Ukraine urges talks as stand-off turns bloody

UNITED NATIONS - Ukraine's premier went before the United Nations on Thursday to urge Russia to negotiate an end to the stand-off between their countries, as street battles in his homeland turned bloody.

At least one pro-Kiev protester was stabbed and killed in the eastern city of Donetsk when a demonstration in favour of Ukrainian unity was attacked by a Russian separatist crowd.

News of the death broke as Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk addressed an emergency session of the UN Security Council on the crisis opposing his interim government and the Kremlin.

Yatsenyuk said a negotiated solution was still possible, if Russia agrees to withdraw its forces from the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and begin a serious diplomatic dialogue.

"We want to have talks. We don't want to have any kind of military aggression," he insisted, turning to directly address Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin.

Churkin ridiculed the idea that there had been an "idyllic situation" before the crisis, but said: "Russia does not want war and nor do the Russians, and I'm convinced that Ukrainians don't want this either." Ukraine and Russia have been locked in an escalating stand-off since February 22, when a street revolt overthrew Ukraine's former pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin refuses to recognise Yatsenyuk's new pro-Western administration, and tensions are building between rival camps inside Ukraine.

The crisis could come to a head on Sunday when Crimea - now occupied by pro-Moscow forces - is due to hold a referendum on becoming part of Russia.

Yatsenyuk has a strong diplomatic hand.

His government has been recognised by European powers, he won the full backing of US President Barack Obama in Washington on Wednesday and he is negotiating an IMF bailout.

Protests turn bloody 

But the facts on the ground favour Putin.

Russia's military is far larger than Ukraine's, and Russian troops have already seized control on the Crimean Peninsula, home to a mainly ethnic Russian population and Russia's Black Sea fleet.

Moscow makes no secret of its plan to annex Crimea after Sunday's referendum, which Kiev and Washington have declared illegitimate - promising the worst East-West split since the Cold War.

[[nid:89571]]

[[nid:82790]]

Meanwhile, in eastern Ukraine, rival protests between pro- and anti-Russian factions have turned bloody, threatening to draw the opposing security forces into conflict in the streets.

A 22-year-old Ukrainian was killed when a pro-Kiev rally in Donetsk was attacked by a pro-Moscow group, the first confirmed death since Crimea was seized.

"According to preliminary conclusions by doctors, he has been stabbed," the local branch of Ukraine's health ministry told AFP, as regional authorities spoke of another 16 wounded in the clashes.

Thirteen of these were in trauma or in surgery with serious injuries, one was hospitalized and two were treated at the scene, said Ilya Suzdalev, a spokesman for the regional authorities.

And a Crimean Tatar leader urged NATO to intervene to protect his people from falling under Russian rule after the referendum, which his minority Muslim community had vowed to boycott.

"If other measures do not work, then NATO should intervene like in Kosovo," Mustafa Dzhemilev told AFP in a phone interview from Brussels, where he was preparing to meet NATO officials.

Western powers rule out military intervention, but Washington and the European Union are preparing what US Secretary of State John Kerry called "a very serious series of steps" against Russia.

A senior US official insisted Washington is "opening the door" to negotiations with Russia, but asked if it was a forgone conclusion that US and EU sanctions would be imposed on Monday, she said: "Yes." Kerry left Washington for London, where he was to meet his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The US official told reporters traveling with Kerry that he would seek "commitment to stop putting new facts on the ground and a commitment to engage seriously on ways to de-escalate." Washington wants to see Russian forces back to barracks, she said, and for Moscow "to use international observers in place of force to achieve legitimate political and human rights objectives."

'Environment of intimidation'

Washington's stern warnings came after Ukraine's parliament voted to set up a huge volunteer force.

And Russia launched its own military maneuvers on its neighbour's doorstep and also dispatched fighter jets to Belarus in a show of military muscle that betrayed no willingness to compromise.

Russia's tanks and artillery units were training across three regions neighbouring Ukraine while 4,000 paratroopers began performing drills in the central Russian region of Rostov.

"This is the second time in a month that Russia has chosen to mass large amounts of force at short notice around the eastern borders of Ukraine," the senior US official said.

"It certainly creates an environment of intimidation. It certainly is destabilizing and that will be one question that is asked tomorrow, what is meant by it," she added.

The United States has dispatched six additional F-15 fighters to Lithuania and 12 F-16s for aviation training in Poland.

[[nid:89571]]