Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev flaunted Russia’s grip on Crimea by flying to the region and holding a government meeting there on Monday, angering Ukraine and defying Western demands to hand the peninsula back to Kiev.
But in a gesture that could ease tension in the worst East-West stand-off since the Cold War, Russia pulled some troops back from near Ukraine’s eastern border.
President Vladimir Putin told Germany’s Angela Merkel that he had ordered a partial drawdown in the region, the German chancellor’s spokesman said. The Defence Ministry said a motorised infantry battalion, which numbers between 300 and 1,200 men, had been pulled back to its base.
However, Medvedev’s visit taunted Western leaders by underlining their inability to force Putin to relinquish Crimea, seized after the overthrow of Russian-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and formally annexed on March 21.
Accompanying Medvedev, outspoken Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin – who has been targeted by Western sanctions – left no doubt about the symbolism of the trip, saying on Twitter: “Crimea is ours. Basta!”
The Ukrainian government denounced the visit, a few hours after the latest round of crisis talks between Russia and the United States ended inconclusively, as a “crude violation” of the rules of diplomacy.
Putin and Merkel also discussed by phone ways of stabilising Ukraine and another former Soviet Republic, Moldova. A Kremlin statement quoted Putin as calling for a comprehensive solution that would end what he called a “blockade” of Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniestria.
Soon after Medvedev landed with cabinet members in Crimea’s main city of Simferopol, he held a government meeting on moves to revive the region’s struggling economy, including by creating a special economic zone to ease tax and customs duties.
In comments that made clear Russia had no plans to give back the region, he set out moves to increase wages for 140,000 state workers in Crimea, boost pensions, turn the region into a tourism hub, protect energy links, end reliance on Ukraine for water and improve its roads, railways and airports.
Ukraine sent a protest note to Moscow over Medvedev’s trip, declaring that “the visit of an official person to the territory of another state without preliminary agreement is a crude violation of the rules of the international community.”
Medvedev landed in Simferopol hours after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Paris late on Sunday and reiterated that Washington considered Russia’s actions in Crimea “illegal and illegitimate”.
Kerry said resolving the crisis over Ukraine depended on a pull back of what the United States has put at up to 40,000 Russian troops near Ukraine’s eastern border.
The United States and Russia’s top diplomats also continued talks by phone on Monday, officials said. A senior State Department official said Lavrov’s call was to inform Kerry of the pullback of one battalion from the border.
Russia has described the troop buildup as part of war games. Ukrainian Major-General Oleksandr Rozmaznin, told journalists in Kiev that the number of troops near the border had been reduced but that might just reflect a scheduled rotation of conscripts.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the slight reduction in troop numbers was a small signal that the border situation was becoming less tense.
