RUSSIA said on Friday that any U.S. sanctions imposed against Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine would boomerang back on the United States, raising the financial stakes as the military standoff intensified.
In a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned against “hasty and reckless steps” that could harm Russian-American relations, the foreign ministry said.
“Sanctions… would inevitably hit the United States like a boomerang,” it added.
It was the second tense, high-level exchange between the former Cold War foes in 24 hours.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said after an hour-long call with U.S. President Barack Obama that they were still far apart on the situation in the former Soviet republic. Obama announced the first sanctions against Russia on Thursday.
Putin, who later opened the Paralympic Games in Sochi which have been boycotted by a string of Western dignitaries, said Ukraine’s new, pro-Western authorities had acted illegitimately over the eastern, southeastern and Crimea regions.
“Russia cannot ignore calls for help and it acts accordingly, in full compliance with international law,” he said.
Ukraine’s border guards said Moscow had poured troops into the Crimean peninsula, where Russian forces have seized control.
Serhiy Astakhov, an aide to the border guards’ commander, said 30,000 Russian soldiers were now in Crimea, compared to the 11,000 permanently based with the Russian Black Sea fleet in the port of Sevastopol before the crisis.
On Friday evening armed men entered a Ukrainian missile defence post in Sevastopol and took control, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene. No shots were fired.
The most serious East-West confrontation since the end of the Cold War – resulting from the overthrow last month of President Viktor Yanukovich after protests in Kiev that led to violence – escalated on Thursday when Crimea’s parliament, dominated by ethnic Russians, voted to join Russia.
The region’s government set a referendum for March 16 – in just nine days’ time.
European Union leaders and Obama said the referendum plan was illegitimate and would violate Ukraine’s constitution.
The head of Russia’s upper house of parliament said after meeting visiting Crimean lawmakers yesterday that Crimea had a right to self-determination, and ruled out any risk of war between “the two brotherly nations”.
Obama ordered visa bans and asset freezes against so far unidentified people deemed responsible for threatening Ukraine’s sovereignty on Thursday. Earlier in the week, a Kremlin aide said Moscow might be forced to drop the dollar as a reserve currency and refuse to pay off any loans to U.S. banks. The top four U.S. commercial banks have around $24bn in exposure to Russia.
The EU, Russia’s biggest economic partner and energy customer, adopted a three-stage plan to try to force a negotiated solution but stopped short of immediate sanctions.
The Russian Foreign Ministry responded angrily yesterday, calling the EU decision to freeze talks on visa-free travel and on a broad new pact governing Russia-EU ties “extremely unconstructive”. It pledged to retaliate.
Brussels and Washington rushed to strengthen the new authorities in economically shattered Ukraine, announcing both political and financial assistance. The regional director of the IMF said talks with Kiev on a loan agreement were going well and praised the new government’s openness to economic reform and transparency.
The European Commission has said Ukraine could receive up to 11bn euros in the next couple of years provided it reaches agreement with the IMF, which requires painful economic reforms like ending gas subsidies.
Russian gas monopoly Gazprom said Ukraine had not paid its $440m gas bill for February, bringing its arrears to $1.89bn and hinted it could turn off the taps as it did in 2009, when a halt in Russian deliveries to Ukraine reduced supplies to Europe during a cold snap.
In Moscow, a huge crowd gathered near the Kremlin at a government-sanctioned rally and concert billed as being “in support of the Crimean people”. Pop stars took to the stage and demonstrators held signs with slogans such as “Crimea is Russian land”, and “We believe in Putin”.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said no one in the civilised world would recognise the result of the “so-called referendum” in Crimea.
He repeated Kiev’s willingness to negotiate with Russia if Moscow pulls its additional troops out of Crimea and said he had requested a telephone call with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
