Ukraine promises more power to regions
Ukraine's embattled premier has vowed to give more powers to the country's regions in an effort to stamp out a separatist insurgency as a new gas war with Russia threatened European supplies.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's promise on Friday during an unannounced visit to the blue-collar coalmining region of Donetsk came as militants armed with Kalashnikovs barricaded themselves inside the local administration building and demanded a referendum on joining Russia.
A similar occupation of the state security office of the hard-scrabble eastern city of Lugansk has confronted the untested leaders with their biggest challenge since their February ouster of a Kremlin-backed president and decision to strike an alliance with the West.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin - his troops already massed along Ukraine's eastern frontier following their seizure of Crimea - only upped the stakes on Thursday by threatening to cut off Ukraine's gas over unpaid bills.
The decision could limit the supplies of at least 18 European nations for the third time since 2006. Each of the previous interruptions also coincided with attempts by Kiev to pull itself out of the Kremlin's historic sphere of influence.
Putin's warning came after Russia had already hiked Ukraine's energy price by 81 per cent and demanded that his neighbour rewrite its constitution to give eastern regions the right to set their own economic and diplomatic relations with Moscow.
Putin's gas threat prompted the US State Department on Thursday to denounce 'Russia's efforts to use energy as a tool of coercion' and President Barack Obama to raise the possibility of a third and most painful yet round of sanctions against Moscow.
The sabre rattling has set an ominous tone to the first round of international negotiations on Europe's worst crisis in decades that US and EU diplomats had managed to convince both Moscow and Kiev to join in Geneva on April 17.
But Yatsenyuk was more preoccupied on Friday with trying to end a five-day siege by pro-Kremlin militants who have seized strategic buildings and exposed Kiev's limited sway over the heavily industrialised east.
He flew overnight to Donetsk to enlist the help of its mayor and Rinat Akhmetov - Ukraine's richest man and one of its most legendary powerbrokers - in finding a bloodless solution to the militants' occupation of the local government seat.
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