REPORT: Russians storm Ukrainian base in Crimea

The commander of Belbek airbase in Crimea said on Saturday he would be taken away by Russian forces for talks after they entered the base with armored vehicles and automatic rifles.
   
One Ukrainian was injured in the takeover of the base, which had been one of the last military facilities in Crimea still under Ukrainian control, Ukraine's Colonel Juliy Mamchur told Reuters.
   
Asked if he thought he would return safely from the talks at an unspecified location - he said: "That remains to be seen. For now we are placing all our weapons in the base's storage."

This comes after Russian troops have surrounded a Ukrainian airbase in Crimea and issued an ultimatum to forces inside to surrender, the deputy commander of the base in Belbek, near Sevastopol, said on Saturday.
   
"The Russian troops at our aerodrome gave us an hour to surrender or they will start storming.  We are going nowhere, let's see what this storming is," Oleg Podovalov told Reuters.

Positions:

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the international community must not allow the Ukraine-Russia crisis to create a new division of Europe.          

Speaking at a briefing in Kiev after talks with Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, Steinmeier said he hoped the first OSCE monitors would arrive in Ukraine to support de-escalation efforts in the next couple of days.            

Yatseniuk said Ukraine would need support from Europe, highlighting energy security and possible cooperation with Germany "to help with the modernization and strengthening of Ukraine's armed forces."           

In turn, the Russian Foreign Ministry said sanctions imposed by the European Union on 12 Russians and Ukrainians on Friday over Crimea were "divorced from reality".  

"It's a pity that the European Council made a decision that is divorced from reality," the ministry's spokesman Alexander said in a statement on the ministry's website.    

In a separate statement, the ministry said Moscow hoped the decision to send to Ukraine a monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe would help resolve what it called an "internal Ukrainian crisis".

 

REUTERS


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