A convoy of hundreds of
Russian soldiers in about 50 troop trucks drove into a base near Crimea's
capital Simferopol. The convoy was accompanied by eight armoured vehicles, two
ambulances, petrol tankers and other hardware. Russia says its only troops in
Crimea are those normally stationed there with its Black Sea Fleet, an
assertion Washington calls "(President Vladimir) Putin's fiction". Mr
Lavrov has said the Ukrainian government was taking orders from extremists and
denied Moscow had any direct role in the crisis in Crimea. "The interim
government... is not independent. It depends, unfortunately, on radical
nationalists who carried out an armed coup," he told a news conference in
Moscow. The head of Russia's upper house of parliament, after meeting visiting
Crimean politicians yesterday, said that Crimea had a right to
self-determination, and ruled out any risk of war between "the two
brotherly nations".
However, yesterday’s incident has
led Poland to evacuate its consulate in Sevastopol, according to Polish Foreign
Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. Mr Sikorski said on Twitter: "Because of
continuing disturbances by Russian forces there, we have reluctantly evacuated
our consulate in Crimea, Ukraine." Senior Ukrainian opposition politician
Yulia Tymoshenko, freed from prison after Viktor Yanukovych's overthrow, met
German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Dublin and appealed for immediate EU
sanctions against Russia, warning that Crimea might otherwise slide into war. Brussels
and Washington rushed to strengthen the new authorities in economically
shattered Ukraine, announcing both political and financial assistance.
The regional director of the
International Monetary Fund said talks with Kiev on a loan agreement were going
well and praised the new government's openness to economic reform and
transparency.
A Russian soldier patrols the small
anti-submarine ship 'Muromets' in the port of Sevastopol
Read more at
0 comments:
Post a Comment