U.S.: Russia inciting unrest in E. Ukraine

Pro-Russian men storm a police station in the eastern Ukrainian town of Horlivka on Monday, April 14, 2014.  Several government buildings have fallen to mobs of Moscow loyalists in recent days as unrest spreads across the east of the country. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Pro-Russian men storm a police station in the eastern Ukrainian town of Horlivka on Monday, April 14, 2014. Several government buildings have fallen to mobs of Moscow loyalists in recent days as unrest spreads across the east of the country. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

WASHINGTON - The White House on Monday said there was “overwhelming evidence” that Russia is fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine, but suggested that President Barack Obama has not yet concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions warrant broader sanctions on key Russian economic sectors.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s acting president asked the United Nations on Monday to send peacekeeping troops to the east of the country, where pro-Russia militias have seized government buildings and blocked major highways.

“We are actively evaluating what is happening in eastern Ukraine, what actions Russia has taken,what transgressions they’ve engaged in,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. “And we are working with our partners and assessing for ourselves what response we may choose.”

Obama and Putin spoke Monday for the first time in more than two weeks. A senior U.S. official said Obama told Putin that while a diplomatic solution to the crisis remains his preferred outcome, Russia’s actions are not conducive to that approach. The Kremlin said Putin used the call to reject Western claims that Russian agents have stoked protests in eastern Ukraine and also urged Obama to discourage the Ukrainian government from using force against those protesters.

The call was initiated at Russia’s request, according to the U.S. official, who insisted on anonymity in order to describe the call before details are formally released by the White House.

Administration officials did confirm that CIA chief John Brennan visited the Ukrainian capital of Kiev over the weekend, breaking with the administration’s typical practice of not disclosing the director’s travel. Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych accused Brennan of being behind Ukraine’s decision to send troops into the east to try to quash an increasingly brazen pro-Russian insurgency.

Since Obama and Putin last spoke, pro-Russian forces have stormed and occupied local government offices, police stations and a small airport in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has proved powerless to rein in the separatists, who are demanding more autonomy from the central government in Kiev and closer ties to Russia.

The White House has blamed the unrest on Russia, saying there are undeniable similarities between the situation in eastern Ukraine and the Kremlin’s maneuvers in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine last month.

“The evidence is compelling that Russia is supporting these efforts and involved in these efforts,” Carney said. “You saw this coordinated effort in a number of cities across eastern Ukraine all at once that sure didn’t look organic to observers from the outside.”

Despite those assertions, it was unclear whether the U.S. planned to respond with deeper economic penalties. Obama has repeatedly warned that Russian advances into eastern Ukraine would mark a serious escalation of the crisis that would warrant a stronger international response, including the prospect of sanctions on Russia’s energy sector and other key industries.

But the administration has avoided saying whether Russia’s actions in the east thus far have crossed that line. U.S. officials are also still trying to rally support for sector sanctions from Europe, which has a far deeper economic relationship with Russia and would therefore be more likely to be negatively affected by the penalties.

As part of that effort, Obama spoke Monday with French President Francois Hollande. The French leader said in a statement that he and Obama discussed the importance of avoiding provocations in Ukraine and establishing a policy of strong and calibrated sanctions along with other European partners.

A deadline set by the Ukrainian government for pro-Russian militants in the country’s east to vacate occupied buildings passed Monday without signs of an effort to enforce it.

Commandos who engaged in gunfights with men who had set up roadblocks stormed a Ukrainian police station in the city of Slovyansk on Sunday, but there were no signs after the deadline passed at 9 a.m. Monday that they had tried to approach again.

The country’s interim president, Oleksandr Turchynov, issued the ultimatum Sunday, saying that separatists should vacate occupied buildings by Monday morning or face a “large-scale anti-terrorist operation” that would involve the Ukrainian military. Ukraine backed away from a previous deadline of Friday after it offered, as a concession, to hold a referendum on regional autonomy and on guaranteeing the status of Russian as an official language.

