Ukraine braced yesterday for a breakaway vote in Crimea as deadly violence flared again in the ex-Soviet country’s tinderbox east amid the biggest East-West showdown since the Cold War.
The second successive day of deadly unrest that has claimed at least three lives in the mainly Russian-speaking east came hours after Moscow — its forces already in control of Crimea and conducting snap drills at Ukraine’s eastern border — warned that it reserved the right to “protect” compatriots throughout its neighbor.
US Secretary of State John Kerry had on Friday failed to either avert today’s ballot in Crimea or win Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov’s assurance that Moscow may delay annexing the Black Sea region that Ukraine received as a “gift” from then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.
Photo: Reuters
The rugged peninsula of 2 million mostly Russian speakers is widely expected to vote to split from Ukraine and join Russia after its lawmakers declared independence from Kiev earlier this month.
The referendum comes in direct response to three months of deadly protests which on Feb. 22 toppled the pro-Kremlin former president and brought to power a new nationalist European-leaning team in Kiev, infuriating Moscow, which views Ukraine as its strategic sphere of influence and wants to retain influence over its former Soviet satellite.
Kiev has denounced the Crimean vote as illegal, but is also warily watching as similar separatist sentiments are being fanned by Moscow supporters in other industrial regions in mostly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, which has deep cultural and trade ties to Russia.
Yet Moscow — whose troops took effective control of Crimea in the days after the Ukrainian president’s Feb. 22 fall — strongly backs the referendum, despite a new round of painful sanctions against top Russian officials that Washington and EU nations are expected to unveil tomorrow.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said he expected to sign in Brussels on Friday the political portion of an historic EU Association Agreement, whose rejection in November last year by the deposed government sparked the initial Kiev unrest.
LIMITS: While China increases military pressure on Taiwan and expands its use of cognitive warfare, it is unwilling to target tech supply chains, the report said US and Taiwan military officials have warned that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could implement a blockade within “a matter of hours” and need only “minimal conversion time” prior to an attack on Taiwan, a report released on Tuesday by the US Senate’s China Economic and Security Review Commission said. “While there is no indication that China is planning an imminent attack, the United States and its allies and partners can no longer assume that a Taiwan contingency is a distant possibility for which they would have ample time to prepare,” it said. The commission made the comments in its annual
DETERMINATION: Beijing’s actions toward Tokyo have drawn international attention, but would likely bolster regional coordination and defense networks, the report said Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s administration is likely to prioritize security reforms and deterrence in the face of recent “hybrid” threats from China, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said. The bureau made the assessment in a written report to the Legislative Yuan ahead of an oral report and questions-and-answers session at the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The key points of Japan’s security reforms would be to reinforce security cooperation with the US, including enhancing defense deployment in the first island chain, pushing forward the integrated command and operations of the Japan Self-Defense Forces and US Forces Japan, as
IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST: Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu said the strengthening of military facilities would help to maintain security in the Taiwan Strait Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi, visiting a military base close to Taiwan, said plans to deploy missiles to the post would move forward as tensions smolder between Tokyo and Beijing. “The deployment can help lower the chance of an armed attack on our country,” Koizumi told reporters on Sunday as he wrapped up his first trip to the base on the southern Japanese island of Yonaguni. “The view that it will heighten regional tensions is not accurate.” Former Japanese minister of defense Gen Nakatani in January said that Tokyo wanted to base Type 03 Chu-SAM missiles on Yonaguni, but little progress
NO CHANGES: A Japanese spokesperson said that Tokyo remains consistent and open for dialogue, while Beijing has canceled diplomatic engagements A Japanese official blasted China’s claims that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has altered Japan’s position on a Taiwan crisis as “entirely baseless,” calling for more dialogue to stop ties between Asia’s top economies from spiraling. China vowed to take resolute self-defense against Japan if it “dared to intervene militarily in the Taiwan Strait” in a letter delivered Friday to the UN. “I’m aware of this letter,” said Maki Kobayashi, a senior Japanese government spokeswoman. “The claim our country has altered its position is entirely baseless,” she said on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Johannesburg on Saturday. The Chinese Ministry
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