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A6 | Wednesday, January 28, 2015
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
WORLD NEWS
EU, Except Greece, Pushes Russia Sanctions
Europe Blasts Kremlin for Ukraine Violence, but Spat With New Greek Government Signals Fresh Rift Over Confronting Putin
BY LAURENCE NORMAN
New Cabinet
In Athens Heralds
Austerity Clash
Associated Press
BRUSSELS—European Union
leaders censured Russia’s actions
in Ukraine and asked the bloc’s
foreign ministers to work up
new options for sanctions, but
Greece’s new government signaled it might resist fresh pressure on Moscow.
EU leaders, in a communiqué,
cited Russia’s “continued and
growing support” for pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine,
saying it “underlined Russia’s responsibility” for the recent surge
in violence.
Ahead of an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers on
Thursday called to discuss the
worsening conflict in Ukraine,
the leaders urged Russia to
quickly move to ensure that separatists respect the peace and
cease-fire accords signed in September in Minsk.
“In view of the worsening situation, we ask [foreign ministers] to assess the situation and
to consider any appropriate action, in particular on further restrictive measures,” they said.
Greece’s new government,
though, jumped into an early
diplomatic spat with Brussels
over the statement, which it said
it hadn’t approved. The statement “was circulated without
having followed the correct procedure for ensuring the consent
of member states and, in particular, without ensuring Greece’s
consent,” said Dimitrios Tzanakopolous, a senior aide to new
Greek Prime Minister Alexis
Tsipras.
The disagreement suggests
the election victory of Mr. Tsipras’s left-wing Syriza party on
Sunday could deepen divides
within the bloc over how hard to
press the Kremlin.
It also hints that Mr. Tsipras
could prove to be a political
thorn in the side of the EU beyond his campaign against European-imposed austerity policies
and in favor of further debt relief that helped bring him into
office.
Greece can’t be ignored if it
chooses to oppose further EU
sanctions against Russia, since
Municipal workers on Tuesday carry a coffin holding the body of a man killed in a weekend attack in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
any penalties require a unanimous decision from all 28 governments. However, in the give
and take of EU politics, the government of a small country is
usually required to give ground
in many other areas to achieve
its priorities.
The EU has already introduced restrictions on trade, defense and energy links with Russia and has targeted dozens of
Russian officials and separatist
leaders with an asset freeze and
travel ban.
Among the further steps the
bloc could take is widening the
net of companies frozen out of
Western financial markets to
more state-run firms or to private companies. They could also
ban exports of technology related to the gas industry, on top
of a similar ban already in place
against Russia’s oil sector.
EU diplomats say the bloc is
unlikely to adopt any fresh restrictions at the Thursday meeting of ministers but that work
would begin then on developing
options for EU leaders at their
next summit on Feb. 12-13.
Greek officials said the European Council, the body that represents member states, had ignored their criticisms of the
communiqué. One Greek official
said a senior aide to Mr. Tsipras
had told European Council President Donald Tusk’s office early
Tuesday that Athens needed
more time before agreeing to it.
The person said the EU went
ahead regardless.
Mr. Tusk’s spokesman hit
back at the Greek claims in
emailed remarks. He said the European Council consulted with
all member states, including a
representative of the new Greek
government, before issuing the
statement.
“It was our understanding
that the statement had been
agreed by all [Monday] evening.
Greece didn’t object to the draft
statement, either in the phone
call between President Tusk
and Prime Minister Tsipras nor
in the communication with the
new Greek Sherpa,” said the
spokesman, Preben Aamann, referring to a senior Greek diplomat.
Mr. Aamann said Mr. Tusk’s
office offered to add a footnote
to the statement explaining that
Greece wasn’t covered by it, but
Athens rejected that idea.
Mr. Tsipras has in the past
lashed out at EU sanctions on
Russia, saying they did nothing
to resolve the Ukraine conflict.
He has made at least two visits
to Moscow over the past two
years, receiving a warm welcome
from senior Russian lawmakers.
On his last trip in May 2014,
the official Rossiskaya Gazeta
newspaper published an interview with him where he said the
sanctions “are harming Europe.”
Tuesday’s EU statement is evidence of an abrupt mood
change in Brussels. Last week,
foreign ministers were discussing ideas on how to eventually
ease tensions with Moscow and
even reverse some sanctions
over time.
However, renewed violence
that has left dozens dead in
Mariupol and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine has hardened opinions, putting fresh sanctions
back on the agenda.
—Viktoria Dendrinou,
Nektaria Stamouli
and Gregory L. White
contributed to this article.
Ukrainian troops beat back
fresh attacks by pro-Russia militants on a crucial rail hub Tuesday, part of recent heavy fighting that is limiting the Kiev
By Alan Cullison in Kiev
and James Marson
in Moscow
government’s options and sapping its finances as it works to
fend off a wider Russian-supported onslaught.
