Russia said the deaths of its servicemen in Crimea
wouldn’t go “without consequences” and Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko put his troops near the peninsula and in the country’s easternmost
regions on “high alert,” warning that Vladimir Putin is seeking to reignite the
conflict in the disputed territories.
The Foreign Ministry in
Moscow ratcheted up the threat of retaliation a day after the Russian
president vowed to respond with “very serious” measures and said Ukrainian
agents had engaged in “terror” tactics on the Black Sea peninsula, which he
seized in 2014. Poroshenko dismissed the accusations as “fiction” that
could be an “excuse for further military threats” by Russia. He ordered the
armed forces, national guard and border troops to go on high alert Thursday and
urged police to step up security to prevent potential terrorist attacks,
according to a statement on his website.
The worst diplomatic
standoff between the two countries since a truce signed last year raised alarm
in foreign capitals and reverberated across markets. The confrontation
coincided with a surge in violence in Ukraine’s eastern territories, where
government troops have been locked in a struggle against pro-Russian
separatists, and torpedoed plans to revive four-way peace talks at the
September G-20 meeting in China, with Putin reversing earlier support and calling
the negotiations “pointless.”
“There may be escalation
in eastern Ukraine and that is very dangerous,” Alexei Makarkin, deputy head of
the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies, said by phone. “The events
are developing according to a pretty negative scenario. Neither
side has any trust in the other.”
Swaps, Yields
The cost of insuring
Russian debt against default climbed the most in five weeks as tensions
escalated. The yield on Ukraine’s dollar-denominated note maturing in 2019
soared 88 basis points from a record low to 7.795 percent in Kiev on Thursday.
Putin discussed
bolstering defenses on the peninsula with his Security Council, the
Kremlin press service said on Thursday. A day earlier, he said the Federal
Security Service reported Ukrainian intelligence officers killed two Russian
servicemen during covert operations in Crimea.
“We again call on our partners to bear the greatest
influence on the authorities in Kiev to prevent them from taking dangerous
steps that might have the most negative consequences,” the Russian Foreign
Ministry said in a statement. “Playing with fire leads to no good.”
Ukraine’s United Nations
mission called for “urgent” Security Council consultations over Russia’s
comments. NATO said it was closely monitoring the heightened tensions, and both
it and the U.S. said they had seen no evidence corroborating Russia’s allegations.
“Russia has not provided
any tangible evidence for its accusations against Ukraine,” the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization said in an e-mailed statement in Brussels. “We are also
deeply concerned by the recent upsurge in violence in eastern Ukraine.”
“This is a very tense
time,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters in
Washington Thursday. “It’s time to take a step back, we’re calling on all sides
to reduce.”
Truce Dead?
Poroshenko ordered the
Foreign Ministry to organize phone calls with Putin and U.S. Vice President Joe
Biden. He also sought to speak with other leaders, including German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, whose Foreign Ministry called the events in Crimea “worrying.”
Russia’s top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov, spoke with his French counterpart on
Thursday.
The Russian leader has
exhibited a tendency to use instability in the region as leverage in
negotiations. He also has launched military operations while the world’s
attention is on the Olympic Games and many leaders are on vacation. The
annexation of Crimea came just after Russia hosted the Sochi Olympics, and
Russia sent troops into Georgia during the Beijing Olympics in 2008. This
year’s Games have been marked by a partial ban on Russian athletes by doping
authorities, which Putin said was “unfair.”
“August is the best time
for Moscow’s military action because Western decision makers are on holidays,”
Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote in a blog post. “The Berlin Wall was initiated in August 1961, the
invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred in August 1968, and the Moscow coup took
place in August 1991.”
Ukraine has accused its fellow
former Soviet republic of funneling cash, weapons and fighters to the
separatists who have seized control of much of its easternmost Donetsk and
Luhansk regions, a largely industrial area known as Donbas, in a conflict that the
UN estimates has killed almost 10,000 people.
Western countries have refused
to recognize Russia’s takeover of Crimea and have imposed sanctions that have
helped force the world’s biggest energy-exporting economy into recession.
“The reason why we’re in this
situation in the first place is because of Russia’s illegal annexation of
Crimea,” said Peter Wilson, the U.K.’s ambassador to the UN. “What we’re seeing
is a spike in tensions in Eastern Ukraine that hasn’t been seen since last
August. That is a matter for real concern.”
Putin’s comment on the
futility of further talks tied to the cease-fire signed in Minsk, Belarus, in
February 2015 -- a long-term resolution calling for both sides to pull back
weapons, for Ukraine to regain control of its border and to change its
constitution, and for elections to take place in separatist-held areas -- may
suggest he’s threatening, along with his separatist allies, to reignite the
conflict.
“It does not make sense to
gather during the G-20,” Vladislav Deynego, representative of pro-Russian
rebels in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, said by phone. “Events
in Crimea are part of Ukraine’s attempt to escalate situation.”
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