2014-03-03 Europe
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Ukraine mobilizes army, loses part of its navy
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Long article at Yahoo that I edited heavily to the key bits. | Kiev (AFP) - Ukraine warned Sunday it was on the brink of disaster and called up military reservists after Russia's threat to invade its Western-leaning neighbour risked sparking the worst crisis since the Cold War.
Ukraine's new Western-backed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk -- in power for just a week following the overthrow of a pro-Russian regime -- also warned that any invasion "would mean war and the end of all relations between the two countries."
"We are on the brink of a disaster," Yatsenyuk told the nation of 46 million in a televised address.
Pro-Moscow gunmen who are widely believed to be acting under Kremlin orders intensified their control Sunday over large swathes of a strategic peninsula that has housed Russian navies since the 18th century. Witnesses said Russian soldiers had moved out of their bases and blocked about 400 Ukrainian marines in the eastern port city of Feodosiya. AFP reporters saw a similar presence of troops outside a Ukrainian military installation near the Crimean capital Simferopol and other locations.
But the biggest blow to the new Kiev leaders came when Ukrainian Navy Commander Denis Berezovsky announced a day after his appointment that he was switching allegiance to the pro-Russian authorities in Crimea after gunmen surrounded his building and cut off its electricity.
Crimea's pro-Kremlin government chief Sergiy Aksyonov -- installed in power Thursday after an armed raid on the region's government building and not recognised by Kiev -- immediately named Berezovsky as head of the peninsula's own independent navy.
Fears of Russia's first invasion of a neighbour since a brief 2008 confrontation with Georgia prompted the largely untested interim team in Kiev to put its military on full combat alert and announce the call-up of all reservists.
The vast country on the eastern edge of Europe would face a David-and-Goliath struggle should the conflict escalate. Russia's army of 845,000 soldiers could easily overwhelm Ukraine's force of 130,000 -- half of them conscripts.
Putin said it was his duty to protect ethnic Russians in Crimea and southeastern swathes of Ukraine that have ancient ties to Moscow and look on Kiev's new pro-EU leaders with disdain. Russian officials also argued they had no need to ask the UN Security Council for permission -- as Putin had demanded for any Western action in Syria -- because the wellbeing of their own citizens was at stake.
NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Russia during urgent talks in Brussels that its movement of troops "threatens peace and security in Europe."
German Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke ominously of preventing "a new division of Europe" while France and Britain called for negotiations between Moscow and Kiev -- either directly or through the United Nations.
What's to negotiate: "What's mine is mine, now let's talk about what you get to keep"? | Pro-Kremlin sentiments in Crimea remained in evidence Sunday amid a sea of Russian flags.
"Crimea is Russia," one elderly lady told AFP in front of a statue of Soviet founder Lenin that dominates a square next to the occupied parliament building in the regional capital Simferopol.
The mood in Kiev was radically different as about 50,000 people massed on Independence Square -- the crucible of both the latest wave of demonstrations and the 2004 Orange Revolution that first nudged Kiev on a westward path -- in protest at Putin's latest threat.
"We will not surrender," the huge crowd chanted under grey skies.
Ukraine's prime minister had assured the nation Saturday he was "convinced" Russia would not launch an offensive because Moscow realised it would put an end to relations between two neighbours with centuries of shared history.
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Posted by Steve White 2014-03-03 00:00||
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