Yankee, go home!

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-ukraine3jun03,0,4306239.stor\

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>From the Los Angeles Times

 

Ukraine Crowd Tells U.S. Troops to Leave Country

Demonstrators seeking to undercut their president's

drive to join NATO target a group of Marines preparing

for joint military exercises.

By David Holley

Times Staff Writer

 

June 3, 2006

 

MOSCOW — A group of Marine reservists were the target

of anti-NATO protests Friday in Ukraine's

predominantly Russian-speaking Crimean region, with

the demonstrators seeking to undercut a drive by

President Viktor Yushchenko to lead his nation toward

membership in the Western alliance.

 

More than 100 Marines are preparing for a joint

U.S.-Ukrainian military exercise scheduled for July.

They were being transported by bus to join other

American military personnel at a Ukrainian Defense

Ministry sanitarium in the Black Sea town of Feodosiya

when protesters blocked their route about 4 a.m.

Friday, Rossiya television reported.

 

The state-run Russian channel showed footage of a

crowd surrounding the bus in darkness, rocking it back

and forth, and shouting in English, " Yankee, go home! "

The convoy turned around and took the Marines to a

facility in Alushta, another Black Sea coastal town.

 

Rossiya television showed demonstrators gathering

there as well, shouting anti-American slogans and

displaying a long red banner reading, " The people of

Alushta demand it: No to NATO in Ukraine! "

 

" Leave this place. We don't need you here, " a

middle-aged woman shouted through a loudspeaker. " Go

back to your mothers. "

 

The protests began Sunday when a U.S. ship arrived in

Feodosiya carrying personnel and equipment to be used

in preparing a Ukrainian military facility to hold the

exercises, dubbed " Sea Breeze 2006. "

 

The ship has also been blockaded by protesters.

 

Under Ukrainian law, parliament must give annual

approval for foreign troops to enter the country for

training exercises. Usually that is a formality. But

in February, just before March parliamentary

elections, lawmakers voted down a bill that would have

granted such permission.

 

The new parliament, which has not yet reached

agreement on forming the next government, has met only

briefly since the elections, and its next session is

set for Wednesday. The outgoing Cabinet hopes to win

approval for the military exercises at that session.

 

At a protest in Feodosiya on Thursday, Leonid Grach, a

Communist Party leader, charged that Yushchenko had

" betrayed the interests of Ukraine. "

 

" Crimean residents should demonstrate that they can

defend themselves against the outright traitors in

Kiev, who will try to railroad through parliament on

June 7 the law on the deployment of American invaders

in the Crimea, " Grach told the protesters, according

to the Russian news agency Itar-Tass. " The people

should defend our Slavonic unity…. We shall not give

so much as an inch of our land to be trampled by the

boots of U.S. soldiers. "

 

The protesters in the Crimean region and other critics

of Yushchenko argue that because parliament has not

yet authorized the presence of foreign troops for the

exercises, the presence of U.S. military personnel in

the country is illegal.

 

The Ukrainian Defense and Foreign ministries issued a

joint statement Friday blasting the protests as

" destructive moves under pseudo-patriotic mottos "

aimed at achieving partisan political aims. The

protests have been backed by several opposition

political parties critical of Yushchenko.

 

The statement said that more than a dozen other

countries were expected to participate in Sea Breeze

2006, but it was formally considered to be a

Ukrainian-American event rather than a North Atlantic

Treaty Organization activity. The other participants

include Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Georgia and Spain.

 

The exercises will not be held without parliamentary

approval, the statement declared.

 

Yushchenko has made winning eventual NATO membership

for Ukraine one of his key goals, but surveys show a

majority of citizens oppose it. A poll conducted in

January by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a

Ukrainian nongovernmental organization that

specializes in surveys, showed that 19% of respondents

favored entering the alliance and 55% opposed such a

move, with the rest expressing no opinion.

 

Many critics of NATO membership argue that it would

worsen Ukraine's traditionally close relationship with

Russia while providing few security benefits.

 

" On April 10 my child went off to the army. I sent him

off because our country had been peaceful, " Svetlana

Shevchenko, one of the protesters outside the

sanitarium housing the Marines, told Rossiya

television.

 

" Now that NATO forces have entered, I don't want my

child fighting. That's not what I brought him up for —

to be killed for the sake of Lord-knows-what values. "

 

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times