DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukraine’s prime minister went on a charm offensive Friday as he visited the country’s southeast, pledging to give regions more powers and to defend the rights of Russian speakers.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk met with regional officials who once opposed his new government in Kiev, but not with protesters occupying government buildings in the cities of Donetsk or Luhansk. Still, he left it unclear how his ideas differed from the demands of the protesters or from Russia’s advocacy of federalization for Ukraine.
“There are no separatists among us,” said Gennady Kernes, mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where the government recaptured a building taken over by protesters earlier in the week. Kernes and other officials asked Yatsenyuk to allow votes on autonomy for their regions but not on secession.
Ukraine’s government has resisted federalization, saying that would lay the groundwork for the country’s breakup.
Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland was the support base for Kremlin-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in February after months of protests. Last month, the Crimea region voted to secede and was annexed by Russia — but only after Russia took over the peninsula by force.
Russia has ratcheted up the pressure on Ukraine, with President Vladimir Putin warning European leaders of a risk to the gas supplies going to them through Ukraine. He has threatened that Russia could shut off energy shipments to Ukraine if it fails to pay its debts. Those debts are a source of contention between the two nations, with the Russian estimate rising from $1.7 billion earlier this month to over $35 billion on Thursday.