Armed men seized regional government building in Ukraine’s Crimea today and raised the Russian flag, alarming Kiev’s new rulers, who urged Moscow not to engage in “military aggression”.
"I am appealing to the military leadership of the Russian Black Sea fleet," said Olexander Turchinov, acting president since the removal of Viktor Yanukovich last weekend.
“Any military movements, the more so if they are with weapons, beyond the boundaries of this territory (the base) will be seen by us as military aggression,” he said.
Mr Yanukovich was ousted after three months of unrest led by protesters in Kiev. He is now on the run being sought by the new authorities for murder in connection with the deaths of around 100 people during the conflict.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry also summoned Russia’s acting envoy in Kiev for immediate consultations.
Crimea, the only Ukrainian region with an ethnic Russian majority, is the last big bastion of opposition to the new leadership in Kiev following Mr Yanukovich’s ouster and provides a base there for the Russian Black Sea fleet.
In Kiev, Ukraine’s new rulers though pressed ahead with efforts to restore stability to the divided country, approving formation of a national coalition government with former economy minister Arseny Yatseniuk as its proposed head.
Mr Yatseniuk told parliament that Mr Yanukovich had driven the country to the brink of economic and political collapse. And he warned of growing threats to the territorial integrity of Ukraine. "We must preserve the integrity of the Ukrainian state which will one day become a member of the European Union," he said.
He accused Mr Yanukovich’s government of stripping state coffers bare and said $37 billion of credit it had received had disappeared.
Speaking in parliament before he was appointed head of a national unity government, Mr Yatseniuk said that in the past three years “the sum of $70 billion dollars was paid out of Ukraine’s financial system into off-shore accounts”.
“I want to report to you - the state treasury has been robbed and is empty,” he said. “$37 billion dollars of credit received have disappeared in an unknown direction,” he added.
Mr Yanukovich said today he was still president of Ukraine and warned its “illegitimate” rulers that people in the southeastern and southern regions would never accept mob rule.
In a statement sent to Russian news agencies from an unknown location, he railed against the “extremists” who had stolen power in Ukraine, threatened violence against himself and his closest aides and passed “illegal” laws.
The situation was so grave that there was no other alternative but to take “extraordinarily unpopular measures,” he said.
As the drama unfolded in Crimea, there were mixed signals from Moscow, which put warplanes along its western borders on combat alert. Earlier it said it would take part in discussions on an International Monetary Fund (IMF) financial package for Ukraine.
Ukraine has said it needs $35 billion over the next two years to stave off bankruptcy.
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said today it will send a fact-finding team to Ukraine in the coming days in response to its request for support.
She said the IMF and its international partners were discussing how to help Ukraine. The IMF team being sent to Kiev will have preliminary talks with authorities there, she added.
“This will enable the IMF to make its usual technical, independent assessment of the economic situation in Ukraine and, at the same time, begin to discuss with the authorities the policy reforms that could form the basis of a Fund-supported programme,” Ms Lagarde said in a statement.
The fear of military escalation prompted expressions of concern from the West, with Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen urging Russia not to do anything that would "escalate tension or create misunderstanding".
Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski called the seizure of government buildings in the Crimea a “very dangerous game”.
“This is a drastic step, and I’m warning those who did this and those who allowed them to do this, because this is how regional conflicts begin,” he told a news conference.
It was not immediately known who was occupying the buildings in the regional capital Simferopol and they issued no demands, but witnesses said they spoke Russian and appeared to be ethnic Russian separatists.
Interfax news agency quoted a witness as saying there were about 60 people inside and they had many weapons. It said no one had been hurt when the buildings were seized in the early hours by Russian speakers in uniforms that did not carry identification markings.
“We were building barricades in the night to protect parliament. Then this young Russian guy came up with a pistol ... we all lay down, some more ran up, there was some shooting and around 50 went in through the window,” said Leonid Khazanov, an ethnic Russian.
“They’re still there ... Then the police came, they seemed scared.”
About 100 police were gathered in front of the parliament building, and a similar number of people carrying Russian flags later marched up to the building chanting “Russia, Russia” and holding a sign calling for a Crimean referendum.
About 50 pro-Russia supporters who came in from the port of Sevastopol, where part of Russia’s Black Sea navy is based, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder facing police lines in front of parliament in Simferopol. Gennady Basov, their leader, said: “We need to organise ourselves like this to maintain order while this illegal and unconstitutional government operates in Kiev. I can’t comment on the people in control of the parliament here. I don’t know who they are.”
Russian president Vladimir Putin has ignored calls by some ethnic Russians in Crimea to reclaim the territory handed to then Soviet Ukraine by Soviet Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.
The United States says any Russian military action would be a grave mistake.
But Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Moscow would defend the rights of its compatriots and react without compromise to any violation of those rights.
It expressed concern about “large-scale human rights violations”, attacks and vandalism in the former Soviet republic.
Crimea is the only region of Ukraine where ethnic Russians are the majority, though many ethnic Ukrainians in other eastern areas speak Russian as their first language.
Reuters