Negotiators Reach Deal to End Ukraine Crisis

By Will Englund, The Washington Post

21 February 14

deal designed to end Ukraine's long-running crisis was reached Friday after all-night negotiations that included European and Russian mediators, the office of President Viktor Yanukovych announced.

In a statement on his Web site, the embattled Yanukovych said he would start a process leading to an early presidential election but set no date. He also pledged to form a coalition government and to initiate constitutional reforms aimed at curbing the president's powers.

There was no immediate reaction to the statement from opposition leaders, who were meeting among themselves, the Associated Press reported.

Members of the ruling Party of Regions said in parliament Friday that the proposed deal envisioned an immediate return to the constitution of 2004, the formation of a coalition government within 10 days, a referendum on a new constitution in September and new elections in December.

The last point is the most likely to cause trouble. The protesters want Yanukovych out of office immediately and have sworn they will not leave the Maidan, the protest epicenter also known as Independence Square, until he leaves the presidency.

Opposition political leaders also would have to be assured that a coalition government - that is, the prime minister and cabinet - would have real authority and not simply be window dressing for Yanukovych.

The agreement was backed by all three opposition parties - the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR), Fatherland and Svoboda - though the nationalist Svoboda party was said to have been the most reluctant.

"We must now take power," said Arseniy Yatsenyuk, head of the Fatherland party. "I do not know how much we can take, but we must do it," he said, according to the news Web site lb.ua. But Yatsenyuk also tweeted that the deal must be approved "on the Maidan" and would not take effect until that happens.

Shots were reported at the Maidan protest site Friday morning; the Interior Ministry said they came from the protesters' side. The city was jittery a day after the bloodiest clashes so far in the three-month political crisis. The death toll from Thursday's violence was reported to be 75.

A key player in the talks could turn out to be Vladimir Lukin, dispatched from Moscow Thursday by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Until now, Russia's lobbying of Ukraine has been so aggressive that Europeans have characterized it as bullying. But Lukin is a respected low-key figure, and his appointment seemed to signal a change in the Kremlin's tone.

Putin has tried to bind Ukraine and Yanukovych to Russia with economic ties and stymie closer relations between Kiev and the European Union. But Russian analysts said Thursday that the Ukrainian president has shown he cannot defeat the opposition and that the past two days of street fighting, coupled with defiance throughout western Ukraine, have exposed his weakness. If that thinking now extends to the Kremlin, Putin might try to cut the best deal he can.

Ukraine's parliament, which turned against Yanukovych late Thursday and voted for a resolution calling on the police to withdraw from the environs of the Maidan, convened again Friday morning.

Thursday's resolution is likely to be challenged on the grounds that there wasn't a proper quorum, because many of Yanukovych's remaining loyalists stayed away. Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, released a video statement in which he said that members who were absent were part of the problem - not, as the saying goes, part of the solution.

Early Friday morning, Petro Poroshenko, an oligarch who unequivocally supports the protests, arranged for a busload of captured troops to be released by the opposition. The crowd on the Maidan brought the bus to a halt, and Poroshenko exhorted them to let it through. Earlier, the hard-line demonstrators who took several dozen hostages had said they would be released when the police pulled back from the areas surrounding the Maidan.

The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that it had issued combat-level weapons to police officers and suggested that they had the right to use them to recover their captured comrades. By early Friday, there had been no general assault on the protesters' position.

At a meeting in Brussels, European Union leaders agreed on targeted sanctions against Ukrainian officials, one day after the United States revoked visas for 20 unidentified officials. In Washington, a White House statement on the violence in Ukraine was unusually stern.

"We are outraged by the images of Ukrainian security forces firing automatic weapons on their own people," it said. "We urge President Yanukovych to immediately withdraw his security forces from downtown Kyiv and to respect the right of peaceful protest, and we urge protesters to express themselves peacefully."

It called on the Ukrainian military not to take part in the conflict because "the use of force will not resolve the crisis."

It promised that the United States would "hold those responsible for violence accountable."

Late in the day, Vice President Biden called Yanukovych. He condemned the violence against civilians in Kiev, according to a White House statement, and called on Yanukovych to pull back police, snipers, military and paramilitary units and irregular forces. The United States, he said, is prepared to sanction those officials responsible for the violence.

Yanukovych met first with the foreign ministers of Poland, France and Germany. The meeting, held away from the presidential office building, lasted four hours. Then, as Radoslaw Sikorski of Poland put it, the ministers went to "test a proposed agreement" with the heads of the three main political parties opposing Yanukovych.

Afterward, as the evening grew late, the three ministers returned to the presidential offices and met with Yanukovych again. They decided to spend the night in Kiev and resume their talks Friday.

UDAR leader Vitali Klitschko and the two other main opposition leaders, Yatsenyuk of the Fatherland party and Oleh Tiahnybok of the nationalist Svoboda party, joined the talks overnight, as did Lukin.

Word of Yanukovych's stated willingness to consider early elections was first reported by the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, in Warsaw. He said part of the plan was the formation of a transitional government within 10 days and the adoption of a new constitution by summer. The next scheduled presidential election would be in 2015 and the next parliamentary elections in 2017.

As Thursday's violence slackened in the afternoon, the Maidan demonstrators returned to their routines. But there was deep dismay over the bloodshed. Hotel lobbies were turned into emergency rooms and morgues. Soot-stained, exhausted protesters tended to the wounded, said farewell to the dead, assiduously dug up more paving stones for use as missiles and showed no signs of debilitating fear.

Medics said it was clear that a number of those killed had been targeted by snipers. At least two were older than 50, according to a partial list of victims. Videos showed police using automatic weapons, and at least one protester was photographed aiming a rifle. Molotov cocktails were employed, as they had been previously.

At one tent on the Maidan, volunteers had collected hundreds of bottles, as if on a recycling drive. But they were to be filled with gasoline for use as weapons. "A horrible tragedy has been happening on the streets in Kiev and other cities of Ukraine," Valeria Lutkovska, human rights commissioner of the Ukrainian parliament, said in a statement Thursday afternoon.