MOSCOW — Russia stopped short on Monday of outright recognition of the contentious referendums organized by separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk, Russian-speaking provinces of southeast Ukraine, instead using the results to intensify pressure for a negotiated autonomy for those provinces.
The separatist leader of the self-declared People’s Republic of Donetsk wasted little time in announcing that his province wanted to join Russia, but the question seemed to be whether Moscow was interested.
Russia avoided any suggestion that it would react to the results with the same alacrity seen after the Crimean Peninsula referendum in March. Within hours of that vote, President Vladimir V. Putin declared that Russia was annexing Crimea, part of southern Ukraine that had once been part of Russia.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
Ukranian soldiers at a highway checkpoint near Slovyansk, not far from where antigovernment forces ambushed a Ukrainian Army convoy. Ukrainian Soldiers Killed in Militia AmbushMAY 13, 2014 Russia Vows ‘Harsh’ Response to Airspace Snub and to Raid of a Delegates’ JetMAY 12, 2014 Yevgeny Kharkovsky escaped being wounded on Sunday when mortar rounds landed around his home in Slovyansk, Ukraine. In One Eastern City, Ukrainians Find Battle Hits Too Close to HomeMAY 12, 2014 Ukraine Vote on Separation Held in ChaosMAY 11, 2014 The Victory Day Parade in Red Square on Friday commemorated the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany, the apex of the Soviet Union’s showdown with Western power. Russia Revisits Its History to Nail Down Its FutureMAY 11, 2014 A poster outside an administrative building in Lugansk, Ukraine, advertises Sunday's referendum. Amid Much Uncertainty, Separatists Prepare for Voting in Eastern UkraineMAY 10, 2014
This time, the Kremlin issued a statement saying only that it “respects the will of the population of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” and that the crisis should be resolved through dialogue between representatives of the easterners and the national government in Kiev.
The Russian government did not even say that it recognized the results of the voting, which the authorities in Kiev and their Western supporters all declared illegal from the start. A preliminary count from eastern Ukraine showed 89 percent of voters in the Donetsk region and 97.5 percent in neighboring Luhansk voted for greater autonomy. But the voter rolls were old, and many supporters of remaining in Ukraine said they stayed away.
Denis Pushilin, leader of the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” said the results showed that the people wanted to be part of Russia.
“We ask the Russian Federation to consider the issue of accession of the Donetsk People’s Republic to the Russian Federation,” he told a televised news conference. “The people of Donetsk have always been part of the Russian world, regardless of ethnicity. For us, the history of Russia is our history.”
Mr. Pushilin then elaborated about that history, while echoing Moscow’s line that the current government in Kiev was composed of “Nazis.” He also said the Ukrainian military had left hundreds dead in recent confrontations, although there was no evidence to support that estimate. Finally, he said the eastern regions would not hold the national presidential vote scheduled for May 25, creating the basis for another possible confrontation.
From Moscow, there was no direct reaction. But soon after Mr. Pushilin’s announcement, the Foreign Ministry issued another statement essentially repeating what Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov had said earlier in the day — that the crisis in Ukraine must be solved through dialogue between Kiev and the east.
In possibly the most important reaction, Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest oligarch and the biggest employer in the industrial eastern regions, known together as Donbass, said his main aim was the kind of happiness that comes through a strong economy and good
