Putin gets go-ahead for military force in Ukraine
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Russia’s parliament yesterday gave President Vladimir Putin the go-ahead to send troops into Ukraine, despite a warning from Washington that such a deployment would results in “costs” for Moscow.
The stark escalation of the ex-Soviet country’s three-month political crisis came amid growing instability in Ukraine’s predominantly Russian peninsula of Crimea that has housed Kremlin navies for nearly 250 years.
Large swathes of the Black Sea peninsula of nearly 2 million people are under the control of pro-Kremlin militia who hoisted the Russian flag over the region’s government buildings and seized control of airports and television centers.
Putin had stayed silent after Ukraine’s parliament ousted pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovych on February 22.
It then appointed a new pro-Western government that aims to move the ex-Soviet nation of 46 million closer to the European Union.
But the Kremlin said in a statement yesterday that Putin had asked Russia’s upper house of parliament to authorize the use of force in Ukraine until the political situation there “normalized.”
“In connection with the extraordinary situation in Ukraine and the threat to the lives of Russian citizens ... I submit to the Federation Council a request to use the armed forces of the Russian Federation on Ukrainian territory until the normalization of the political situation in that country,” the Kremlin quoted Putin as saying in the document.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Igor Tenyukh had earlier told the new government’s first cabinet session that Russia’s armed forces had sent 30 armored personnel carriers and 6,000 additional troops into Crimea in a bid to help local pro-Kremlin militia gain broader independence from the new pro-EU leaders in Kiev.
Putin’s move came after an appeal for help from Crimea’s newly chosen premier Sergiy Aksyonov — a ruler not recognized by Kiev and appointed by regional lawmakers after gunmen had seized the parliament building in the regional capital Simferopol on Thursday.
US President Barack Obama had warned Putin on Friday that “there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.”
“We are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine,” Obama said in a statement.
A senior US official separately said that Obama could skip June’s G8 summit in Sochi if Moscow’s forces became more directly involved in Ukraine.
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