Slitherine

quote:

1454 GMT: ITAR-TASS reports that the Ukrainian parliament is threatening to remove a key agreement with Russia in light of recent events (translated by The Interpreter:
The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada or parliament is reviewing whether to annul the Kharkhov Agreement on Russia’s stationing of the Black Sea Fleet on Ukrainian territory, ITAR TASS is reporting.

Deputy Oleg Lyashko has made the proposal today from the podium.

“Given the position the Russian Federation is taking on Crimea, we must immediately abrogate the Kharkhov Agreements,” said Lyashko.

Russian troops are in Crimea only because of this agreement. Without this agreement, Russia may have to give up its base on the Black Sea. Russia is highly unlikely to do this. This is a major provocation, in response to a series of major provocations.

Wikipedia offers this quick summary of the Kharkov Agreement:

The Kharkhov Agreement was signed in 2010 between then-president Dmitry Medvedev and Viktor Yanukovych, and extended Russia’s lease on the Crimean facilities until 2042 with an option for a five-year extention, in exchange for a multiyear discounted natural gas contract

quote:


I am reporting on the situation by the end of the night to prevent rumours spreading:

1. Belbek Aiport. Cordoned off by military units from the Russian fleet. Inside the airport are Ukrainian military and border guards. The soldiers outside are camouflaged, armed and unmarked, but they are not hiding their affiliation. The airport is not functioning. There are Interior Ministry positions on the outer perimeter. There have not been any armed confrontations yet.

2. Simferopol Airport. At around midnight, a group of about 100 in civilian clothes, identifying themselves as a Cossack sotnia, got over the fence on the grounds of the airport and came out onto the airfield. Through the efforts of the Internal Troops and the police, these people were driven back, at first into an airport building, and then completely out of the area. Weapons were not used. The ‘cossacks’ fled the airport area at around 1 am when they boarded soft-topped KAMAZ trucks and left. At around 1.30am several trucks arrived at the airport building with 119 camouflaged soldiers with automatic weapons and no markings. They entered the airport terminal and set up inside the restaurant. They are not hiding their affiliation to the armed forces of the Russian Federation. When questioned by Ukrainian Interior Ministry staff “you are soldiers and you have no right to be here”, they answered curtly that “we do not have instructions to negotiate with you”. The situation is static; neither side has used weapons. The Russian soldiers are passively observing the work at the airport, which is not being directly interfered with.

Internal troops and the Ukrainian Interior Ministry have strengthened details in the airport area. Tension is rising. Law enforcement authorities cannot confront regular military forces.

My assessment of what’s going on is that it is a MILITARY INCURSION AND OCCUPATION IN VIOLATION OF ALL INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS AND NORMS. This is the direct provocation of armed bloodshed in the territory of a sovereign sate.

quote:


Russia admits that it has moved troops in Ukraine
Russia has finally confirmed that it has moved troops into Ukraine's restive Crimea region, after speculation about Moscow's involvement

Russian troops have moved into Crimea in what Moscow is calling a mission to “protect Black Sea Fleet’s positions” but which the Ukrainian government has denounced as an “armed intervention.”
The Russian foreign ministry said Friday that it had informed the Ukrainian government that armoured units from the Black Sea Fleet base near Sevastopol had entered Crimea in order to protect fleet positions.

“The Ukrainian side was also passed a note regarding the movement of armoured vehicles of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, which is happening in full accordance with the foundation Russian-Ukrainian agreement on the Black Sea Fleet,” the ministry said in a statement posted on its website on Friday afternoon.
In the same note the Russian foreign ministry said it had declined a Ukrainian request for “bilateral consultations” on events in Crimea because they are “the result of recent internal political processes in Ukraine.”
Related Articles
Ukraine: Russia accused of ‘armed invasion’ amid claims that aircraft are flying troops to Crimea 28 Feb 2014
Crimea is a tinderbox of divided loyalties as Putin flexes his muscles 28 Feb 2014
Ukraine crisis: will Vladimir Putin send in the tanks against the 'bandits' in Kiev? 27 Feb 2014
Ukraine crisis live: Obama warns Russia of 'costs' for intervening in Ukraine 28 Feb 2014
Viktor Yanukovych: I will return - but I wasn't scared and didn't run away 28 Feb 2014
Ukraine pleads for Britain and US to come to its rescue 28 Feb 2014
Unconfirmed reports were emerging late on Friday that a convoy of armoured vehicles were moving up the Sevastopol highway toward Simferopol, the regional capital.
Earlier armed men in unmarked uniforms occupied key transportation hubs in the Crimea on Friday, in what the Ukrainian government denounced as an “armed intervention” by Russian troops.
Men in unmarked camouflage uniforms occupied two airports and blocked the road between Simferopol and Sevastopol before dawn, while a Russian warship was reported to have blockaded the entrance to the bay at Balaklava, the home of the Ukrainian coast guard.
Several dozen men in camouflage uniforms and carrying AK-74 assault rifles and PK 7.62 mm machine guns occupied a restaurant and patrolled the car park and forecourt of Simferopol international airport early on Friday morning.
The soldiers, who wore no identifying insignia, refused to answer questions from journalists as they strolled up and down outside the airport.
The troops made no apparent attempt to interfere with the running of the airport or take over key infrastructure, contenting themselves with strolling up and down the car park at a leisurely place, apparently deliberately for the benefit of television cameras.
While those patrolling the car park carried assault rifles without magazines attached, belt ammunition could be seen loaded into two medium machine guns carried by sentries outside the occupied restaurant building. Some rifles carried telescopic sights and under-barrel grenade launchers.
They were backed by civilian volunteers wearing the orange and black St George’s ribbon, a symbol of Russian military prowess that has been adopted by pro-Russian activists in Crimea as an identifying mark.
“We are here for your safety,” said one man, who described himself as a member of the “people’s militia and ordered journalists away from the restaurant the troops had occupied. “If you don’t move away from this building maybe someone will throw a grenade at you,” he said. He denied he was threatening journalists, citing an incident yesterday when armed men in the regional parliament building reportedly answered shouted questions with a stun grenade.
“It is an unpredictable situation and we want to make sure everything remains calm. We are just people from this city who want to protect their families,” he said.
The man refused to give his name, but said he and his group arrived at the airport at 6 AM. He refused to say who controlled his "militia" or whether they accompanied or knew the identity of the mysterious soldiers.
Meanwhile, at least 20 men wearing the uniform of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet carrying automatic riffles were reported to have surrounded a Ukrainian border guard post in the port city of Sevastopol on Friday.
A serviceman who identified himself as a Black Sea Fleet officer said “we are here…so as not to have a repeat of the Maidan,” Reuters reported.
A Russian warship is reported to have blocked the bay at Balaklava, where the Ukrainian coast guard is based.

