anoop_mig25
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Well offf topic can ukranie be part of russian custom alliance as well as have some kind of business alliance with europe ........
According to the 2010 Agreement between Ukraine and Russia, the Russian Federation is fully within its rights to move a certain number of troops (some sources say upto 25k) into Crimea.Russia Admits It Has Moved Troops In Ukraine
Russia admits that it has moved troops in Ukraine - Telegraph
Source: http://rt.com/news/kiev-clashes-rioters-police-571/The Crimean premier, Sergey Aksenov, has declared that firearms have been used in the clashes in the region, Itar-Tass news agency reported.
He said he will be managing all national security forces in the region, and has asked Russia's President Vladimir Putin for help in ensuring peace in Crimea.
Crimean Leader Appeals to Putin for Help | World | RIA NovostiSIMFEROPOL, March 1 (RIA Novosti) – The new Crimean prime minister made a personal appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin for assistance Saturday amid widespread reports of Russian troop movements in the southern Ukrainian peninsula.
The Kremlin said in a subsequent statement that it would not ignore the request for help.
The Crimean parliament was seized Thursday by armed men who raised the Russian flag, and international media have reported a large Russian military maneuvers in the region, including armored personnel carriers, tanks and attack helicopters.
Russia has insisted that such troop movements in the Crimea are allowed under a 1997 agreement with Ukraine about the use of naval bases on the peninsula.
"I am turning to Russian President Vladimir Putin to request assistance to preserve peace and calm," said Sergei Aksyonov, who was appointed as Prime Minister of Crimea after a parliamentary vote Thursday.
Aksyonov, who is also the leader of the Russian Unity Party, announced that a referendum on the status of Crimea within Ukraine will be brought forward by almost two months, to March 30.
Local security forces including the police and the army - which are usually commanded from Kiev - will be temporarily transferred to under his control, Aksyonov said.
The announcements by Aksyonov appear to bring closer a possible partition of the former Soviet nation where a new government is struggling to control the country after the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych last week.
Putin has made no public comment on the current Ukrainian crisis since the opposition swept to power after months of street protests ended in a violent crackdwon in which 82 people died.
Armed men in balaclavas have occupied key public buildings in Crimea in recent days and appeared to have taken control of the region's two main airports.
One of Ukraine's largest telecommunications companies said in a statement Friday that telephone and internet links between Crimea and the rest of the country had been severed.
The incoming authorities in Kiev have described developments as an invasion, and interim president Oleksandr Turchynov told reporters late Friday that Russia was seeking to provoke conflict.
Russia has recently moved about 6,000 additional troops into Crimea, Ukraine's defense minister said Saturday, according to report by Reuters news agency.
Crimea was transferred to Ukrainian Republic by the Soviet leadership in 1954. Since the fall of Communism it has enjoyed a large degree of political autonomy within Ukraine, including its own prime minister.
About 60 percent of the population in Crimea identifies itself as ethnic Russian, with the remainder being Ukrainian or Crimean Tatar.
Pro-Russian groups and Tatars, who mostly support the new regime in Kiev, clashed outside the Crimean parliament Thursday during a confrontation in which at least two people died.
Updates with referendum being brought forward, new details
Yanukovych Condemns Interim Ukraine Govt as Violent Usurpers | Russia | RIA NovostiOusted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych lashed out at the West on Friday for its support for what he described as the violent usurpers that seized power in his former Soviet nation over the weekend.
Looking nervous while addressing reporters in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, Yanukovych rejected suggestions that he had been overthrown and insisted he was forced to flee Ukraine under duress.
"Power in Ukraine was seized by nationalists, neo-Fascist youths that represent an absolute minority of the people," he said. "I was not overthrown. I was forced to leave Ukraine under immediate threat to my life and the lives of my loved ones."
Yanukovych, who was making his first appearance in public since leaving the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, over the weekend, appeared on edge. At one moment he broke a pen with which he was fiddling, and he provoked some laughter in the hall when he mistakenly said "Ukraine" when he was trying to say "Russia."
Yanukovych characterized the current situation in Ukraine as one of "illegality, terror, anarchy and chaos," and said that those now in power in Kiev were fully to blame for the current crisis.
"I lay the responsibility for this on those now in power "¦ and the representatives of the West, including the United States, who gave their support to the Maidan," he said, referring to the square that served as the focal point of the protest movement that spearheaded his unseating.
