Europe
Ukraine Puts ‘Extremists’ on Notice After Deadly Clashes
KIEV,
Ukraine — The security authorities in Ukraine offered the first
indication on Wednesday that the deadly political violence afflicting
Kiev had spread far beyond the city limits, announcing a crackdown on
what the Interior Ministry called “extremist groups” that had torched
buildings and seized weapons nationwide.
The
Interior Ministry announcement of an “anti-terrorist operation” across
the country came a day after Kiev was gripped with the most lethal
mayhem since protests erupted in November, leaving at least 25 dead
including nine police officers. The Health Ministry said that 241 people
had been wounded.
The
violence turned a protest encampment in Kiev’s central Independence
Square into a flaming war zone that sharply escalated the political
crisis that has convulsed the former Soviet republic of 46 million for
the past three months. The crisis raised East-West tensions over
Ukraine’s future, with Russia denouncing the protesters as Nazi-like
coup plotters and the European Union threatening severe sanctions
against Ukrainian government leaders.
Video|2:02
Genya Savilov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Scenes as Clashes Continue in Ukraine
Deadly antigovernment protests continued overnight and into the early hours of Wednesday in Ukraine.
“In
many regions of the country, municipal buildings, offices of the
Interior Ministry, state security and the prosecutor general, army units
and arms depots, are being seized,” Oleksandr Yakimenko, the head of
the SBU, the Ukraine state security service, said in a statement quoted
by Reuters.
“Courtrooms
are being burned down, vandals are destorying private apartments,
killing peaceful citizens,” he said in the statement. Mr. Yakimenko said
the past 24 hours had shown “a growing escalation of violent
confrontation and widespread use of weapons by extremist oriented
groups.”
In
Kiev on Wednesday, protesters stoked what they are calling a “ring of
fire” separating themselves from the riot police in a desperate effort
to defend the remnants of a stage on Independence Square that has been a
focal point of their protests.
Men
staggering with exhaustion dismantled the tents and field kitchens from
the protest movement’s earlier and more peaceful phase and hauled their
remnants onto the fires. They piled on mattresses, sleeping bags, tent
frames, foam pads and whatever else looked flammable, burning their own
encampment in a final act of defiance.
The
Interior Ministry said all the police officers killed on Tuesday had
died from gunshot wounds, although witnesses said it appeared that
several officers had been trapped in a burning armored vehicle.
As
the scope of the violence became clear, Russia, President Viktor F.
Yanukovych’s most important ally in the crisis, issued a blistering
statement blaming the “criminal activities of radical opposition forces”
for causing the bloodshed and denouncing European countries for
refusing to acknowledge that. When the protests began late last year,
they opposed the government’s rejection of a trade agreement with the
European Union.
1,000 FEET
KHRESHCHATYK
Hotel
Trade Unions Building,
improvised clinic
Independence
Square
Dynamo
Stadium
Two police armored vehicles burned in this area
Parliament
Ukraina
Hotel
UKRAINE GOVERNMENT HOUSE
DOWNTOWN KIEV
City Hall
REtaken by
protesters
Areas barricaded by protesters
Ruling party's BUILDING set on fire
The
statement on Wednesday from the Foreign Ministry described the violence
as an attempted coup and even used the phrase “brown revolution,” an
allusion to the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933.
The ministry said Russia would use “all our influence to restore peace and calm.”
President
Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman said that the Russian leader had spoken
by telephone with Mr. Yanukovych and expressed support for a swift
settlement, but said it was up to Ukraine’s government to resolve it
without external interference. “In the president’s view, all
responsibility for what is happening in Ukraine rests with the
extremists,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman, told reporters, according
to the news agency Interfax.
On
the other side of the barricades in Kiev, scores of exhausted riot
police officers, their faces covered in soot, sat slumped on the
sidewalk on Khreshchatyk Street, the main artery leading to Independence
Square. Reinforcements poured in, massing in European Square, a large
roundabout that sits astride main roads leading to the center of the
city. One of these was clogged with around a dozen military-style dump
trucks, armored cars and other vehicles.
But
it was unclear whether the authorities had mustered sufficient force to
complete the operation they began on Tuesday to clear Independence
Square. The security forces did, however, strengthen their grip on the
Ukrainian House, a large modern building that had been occupied by
protesters. Police officers carted out sacks filled with documents and
others with garbage.
