Ukraine cease-fire endorsed by Putin

But Russia puts military on alert

Pavel Gubarev, self-proclaimed governor of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, gives a speech and an oath of allegiance to pro-Russia fighters Saturday in Donetsk’s Lenin Square. Gubarev said he had seen no sign of a cease-fire by Ukrainian forces.
Pavel Gubarev, self-proclaimed governor of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, gives a speech and an oath of allegiance to pro-Russia fighters Saturday in Donetsk’s Lenin Square. Gubarev said he had seen no sign of a cease-fire by Ukrainian forces.

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Saturday accepted a peace plan proposed by the Ukrainian leadership to quell a separatist uprising in southeastern Ukraine, but he also put troops across central Russia on combat alert and mounted surprise military drills.

A statement posted late Saturday on the Kremlin's website was Putin's most direct call to date for all parties to stop fighting. Moscow has claimed that it does not hold sufficient sway over the pro-Russia separatists to influence their position.

"The president of Russia calls on all parties to the conflict to cease hostilities and sit down at the negotiating table," the statement said.

The statement said Putin supported the declaration of a unilateral cease-fire by President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, "as well as his intent to take a number of specific measures to reach a peaceful settlement."

But it said the plan would be neither "viable nor realistic" without practical steps to begin negotiating with the separatists, who have declared autonomy in two southeastern regions.

Poroshenko ordered his forces to cease fire Friday and halt military operations for a week, the first step in a peace plan he hopes will end the fighting that has killed hundreds.

Putin also described as "unacceptable" the firing of Ukrainian shells into a Russian border post Friday night, soon after the cease-fire was declared, "causing material damage and threatening the life and health of Russian citizens."

The loudest response to that episode came hours before Putin spoke, when the Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, announced that about 65,000 troops across central Russia would begin a week of combat drills.

Russia's combat alert was ordered on the first day of the cease-fire, which was marked by more fighting along the border.

The Ukrainian border guards reported overnight attacks on two border posts in the Donetsk region, which left three troops injured, hours after the cease-fire was announced. One of the posts, Vyselky, was attacked with mortar and sniper fire for half an hour, the border guards said.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry reported two attacks on the quarters of a missile unit in the village of Avdiyivka. Kiev said men armed with automatic rifles and grenade launchers attacked the base one hour after the cease-fire was announced, prompting the army to respond.

NATO spokesman Oana Lungescu on Saturday lamented Moscow's military exercises, saying that "it can be seen as a further escalation of the crisis with Ukraine."

On Saturday in Donetsk, a group of armed men gathered in the central square to take a military oath to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.

Pavel Gubarev, who describes himself as governor of the breakaway republic, said there was no sign of any cease-fire near Slovyansk, the scene of serious clashes for several months.

"There is no cease-fire over there," Gubarev said. "There is shooting all the time, and this cease-fire that Poroshenko is talking about is just fake. The Ukrainian forces are either not under his control, or he is just a liar."

Russia's dual-track approach reflected what analysts have been saying for weeks is the country's main goal: to put pressure on the Ukrainian government to grant significant autonomy to the southeast without prompting a third round of Western sanctions, far more serious than the earlier ones, that would further weaken the Russian economy. Western leaders are set to consult on further sanctions this week.

But it also reflected the split within the Russian government. Militants and nationalists pushed Putin to annex the autonomous Ukrainian region of Crimea in March and generally want Russia to reclaim its role as a global power and a counterbalance to the West.

"I think that they will keep agreeing to cease-fires, keep calling on the militants to stop the fighting and keep supplying the militants with arms until they achieve a stable equilibrium on their terms," said Clifford Kupchan, a Washington-based Russia analyst at the Eurasia Group.

Analysts believe that Russia is looking for a compact. It does not want to face more sanctions or take on financial responsibility for the aging industries that employ most of the 7 million people in southeastern Ukraine, they say, and the country worries that the bulk of the population there would be hostile.

But it wants sufficient sway in southeastern Ukraine to destabilize Kiev or to make sure that the central government there does not get too close to the European Union or contemplate joining NATO, the analysts say.

"The Russian side wants to avoid the imposition of further Western sanctions by saying that it supports a ceasefire, but you have to focus on Russian actions, not words," Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., said in an email.

But the analysts point out that there is no trust on either side to take the steps necessary to negotiate, and that the fighting might slip out of leaders' control.

Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia's security forces at New York University, said, "Each side is escalating, hoping the other side will blink, but in the process it is getting harder and harder for any kind of meaningful agreement to be reached."

Putin emphasized the need for such an agreement in his announcement.

"The peace plan proposed by President Poroshenko should not take the form of an ultimatum to militia groups," Putin's statement said. "The opportunity that opens up with the end of hostilities should be used to start constructive negotiations and to reach a political compromise between the parties to the conflict in southeast Ukraine."

Poroshenko declared the cease-fire as he introduced a 15-point peace plan that would establish a 6-mile demilitarized zone along the Ukrainian-Russian border and provide an escape corridor for Russian and Ukrainian mercenaries, who the Ukrainian government has said are involved in the fighting.

Steps would include joint security patrols, a buffer zone on the border, early regional and parliamentary elections, protections for the language rights of people who use Russian as their main language and changes in the constitution to permit more regional self-government.

Before Putin issued his statement, Moscow had responded harshly to the plan, saying it was an ultimatum to the rebels and did not provide for talks with the government.

U.S. and European leaders have called on Russia to play a constructive role in settling the conflict and halt what they say is support for the rebels.

Information for this article was contributed by Neil MacFarquhar and Andrew Roth of The New York Times; by Nataliya Vasilyeva, David McHugh and Marko Drobnjakovic of The Associated Press; and by Kateryna Choursina, Ksenia Galouchko and Alex Wayne of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 06/22/2014

Upcoming Events