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Kiev. — Russian troops opened fire with automatic rifles during a takeover yesterday of a Ukrainian naval post in Crimea, Interfax news agency quoted a Ukrainian officer as saying.The unnamed officer from the motor vehicle battalion of the Ukrainian navy said Russian troops broke in to the base near the inland town of Bakhchisaray some time after 14:00, took mobile phones from the Ukrainians and began trying to remove vehicles.
None of the Ukrainian troops were hurt and the base commander was trying to negotiate an end to the action.
Further details were not immediately available. Russian forces who have taken control of a number of military installations across the Black Sea peninsula have not so far exchanged fire in anger with Ukrainian troops.
Diplomatic efforts to calm the Ukraine crisis inched forward yesterday, with Moscow saying it would consider Western proposals for talks on the standoff but insisting Crimea had the right to secede.
Britain said Russian President Vladimir Putin had promised to meet with his foreign minister on Monday to discuss the possibility of creating an “international contact group” — his first indication he may be willing to take part in the talks being pushed by the US and Germany to ease the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.
But that embryonic sign of diplomatic progress came against the backdrop of Putin’s recognition on Sunday of Crimea’s self-declared leaders as the breakaway peninsula’s “legitimate” authorities.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuked Putin for his comments, telling him Crimea’s planned 16 March referendum on joining Russia was illegal.
In phone calls with Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron, Putin in turn accused Ukraine’s new government of failing to rein in “ultra-nationalist and radical forces” in the movement that swept it to power after toppling pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in three months of protests. — Agencies.
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