International
DONETSK, Ukraine — Armed pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine said Friday they were not bound by an international deal ordering them to disarm and were looking for more assurances about their security before leaving the public buildings they have occupied since early April.
The agreement, brokered by the United States, Russia, Ukraine and the European Union in Geneva on Thursday, offered the best hope to date of defusing a crisis in Ukraine that has dragged East-West relations to their lowest level since the Cold War, as the situation in eastern Ukrainian cities such as Donetsk grew more tense.
"We do not listen to the Kyiv government," said Alexsander, spokesman for the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk, who did not give his last name out of fear for his safety.
"They came to power as a result of the military coup, and we can act on our own," he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov "did not sign anything for us. He signed on behalf of the Russian Federation," Denis Pushilin, the leader of the separatist group, told journalists in Donetsk.
Alexsander said the group is planning on conducting a referendum by May 11 in which people can decide whether Donetsk should be an independent state, and possibly join Russia, or remain part of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government said it was preparing a law to give the rebels amnesty, although the drive to root them out would continue.
The agreement requires all illegal armed groups to disarm and end the occupation of public buildings, streets and squares. But with rebels staying put in the east and Ukrainian nationalist protesters showing no sign of leaving their unarmed camps in Kyiv’s Independence Square, it was not clear which side would be willing to move first.
Enacting the agreement on the ground will be difficult because of the deep mistrust between the pro-Russian groups and the Western-backed government in Kyiv — mistrust that this week erupted into violent clashes that killed several people.
In Donetsk, dozens gathered outside one occupied building. A small red tent of the Communist Party of Ukraine stood outside the barricades with a poster on it showing a photo of Hitler and a drag queen with a baby crying.
Russia has continuously suggested that the movement which overthrew former President Viktor Yanukovych was led by neo-Nazis. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin overturned decades of post–Cold War diplomacy by declaring that Russia had a right to intervene in neighboring countries and to annex the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
Russia has also denied being behind the protests and takeovers in eastern Ukraine. Alexsander and his compatriots said the same.
"That's an absolute lie," he said. "There is not one single Russian citizen in the building. This is the propaganda; this is their attempt to provoke, the attempt to undermine what we are doing here."
Vika, who describes herself as an ethnic Russian, sat within the barricades holding a Russian flag.
"We're very much historically linked to Russia, and this is the only country I can relate myself to," she said.
She denounced the interim government in Kyiv, saying, "They believe that they are entitled to instruct me what to do ... we are deprived of our opinion."
Nearby stood a masked man wearing a protective vest and a pro-Russia ribbon.
"We came here because we want to protect the people, protect the building, because our government, they don't hear us," he said.
With the developments on the ground, the fact that any deal was reached at all during diplomatic talks in Geneva came as a surprise, and it was not clear what had happened behind the scenes to persuade the Kremlin, which had shown little sign of compromise, to join calls for the rebels to disarm.
As part of its offensive, Ukraine ordered Russian television channels off the air, a move criticized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Igor Gizhko, who teaches English at a university, was one of those watching and says he is trying to get money back from his cable provider for not showing Russian channels.
While he does not support the government in Kyiv, he also does not support the takeover of buildings in Donetsk and wants the region to remain within Ukraine, but with greater regional power over politics and economics.
"I want to stay in Ukraine. I want to stay in Ukraine as a whole country … We never expected like this," referring to the occupied building.
In Kyiv, people on the Maidan, the local name given to Independence Square, which was the center of protests that eventually toppled Yanukovych, said the barricades would not come down until after the May 25 presidential election.
"People will not leave the Maidan. The people gave their word to stay until the presidential elections so that nobody will be able to rig the result. Then after the election, we'll go of our own accord," said 56-year-old Viktor Palamaryuk, from the western town of Chernivtsi.
Right Sector, a far-right nationalist group whose violent street tactics in support of the Maidan helped bring down Yanukovych in February, saw the Geneva accord as being directed only at pro-Russian separatists in the east.
"We don't have any illegal weapons, so the call to disarm will not apply to us," said Right Sector spokesman Artem Skoropadsky. "We, the vanguard of the Ukrainian revolution, should not be compared to outright gangsters."
U.S. President Barack Obama did not seem to have much confidence in the power of the agreement himself, saying that the meeting in Geneva was promising but that the United States and its allies were prepared to impose more sanctions on Russia if the situation fails to improve.
"There is the possibility, the prospect that diplomacy may de-escalate the situation," Obama told reporters.
"The question now becomes, 'Will in fact they use the influence they've exerted in a disruptive way to restore some order so that Ukrainians can carry out an election and move forward with the decentralization reforms that they've proposed?'" he said at the White House.
Ukraine's government promises to devolve power to regions and protect people's right, notably in the east, to use the Russian language in public life. But it rejects calls for a federal structure that it says could lead to permanent Russian interference in the east and eventually break up the country.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Geneva that if by the end of the weekend there were no signs that pro-Russian groups were pulling back, there would be costs for Moscow — a reference to further EU and U.S. sanctions.
The U.S. and EU have so far imposed visa bans and asset freezes on a small number of Russians, a response that Moscow has openly mocked. However, the Western states say they are contemplating measures that could hurt Russia's economy more broadly.
But some EU nations are reluctant to press ahead with more sanctions, fearing they could provoke Russia further or end up hurting their own economies.
The Geneva deal contained no mention of Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Asked about the absence of any language in the document condemning Russia's intervention in Crimea, Western diplomats said they remained firm that Russia had acted illegally and denied they had dropped the issue.
That the agreement did not address Crimea could put pressure on Ukraine's interim government from its supporters who are adamant that everything should be done to bring the peninsula back under Kyiv's control.
Kristina Jovanovski contributed to this report, with Reuters.
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