While fighting in eastern Ukraine between government
forces and Russian-backed separatists has ground down lately into a war of slow
attrition, tension between Moscow and Kiev has been rising over diplomatic
expulsions and unfulfilled conditions of a five-month-old peace plan.
The Ukrainian government Friday expelled Russia's
consul general from the Black Sea port of Odessa, declaring the envoy,
Valery Shibeko, "persona non grata" after the Security Service
of Ukraine accused him of "actions incompatible with diplomatic
activity."
"The security service will continue to identify foreigners who work
against our government using their diplomatic status as cover," the state
security service said in a statement.
The expulsion from Ukraine's largest port and centuries-old stronghold of
Russian culture followed Moscow's detention of 160 Ukrainian citizens living in
Russia who have been ordered to leave, Russia's Sputnik news agency noted.
Odessa was the scene of some of the 15-month-old Ukraine conflict's worst
carnage last year, when more than 50 died after a day of street fighting ended
with Molotov cocktails setting fire to a central building in which dozens of
pro-Russia militants had taken refuge.
At least 25% of Odessa's population of more than a million is ethnic
Russian, and their language remains dominant even 24 years after Ukrainian
independence. While tensions flare into confrontation from time to time, the
city has largely been spared further incidents of political violence since the
May 2, 2014, conflagration.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko two months ago
appointed former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as governor of the
Odessa region. Saakashvili's Georgian army fought a brief war with Russian
troops in 2008, when it lost two regions of the neighboring country to Moscow's
de facto control. The staunchly pro-Western Georgian has
reportedly embarked on a mission to clean up corruption and smuggling in
Odessa, the stuff of real and literary crime and scandal. That shift in the
region's administration has raised hackles in Moscow as well as among the
Russian bosses who control much of the port's trade and shipping.
The Kremlin has also accused Poroshenko's government
of failing to fulfill the requirements of a European-brokered Feb. 12
cease-fire and peace plan that Ukraine's diverse regions be granted more
autonomy to decide local taxing and spending matters and to conduct their own
foreign relations.
Ukraine's parliament, the Supreme Council, on Thursday
approved proposed constitutional changes to enhance the authority of local
governing bodies, but the measures fall far short of the self-rule sought by
the Moscow-allied separatists who control the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern
Ukraine.
On Friday, lawmakers set local elections for Oct. 25
but said they wouldn't be held in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula seized and
annexed by Russia last year, or in the separatist-held areas as Ukrainian
officials have no access there.
The peace plan drafted in the Belarus capital of Minsk
five months ago called for local elections to be held in the
separatist-occupied areas but within the framework of Ukrainian law. "Kiev has its own and extremely
selective interpretation of the Minsk-2 agreements," the Russian Foreign
Ministry said in a statement. Moscow backs the
separatists' view of the February peace plan -- the second proclaimed from
Minsk in less than a year -- that the call for autonomy allows the breakaway
regions virtual independence from the government in Kiev.
The war, which has taken at least 6,500 lives since it
broke out in April 2014 in opposition to the overthrow of a pro-Moscow
president, paused Friday as both sides commemorated the one-year anniversary
since Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over rebel-held territory. All
298 on board died in what Ukrainian authorities and their Western allies
believe was the result of separatists mistaking the civilian plane for a
Ukrainian military transport.
While fighting has waxed and waned since the second
Minsk truce was declared, other aspects of the peace plan have also fallen
apart.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, which has hundreds of cease-fire monitors deployed to Ukrainian
conflict areas, regularly reports outbreaks of shooting and artillery
exchanges. On Friday, the 57-nation security agency
that includes Russia and Ukraine reported that tanks and mounted guns that had
been surrendered earlier in compliance with the Minsk accords were again
missing from the storage depots.
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