![]() ![]() ![]() Ukrainian marine standards were still flying on Sunday alongside the Russian flag at the Crimean base of Ukraine’s top military unit in Fedosiya, but the Ukrainian troops were getting ready to leave after the Russian military takeover. The United States and the European Union have targeted some of Putin’s closest political and business allies with personal sanctions and have threatened broader economic sanctions if Putin’s forces encroach on other eastern or southern parts of Ukraine with big Russian-speaking populations. It has called the soldiers who took over Ukrainian bases in Crimea “self defence forces”. Russia said it was complying with international agreements and had no plans to invade. “It’s possible that they are preparing to move in,” he told CNN. President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken said the build-up might just be aimed at intimidating Ukraine’s new pro-Western leaders but that Russia could invade the country’s mainly Russian-speaking east. “The (Russian) force that is at the Ukrainian border now to the east is very, very sizeable and very, very ready,” the NATO commander told an event held by the German Marshall Fund think-tank. Russian troops, using armoured vehicles, automatic weapons and stun grenades, seized some of the the last military facilities under Ukrainian control on Saturday in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russian President Vladimir Putin formally annexed the day before.īreedlove was one of several Western officials and politicians to warn on Sunday that Russia may not stop there in a crisis that has taken East-West relations lurching back towards the Cold War since pro-Western protests in Ukraine ousted Moscow-allied President Viktor Yanukovich last month. Air Force General Philip Breedlove said, and the 28-nation alliance should rethink the positioning and readiness of its forces in eastern Europe. Russia was acting more like an adversary than a partner, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Armed men, believed to be Russian servicemen, supply an armoured personnel carrier (APC) in front of a Ukrainian marine base in the Crimean port city of Feodosia March 23, 2014.
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