On Monday, Turchynov asked the U.N. to send peacekeepers. But Russia holds a veto at the U.N. Security Council and is unlikely to agree to such a request.

Elsewhere in eastern Ukraine on Monday, a pro-Russian mob broke into a police station in the city of Horlivka, near the Russian border, The Associated Press reported.

Dozens of men hurled rocks and smashed the windows of the building as onlookers cheered, the newsagency reported. The group raised a Russian flag after gaining control of the station, the report said.

At least one officer was killed in the fighting Sunday, Ukrainian officials said, and several officers and local residents were injured. The Russian news media and local residents disputed that account, however, saying that the Ukrainian forces had been engaged in a gunfight at the checkpoint only briefly.

A high-ranking European Union official said foreign ministers decided Monday to sanction more Russians with asset freezes and visa bans as a sign of the trade bloc’s disapproval over Moscow’s ongoing interference in Ukraine.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton declined to make public the number or the names of the Russian officials or citizens affected. The decision was reached at a meeting of the ministers dominated by the crisis in Ukraine and how the EU should respond, Ashton told a news conference.

Russia has strenuously denied involvement in the escalation of armed violence in eastern Ukraine, but several EU ministers noted events there have echoed what happened in the Crimean Peninsula before Russia unilaterally annexed it.

“The problem is it looks very, very similar to what happened previously in the Crimea. So you know, if it looks like a horse and it walks like a horse, it’s usually a horse - and not a zebra,” said Frans Timmermans, foreign minister of the Netherlands.

Like many matters in the European Union, though, levying sanctions requires the unanimous consent of member states. What ministers were able to agree on Monday was a public warning that “any further steps by the Russian Federation to destabilize the situation in Ukraine would lead to additional and far-reaching consequences in a broad reach of economic areas” between EU countries and Russia.

Preparatory work on just what those economic measures could be is proceeding.

The U.S. is also prepared to slap more sanctions on Russia over its incursion into Ukraine, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Monday when signing a $1 billion loan guarantee for Ukraine.

“Working with our allies, we are fully prepared to impose additional significant sanctions on Russia as it continues to escalate the situation in Ukraine, including apparently through support to a concerted campaign by armed militants in eastern Ukraine,” he said.

Lew signed a $1 billion guarantee that will help Ukraine reduce the cost of debt financing. U.S. aid accompanies assistance from the International Monetary Fund, which is negotiating with Ukraine for as much as $18 billion in loans over two years.

Also on Monday, U.S. military officials said a Russian fighter jet made multiple, close-range passes near an American warship in the Black Sea for more than 90 minutes Saturday amid escalating tensions in the region.

In the first public account of the incident, the officials said the Russian Fencer made 12 passes, and flew within 1,000 yards of the USS Donald Cook, a Navy destroyer, at about 500 feet above sea level.

The U.S. warship issued several radio queries and warnings using international emergency circuits, but the Russian aircraft did not respond.

“This provocative and unprofessional Russian action is inconsistent with international protocols and previous agreements on the professional interaction between our militaries,” said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.

The fighter appeared to be unarmed and never was in danger of coming in contact with the ship, said the officials. The passes, which occurred in the early evening there, ended without incident. A second Russian fighter jet flew at a higher altitude and was not a concern, said Warren.

A U.S. military official also said that a Russian Navy ship, a frigate, has been shadowing the U.S. warship, remaining within visual distance but not close enough to be unsafe. The official was not authorized to discuss the incident publicly but spoke on condition of anonymity.

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Vladimir Isachenkov, Nedra Pickler, Greg Keller, John-Thor Dahlburg, Shawn Pogatchnik, Lolita C. Baldor and Alison Mutler of The Associated Press; by Andrew E. Kramer, Andrew Higgins, David M. Herszenhorn, Somini Sengupta, Brian Knowlton and Michael R. Gordon of The New York Times; and by Kasia Klimasinska and Ian Katz of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/15/2014

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