AUDASE

Putin raises stakes over alleged Ukrainian terror plot in Crimea

Russian president says Moscow will not ignore incidents in which two soldiers were killed, but which Kiev denies took place

Shaun Walker in Moscow London Times

Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of plotting terrorist attacks in Crimea and claimed two Russian servicemen were killed in clashes this week, as tensions over the peninsula rise to their highest level since Russia annexed it in 2014.

Ukraine denied the alleged incidents had taken place and dismissed the claims as Russian provocation.

In characteristically bellicose language, Putin accused Ukraine of playing a dangerous game.”We obviously will not let such things slide by,” the Russian president said on Wednesday. Ukraine had “resorted to the practice of terror”, he said.

Putin’s warning that Russia would not ignore the incidents will worry observers. The increased tension in Crimea comes at a time when the simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine appears to be heating up. There are almost daily casualties on the frontline between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed rebel military formations, and little sign of a resolution to the conflict, in which more than 9,000 people have been killed over the past two years.

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Russia’s security service, the FSB, said in a statement that one of its officers had been killed during a shootout with a “group of diversionaries” on Saturday night, when they were supposedly discovered just inside Crimea’s border with mainland Ukraine. It said the group had 20 homemade devices with a total of 40kg of explosives in their possession.

The FSB said there had been a further incident on Monday involving “massive firing” from the Ukrainian side of the border and attempts to enter the region by force, during which another Russian soldier died.

“On the night of 8 August 2016, special operations forces from the Ukrainian defence ministry carried out two more attempts to make a breakthrough by sabotage-terrorist groups,” it said.

The FSB said it had arrested a man named Evgeny Panov, allegedly a Ukrainian military intelligence operative born in 1977, and said he had made a confession. It gave no further information.

“This is a very dangerous game,” said Putin. “We will of course do everything to assure the security of infrastructure, citizens and will take additional measures to provide security, including serious additional measures.”

The FSB said Kiev’s aim was the “destabilisation of the socio-political situation in the region during preparation for elections”. Russia will hold nationwide parliamentary elections on 18 September, with Crimea taking part for the first time since its annexation.

Locals in Crimea have noted a large amount of Russian military hardware on the move in recent days, and the de facto borders between Crimea and Ukraine were closed over the weekend and subject to increased security checks when they reopened.

Ukraine’s defence ministry said: “This kind of FSB statement is nothing more than an attempt to justify the relocation and aggressive actions of Russian military units on the temporarily occupied peninsula.

“Russian security services are trying to distract the population of Crimea and the international community from its criminal actions, turning the peninsula into an isolated military base.”

 Vladimir Putin accused Kiev of resorting to terror instead of seeking peaceful solutions. Photograph: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Oleskandr Turchynov, the head of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, also dismissed the claims. “The hysterical and false statement by Russia’s FSB has no purpose other than an attempt by occupiers to inflame the situation on temporarily occupied Ukrainian lands,” he said.

Russia annexed Crimea in a swift military operation following the February 2014 revolution in Kiev that deposed the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Armed men in unmarked uniforms fanned out across the peninsula and seized Ukrainian army bases and other key infrastructure. At the time Putin vehemently denied the men were Russian soldiers,but he later admitted they were.

Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in a referendum that the international community dismissed as flawed and illegitimate and which led to western sanctions against Russia that are still in place.

Ukraine has said it will never give up its claim to the peninsula, but it has acknowledged in the past that it does not have the military capability to regain control. Ukrainian authorities have tacitly supported a blockade of Crimea by a group of Crimean Tatars, an indigenous ethnic group largely opposed the annexation. Crimean Tatars blocked trucks from entering Crimea from mainland Ukraine for several months last year and even blew up electricity pipelines, leading to blackouts on the peninsula. 

Putin has promised infrastructure will be built in the next few years to make Crimea self-sufficient in energy. Moscow is also building a bridge to link the peninsula with the Russian mainland across the Kerch Strait. It is due to open in 2018.

Crimea’s governor, Sergey Aksyonov, who was appointed by Moscow, said attempts to destabilise the peninsula during the summer tourist season would be prevented “in the harshest possible way”, promising that the region was safe for residents and tourists.

Igor Plotnitsky, the head of the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic, was admitted to hospital after an assassination attempt this month. He blamed Ukrainian authorities and the CIA, but other analysts suggested infighting or falling out with his Russian handlers was a more likely cause.

Responding to the alleged incidents in Crimea, Putin also said it made no sense to have a “Normandy four” meeting in the current circumstances. The quartet of leaders from Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany have met periodically to discuss the conflict in eastern Ukraine. A meeting had been mooted for the G20 summit in China next month.

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All of this leads to the suspicion, voiced by Carl Bildt, Sweden’s former prime minister and others, that Russia may be about to invade again.

When it comes to the month of August, Putin has form. His previous invasions have coincided with Olympic Games, a time when the international community is distracted or on holiday - Georgia in 2008 after Beijing, and Ukraine in 2014 (after the Winter Games in Sochi.

There are other propitious circumstances this summer. The presidential election is paralysing the US, and the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, has hinted that as president he might recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea. He seems uncertain as to where Ukraine actually is. Europe meanwhile is in disarray in the wake of the Brexit vote and an ongoing migration crisis.

Seizing Crimea seemed a good idea in 2014, and it was achieved with remarkable ease. As the Russian writer Leonid Kaganov put it, however, it was a bit like stealing an expensive phone without its charger. Once a peninsula, the region is now effectively an island. Putin has announced plans to build a bridge across the Kerch Strait, connecting it to the Russian mainland, but he has entrusted the job to a childhood friend, Arkady Rotenburg, and it is unlikely to be finished any time soon.

In the meantime, Crimeans, most of whom still support Russia, have suffered a series of electricity blackouts and other indignities. Last November Ukrainian activists blew up energy pipelines to Crimea, plunging homes into darkness. People ate dinner by candlelight, factories shut down and for the first few days even traffic lights stopped working. The peninsula’s water supply is also vulnerable. It gets all of its water via the north Crimean canal, currently in Ukraine.

At this point there seem to be three possible scenarios. One is that Putin will try to leverage this latest crisis to persuade EU countries to drop the sanctions imposed over the Ukraine conflict. Another is that he is preparing a limited military incursion, possibly to set up a security corridor, which doubtless would include the electricity station in the nearby Ukrainian city of Kherson. A third is that he is planning something bigger.

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In spring 2014 there was speculation that he would seek to carve out a land corridor connecting separatist Donetsk and Luhansk with Crimea. That would involve over-running Ukrainian forces in the port city of Mariupol and advancing along the coast. The Kremlin also floated the idea of Novorossiya, a historical pseudo-entity encompassing Ukraine’s southern and south-eastern Russian-speaking regions.

None of this happened, but a land corridor would certainly be an attractive solution to Crimea’s current woes, and would at a stroke solve Russia’s short and long-term infrastructure problems. There would be political dividends too. From the Kremlin’s point of view, a further Ukraine adventure would conclusively demonstrate the west’s weakness and incapacity.

At a time when US swimmers are openly taunting their Russian rivals in the pool, it would also be payback for the doping scandal and international attempts to ban Russian athletes from the Olympics. Putin cares deeply about sport. The Wada report on Russian state-sponsored doping has been presented inside Russia as a western conspiracy. Putin may be showing who is boss.