Ukrainian army put on combat Alert, Ukraine’s Navy flagship Defects

Update: 2014 March 02 

 

Armed servicemen wait near Russian army vehicles in the Crimean town of Balaclava on March 1, 2014

Source: Press TV

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/03/01/352841/ukraine-army-put-on-combat-alert/

The Ukrainian army has been put on a combat alert as the interim president says any Russia’s military intervention will lead to a war in the crisis-hit country.

Ukraine’s acting President Oleksandr Turchynov made the announcement on Saturday after meeting with the country’s security and defense chiefs.

Turchynov warned Russia against military intervention, saying such a move could lead to a war.

He also added that there was no justification for what he called Russian aggression.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s new Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk said he had urged Russia, in a phone call with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, to return its troops to their base in Ukraine’s autonomous region of Crimea.

Earlier in the day, the Russian parliament approved President Vladimir Putin’s request to deploy troops into Crimea.

"The Duma Council adopted an appeal to the president of Russia, in which parliamentarians are calling on the president to take measures to stabilize the situation in Crimea and use all available means to protect the people of the Crimea from tyranny and violence," Lower House Speaker Sergey Naryshkin said.

The developments came after Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksenov asked Putin to help restore peace and calm in the region.

The mission in Crimea is necessary to protect ethnic Russians, and the troops in the peninsula known as the Black Sea Fleet, Putin said.

Putin has yet to decide on the troop deployment. But reports emerging from the region show two Russian anti-submarine warships have appeared off the Ukraine coast.

McCain to Obama: Take steps against Putin over Ukraine crisis

 

Source: Press TV

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/03/01/352835/sen-mccain-urges-obama-to-stop-putin/

US Republican Senator John McCain has called on the Obama administration to take action against Russian President Vladimir Putin over the crisis in Ukraine.

During a speech on Friday, President Barack Obama said he is “deeply concerned” by reports Moscow had sent troops into Ukraine’s Crimea region and warned that “there will be costs” for any military intervention in Ukraine.

In a statement on Saturday, the US senator said President Obama should "articulate exactly what those costs will be and to take steps urgently to impose them."

"None of us should be under any illusion about what President Putin is capable of doing in Ukraine," McCain said.

"Every moment that the United States and our allies fail to respond sends the signal to President Putin that he can be even more ambitious and aggressive in his military intervention in Ukraine," he added.

"There is a range of serious options at our disposal at this time without the use of military force," the hawkish Arizona senator said.

Earlier on Saturday, the Russian parliament approved Putin’s request to deploy troops into the autonomous region of Crimea.

According to Putin, the mission is necessary to protect ethnic Russians and the military base in Crimea known as the Black Sea Fleet.

The Russian president has yet to decide on the troop deployment, but reports emerging from the region show two Russian anti-submarine warships have appeared off the Ukraine coast.

Meanwhile, US Senator Bob Corker called for immediate sanctions against Russia.

"Vladimir Putin is seizing a neighboring territory — again — so President Obama must lead a meaningful, unified response," Corker said in a statement.

Ukrainian Navy flagship takes Russia’s side – report

 

The Ukrainian Krivak class frigate Hetman Sahaydachny (Reuters / Gleb Garanich)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/news/ukraine-navy-flaghsip-protest-389/

Ukraine’s Navy flagship, the Hetman Sahaidachny frigate, has reportedly refused to follow orders from Kiev, and come over to Russia’s side and is returning home after taking part in NATO operation in the Gulf of Aden flying the Russian naval flag.

There has been conflicting information on where exactly the vessel is, but a Russian senator has confirmed to Izvestia daily that the frigate defected to the Russian side.

“Ukraine’s Navy flagship the Hetman Sahaidachny has come over to our side today. It has hung out the St Andrew’s flag,” Senator Igor Morozov, a member of the committee on the international affairs, told Izvestia daily.

He said the flagship is on its way back to the Black Sea after drills in the Mediterranean. “The crew has fulfilled the order by the chief commander of Ukraine’s armed forces Viktor Yanukovich,” he added.

The move comes after the Navy command resigned Friday. Self-appointed President Aleksandr Turchinov made Rear Admiral Denis Berezovsky the new Navy Chief, a statement published on the President’s website Saturday said.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Prime Minister of Ukraine had earlier asked his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to let the frigate through the Bosporus strait, according to the Kiev Times. The ship captain and the head of Ukraine’s contingent in the operation, Rear Admiral Andrey Tarasov disobeyed orders from Kiev.

The Hetman Sahaidachny returns to Sevastopol, Crimea after taking part in a joint counter-piracy operation with NATO and the EU off the Horn of Africa, reported UNN on Friday, citing Ukraine’s Defense Ministry. On February 26, after crossing the Suez Canal, the ship entered the Mediterranean Sea and was expected to be in Sevastopol in early March.

 

Udated: 2014 March 02

Ukraine’s Navy Chief Swears Allegiance to Crimea

Source: Russia Today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYQvVqBZSsI

News Updates on the unfolding events in Ukraine

 

Putin faces down Obama over Ukraine

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin

By: Finian Cunningham

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/03/01/352833/putin-faces-down-obama-over-ukraine/

American exceptionalism has gone into overdrive with stern warnings from US President Barack Obama to Russia to respect Ukrainian sovereignty and to not destabilize the region.

By "American exceptionalism" we mean Washington's seemingly unlimited capacity for exceptional arrogance and double think.