President Petro Poroshenko’s
government will run out of
money without fresh multibillion-dollar injections from the
International Monetary Fund
and other official Western
sources. Western donors are
prodding Mr. Poroshenko to
show his creditworthiness by
more aggressively rooting out
government corruption—an arduous task, Ukrainian officials
say, as the country fights a war.
If Mr. Poroshenko agrees to a
new cease-fire and a pullback of
his forces, he would effectively
give up rebel-held territory, undermining political support in
Kiev, where parliament voted
Tuesday to declare Russia an aggressor and the separatist gov-
ernments terrorist organizations.
But continuing to stand up to
Russia without significant military support from the West
could lead to further losses of
both territory and men, deepening Ukraine’s financial woes.
Ukraine’s economy contracted
7.5% in 2014, and central bank
reserves shrank to $7.5 billion in
December, the lowest in more
than a decade. Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, hit fresh lows
on Tuesday after losing half of
its value against the dollar last
year.
“He’s between a rock and a
hard place, between a deal with
[Russian President Vladimir] Putin and increasingly radicalized
Ukrainian public opinion that is
not prone to compromise,” said
Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a
Washington-based think tank.
U.S. and European leaders
threatened new sanctions in the
wake of a rebel rocket attack
that killed dozens of Ukrainian
civilians over the weekend, but
Mr. Putin appeared ready to
shrug off any new measures. On
Tuesday, he continued to blame
Kiev for the fighting and for
Getty Images
Renewed Fighting Strains Ukraine’s Finances
President Petro Poroshenko attends Auschwitz ceremonies Tuesday.
“gunning down civilians in cold
blood.”
The Kremlin denies giving
support to pro-Russia rebels in
eastern Ukraine or sending Russian troops, which Kiev said on
Tuesday numbered as many as
15,000. Kiev and Western officials say a fresh infusion of Russian armor in the past two
weeks has been feeding the latest offensive against Ukrainian
troops, who last week fell back
from a long-contested airport
outside the eastern city of Donetsk and are now in danger of
encirclement at a rail hub in the
provincial city of Debaltseve.
Western officials had hoped
Moscow would be forced to back
down through a combination of
sanctions and financial pain after the plunge in the price for
crude oil, Russia’s main export.
But Mr. Putin has been unwilling to order militants to return
control of the Ukraine-Russia
border to Kiev, a crucial point of
the September deal.
Mr. Putin ramped up his rhetoric this week, blaming Kiev for
the upsurge in violence and calling Ukraine an instrument being
used by the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization to contain
Russia.
For now, Kiev says its forces
don’t face a massive defeat. Government forces and rebels are
concentrated around Debaltseve,
an important rail junction between the two rebel capitals,
with the militants pushing to
surround it while pounding it
with rockets and artillery. The
encirclement of the town is
likely a precursor to an assault
that could come in the next
week, Ukrainian officials said.
With no offensive possible,
Ukrainian units have for now
settled into a strategy of punishing the rebels with artillery
strikes as they advance. After
Russia gave sophisticated antiaircraft weaponry to separatists
last summer, officials say that
Ukraine’s air force has been unable to operate in the conflict
zone even for reconnaissance
and spotting targets for artillery.
—Nick Shchetko in Kiev
contributed to this article.
ATHENS—Prime Minister
Alexis Tsipras unveiled a cabinet
that includes an outspoken bailout critic as finance minister,
signaling that Greece’s new coalition government aims to take
a tough line in upcoming debt
negotiations with the country’s
international creditors.
The new finance minister,
Yanis Varoufakis, is an economist who describes himself as a
libertarian Marxist. An academic
who most recently taught at
the University of Texas, he has
blasted the steep spending cuts
called for under terms of
Greece’s financial rescue as “fiscal waterboarding” and recently
described Europe’s new growth
plan to address the crisis as a
“stupidity” that would fall short
of its goals.
Mr. Varoufakis is now part of
a team of prominent critics of
Europe’s economic approach appointed with the task of rolling
back Greece’s austerity plan and
reducing the country’s massive
debt load with its international
creditors.
The cabinet—presented just
two days after Mr. Tsipras’s leftist Syriza party swept to power
on a wave of support from austerity-weary voters—also included several appointments
from the right-wing Independent
Greeks party, Syriza’s junior coalition partner. The coveted defense ministry position went to
Panos Kammenos, the head of
the Independent Greeks. Mr.
Kammenos, an archconservative
who shares Mr. Tsipras’s antiausterity views, has been a
harsh critic of Turkey and has
called for tightening restrictions
on immigrants in Greece.
Mr. Tsipras’s selection of the
two ministers suggests he has
no plans to retreat from promises to reverse years of spending cuts and unpopular reforms.
