Moscow: Speaking from Russia, Ukraine's ousted leader urged his citizens on Friday to press for a vote to determine the status of their regions, a call echoing the Kremlin's push to turn Ukraine into a loosely knit federation.
The statement from Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian leader who fled to Russia in February after three months of protests, raised the threat of further instability in Ukraine's Russian-speaking eastern provinces, where many resent the new Ukrainian government.
Deep divisions between Ukraine's Russian-speaking eastern regions, where many favor close ties with Moscow, and the Ukrainian-speaking west, where most want to integrate into Europe, continue to fuel tensions.
The Crimea Peninsula, where ethnic Russians are a majority, voted this month to secede from Ukraine before Russia formally annexed it, a move that Western countries have denounced as illegitimate. Talk percolates of similar votes in
other Ukrainian regions with large Russian populations, although none has been scheduled.
Yanukovych urged Ukrainians to demand a "referendum that would determine the status of each region in Ukraine," in a statement carried by the ITAR-Tass news agency. Yanukovych didn't specify when or how the vote should be held.
Russia has pushed strongly for federalizing Ukraine, giving its regions more autonomy, but Ukraine's interim authorities in Kiev have rejected such a move. Following the statement, Ukrainian prosecutors opened a new investigation against Yanukovych on charges of calling for overthrowing the country's constitutional order.
In addition, Yanukovych's biggest rival, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, attacked the statement, accusing Yanukovych of being "a tool aimed at destroying the independence of Ukraine." Tymoshenko is running in Ukraine's next presidential election, scheduled for May 25.
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