Germany Halts Nord Stream 2 After Putin Orders Troops to Ukrainian Breakaway Regions
Ukraine’s president considers cutting diplomatic relations with Russia
Germany halted the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into breakaway Ukraine regions, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he is considering severing diplomatic relations with Russia in response to Mr. Putin’s decision, as reports grew of Russian troops moving into the area.
“Ukraine must react to this, defending its sovereignty and statehood.” Mr. Zelensky said at a Tuesday press conference with the Estonian president, at which he called on the West to immediately punish Russia with sanctions. He said he would decide on his foreign ministry’s proposal to cut ties with Moscow later Tuesday.
Columns of Russian military vehicles poured into Donetsk overnight, hours after Mr. Putin made a speech questioning Ukraine’s legitimacy and recognizing the two statelets that Russia established in the Donbas in 2014, according to witnesses and footage posted on social media. A senior White House official said the administration had received information that Russian troops had deployed into the Donetsk and Luhansk regions “for so-called peacekeeping functions,” adding that U.S. officials are still assessing the situation.
The local authorities, however, haven’t made any announcements on this alleged deployment. Eduard Basurin, a senior official of the so-called Donetsk people’s republic, was quoted by Moscow’s RIA news agency as saying he wasn’t aware of any arrival of Russian troops.
In an earlier TV address to Ukrainians, Mr. Zelensky said the Russian move simply legalized the eight-year Russian occupation of the area and showed that Moscow wasn’t interested in peace.
Russia has fomented the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions after pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted following street protests in 2014. It has since covertly deployed a sizable military force in Donetsk and Luhansk, with the two enclaves possessing more battle tanks than the U.K. or France. Monday’s recognition allows Russia to openly send units and weapons to the area, where shelling has intensified since last week.
The U.S. has warned that Russia plans an all-out occupation of Ukraine after deploying some 190,000 troops along the country’s borders, and this week evacuated its remaining diplomats from the western city of Lviv. The White House on Monday said President Biden “strongly condemned” Mr. Putin’s decision and planned to issue sanctions. Mr. Biden issued an executive order prohibiting “new investment, trade and financing by U.S. persons’’ in the breakaway areas.
Mr. Zelensky projected calm on Tuesday, and said there was no need to suspend democratic freedoms or proclaim a national state of emergency.
“We believe that there will be no mass war against Ukraine, and no broad escalation by the Russian Federation,” he said. “But if there will be, we will declare martial law.”
Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Moscow is recognizing the Donetsk and Luhansk statelets within their self-proclaimed borders, which include the two thirds of the regions that are currently controlled by Kyiv. The Luhansk statelet has already demanded that Kyiv “voluntarily” vacate areas within the republic’s “historical territory.”
Asked about the demand, Mr. Zelensky said he doesn’t recognize these statelets and doesn’t communicate with them.
In these Ukrainian-controlled areas of Donbas, residents were bracing for a renewed offensive.
In the city of Dnipro, 60 or so miles west of the Donetsk line of contact, Interpipe, a manufacturer of steel pipes and wheels for rail lines, has been fielding calls from concerned international customers in Europe and the U.S.
“Clients are asking us what’s happening in Ukraine,” said Denis Morozov, the head of Interpipe’s pipe division. “‘Do you have the ability to fulfill our orders?’”
Mr. Morozov said that production continues in three Interpipe facilities in the Dnipro region, employing 11,000 workers. Interpipe took in $1.1 billion in revenue last year.
“We plan to fulfill orders on time,” Mr. Morozov said. “You have to be stable, keep calm.”
“Yesterday’s developments don’t impact our plans,” said Tomas Fiala, the chief executive of Dragon Capital, Ukraine’s largest investment bank.
Dragon hasn’t evacuated its employees, Mr. Fiala said, including more than 200 at its Kyiv headquarters and others working on commercial real-estate projects at offices in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Zaporizhya,
“Our plans could be impacted if Russia further invaded Ukraine,” Mr. Fiala said. “The toughest sanctions have to be put in place no matter if it costs a couple percent of GDP.”
Mikhail Karablin, 67 years old, who was born in Russia and moved to the Ukrainian town of Konstyantynivka more than 40 years ago, said he dreads the idea of his adopted town falling under the sway of separatist authorities.
“They’re a plague, they came to this land with guns and turned Donetsk into a wasteland,” he said, waiting for his wife outside one of the town’s few banks.
“Who knows how many people are being tortured in basements there,” he said. “I just pray they all stay on that side of the front line.”
Anna Mikhailova said she remembers 2014 as a nightmare when fighting raged around the city and armed personnel carriers drove through the streets. “I can’t go through it again,” she said. “What will we do? Find some way to survive.”