Obama has not yet accused Russia outright of "military invasion" in the crisis-torn country, but that was the clear inference from his weekend press conference. In a veiled threat of military confrontation, the American president warned that there would be "costs" for Moscow.

"Any violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity will be deeply destabilizing and the US stands with the international community to affirm that there will be costs [for this violation]," said Obama in a hastily arranged media statement in Washington on Friday.

The White House is obviously rattled by reports of Russian troop movements across Ukraine's southern Crimean Peninsula. Moscow says that its military presence in the autonomous Crimean republic of Ukraine is fully in accord with a long-standing legal agreement to have its soldiers stationed there as part of its Black Sea naval base.

That agreement was renewed in 2010 between Moscow and Kiev for a further 20 years, affording Russian military presence in the Crimea, particularly the naval base at Sevastopol, which is headquarters for Russia's Black Sea fleet.

Russian ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin denied that Russia had invaded Ukraine's territory and said, "We are operating under this agreement [with Ukraine]."

Events in Crimea took on a chaotic twist in recent days when unknown armed men took over the local parliament and the Russian flag was hoisted. There were also other reports of large troop deployments at the main civilian airport and other facilities. Soldiers were not wearing identifiable uniforms, but there were unconfirmed reports that armored vehicles bore Russian military insignia.

Under the existing military lease of the naval base at Crimea's Sevastopol, Russia is permitted to station thousands of troops on the Peninsula, and Moscow has in the past routinely engaged in maneuvers there.

However, it is stretching naivety to believe Moscow's claims that the recent surge in military movements is merely "routine". The Crimean activity coincides with other large-scale mobilization of Russian troops as well as military aircraft on Russia's broader border with Ukraine.

But here's the laughable irony of Obama's protestations. The latest apparent Russian military moves follow months of US-sponsored destabilization in Ukraine. This illegal and covert American interference has trampled all over Ukrainian sovereignty, which ironically Obama is now accusing his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin of doing.

Since Ukraine spurned a tentative trade agreement with the European Union at the end of last November, street protests have escalated in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Washington and its European allies, including Britain, France and Germany, have done everything to escalate these protests, from high-profile political statements to clandestine military infiltration through the organs of the CIA. The demonstrations in Kiev quickly took on a quasi-military character with sinister fascist elements using firearms and other forms of violence to seize and occupy government buildings. That rapidity betrays the pre-meditated external nature of the "protests".

There are reliable reports that many of the deaths in clashes between Ukrainian police and protesters were actually caused by Western-backed provocateurs and snipers in a deliberate attempt to inflame the crisis. Washington has infiltrated Ukraine with the CIA and a myriad other so-called "non-governmental organizations" since the early 1990s - with the objective of agitating regime change in the former Soviet Republic.

US State Department official Victoria Nuland recently disclosed that Washington has "invested" some $5 billion in "promoting democracy" (that is, subversion and sedition) in Ukraine over the past two decades.

The crisis came to a head when the embattled elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled suddenly from his office last week and went into exile in Russia. The Ukrainian parliament has since been taken over by his Western-backed opponents and a new interim government installed. Washington and Brussels swiftly moved to recognize this so-called new authority in Kiev, but Russia, with sound legal reasoning, has denounced the sacking of the elected Yanukovych and his government as a coup d'état.

The turmoil in Ukraine has therefore all the hallmarks of a Washington-led regime-change operation. Needless to say that is a wholly criminal interference that makes a mockery of international law. The ultimate target of this meddling, as has been brazenly stated over many years since the early 1990s by Zbigniew Brzezinski and other US imperial planners, is the destabilization of Russia itself.

Risibly, Washington's new puppet president in Kiev, Oleksandr Turchynov, has now accused Russian forces of "seizing and capturing" the regional parliament and other government buildings in Ukraine's southern Crimea. This complaint comes from political agitators who used violence and other crimes, including the murder of policemen, to seize government buildings in Kiev, culminating in the ousting of an elected president.

In all this, Russian President Vladimir Putin has maintained a cagey silence. But the Russian leader knows only too well the depth of American deception and hypocrisy, and Washington's covert agenda for regime change - an agenda which is being ruthlessly pursued against Russia's Arab ally, Syria.

For now, Moscow seems to be effecting an air of calm legality and playing by the rules, citing that its troops in Crimea are part of its bilateral military agreement with the Ukraine.

But, off the record, the Americans know that what Putin is really saying is this: "You want to break the law, well, OK, we can break it too. Now back off!"

Rules of sovereignty and international law are out the window, and it is Washington and its European puppets who threw all norms out that window with their incessant, illegal interference in Ukraine. Ukrainian territory, and its centuries of shared history, is a vital interest for Russia.

Putin is entirely right to lay down an unspoken military marker to Washington over Ukraine, just like he did when the Americans tried to mess militarily with South Ossetia in 2008 through its NATO proxy, Georgia.

American exceptionalism of arrogance and lawlessness does not understand the language of diplomacy. The only language it responds to is blunt force talking back to force.

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Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is now located in East Africa as a freelance journalist, where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring, based on eyewitness experience working in the Persian Gulf as an editor of a business magazine and subsequently as a freelance news correspondent. The author was deported from Bahrain in June 2011 because of his critical journalism in which he highlighted systematic human rights violations by regime forces. He is now a columnist on international politics for Press TV and the Strategic Culture Foundation

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