Yanukovych's press conference took place in a sprawling conference center on the outskirts of Rostov-on-Don. In the next-door building an exhibition of agricultural machinery was taking place.
The fugitive president did not give a reason why he was in the city, except to say that he was staying with an "old friend." He said he would return to Ukraine as soon as his safety could be guaranteed.
Yanukovych used the gathering as a platform from which to appeal to Russia for help, but said that he did not support armed intervention. He said he had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin by telephone, but emphasized that they had not met in person.
"Knowing the character of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin I am surprised that he is still so reticent, so silent," he said.
Putin has made no public comment on the Ukrainian crisis since the opposition swept to power in Kiev.
On Saturday, Yanukovych was impeached by erstwhile protesters who took control over parliament and banded together with disaffected deputies from the ex-ruling Party of Regions.
The impeachment vote came one day after opposition parties signed an agreement with Yanukovych on a political settlement to form a unity government, call early elections and reform the constitution.
That proposed arrangement was superseded by events, however, when the opposition occupied the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, as police disappeared from the center of Kiev.
Yanukovych said he did not recognize the authority of parliament.
"I believe the Verkhovna Rada is illegitimate, and I still believe that [Friday's] agreement was not fulfilled," he said. "If it had been fulfilled, or if it is fulfilled, it would to a considerable extent calm the situation and begin the process of settling the political crisis in Ukraine."
"This is the only way out of the impasse to which we have been brought by the radicals," he said.
Interim authorities have called elections for May 25, but Yanukovych said he would not acknowledge the legitimacy of that planned vote.
"It is illegal, and I will not be taking part," he said.
Yanukovych even had to face questions Friday about the contents of his mansion outside Kiev that was thrown open to curious locals last weekend after he left the capital.
"I sold everything that I had and paid $3.2 million for that house. All the rest that is there now does not belong to me. I rented part of the site," he said in a long response to question about ponies that he allegedly kept on the estate.
Ukraine's Interior Ministry on Monday issued an arrest warrant for Yanukovych on charges of mass murder.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Yanukovych was being sought in connection with the killings of "innocent citizens," a reference to protesters who died during clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces.
Authorities in Kiev have said they want to see Yanukovych tried in the International Criminal Court for the killings.
Yanukovych said in response to a question on the prospect of a trial in The Hague that he first wanted to see an impartial investigation into the events that led to at least 82 deaths, including more than a dozen police officers, on the streets of Kiev.
"There must be an independent investigation involving the government and opposition, first of all, and then the Council of Europe. After an independent investigation, then we can start talks about courts," he said.
At the height of the unrest, authorities insisted that police were simply protecting government buildings from violent extremists. Many of those involved in clashes with police were armed with shields, sticks and Molotov cocktails, and some were reportedly also carrying firearms.
A large number of protesters killed in clashes bore gunshot wounds that opposition representatives said were sustained as a result of sniper fire.
Yanukovych said at the press conference that he never gave any orders to fire on rioters.
"I never gave the police any orders to shoot. The police, as you know, were unarmed until the very last moment. When there was a danger that they could be killed, that is when they began shooting. It was then that the police began to take up arms," he said.
Amid Escalation Fears, Russia Says Kiev Sent Fighters to Crimea | Russia | RIA NovostiArmed men dispatched from Kiev to the southern Ukrainian region of Crimea attempted an overnight storm of the local Interior Ministry, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Saturday.
"As a result of this perfidious provocation several people were injured," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"This confirms that certain well-known political circles in Kiev are striving for the destabilization of the situation"¦ we call on all those giving such orders from Kiev to show restraint."
The allegation comes as international media report large scale Russian military movements in Crimea that have included tanks, helicopters and troops.
In recent days heavily armed soldiers in unmarked uniforms have occupied the region's parliament, airports and other strategic points across the peninsula.
Reports from the regional capital of Simferopol on Saturday suggested that the military presence had been strengthened with the appearance of several manned machine gun positions around the parliament, which is flying the Russian flag after it was seized by unidentified gunmen earlier this week.
Ukrainian authorities have accused Russia of seeking to provoke a conflict. World leaders, including US President Barack Obama, have expressed their deep concern about the apparent Russian incursion into Crimea.
Interim Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk said Saturday that Russia should immediately recall all its troops to the bases where they are normally located.
"If not, the responsibility for any armed confrontation provoked by the radicals being de facto supported by the Russian military will lie with the Russian leadership," Yatsenyuk said.
