Putin Urges Talks on Greater Autonomy for Eastern Ukraine

MOSCOW - President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Sunday called on Ukraine to begin talks on 'the statehood' of that country's rebellious southeast, a vague and provocative turn of phrase used by Mr. Putin as he demanded that the Ukrainian government negotiate directly with pro-Russian separatists.

Western governments have accused Russia of backing the separatists with arms and fighters and of sending Russian troops to lead a counteroffensive in Ukraine over the past week that threatened Mariupol, an important port city, and left thousands of government troops encircled.

'We must immediately begin substantive, meaningful negotiations, not on technical questions, but about the political organization of society and the statehood of Ukraine's southeast for the unconditional securing of the legal interests of the people who live there,' Mr. Putin said.

Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin's spokesman, said that Mr. Putin was not calling for independence for eastern Ukraine. Rather, he said, the Russian leader was seeking inclusive negotiations that would provide greater autonomy for the country's southeast as it remained a part of the country.

The self-proclaimed independent republics in Luhansk and Donetsk, which held haphazard, self-organized referendums on independence in May, have repeatedly requested Russian recognition, protection and annexation. Although the Kremlin annexed Crimea in March, it has for months avoided formally recognizing the separatist states.

Mr. Putin spoke Sunday on a televised news program in Moscow as European leaders vowed at a summit meeting in Brussels to toughen economic sanctions against Russia by the end of the week if the conflict in Ukraine continued to escalate.

In the interview, Mr. Putin veered between veiled threats and demands for negotiations to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. He said that country should cease hostilities immediately and renew its supplies of natural gas, which are piped in from Russia, to survive the coming winter.

'I think that nobody thinks of that anymore, except Russia,' Mr. Putin said of the winter. 'There are ways of helping resolve the issue. First, to immediately stop hostilities and start restoring the necessary infrastructure. To start replenishing reserves, conducting the necessary repair operations and preparing for the cold season.'

Mr. Putin, however, gave rare praise to President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine after a meeting with him in Minsk, Belarus, calling Mr. Poroshenko 'a partner with whom dialogue can be conducted.'

Earlier, Mr. Putin toughened his rhetoric on Ukraine, making a direct address on the Kremlin's website to 'the militias of Novorossiya,' or New Russia, a controversial phrase for the region, including the rebel strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk, which was once controlled by the Russian empire. In the address, he invoked the phrase to hail the success of the rebel offensive.

He called for the militias to allow for the opening of corridors for Ukrainian troops to retreat, a plea that was promptly granted by the prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, Aleksandr Zakharchenko. Mr. Zakharchenko said, however, that the Ukrainian forces must surrender their artillery and heavy vehicles.

On Sunday, meanwhile, Russia announced that Ukraine had returned 10 army paratroopers who were arrested last week inside Ukraine after coming under artillery fire.

Ukraine's Security Services said the men had been detained about 20 miles from the border and were evidence of the presence of Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. Russia claimed that the men had strayed into Ukrainian territory by accident during a routine border patrol.

'The negotiations were very difficult,' said Aleksei Ragozin, the deputy commander of Russia's Airborne Forces, according to the RIA Novosti state news agency. 'However, common sense triumphed, and all ended well. The most important thing is that our guys are back with us, in Russia.'

'I want to emphasize that we never abandon our own,' he added.

Pro-Russian separatists also said that they had released several hundred captured Ukrainian regular and irregular soldiers on Sunday who were captured during last week's offensive.

In Mariupol, the industrial port city now within the sights of the pro-Russian militants, an obstacle to any recognition of the separatist government was on full display on Sunday: large parts of the Donetsk region were still inhabited by overt supporters of the central government, and now beyond control of their organization.

Unlike the unrecognized pro-Russian enclaves of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria that were formed in the 1990s with the backing of Russian peacekeeping forces, the borders of the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk are now amorphous, and most of the territory, in spite of the recent counteroffensive, is under government control.

On the eastern edge of Mariupol, a city of about half a million inhabitants on a bluff overlooking sunflower fields, workers from the city's Soviet-legacy steel plants and a few hundred volunteers were digging trenches and bunkers and filling sandbags to defend against the expected attack.

Men in hard hats and the gray and red overalls of the Azov Steel Works filled sandbags, stopping to wipe their brows in the midday sun. Asked why he was laying the steel slabs on the fortification, one man replied that he wanted to show Mr. Putin that he would not be welcome in Mariupol.

The workers arrived with flatbed trucks carrying steel slabs, yellow backhoes and mobile cranes to hoist over the tops of bunkers gigantic 22-foot-long and 7-foot-wide slabs of raw steel fresh from the blast furnaces. Each was nine inches thick and weighed 25 tons. 'Everybody is trying to help in their own way,' said Vasili Sisentsov, a steelworker.

Mariupol, considered a solidly pro-Ukrainian city, never fell under full control of pro-Russian groups. As elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, the separatist movement failed to attract the urban middle class, but in Mariupol it also lost the backbone of the community and local economy, the steel workers, who feared that their plants would close and jobs would be lost in an isolated, unrecognized republic unable to export steel.

'The Donetsk People's Republic didn't work out in our town,' Mr. Sisentsov said. 'They were all drug addicts, homeless people and criminals. It was clear it would never succeed.' Last spring, steel workers, with the support of the factory management, formed volunteer foot patrols in the city to drive out the pro-Russian agitators.

Now, the mood is more uncertain, he said. Families with children have left, he said, and the steel slabs the workers were unloading were more symbolic than militarily useful, as the fields beyond were wide open for tanks to cross. The soldiers who seized the border town of Novoazovsk, 27 miles away, who claim to be from the Army of Novorossiya, say they also intend to capture Mariupol, but have not said when.

At one point, a man drove by a hive of activity of volunteers and steel workers digging in at the checkpoint, yelling out of the window of his car: 'It's worthless! Russia is coming!'

Andrei Markov, a grocery store manager, showed up with his son, Artur, 13, carrying work gloves and asking the soldiers where to dig. 'I came to help my country, to help my city,' he said. Other residents arrived and asked the soldiers: 'Guys, what do you need? We'll buy it for you.'

A few soldiers stood about, nervously watching the road to the east. Denis, a private who declined to give his last name, said he had been assigned to crowd-control duties on Maidan Square in Kiev, Ukraine's capital, last winter, where protesters hurled insults, cobblestones and homemade bombs at him for weeks. He said he disagreed with the protester's methods, and felt vilified for having served in the police during that period, but would nonetheless stand his post at the edge of Mariupol now.

'No matter what this country's problems, and no matter how it treats me, it's my country and I am a soldier,' he said. 'I will defend it.'