KIEV: Ukraine’s embattled president, Viktor Yanukovich, found himself squeezed between mounting pressure by the United States and Russia yesterday as the former cold war superpowers sought to influence a political crisis wracking his ex-Soviet satellite state.
Yanukovich was to fly to Sochi to hold talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics opening, his office said. His departure on the two-day trip was taking place just after Yanukovich held talks in Kiev yesterday with US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.
The back-to-back meetings underlined the ratcheted-up struggle between Washington and Moscow to bring Ukraine into a Western or a Russian orbit, and the stakes as Yanukovich weathers more than two months of pro-West demonstrations that have badly weakened his rule.
Sharpening the tone, the Kremlin accused the United States of arming Ukranian “rebels” and warned Russia could intervene to end the crisis. “The stunts the Americans are pulling today by crudely interfering in Ukraine’s domestic affairs in a unilateral manner are an obvious violation” of a 1994 treaty giving the US and Russia roles as security co-guarantors for Ukraine, Sergei Glazyev, Putin’s economic adviser, told the Ukrainian edition of Russia’s Kommersant.
When conflicts arise, the guarantors “are obliged to intervene,” Glazyev said. The hawkish adviser, who is viewed as the Kremlin pointman on Ukraine, said: “According to our information, American sources spend $20m a week on financing the opposition and rebels, including on weapons.”
He alleged that militants were briefed in the US embassy and being armed. One Ukrainian activist, Dmytro Bulatov told reporters in a hospital in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, that he had been abducted in Ukraine, “crucified” to a wooden door, and beaten until he was made to say he was an American spy.
“I told them that the American ambassador had given me $50,000,” Bulatov said. “It was so scary, it so painful that I asked them to kill me. I lied because I could not stand the pain.” The US embassy did not immediately comment on Glazyev’s allegations.
Instead its attention was focused on Nuland’s visit, which came a day after EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said in Kiev that Yanukovich’s government was not doing enough to overcome Ukraine’s worst crisis since independence in 1991.
After the meeting with Nuland, Yanukovich’s office issued a statement saying he supported swift constitutional reforms backed by protest leaders that would curb some of his powers. But both the opposition and the West suspect the 63-year-old leader is playing for time.
In Russia’s Black Sea city of Sochi, on the sidelines of today’s Winter Olympics opening ceremony, Yanukovich was expected to hold talks with Putin, to the fury of Ukraine’s opposition.
In a sign of the sensitivity of the talks, Russian and Ukrainian officials were tight-lipped over details. But it is expected in part to touch on the fate of a crucial $15bn bailout Russia promised Ukraine but which is now on hold.
The protests against Yanukovich broke out when the president in late November backed out of an EU trade and political association pact under Russian pressure.
AFP
