Ukraine holds crisis talks to avoid civil war
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Ukraine’s embattled leaders launched round-table talks yesterday as part of a Western-backed push to prevent the country falling apart, vowing they would not bow to “blackmail” by pro-Russians waging an insurgency in the east.
The so-called national unity discussions — which crucially do not involve the insurgents — are being held barely two weeks before Ukraine holds a presidential election that the West is scrambling to keep alive.
European leaders have been working to bring Kiev and pro-Moscow separatists together under a roadmap sponsored by pan-European security body the OSCE. But shortly before the talks started, Russia bluntly warned that the former Soviet republic was already on the brink of civil war and demanded that the insurgents be invited to the negotiating table.
Ukraine’s interim President Oleksandr Turchynov opened the discussions saying Kiev was ready to negotiate but that the rebels must first lay down their arms. “Those with weapons in hand who are waging a war against their own country and dictating the will of a neighboring country will answer before the law. We will not yield to blackmail,” he said. “We are ready to listen to the people of the east but they must not shoot, loot or occupy government buildings.”
Dozens have been killed in fighting in the east and in an inferno in the southern port city of Odessa, with the Ukrainian army losing seven soldiers in a rebel ambush on Tuesday.
“When Ukrainians kill Ukrainians I believe this is as close to a civil war as you can get,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Bloomberg television. “In east and south of Ukraine there is a war, a real war,” he said. “And if this is conducive to free and fair elections then I don’t recognize what free and fair is.”
But he said Moscow had no intention of sending in troops to eastern Ukraine. The roadmap drawn up by Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe calls for “restraint from violence, disarmament, national dialogue, and elections.”
While voicing support for the plan, Russia has accused Ukraine’s authorities of refusing “real dialogue” with the separatists. It says Kiev must halt its “reprisal raids” if rebels are to comply with the peace initiative, and insists on negotiations over regional rights before the presidential vote.
The referendums were rejected as illegal and a farce by Kiev and the West, fearful that President Vladimir Putin would move quickly to annex the territories as he did with Crimea.
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