In a speech to the Russian parliament, President Vladimir Putin urged the body to accept Crimea as a part of Russia. He additionally addressed the world, saying that the West had crossed a red-line by condoning the coup in Kiev, and that he hoped Ukraine would respect the rights of the predominantly Russian regions in the eastern portion of the country. Putin further stated that Crimea's secession from Ukraine was just like Kosovo's secession from Serbia, and any arguments otherwise are just attempts to bend the West-advocated rules that were applied to the Kosovo case.
Russian President Vladimir Putin completed on Tuesday the first
annexation of another European country's territory since the second
world war by absorbing Ukraine's Crimean peninsula into the Russian
Federation with the stroke of a pen.
Less than three weeks after
unmarked Russian soldiers took over Crimea's parliament, Mr Putin signed
a treaty with the region's new Moscow-installed premier on joining
Russia.The Crimean port city of Sevastopol, home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, also joined Russia as a separate federal subject.
The
twin signings, before a jubilant audience of Russia's political elite,
completed a move to reincorporate the Black Sea peninsula which has been
achieved with breathtaking speed but has been widely condemned by the
international community.
Russia's moves over Crimea have provoked
the most serious European security crisis since the Cold War. Carl
Bildt, Sweden's foreign minister, warned that Mr Putin's steps
represented a "profound challenge to international law and [the] global
order".
Moscow's steps also left the future of several thousand
Ukrainian troops, now surrounded on their bases by unmarked Russian
forces, in question. The stand-off between the two forces turned deadly
late on Tuesday as Ukraine's defence ministry said a soldier had been
shot dead while masked armed militants clashed with troops at a military
facility in the regional capital of Simferopol.
In an hour-long
speech before both Russian houses of parliament, Mr Putin celebrated the
return of a territory that Russia saw transferred to Ukraine by Soviet
leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, but has long seen as rightfully its
own.
"Crimea is a symbol of Russian war glory, of Russian traditions, language, beliefs," he said, triggering thunderous applause.
Joe
Biden, US vice-president, on a visit to Poland, led international
condemnation, calling the annexation of Crimea a blatant violation of
international law and "nothing more than a land grab".
US President Barack Obama invited his G7 counterparts to a meeting in The Hague next week to discuss the crisis.
Russia's
stock market continued to rebound, however, after Mr Putin said he saw
"no need" to split Ukraine. Moscow's Micex index closed up 4.1 per cent.
Mr
Putin said the people of Crimea had decided the fate of the region in a
triumph of their free will, referring to last Sunday's referendum. He
rejected western criticism of the vote and reiterated his backing of the
outcome.
The Ukrainian soldier was
killed and another wounded in a shootout as their office in the Crimean
capital of Simferopol was stormed by well-armed commandos wearing
Russian uniforms that had been stripped of identifying insignia, the
Ukrainian Defense Ministry in Kiev said.
Such forces, backed by
pro-Russian locals, occupied Crimea two weeks ago, surrounding Ukrainian
bases in the region and demanding the soldiers inside surrender and
leave, or switch allegiance to Russia.
President Barack Obama
today imposed sanctions on seven top Russian government officials and
four others from Ukraine and warned Russia will face more penalties if
it doesn't pull back from Crimea.
"Continued Russian military
intervention in Ukraine will only deepen Russia's diplomatic isolation
and exact a greater toll on the Russian economy," Obama said at the
White House. The U.S. can "calibrate our response" based on whether
Russia chooses "to escalate or to de-escalate the situation."
No comments:
Post a Comment