Armed servicemen wait in Russian army vehicles outside a Ukranian border guard post in the Crimean town of Balaclava March 1, 2014. Ukraine accused Russia on Saturday of sending thousands of extra troops to Crimea and placed its military in the area on high alert as the Black Sea peninsula appeared to slip beyond Kiev’s control. REUTERS/Baz Ratner
Ukraine’s acting president accused Russia of open aggression on Friday and said Moscow was following a similar scenario to the one before it went to war with Georgia in 2008.
Urging President Vladimir Putin to stop “provocations” in the Ukrainian region of Crimea, Oleksander Turchinov drew a comparison to Russia’s intervention in Georgia over the breakaway Akhazia region which has a large ethnic Russian population.
“Russia has sent forces into Crimea … they are working on scenarios which are fully analogous with Abkhazia, when having initiated a military conflict, they started to annex the territory,” he said in televised comments.
via@Reuters, other sources