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Tensions rise as gunmen seize

Crimea parliament Russian flag hoisted; Ukraine's new leader warns Moscow not to intervene

The Guardian
Fears of a major regional conflict in Crimea pitting Russia against the west have intensified after unknown pro-Russian gunmen seized the government and parliament building in a well co-ordinated military operation.
According to witnesses, the men dressed in fatigues stormed Crimea's regional administrative complex in Simferopol at 5:00am yesterday. They hoisted a Russian flag above the parliament building. About 120 men were holed up inside, armed with heavy weapons including rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles, witnesses said.
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They threw a flash grenade in response to a journalist's questions. Calls to region's legislature rang unanswered, and its website was down.
It was unclear if the men were members of a pro-Russian self-defence militia formed in the aftermath of Ukraine's revolution or undercover Russian soldiers.
Speaking in Kiev, the former head of the Crimean parliament, Serhiy Kunitsyn, described the men as “professionally trained’. He said he had been on the phone to Crimea 'all night’. The gunmen were heavily armed, he said, with enough weaponry to defend the complex "for a month’.
Either way, the seizure dramatically escalates tensions on the already volatile Crimean peninsula. Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, who has been in the job since the removal of Viktor Yanukovych last week, explicitly warned Russia not to intervene in the crisis by moving troops. The Kremlin's Black Sea fleet is based near Simferopol in the port of Sevastopol.
Turchynov said: “I am appealing to the military leadership of the Russian Black Sea fleet. Any military movements, the more so if they are with weapons, beyond the boundaries of this territory |the base] will be seen by us as military aggression.’ Ukraine's foreign ministry also summoned Russia's acting envoy in Kiev for immediate consultations.
EU leaders expressed alarm at the latest developments. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has ordered fighter jets to a state of high alert, as well as large-scale military exercises on Ukraine's border. In a tweet, the
Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, urged Russia not to do anything that would 'escalate tension or create misunderstanding’. Poland's foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, called the seizure of government buildings in theCrimea a ’very dangerous game’.
He told a news conference: ’This is a drastic step, and I'm warning those who did this and those who allowed them to do this, because this is how regional conflicts begin.'
Hours after the parliament building was seized, Yanukovych revealed that he was now in Moscow and had "sought protection" from Putin.
Yanukovych, who fled Kiev after government troops shot dead more than 80 people, excoriated Ukraine's new leadership unveiled on Wednesday and said he was still the country's legitimate president. He appeared to give approval to seces-sionist pro-Russian forces in Crimea who have rejected Kiev's authority, and said an "orgy of extremism" had swept the country. "Now it is becoming clear that the people in south-eastern Ukraine and in Crimea do not accept the power vacuum and complete lawlessness in the country," he said.
The gunmen barricaded doors into the parliament building with wooden crates. Police sealed off the area on Wednesday, as a crowd supportive of the seizure gathered outside. Two people died and 35 were injured during clashes outside the building on Wednesday between pro-Russian demonstrators and Muslim Tartars. About half of Crimea's 2 million population are ethnic Russians. The Tartars - the peninsula's original Turkic-speaking Muslim inhabitants -are 300,000 strong and support the