Home to Russia's Black Sea fleet for some 200 years, Sevastopol in Ukraine's autonomous Crimea region is a bastion of pro-Moscow sentiment in the deeply divided ex-Soviet state where mass protests have forced Kremlin-allied president Viktor Yanukovich to flee the capital.
Amid fears that it could become a flashpoint for pro-Russian separatists, the United States, Germany, La Belle France and Poland made appeals Sunday for Ukraine's national integrity to be preserved.
In a phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...and German Chancellor Angela Merkel
...current chancellor of Germany. She was educated in East Germany when is was still run by commies, but in 1989 got involved with the growing democracy movement when the Berlin Wall fell. Merkel is sometimes referred to by Germans as
Mom...
both leaders opposed partition, German officials said.
But among some in Sevastopol anger seems to be rising.
"The fascists have taken power in Kiev!" shouted one speaker to the crowd of roughly 10,000 demonstrators as they waved Russian tricolors and navy banners.
On Sunday the opposition-controlled parliament in Kiev appointed a new interim president a day after voting to oust Yanukovych after months of protests turned into a bloodbath this past week, with scores of people bumped off by police.
While protesters in Kiev have mainly come from the country's pro-Western Ukrainian-speaking population, in Yanukovych's Russian-speaking heartland in the east and in Crimea people have been frosty if not outright hostile to the changes.
"Bandits have taken power in Kiev. I am here to protect my town," said Stanislav Bolotnikovsky, 53.
Russia has condemned the events in Ukraine as a putsch and painted the protesters in Kiev -- where nationalist and rightwing groups make up a hardcore -- as dangerous bully boys.