You're reading: Armed men storm government buildings in Crimea; two dead, 30 injured during confrontations (UPDATE)

Ukraine’s Acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov put police and security forces on alert after buildings of the Crimean parliament and administration were seized just before dawn on Feb. 27 by an unknown armed group.

Two
persons were killed and more than 30 people were injured in clashes on
Feb. 26-27, according to officials. Thousands gathered in front of the parliament building with
crowds split between those supporting the new government appointed by
parliament in Kyiv and those calling for integration with Russia. 

The buildings of the Crimean Council of Ministers and the Crimean parliament were seized by an unknown group of 120 armed men at around 4 a.m.,
according to Crimea Prime Minister Anatoly Mogilyov, the nation’s former prime
minister and a longtime loyalist of ousted President Viktor Yanukovch. Mogilyov
and UDAR party lawmaker Serhiy Kunitsyn said the men were professionally trained individuals with automatic weapons.

“More than 120 armed men entered the Crimean Supreme Council and the Crimean government. These professionally trained people are armed. They brought weapons – automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and machine guns,” Kunitsyn said, speaking from the parliament rostrum in Kyiv on Feb. 27.

“They have enough weapons to defend (the buildings) for a month,” he added.

Reuters news agency quoted an ethnic Russian on the scene as saying some of the armed men fired their weapons during seizure of the buildings.

“We were building barricades in the night to protect parliament. Then this young Russian guy came up with a pistol … we all lay down, some more ran up, there was some shooting and around 50 went in through the window,” Leonid Khazanov told Reuters.

“They’re still there … Then the police came, they seemed scared. I asked them (the armed men) what they wanted and they said ‘To make our own decisions, not to have Kyiv telling us what to do,'” Khazanov added.

Mustafa Jemilov, former head of the Mejilis of the Crimean Tatar people, said in Ukraine’s parliament on Feb. 27 that the men occupying the crimean government buildings “came by buses from Sevastopol.”

“There are reports of movement of armed vehicles from the Russian fleet in different directions,” he said. “We also got signals that in many hotels there are Russian soldiers in civilian clothes. This all is very alarming.”

He said that the Russian General Consul denied all involvement in the incident. “But they would hardly tell truth,” he added.

Jemilov believes the group of armed men come from one of two camps: “either they are Russian soldiers, or former Berkut soldiers who with allegiances to Russia.”

Crimea is the last bastion of opposition to the newly formed government in Kyiv after the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22.

Russia’s Black Sea fleet is stationed in the port of Sevastopol. Crimea is also home to more than a million ethnic Russians, as well as ethnic Urkainains and Tatars, a group victimized by Soviet ruler Josef Stalin during World War II, whose first language is Russian.

Russia’s foreign ministry said through a statement that the Kremlin was prepared to defend the rights of its compatriots and would react appropriately to any violation of them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has thus far not responded to some calls by ethnic Russians in Crimea to reclaim the peninsula, which was turned over to Soviet Ukraine in 1954.

Leonid Grach, the head of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ukraine, appealed to Putin on Feb. 27 to provide assistance to Crimea.

“I appeal to (Russia President Vladimir) Putin! First of all we need economic assistance. He made help restore damaged relations with Russia and Kerch Bridge must be one of these tools. I am ready to lead the Crimean Council of Ministers,” Grach said.

Putin flexed his muscles on Feb. 26, putting 150,000 troops on alert and ordering them to carry out military drills near teh Ukrainain border in western Russia.

United State Secretary of State John Kerry said on Feb. 26 that Russia must be “very careful” in the decisions it makes on Ukraine, adding that Putin should remember “this is not Rocky IV.”

“I think Russia needs to be very careful in the judgments that it makes going forward here,” he told NBC News.

“We are not looking for confrontation. But we are making it clear that every country should respect the territorial integrity here, the sovereignty of Ukraine.

“Russia has said it would do that and we think it’s important that Russia keeps its word,” he added.

Representing the White House, Josh Earnest, a special assistant to the president and principal deputy press secretary, on Feb. 27 urged outside actors in the region “to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, end provocative rhetoric and actions, support democratically established transitional governing structures, and use their influence in support of unity, peace and an inclusive path forward.”  

“We remind all governments of their political commitments to transparency about military activities under the Vienna Document 2011, and other OSCE obligations designed to ensure security and peace in the Euro-Atlantic region,” he added.