merkel, but moved only one battalion a modest distance. One official said that satellite photos that would better verify Mr. Putin’s assertions would take a while to come through.

 

Nevertheless, British officials regarded Mr. Putin’s comments as positive. They suggested that he wants to avoid a larger economic confrontation with the United States and the European Union and that some of the concerns of Russian businessmen may finally be getting through to the tight circle around Mr. Putin.

 

While the world was caught off guard by Mr. Putin’s sudden peace offensive, analysts in Moscow cited several robust military, economic and political reasons he might be inclined to switch tracks.

 

First, there has been an increasing sense here, as elsewhere, that conditions in Ukraine were rapidly approaching the situation in Yugoslavia in 1991, when the former Soviet satellite broke into pieces. The violence among various factions was creating facts on the ground, they said, that nobody could predict or manage.

 

Paradoxically, some added, this dynamic was nurtured in large part by round-the-clock reports on Russian state television that Ukraine was heaving with violence instigated primarily by neo-fascist cells emanating from western Ukraine. But with the notable exception of some 40 deaths in riots last week in Odessa, far from the separatist hotbeds of Slovyansk and Donetsk, the violence was mostly confined to small skirmishes.

There were worrying signs that was changing, however.

“The problem is that in all these types of conflicts, once the black swans have started to fly, you will never control the situation,” said Sergei A. Karaganov, dean of the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and a periodic adviser to the Kremlin on foreign policy.

 

In modern international relations and finance, “black swans” refer to random, unexpected events with unforeseeable consequences. “Law and order was beginning to fall apart, and more and more groups were fighting each other,” Mr. Karaganov said.

 

 

The other reasons follow a certain logic. Mr. Putin wants to shape Ukraine’s future, but an invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Army would be wildly expensive, bloody and unpredictable. Even a nominally successful invasion could breed an insurgency in the east by pro-Ukrainian militants, while the partition of the country would stick Russia with a failed state in southeast Ukraine that would take tens of billions to restructure. It would also create an implacably anti-Russian and pro-European state in western Ukraine that would most likely join NATO as fast as it could.

 

And an invasion would almost certainly galvanize the European Union into joining the United States in imposing much tougher sanctions that might target entire sections of the Russian economy, like banking, energy or steel.

 

The Russian aim in Ukraine has always been clear, analysts said. Mr. Putin wanted to annex Crimea with minimal cost, which he appears to have done. Generally, Washington and the European capitals have been so focused on the possible dismemberment of Ukraine that Crimea was shunted to a back burner.

 

Mr. Putin wants to maintain the ability, they say, to manipulate events in Ukraine to keep the country out of a full embrace by the European Union and, worse, NATO. Toward that end, Russia has been pushing for regional autonomy, a slippery concept that leaves plenty of room for maneuvering at a later date. If he can get European mediators to push through an autonomy plan that keeps southeast Ukraine in Moscow’s orbit — without risking his army or sanctions — so much the better.

 

“He really promised nothing,” noted Kirill Rogov, an economic analyst and political commentator in Moscow. “He demonstrated that he controls the level of tension in Ukraine. He can return the situation to the high levels of violence at any moment. He did not refuse the referendum, but only proposed delaying it.”

 

Above all, perhaps, Mr. Putin is known to loathe chaos, and southeast Ukraine was staggering in that direction.

 

Analysts suggested that if eastern Ukraine were to vote in the referendum Sunday to join Russia, or for independence, or if they demanded Russian protection in some orchestrated way, Mr. Putin would be forced to react, given his past statements about Russia’s responsibility to ensure the safety of ethnic Russians beyond its borders.

“The decision was taken not to increase Russian involvement in Ukraine, and not to increase the chances of major violence there,” said Konstantin von Eggert, an independent political analyst and a commentator for Kommersant FM radio.

 

Most analysts believe that Mr. Putin wanted to avoid war, and say that a minor armed incursion into Ukraine would not have been enough to resolve the crisis. Instead, it could easily have developed into a long, bloody and expensive slog, bruising the reputation he gained from annexing Crimea with virtually no bloodshed.

 

“This one would not have been bloodless,” Mr. von Eggert said. “This would have been a real war, not by stealth, not by new methods, but a real old-fashioned war, and this is something that Mr. Putin does not want.”

 

The intense public support generated in recent months, all the glow about renewed Russian strength, would have evaporated.
Mr. Putin repeated Russia’s longstanding demands. He said the authorities in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, should immediately halt all military actions in southeast Ukraine. He demanded the release of all prisoners linked to the uprising. He also expressed sympathy for the goals and actions of the rebels in the southeast, where armed men have paralyzed most of the major cities by seizing government buildings and barricading themselves inside, with just enough weapons to fend off government attempts to recapture them.

“I can understand the people in southeast Ukraine, who say that if others can do what they like in Kiev, carry out a coup d’état, take up arms and seize government buildings, police stations and military garrisons, then why shouldn’t they be allowed to defend their interests and lawful rights?” Mr. Putin told the news conference, according to the official Kremlin transcript of his remarks. The Kremlin has for months referred to the interim government as a “junta,” called it illegitimate and warned of its infiltration by neo-fascists.

The reaction in Kiev and among separatists in southeast Ukraine was a combination of suspicion and mistrust.

 

In Kiev, Andriy Parubiy, the head of Ukraine’s national security council, said that Mr. Putin’s remarks were “clear evidence” of what Moscow had been denying all along, that the separatist movement was directed from Russia.

 

“We understand that the center of the Ukrainian crisis is not in Slovyansk, not in Donetsk, not in Luhansk,” Mr. Parubiy said. “The center of the Ukrainian crisis is coordinated in the Kremlin.”

 

He added that the call to delay the referendum in Donetsk was not surprising given that it was illegal and impossible to carry out because the separatists control only a few public buildings in the center of a dozen or so cities.

 

On Wednesday, the militants seemed perplexed by the Kremlin’s announcement. Both Moscow and the militants have repeatedly said that their actions are not coordinated, despite the shadowy presence of well-trained, well-armed men Ukraine accuses of being part of the Russian military or special agents.

 

In Slovyansk, the ground zero of some of the toughest, most militarily experienced opposition to Kiev, the separatist mayor, Vyachislav Ponomaryov, first claimed that he had not heard Mr. Putin’s announcement and then confessed confusion.

 

“I don’t know exactly who he is appealing to with this request,” Mr. Ponomaryov said.

He added that the militants were still ready to hold the referendum, that the ballots were prepared and polling stations were being set up. “If a collective decision is made not to hold the referendum, then we won’t,” he said. “Otherwise, we’re ready.”