Ukrainian officials say
Aleksandr Vitko, the Russian commander of the Black Sea Fleet, went
aboard a blocked Ukrainian warship in Sevastopol Harbor on Monday and
issued the threat.
"Swear allegiance to the
new Crimean authorities, or surrender, or face an attack," he said,
according to Vladislav Seleznev, a Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman
in Crimea who spoke to CNN. He said the Russian commander did not
mention an ultimatum deadline.
Moscow has defended its
parliament's approval of President Vladimir Putin's use of military
force to protect its citizens in the Crimean Peninsula, an autonomous
region of eastern Ukraine with strong loyalty to Russia.
"I repeat: This is a
matter of defending our citizens and our compatriots, of defending the
most important human right -- the right to life," Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a U.N. human rights meeting in Geneva,
Switzerland.
But Ukraine's ambassador to the U.N. says Russia's reasoning for the invasion is fake.
"There is no evidence
that the Russian ethnic population or Russian-speaking population is
under threat," Ambassador Yuri Sergeyev told CNN. To read more, click here
