Poland and the US have accused Russia of being the catalyst behind recent events in eastern Ukraine and further sanctions against Moscow could follow.

Pro-Russian supporters attack a police bus as they clash with special police forces near regional state administration building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, 08 April: photo - . EPA/ANASTASIA VLASOVA

"A more powerful country has taken a province away from a less powerful country and is now financing subversion using the pretext of ethnic problems. This is unacceptable," Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told the CNN broadcaster on Tuesday after government buildings were stormed in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk by pro-Russian groups.

US secretary of state John Kerry also told the Senate in Washington that Russian "special forces" had been "the catalyst behind the chaos of the last 24 hours" and recent events "could potentially be a contrived pretext for military intervention just as we saw in Crimea".

Ukraine authorities took back control of buildings in Kharkiv yesterday though armed militants are refusing to withdraw in Luhansk and a pro-Russian group is demanding a referendum on leaving Ukraine in Donetsk, as tension escalated in eastern Ukraine.

Lawmakers of right-wing Svoboda (Freedom) Party scuffle with Communist Party deputies during a session of Parliament in Kiev, Ukraine, 08 April 2014. The chief diplomats of Russia and the United States have discussed convening direct talks about Ukraine within the next 10 days, the US State Department says: photo - EPA/MAKSIM MARUSENKO

John Kerry told a Senate panel that if Russia does not de-esculate the situation then further sanctions will follow.

"Russia has a choice: to work with the international community to help build an independent Ukraine that could be a bridge between the east and west, not a tug of war...or they could face greater isolation and pay the cost for their failure to see that the world is not a zero sum game," Kerry said.

Radoslaw Sikorski added that the European Union is also ready to impose further sanctions against Moscow.

“Traditionally what happens is the US goes first and then the European Union follows,” he told CNN, adding that historically, Poland has been on the end of Russian occupation on the pretext of protecting ethnic groups.

"We were partitioned by Russia in the eighteenth century – literally our country was occupied. And this was also done on the pretext of protecting national minorities. So it’s an old story. It’s like watching an opera whose libretto is known in advance," Poland;s foreign minister said.

"In Europe there isn't a country that doesn't have national minorities. and if we started changing borders on the pretext of protecting them we would be back to the hell of the 20th century". (pg)