Russia maintains that any military movements in Crimea are within the framework of a 1997 agreement regulating its use of Black Sea naval bases on the peninsula that it leases from Ukraine.
Self-defense squads, which maintain that they will resist orders from Kiev, have been forming in the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine since the opposition swept to power in Kiev last weekend
The Foreign Ministry said that the alleged assault on the Interior Ministry in Crimea on Saturday was fought off by some of these pro-Russian self defense squads. It did not specify which side suffered the casualties.
Russia may decide to tighten the noose, just a bit. Gazprom Mulls Cancelling Ukraine Gas Discount Over DebtOne important fact: Russia supplies Ukraine oil and Gas worth 1 billion dollar EACH month at a very low price. Ukraine's economy can get totally destroyed if Russia stops the Gas. War is not even necessary. But, Russia do not want to punish Ukrainian people so the Russian Oil and Gas will continue flowing to Ukraine. Not only Ukraine, Poland,Hungary, Czec repub, Romania ,Bulgaria ..all of these are greatly dependent on Cheap Russian Oil and Gas. West wants to create chaos in eastern Europe to keep Russia engaged in that region...so that West can keep on setting on fire the remaining Middle eastern nations esp. Syria and Iran. West is reaching a desperate point and is behaving like a mad dog but the world is starting to react...Entire Latin America, Russia, China, India, iran, Brazil, and many other nations are turning against West. Let's see how long the hegemony lasts?
Not yet. But the Federation council (upper house) of the Russian Federation is trying to get it done.I think Russian Ambassador was recalled from the US due to this fallout. Putin is not mincing words this time.
http://rt.com/news/us-ambassador-russia-obama-374/The upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, has ordered the committee on international affairs to apply to Putin and ask him to recall the ambassador, the house's speaker Valentina Matvienko said.
"The president will consider the appeal and make a decision," she said.
The initiative was voiced by the Federation Council's vice speaker, Yury Vorobiev, who referred to the American leader's recent speech, where he said that Russia would have to pay for its policies in Ukraine. In Vorobiev's opinion, Obama "crossed the red line and insulted the Russian people" and his words were a "direct threat."
MOSCOW, February 28 (RIA Novosti) – Deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych landed at a military airport in southern Russia late on Thursday escorted by fighter jets, a local news agency has reported.
Yanukovych, whose whereabouts have since his ouster been subject of feverish speculation, is scheduled to hold a news conference in the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don at 5 p.m. local time (1100 GMT) on Friday.
"The plane with the embattled president onboard was escorted by several fighter jets. The boom of supersonic engines was heard for half an hour in the northwestern part of the city, where the airport is located," local news agency DonInformBuro reported.
Yanukovych is staying at private premises in Rostov-on-Don, instead of a government residence for top officials, and no additional security forces have been deployed, the agency reported citing its own sources.
Yanukovych, whom Ukraine put on an international wanted list on mass murder charges, said in a statement Thursday he was still the legitimate president of his country and that he had been forced to ask Russia to ensure his personal security from "extremists."
Anonymous government sources in Moscow said Thursday that Russia had accepted Yanukovych's request for security.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin ordered the government Thursday to hold consultations with international partners, including the International Monetary Fund, to provide financial assistance to Ukraine and develop a humanitarian aid package to Crimea.
"Putin instructed the Russian government to continue contacts with partners in Kiev regarding the development of trade and economic ties between Russia and Ukraine", Peskov said.
The toppling of Yanukovych's government at the weekend has provoked a wave of pro-Russian rallies in the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine, particularly in the Crimean Peninsula, where ethnic Russians are in a majority.
A purported decree by Yanukovych mandating that the country's leadership and law enforcement agencies be transferred to the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea was read out before pro-Russian protesters gathered outside the peninsula's parliament building in the town of Simferopol on Thursday.
Sources close to Yanukovych have said, however, that they consider the decree distributed via the Internet to be fake.
The Crimean parliament voted Thursday to approve Serhiy Aksenov, leader of the Russian Unity party, as head of the region's government. The new prime minister immediately pledged allegiance to Yanukovych, saying that he still considered him Ukraine's legitimate head of state.
On Thursday evening, the parliament resolved to hold the referendum giving Crimea greater autonomy on May 25.
Crimea was part of Russia until 1954, when it was transferred to the Ukrainian republic within the Soviet Union. Russia has a large naval base on the peninsula on which it recently extended a lease until 2042.