Ukraine’s embattled leaders on Wednesday launched roundtable talks as part of a Western-backed push to prevent the country falling apart, vowing they would not bow to “blackmail” by pro-Russian rebels waging an insurgency in the east.
The so-called national unity discussions — which crucially do not involve the insurgents — are being held barely two weeks before Ukraine holds a presidential election that the West is scrambling to keep alive.
European leaders have been working to bring Kiev and pro-Moscow separatists together under a roadmap sponsored by pan-European security body the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
However, Russia bluntly warned that the former Soviet republic was already on the brink of civil war and accused Western mercenaries of operating in Ukraine.
Acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov said at the roundtable talks that Kiev was ready to negotiate with pro-Russians, but that the rebels must first lay down their arms.
“We will not yield to blackmail,” he said. “We are ready to listen to the people of the east, but they must not shoot, loot or occupy government buildings.”
The east of Ukraine remains on edge, with deadly violence erupting often as government troops battle against the separatists who have seized more than a dozen towns and cities since early last month.
Dozens have been killed in fighting in the east and in an inferno in the southern port city of Odessa, with the Ukrainian army losing seven soldiers in a rebel ambush on Tuesday.
And the crisis showed no signs of easing despite the flurry of diplomatic efforts following hotly disputed weekend independence referendums in the eastern industrial regions of Donetsk and Lugansk that raised fears of partition.
“When Ukrainians kill Ukrainians, I believe this is as close to a civil war as you can get,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Bloomberg television. “In east and south of Ukraine there is a war, a real war.”
Lavrov also said he had “strong suspicions” that Western mercenaries were operating in Ukraine and played down the threat of further US and EU sanctions. However, he said Moscow had no intention of sending in troops to eastern Ukraine as it did while annexing Crimea in March.
European leaders had called for Wednesday’s talks to be representative, with OSCE-appointed mediator Wolfgang Ischinger saying they should contribute to an “electoral process that is inclusive, honest and transparent.”
The roadmap drawn up by the OSCE calls for “restraint from violence, disarmament, national dialogue, and elections.”
Turchynov charged on Wednesday that the loss of the strategic Black Sea peninsula had cost Ukraine’s struggling economy US$100 billion.
The Russian “aggression has not stopped” and has spread to the east, he said.
“The situation is explosive in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions,” he said.
However, pro-Russian lawmaker Olexander Efremov told Turchynov that “tens of thousands” of local residents support the armed rebellion. There was also a stark warning from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development — which was founded to help ex-Soviet bloc countries make the transition to free-market economies — about the wider fallout from the crisis.
In a bleak report, the bank warned that Ukraine risked plunging deeper into recession with the economy forecast to shrink 7 percent this year, while Russian growth would be flat.
The economic woes are adding to European concerns about the vital supply of Russian gas, much of which flows through Ukraine.
Acting Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Tuesday accused Russia of “stealing” Ukraine’s gas and threatened to take Russia to court if it rejected proposals to settle their dispute over gas contracts.
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