Locals queue to buy products at cheap prices at Donetsk’s Lenin Square. Efforts to restart peace talks between Kiev and separatists fell through on Friday, according to the separatists, despite fresh mediation by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.


Reuters/AFP/Moscow

Russia will not be intimidated over its actions in Ukraine and Crimea, President Vladimir Putin said yesterday as his foreign ministry warned that it was preparing to retaliate against fresh Western sanctions.
Both the European Union and United States adopted tighter restrictions on investments in Crimea this week, while Canada ratcheted up its own sanctions directed at Moscow.
Sanctions coupled with tumbling global oil prices have rattled Russia’s economy, with the rouble losing over 40% of its value year-to-date and a recession expected to take hold next year.
Putin has remained defiant in the face of these setbacks, repeatedly defending Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March and its subsequent support for pro-Russian separatists battling Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine.
Speaking at a concert honouring past and present security service staff, Putin said that he had heard people calling for Russia to “pay dearly for its independent position backing compatriots and Crimea ... (and) just for the mere fact that we exist”.
“Obviously, no one will succeed in intimidating us, to deter, to isolate Russia,” he said in comments that were shown by state-run Rossiya 24 TV.
Separately, the Russian foreign ministry said yesterday that new Western sanctions against Ukraine’s Crimea region represented a “collective punishment” against residents who had voted overwhelmingly in a referendum last March to join Russia.
“It is sad that the countries which call themselves democratic resort to such methods in the 21st century,” the ministry said in a statement.
Foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said the sanctions undermined political efforts to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
“We advise Washington and Ottawa to think about the consequences of such actions. Meanwhile, we will work on retaliatory measures,” he said in comments published on the ministry website.
Russia retaliated to earlier sanctions by limiting food imports from a range of Western countries.
Kiev and its Western backers accuse Moscow of fanning violence in Ukraine and arming the rebels.
Moscow denies the accusations and says it annexed Crimea only after the referendum showed most residents wanted it to become part of Russia.
Earlier yesterday, in a letter published by the Kremlin, Putin called for Russia’s secret services to be improved to tackle “modern challenges and threats and the emergence of new destabilising factors”.
The key tasks for Russia’s secret operatives were to fight international terrorism and “any attempts of foreign special services to deal a blow to Russia (and) her political and economic interests,” said Putin, himself a former KGB agent.
A Ukrainian conference mediated by European and Russian envoys in the Belarussian capital Minsk had initially been set for last week and meant to coincide with a new truce in the eight-month conflict.
The ceasefire appears to be holding better than similar previous measures and the number of daily rocket and mortar attacks across the Russian-speaking eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk has gone down.
But Ukrainian forces still reported the loss of five soldiers on Friday and have seen 15 servicemen killed since the December 9 deal.
The sudden glimmer of hope that the end of Europe’s worst violence since the 1990s Balkans conflicts was approaching has seen Western allies step up their pressure on Russia – already reeling from its worst economic crisis of Vladimir Putin’s 15-year rule.
Crimea’s Moscow-backed leader Sergei Aksyonov called the European Union sanctions in particular an attempt to “humiliate Russia”.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko was due to convene his National Security and Defence Council to discuss ways of avoiding repeated disruptions of supplies to his forces in the east.
The emergency meeting comes a day before Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko pays his first visit to Kiev since his neighbour’s historic shift toward the West.
The authoritarian leader has emerged as the conflict’s unlikely peacemaker – his own independence from Moscow undermined by a heavy reliance on Russian energy subsidies and beneficial trade rules.
The timing of Lukashenko’s visit signals that the peace talks are unlikely to take place today as both Poroshenko and his European supporters had hoped.
Several rebel commanders have said they would not be ready until at least tomorrow or Tuesday.
A Skype video conference between the sides on Friday failed to resolve the dispute.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and – more recently – French President Francois Hollande have been spearheading Western efforts to get the sides talking while Washington plays a backseat role.
Both leaders are this weekend expected to hold their third teleconference with Putin and Poroshenko in the space of a week.
The Minsk meeting appears to be hung up over Poroshenko’s refusal to discuss one of the separatists’ main demands – that he resume the social welfare payments to the war-torn region that Kiev suspended last month.
Poroshenko argues that the money is being stolen by the insurgents and used to pay guerrillas and foreign mercenaries.
The militias’ inability to improve life in the socially devastated region threatens to turn the locals against them and undermine their claims of legitimacy.