Putin ‘welcome to attend D-Day ceremonies’

Paris — French President Francois Hollande said yesterday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was welcome to attend ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day in June, despite the standoff over Ukraine.“We may have differences with Vladimir Putin but I have not forgotten and will never forget that the Russian people gave millions of lives” during World War II, he told France 2 television.

“I told Vladimir Putin that as the representative of the Russian people, he is welcome to the ceremonies.”

Western leaders including US President Barack Obama and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth are also due to attend the events on June 6, to commemorate the Normandy landings that marked the beginning of the liberation of continental Europe from the Nazis in World War II.

Putin had said earlier this week he did not rule out attending the ceremonies despite the Ukraine crisis, the worst standoff between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.

In March, the United States and other top economic powers cancelled a G8 summit with Russia planned for the Black Sea resort of Sochi in June and replaced it with a G7 meeting to be held in Brussels.

The West has also imposed sanctions on Russia over its stance on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Pro-Russian separatists have decided to go ahead with a referendum on independence as planned despite a call from Putin to postpone it.

Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, said yesterday the coordinating committee of the rebels had decided in a meeting that the vote would be held on Sunday as planned.

“We would have lost the trust of the simple people if we had not gone ahead,” Pushilin said.

In a similar move, the rebel group of neighbouring Luhansk region, the Army of the Southeast, told Russia’s RIA news agency that they also rejected Putin’s appeal to delay the referendum scheduled for May 11.

A spokeswoman for the separatists in Slovyansk simultaneously confirmed that the vote would be held on the same day in the city too.
Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from Donetsk, said the reality was that the separatists formed a minority in the region, and there would be no way to measure the fairness of the voting.

“There are no monitors, no formal structures and no ways of measuring the veracity of the results when they come in,” he said.
Against this backdrop, Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief, said yesterday a decision to go ahead with the vote that had “no legitimacy” can “only further worsen” the situation in Eastern Ukraine.

The West and Ukraine’s interim government blame Russia for fomenting the crisis in the country’s east, but Russia denies involvement.
Ukraine’s security service claimed on Wednesday to have obtained “conclusive evidence proving that the Russian Federation is preparing and coordinating activities aimed at holding in the eastern Ukraine of a so-called “referendum” on creation of the Donetsk People’s Republic”.

The service published a telephone conversation online that allegedly took place on May 5, between a leader of the Russian National Unity movement and one of the leaders of the pro-Russian Orthodox Donbas organisation.

For his part, Putin said yesterday that the developments in Ukraine show where “irresponsible politics” led, blaming the government in Kiev for the unrest in the east. —  Al Jazeera.