KIEV, Ukraine - Vice President Joe Biden on Monday began a high-profile visit to demonstrate the U.S. commitment to Ukraine and push for implementation of an international agreement aimed at de-escalating tensions even as violence continues.
A U.S. diplomat said the United States will decide within “days, not weeks,” whether Russia is abiding by the accord.
“It’s still too early to tell if this is going to succeed,” said Geoffrey Pyatt, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. “The ball is really in Moscow’s court in terms of whether they’re going to take this diplomatic offramp.” The U.S. has threatened additional sanctions against Russia if the agreement is not heeded.
Biden planned to meet today with government leaders who took over after pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in February after months of protests.
Biden will hold talks with Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the acting Ukrainian prime minister, and Oleksandr Turchynov, the acting president. He also is to meet with legislators from across the country and democracy activists before returning to Washington tonight.
Russia, meanwhile, warned Monday that Ukraine’s government is igniting a civil war in the eastern regions of the country, and it said Moscow is prepared to step in if those efforts do not stop. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s warning about Russian intervention was the most explicit declaration yet of his country’s intentions toward eastern Ukraine.
“Those who are deliberately pursuing a civil war, in a possible attempt to start a big, serious bloody conflict, are pursuing a criminal policy,” Lavrov said. “And we will not only condemn this policy, but will also stop it.”
Secretary of State John Kerry and Lavrov spoke by telephone Monday but appeared to break little new ground.Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Lavrov told Kerry that the Ukrainian government was unable and unwilling to stop what the Russians call extremists in eastern Ukraine.
Even as officials sorted through the latest disturbance, the State Department sought to build a public case against Russia for the wider unrest. Photo images released Monday show militants brandishing Russian weapons and wearing uniforms similar to those worn by Russian forces. The militants look similar to the forces that moved into Crimea in March, ahead of a referendum there that resulted in the peninsula being annexed by Russia.
There was no way to immediately tell whether the photographs were legitimate or to independently confirm them. None of the people in the photographs were identified, and there were few indicators to prove where the pictures were taken.
A senior administration official said Biden plans to announce new technical support to the Ukrainian government to implement energy and economic measures. The official, speaking on a condition of anonymity to allow Biden to publicly announce any agreements, said the vice president also will follow up on recent U.S. commitments of nonlethal security assistance.
Biden also plans to discuss preparations for next month’s presidential election and the latest developments in eastern Ukraine, where insurgents are accusing leaders in Kiev of trying to suppress the country’s Russian speakers.
Biden plans to warn Russia of mounting costs if it doesn’t follow through on its commitments. The U.S. and its allies have prepared new sanctions on wealthy Russians in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, as well on the entities they run.
Lavrov called on the U.S. to avoid threats of sanctions, while brushing off accusations that Russian forces are involved in attacks in Ukraine. Russia is receiving increasing requests to intervene in eastern Ukraine to protect the Russian-speaking population, he said Monday.
Biden’s trip came a day after a shootout at a checkpoint in eastern Ukraine manned by the pro-Russian insurgents left at least three dead and Ukrainian and Russian officials trading accusations.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry quickly blamed militant Ukrainian nationalists for the Sunday attack near the city of Slovyansk. Lavrov accused Kiev of “a crude violation of the agreements reached in Geneva” to ease tensions.
“This is a crime carried out by those who want to abort the implementation of the Geneva agreement,” Lavrov said Monday. “Everything points to the fact that the Kiev authorities either don’t want to, or can’t ,control the extremists.”
The Ukrainian Security Service, however, said the attack was staged by provocateurs from outside the country. Turchynov accused Putin of seeking the “extermination of independent Ukraine.”
The agreement, signed in Geneva by Ukraine, the European Union, the U.S. and Russia on Thursday, calls for all illegal groups to give up their arms and return seized buildings. Pro-Russian forces held their ground in several eastern cities, as their leaders denied they were bound by the accord.
On Monday, international monitors seeking to reclaim public buildings were blocked by the separatists, Western diplomats said.
A team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a 57-nation group that includes Russia and the U.S., “has been in Donetsk but has not yet made progress,” a diplomat said.
Free passage of the monitors was a key element of the agreement. U.S. officials have said those terms would be the primary test of whether Russia intended to comply with the accord.
Meanwhile, police in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk pulled two bodies Monday from a fork of the Donetsk River, which loops through the city, said Vyachislav Ponomaryov, who has been appointed by militants to serve as the “people’s mayor.”
“Today, I went to the morgue to identify another two corpses,” Ponomaryov said. He said both were pro-Russian militants.
They had died, he said, from stab wounds and been thrown in the river. Ponomaryov said the city was under attack by a Ukrainian nationalist group, Right Sector, and the Ukrainian army, though there has been no clear sign of either since a Ukrainian armored column surrendered to the separatists last week.
Elsewhere in Slovyansk, three foreign journalists were temporarily detained Monday by pro-Russian insurgents.
One Belarusian and two Italian journalists were stopped by gunmen as they reported in the city.
Dmitry Galko said he and his two Italian colleagues were freed some time later after a document check.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe condemned the detentions.
Information for this article was contributed by Nedra Pickler, Julie Pace, Lara Jakes, Jim Heintz and staff members of The Associated Press; by Andrew E. Kramer of The New York Times; and by Henry Meyer and Kateryna Choursina, Jake Rudnitsky, Daria Marchak, Julianna Goldman, Stepan Kravchenko, Ksenia Galouchko, Vladimir Kuznetsov, Jason Corcoran and Nicole Gaouette of Bloomberg News; and by Karen DeYoung, Will Englund, William Booth and Scott Wilson of The Washington Post.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/22/2014