The cabinet’s 40 members, who
were sworn in Tuesday, will assume responsibilities immediately.
In the aftermath of Sunday’s
election, eurozone politicians
have sought to damp hopes
that Greece would get easier
bailout terms, worried that the
step would encourage other recipients to demand similar
deals. Mr. Varoufakis didn’t try
to allay that fear.
“What happens here today is
the beginning of a new hope for
the whole of Europe,” he said
after his swearing-in. The euro
“was not designed to sustain financial crisis.”
Though a relative newcomer
to politics, the 53-year-old Mr.
Varoufakis has for years been a
strident critic of Greece’s bailout
program, as well as Europe’s austerity-oriented approach to the
global financial crisis.
In a 2011 book on the global
financial crisis, Mr. Varoufakis
argued that the roots of the crisis date back more than four
decades and can be traced to
the changing and shrinking role
of the U.S. in the world financial
order.
“The euro crisis was the inevitable result of the global crisis,” Mr. Varoufakis said. “However, the way Europe’s
leadership mishandled it gave it
a significance all of its own.”
—Stelios Bouras
and Alkman Granitsas
Russians Needed 2 Tries AuschwitzLiberationMarkedWithoutPutin
To Kill Spy, Court Hears
Composite
LONDON—The deadly dose of
radioactive material used to poison Alexander Litvinenko at a
Mayfair hotel in 2006 may have
been the second attempt on the
former Russian spy’s life in two
weeks, a British inquiry heard on
Tuesday.
The revelation came on the
first day of a long-awaited public
inquiry into the circumstances of
the death of Mr. Litvinenko, a
former KGB officer who had
moved to the U.K. in 2000 and
become a Kremlin critic. The inquiry, which is expected to last
nine weeks, is expected to aggravate relations between the two
countries as U.K. investigators
again air allegations of Russian
state involvement in his killing.
Moscow has denied any involvement in the affair.
Mr. Litvinenko’s slow, painful
death after consuming tea laced
with radioactive polonium, and
Russia’s refusal to extradite the
chief suspect—a career Russian
security officer—created strains
in the relationship between London and the Kremlin from which
they have never fully recovered.
Until now, evidence aired by
British investigators has concentrated on a single, fatal dose of
polonium ingested at the Pines
Bar in the luxury Millennium Hotel. But that may not have been
the first attempt on his life, said
Robin Tam, the lawyer representing the inquiry.
At least a small amount of
polonium was administered to
Mr. Litvinenko in a London
boardroom on the afternoon of
Oct. 16, two weeks before a second dose was slipped to him at
the Mayfair hotel, Mr. Tam said.
In both instances, Mr. Litvinenko had been with what
British prosecutors have said are
the two chief suspects in the
case, Andrei Lugovoi, a career
Russian security officer, and his
childhood friend Dmitry Kovtun,
Mr. Tam said. Mr. Lugovoi denies
the charge and the Russian government has declined to extradite him. Mr. Kovtun has also
publicly denied any involvement.
Dozens of world leaders gathered at the former site of the
Auschwitz concentration camp
on Tuesday to commemorate its
liberation by the Red Army 70
years ago, with Russia’s president notably absent amid tensions with the West.
More than 1.1 million Jews, as
well as some 100,000 prisoners
of war and members of ethnic
minorities from around Europe,
perished at the site, originally
built by Nazi Germany for Polish
political prisoners, then greatly
expanded and turned into a
death camp for European Jews.
Speaking at the ceremony,
Halina Birenbaum, an 85-yearold Polish-Jewish camp survivor,
said Auschwitz was “like nothing
similar to anything in human experience.”
“Cursing, beatings, sophisticated torture, corporal punishment for petty offenses or for
nothing at all,” she said. “Columns of people being led to gas
chambers. A pillar of fire straight
to the sky. Trains and trains full
of new victims.”
Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski lays a wreath at the Nazi death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Tuesday.
Nearly 50 countries sent delegations to Auschwitz, with heads
of state leading those from Germany, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria,
Croatia, Lithuania, France, the
Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland
and Ukraine. Russia’s delegation
was led by President Vladimir Pu-
tin’s chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov.
Tensions between the Kremlin
and the West have made Mr. Putin an awkward guest for Poland,
which has staunchly supported
Ukraine as Moscow annexed Crimea and allegedly sent equipment and troops to support sep-
P2JW028000-2-A00600-1--------XA
BY ALEXIS FLYNN
Associated Press
BY MARTIN M. SOBCZYK
aratist rebels.
Polish President Bronislaw
Komorowski appeared to direct
his comments at Moscow, saying
no nation can grow at the expense of another “using subjugation, conquest, enslavement, [or]
exploitation.”
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