NEIL MacFARQUHAR and ANDREW E. KRAMER
August 29, 2014
Pro-Russian fighters near Novoazovsk, Ukraine. “Now we are fighting for all of southeastern Ukraine, for Novorossiya, which was historically a Russian province,” their commander said. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
MOSCOW — As Russian-backed rebels entrenched themselves in a newly captured, strategically located town in southeast Ukraine on Friday, President Vladimir V. Putin bluntly strengthened Moscow’s hard-line position that the government in Kiev must be compelled to negotiate regional autonomy.
Abandoning his more frequent conciliatory stance, Mr. Putin issued a rare, open, congratulatory message to the insurgents. They had “achieved a major success in intercepting Kiev’s military operation,” he said on his website.
Behind the message, and the wider military operation, analysts saw several Kremlin goals. Most important, they said, is that Mr. Putin wants to force terms, first laid down in March, built around political changes in Ukraine that would weaken central government authority and ensure that the country cannot escape Moscow’s orbit — and certainly never join NATO or other important Western alliances. Second, but perhaps more urgent, Russia wanted to take the pressure off the increasingly beleaguered rebel forces in Luhansk and Donetsk, which were at risk of capture by government forces, hence robbing Moscow of important leverage.
Third, there was the possibility that Russia was trying to establish a land route to Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula seized in March. Analysts noted, though, that such a possibility would mean a notable shift in policy — never easy to assess given the opaque statements from the Kremlin.
“Russia in the end would like negotiations, but negotiations that would conclude with serious concessions from Ukraine,” said Aleksei V. Makarkin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow.
Given that Ukraine has shown no willingness to negotiate, the Kremlin raised the pressure by increasing its support for the breakaway republics in southeastern Ukraine, he said.
“Russia is investing very large resources into these republics, resources of various kinds, with the understanding that Ukraine will have to yield and come to an agreement with Russia on Russia’s terms,” Mr. Makarkin said.
Mr. Putin, in separate remarks at a nationally televised question-and-answer session with student supporters at a resort northeast of Moscow, accused Ukraine of stalling for time, hoping to control the rebels rather than talk to them.
“We need to make the Ukrainian authorities start negotiations of real substance,” he said, with the main priority to guarantee the rights of people in the southeastern Donbass region bordering Russia. “But the problem is that they don’t really want to talk.”
Instead, Mr. Putin said, “The Ukrainian Army has surrounded small towns and big cities and is firing directly at residential areas in order to destroy infrastructure and crush the will to resist.”
Russian troops and weaponry were creating momentum for a counteroffensive along a significant new front that threatened Mariupol, a key southeastern seaport and one of the region’s biggest cities with nearly half a million residents.
In the town of Novoazovsk, Ukrainian militiamen manned checkpoints. But evidence of a Russian presence was abundant, including unmarked Russian military vehicles with no license plates. A soldier on a truck greeted journalists by shouting in English: “Back in the U.S.S.R.!”
A cashier at a Novoazovsk grocery store said Russian soldiers had bought sausages and cigarettes. Asked how she knew they were Russian, the cashier, who identified herself as Olga, snapped: “You think I’ve only lived one day?”
The military commandant of the town, who offered only his nickname, Svet, said the soldiers there were with the Army of Novorossiya, rather than either of the main separatist groups, the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics.
The militiamen flew the flag of “Novorossiya” or New Russia, a reference to Russia’s historical claims over the area in southeast Ukraine that encompasses the rebellious Donetsk and Luhansk regions along with much of southern Ukraine.
In his statement on the Kremlin website, Mr. Putin referred to the “Novorossiya Militia,” pointedly using the reference to the broader area.
President Vladimir V. Putin, arriving at an education forum for students, said the Ukrainian government must enter substantive talks with the rebels. Credit RIA Novosti/Reuters
“Now we are fighting for all of southeastern Ukraine, for Novorossiya, which was historically a Russian province,” said Svet, interviewed outside an auto repair shop he had set up as a command post. “We plan to take Mariupol.”
Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of increasingly brazen military aggression, sending troops, tanks and other weapons across the border to support the Ukraine rebels. The Kremlin has denied the accusations and a top rebel leader asserted that any Russian active duty soldiers fighting in Ukraine are volunteers on vacation.
A takeover of Mariupol would go a long way toward helping the separatists gain control over land that would connect Russia to Crimea. Russia lacks a land link to the peninsula, and the ferry route farther south has become a major bottleneck.
But analysts said that would mean occupying a lot of Ukrainian territory where there is little pro-Russian sentiment, possibly forcing a costly, bloody occupation of the type Mr. Putin has thus far sought to avoid. Separatists were chased out of Mariupol earlier this year.
Journalists who visited the city on Friday saw Ukrainian workers digging trenches with backhoes and building defensive positions in anticipation of an assault. Civilian residents, household belongings piled into their cars, were leaving.
On the other hand, the specter of a wider war might help President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine convince citizens that some compromise with Russia is necessary. It is a step bitterly opposed by many in Ukraine.
But the initial reaction from Ukraine on Friday was to try to align the country more with the West. The Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, announced a new bill to cancel Ukraine’s status as a nonaligned country and “restore its aspirations to become a NATO member” as well as to join the European Union.
The proposal was considered unlikely to advance, as NATO cannot accept new members with disputed borders.
Analysts suggested that the move was a blunder by the government in Kiev, similar to its attempts to ban Russian as an official language after toppling the elected president in February. Both developments fed Moscow’s fears that the West is manipulating events in Ukraine to create a threat on Russia’s doorstep.
In one conciliatory gesture, Mr. Putin suggested in his statement that the militia groups open a humanitarian corridor to allow surrounded Ukrainian soldiers to escape and to avoid further loss of life. Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the rebel leader who said on Thursday that more than 3,000 Russians, including active soldiers on leave, had fought among the separatists, quickly agreed to Mr. Putin’s proposal. But he said the Ukrainians would have to abandon their weapons.
Ukraine rejected the proposal and said no such corridors had been established. “Combat is going on there with an aim to kill,” said Col. Andriy Lysenko, the spokesman for the Ukrainian national security council. The flurry of heightened military activity and threat of wider violence prompted renewed calls from the West for stronger economic sanctions that put new pressure on the ruble. It cost more than 37 rubles to buy a dollar on Friday, compared to about 32 rubles before the crisis began.
The three rounds of sanctions imposed so far have yet to notably alter Mr. Putin’s conduct in Ukraine, however, despite the economic problems they are causing.
If Mr. Putin does not get what Russia wants via negotiations, he is likely to maintain a low-level conflict in eastern Ukraine for some time, analysts suggested. It is a pattern established in other countries like Georgia and Moldova that have sought close alliances with the West.
“The Ukrainians behaved much tougher than Mr. Putin anticipated, but we know that Putin never retreats,” said Alexander M. Golts, an independent analyst.
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