Gunmen seize Ukraine House as row rages

Dozens of pro-Russian gunmen in combat fatigues seized parliament and government buildings on Ukraine’s volatile Crimea peninsula on Thursday as the country’s ousted leader won assurances that Moscow would protect him.

The dawn raid in Crimea came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered snap combat readiness drills to be held near the Ukrainian border, raising fears the Kremlin might use force to sway the outcome of a three-month crisis that has pitted Moscow against the West in a Cold War-style confrontation.

BOISTEROUS SESSION

Ukraine’s interim president Oleksandr Turchynov told a boisterous session of parliament that any movement of Russian troops out of their Black Sea bases in Crimea “will be considered as military aggression.”

The same message was delivered when the Ukrainian foreign ministry called in Moscow’s charge d’affaires for urgent consultations.

Ukraine’s bloodiest crisis since independence in 1991 erupted in November when Viktor Yanukovych — deposed as president last weekend — made the shock decision to ditch an historic EU trade deal in favour of closer ties with old master Russia.

Mr Yanuvkoych, in his first comments since fleeing Kiev, said in a surprise statement to Russian news agencies issued from an undisclosed location that he still considered himself to be president of Ukraine, a strategic nation of 46 million people. News reports in Moscow said the fugitive leader’s request for personal security had been “granted on Russian territory” but provided no other details.

Ukraine had appeared to take a decisive swing back towards the European Union by ousting Yanukovych’s entire pro-Russian team and replacing it with a new brand of younger pro-Western politicians who will steer the nation — torn between a Russified east and pro-European west — until snap presidential polls are held on May 25.

A Cabinet headed by 39-year-old caretaker prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk — a close ally of the freed opposition icon Yulia Tymoshenko — was unveiled to an emotional crowd of 25,000 late Wednesday on the same barricade-riven Kiev square that had been the epicentre of the revolt against Yanukovych’s rule. (AFP)

Lawmakers in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada parliament were due Thursday to overwhelmingly confirm the new cabinet after ousting Yanukovych on Saturday in a near-unanimous vote.

The Russian flag flew today over both the Crimean parliament and government buildings in the regional capital of Simferopol.

The Black Sea autonomous region’s prime minister Anatoliy Mohilyov told AFP that up to 50 men with weapons seized the buildings and were preventing government workers from entering.

But his predecessor Serhiy Kunitsyn told lawmakers in Kiev that his contacts in Crimea said the raid involved “about 120 well-trained gunmen armed with sniper rifles... and carrying enough ammunition to last them a month”.

Mohilyov said he tried to enter the Crimean government building to conduct negotiations but had been turned away.

OPPOSING RALLIES

Simferopol was rocked Wednesday by opposing rallies involving thousands of people that degenerated into fistfights. Local health authorities said two people died.

Ukraine’s interim interior minister Arsen Avakov said interior ministry troops and the entire police force had been put on heightened alert following the Thursday raid.

The prosecutor general’s office said it had launched a criminal probe into a suspected “act of terrorism” by the gunmen.

AFP correspondents in Simferopol said about 20 police officers were carefully moving a crowd of a few hundred mostly pro-Russian onlookers away from the direct vicinity of the seized buildings.

“We now hope that the (Ukrainian) nationalists in Kiev do not come here,” said a Sergei Vladimirovich, a Russian-speaking pensioner.

“The situation in Kiev in unconstitutional. What is happening here is an adequate response to the coup that was staged there.”

Yanukovych — wanted for “mass murder” — had ben widely believed to have gone into hiding in Crimea with his two sons and a small team of heavily armed guards.

But Russian television reported Wednesday that he was hiding in a government health resort near Moscow.

His statement Thursday did not disclose his whereabouts but stressed he was “compelled to ask the Russian Federation to ensure my personal security from the actions of extremists.”

“I still consider myself to be the legal head of the Ukrainian state,” Yanukovych in a statement released simultaneously by Russia’s three main news agencies.

ALL ACTIONS ILLEGAL

Yanukovych said he considered all actions being taken by Ukraine’s parliament to be illegal.

The Kremlin had said Wednesday it had no information about where Yanukovych might be. But a security source strongly implied that the 63-year-old was already in Russia.

“Because president Yanukovych appealed to the authorities of the Russian Federation to ensure his personal security, I can say that this request has been granted on Russian territory,” the unnamed source told Russian agencies.

Ukraine’s new leaders are increasingly facing the spectre of separatism from eastern and southern mostly-industrial regions of the country whose cultural and linguistic ties to Moscow trace back centuries and whose trade depends heavily on Russia.

But Ukraine is also suffering badly from Moscow’s decision to freeze the $15-billion bailout package Putin promised to Yanukovych after delivering only a $3 billion tranche in December that had long been used up.

Kiev has requested as much as $35 billion in Western help and owes $13 billion in state debt payments this year — a massive sum in a country where state reserves are less than $18 billion.

Concerns over what would be a catastrophic default by Ukraine saw the local currency plunge to a record low against the dollar on Wednesday.

But the leadership in Kiev won a rare a reprieve on Wednesday when US Secretary of State John Kerry promised quick delivery of $1 billion in loan guarantees “with some other pieces” to follow.

Kerry added the European Union was looking at loan guarantees worth some $1.5 billion.