Crimea leader asks Ukraine Russians to fight Kiev
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CRIMEA’S rebel leader urged Russians across Ukraine yesterday to rise up against Kiev’s rule and welcome Kremlin forces whose unrelenting march against his flashpoint peninsula has defied Western outrage.
The call came amid growing anxiety among Kiev’s Western-backed rulers that Russian President Vladimir Putin will imminently order an all-out attack on his ex-Soviet neighbor after being hit by only limited European Union and US sanctions for taking the Black Sea cape.
“The aim of Putin is not Crimea but all of Ukraine,” Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council chief Andriy Parubiy told a mass unity rally in Kiev.
“His troops massed at the border are ready to attack at any moment,” he said a day after Russian forces used armored personnel carriers and stun grenades to capture Ukraine’s main Crimean airbase.
The takeover came as the chill in East-West ties grew stiffer with a charge by Germany of a Kremlin attempt to “splinter” Europe along Cold War-era lines.
One of the biggest tests facing the besieged Western-backed leaders in Kiev now comes from restless Russians who have been stirring up violent protests and demanding their own secession referendums in the southeastern swaths of Ukraine.
The region’s mistrust of the new team’s European values lies from cultural and trade ties with Russia that in many cases are centuries old — a fact seized upon yesterday by Crimea’s self-declared prime minister.
Sergei Aksyonov said in an impassioned address he posted on Facebook and read out on local TV that Crimea began facing a “sad fate” the moment three months of deadly protests involving a mix of nationalist and pro-Western forces toppled the pro-Kremlin government in Kiev.
“But we resisted and won! Our motherland, Russia, extended her hand of help,” said Aksyonov. “So today, I appeal to you with a call to fight. I call on you to resist the choice made for you by a bunch of political mavericks who are being financed by oligarchs.”
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