quote:

Russia Seeks Access to Bases in Eight Countries for Its Ships and Bombers


russia
Russia map

(CNSNews.com) – At a time of escalated tensions with the West over Ukraine, Russia says it is negotiating with eight governments around the world for access to military facilities, to enable it to extend its long-range naval and strategic bomber capabilities.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday the military was engaged in talks with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Algeria, Cyprus, the Seychelles, Vietnam and Singapore.

“We need bases for refueling near the equator, and in other places,” ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying.

Russia is not looking to establish bases in those locations, but to reach agreement to use facilities there when required.

The countries are all strategically located – in three leftist-ruled countries close to the U.S.; towards either end of the Mediterranean; in the Indian Ocean south of the Gulf of Aden; and near some of the world’s most important shipping lanes in the Malacca Strait and South China Sea.

Access to the new locations would extend the Russian military’s potential reach well beyond its existing extraterritorial bases, at the Syrian port of Tartus and in former Soviet states – Ukraine’s Sevastopol, Armenia, Belarus, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and the occupied Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Shoigu said Russia was also beefing up its existing military presence in the post-Soviet region, doubling its troop numbers in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and deploying a regiment of troops to Belarus where it already has fighter aircraft stationed.

“Russia has started reviving its navy and strategic aviation since mid-2000s, seeing them as a tool to project the Russian image abroad and to protect its national interests around the globe,” the RIA Novosti state news agency commented.

“Now, Moscow needs to place such military assets in strategically important regions of the world to make them work effectively toward the goal of expanding Russia’s global influence.”

During his previous tenure at the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin in 2002 shut down a Cold War-era radar base in Cuba and a naval base in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. Russia cited financial constraints, but the move was also seen at the time as an attempt to improve relations with Washington.

The listening station near Havana had been a key intelligence facility for decades, while the Vietnamese base, which was built by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, was leased to the Soviet Union in 1979 and became the largest Soviet base in the world beyond Moscow’s Warsaw Pact allies.

Upon his return to the presidency in 2012, Putin began exploring options to renew alliances with the communist countries, and Russian Navy chief Vice Admiral Viktor Chirkov said that year Cuba and Vietnam were in the frame.

Russia is now helping Vietnam to upgrade facilities at Cam Ranh Bay, including a submarine training center, and Russia is negotiating for preferential access to refueling and repair facilities there for its ships.

As for the Western hemisphere, Russian Navy ships in 2008 made their first visit since the end of the Cold War, holding joint maneuvers with the Venezuelan Navy in the Caribbean, navigating the Panama Canal, and making a port call in Havana.

Russian Navy vessels visited Cuba again in 2009 and last August – and on Wednesday, a Russian intelligence-gathering ship, the Viktor Leonov, docked in Havana harbor with no explanation from the government or state media coverage, the Associated Press reported.

Russian strategic bombers also visited the region in 2008 – for the first time since long-range flights by the aircraft were halted after the Soviet Union’s collapse – and again last fall, when two Tupolev “Blackjacks” carried out combat training patrols between Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Russian defense spending has been climbing sharply in the years since its last military engagement – the invasion of Georgia in August 2008 – and early this year it was reported to have overtaken Britain to become the world’s third biggest spender, behind the U.S. and China.

According to the British consultancy HIS Jane’s, Russia’s defense expenditure has more than doubled since 2007, and will have tripled by 2016

quote:

ORIGINAL: CommanderNimitz

Psh, CNN nubs can't tell the difference between a tank and an arty piece...

"To meaningless French Idealism, Liberty, Fraternity and Equality...we answer with German Realism, Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery" -Prince von Bülov, 1870-

quote:

ORIGINAL: Baloogan

http://www.aljazeera.com/

quote:

ORIGINAL: Skyhigh
I reckon they are going to get a better handle on Ukraine than if Yanukovich stayed in power.