The
Interior Ministry’s announcement of a nationwide crackdown came after
witnesses and unofficial news reports from outside the capital said
protesters had seized provincial administrative buildings in several
regions, including Lviv, a bastion of anti-Yanukovych sentiment in
western Ukraine near the border with Poland.
Andriy
Porodko, a 29-year-old antigovernment activist in Lviv, said by
telephone that protesters had taken control of the central government’s
main offices in the region, resuming an occupation that had ended last
Sunday, and had also raided the local headquarters of the state
prosecutor, the Ukrainian security service and several district police
stations.
Most
ominously, said Mr. Porodko, who last month organized a blockade of an
Interior Ministry garrison on the outskirts of Lviv, around 1,000
protesters had stormed the garrison, which serves as the headquarters of
the Interior Ministry’s western regional command, seizing control of
barracks and weapons stores. In addition, a local journalist said that
around 140 guns were seized from Lviv’s central police station.
In
Kiev, the fires kept security forces and their vehicles away from the
stage as police seemed unwilling to risk driving through the blazes. It
was unclear how long the debris of the protesters’ tent camp could fuel
the bonfires sufficiently to prevent an assault by security forces.
The
flames from the barricades defended the entrances to the square where
riot police officers were pressing forward but not streets leading from
the plaza. The authorities appeared to be attempting to push the
protesters out through those exits.
Protesters began pounding with clubs on utility poles and makeshift shields, creating a rhythmic din.
With
the center of the city engulfed in thick, acrid smoke and filled with
the deafening noise of grenades, fireworks and occasional gunfire, what
began as a peaceful protest in late November against Mr. Yanukovych’s
decision to spurn a trade deal with Europe and tilt toward Russia became
on Tuesday a pyre of violent chaos.
Map: Satellite Images of the Protests in Kiev
The
violence was likely to resonate for weeks, months or even years around
this fragile and bitterly divided nation. It also exposed the impotence,
in this dispute, of the United States and the European Union, which had
engaged in a week of fruitless efforts to mediate a peaceful
settlement.
Doubts
about the influence of Russia were also shredded, as the Krmlin
portrayed the protesters as American-backed “terrorists” and, in thinly
coded messages, urged Mr. Yanukovych to crack down.
Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. telephoned Mr. Yanukovych to “express
grave concern regarding the crisis on the streets” of Kiev and urged him
“to pull back government forces and to exercise maximum restraint,” the
vice president’s office said in a statement on Tuesday.
Secretary
of State John Kerry urged Mr. Yanukovych to stop the bloodshed. “We
call on President Yanukovych and the Ukrainian government to de-escalate
the situation immediately, and resume dialogue with the opposition on a
peaceful path forward. Ukraine’s deep divisions will not be healed by
spilling more innocent blood,” he said in a statement.
The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, warned the Ukrainian government that it could face sanctions.
Ukraine should expect Europe to reconsider its
position on imposing sanctions on individuals,” Mr. Steinmeier said in a
statement on Tuesday night. The bloodshed erupted only hours after Mr.
Steinmeier had received the two main opposition leaders, Vitali
Klitschko and Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, in Berlin, where they also met
Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The
State Department, in an alert to American citizens, said that travel
into and out of the center of Kiev was restricted and described the
situation as “currently very fluid.” It also warned that roving gangs
had attacked journalists and protesters and committed other random acts
of violence in Kiev and other cities.
“U.S.
citizens whose residences or hotels are located in the vicinity of the
protests are cautioned to leave those areas or prepare to remain
indoors, possibly for several days, should clashes occur,” the notice
said. “Further violent clashes between police and protesters in Kiev and
other cities are possible. The location and nature of demonstrations
and methods employed by the police can change quickly and without
warning.”
Mr.
Yanukovych had repeatedly pledged not to use force to disperse
protesters, but after meeting Mr. Putin at the opening of the Winter
Olympics in Sochi, he had clearly changed his mind. The fighting also
broke out only a day after Russia threw a new financial lifeline to Mr.
Yanukovych’s government by buying $2 billion in Ukrainian government
bonds.
The
Russian aid appeared to signal confidence that important votes in
Parliament expected this week, to amend the Constitution and form a new
cabinet, would go in Russia’s favor.
