Tehran, YJC. Japan plans to provide nearly $1.0 billion in financial aid to Ukraine, public broadcaster NHK said Friday, as relations with Russia cool over the Crimea crisis.
Russia reserves the right to give an adequate response to the sanctions imposed by the European Union against Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Saturday.
Russia on Saturday expressed hopes for the success of the OSCE monitoring mission in Ukraine, while stressing the observers were excluded from Crimea after its takeover by Moscow.
Ukraine will have to buy natural gas from Russia even at $500 per 1,000 cubic meters should Moscow set such a price, Ukrainian parliament-appointed prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk said on Ukrainian television.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
and U.S. State Secretary John Kerry were planned to meet in The Hague, a
Russian Foreign Ministry source confirmed to Itar-Tass on Saturday. "Such
a meeting is planned," he said.
Participants in a rally in front of the building of the Ukrainian naval force have broken through the perimeter fence into the territory of the military unit to have hoisted the Russian and St. Andrew's flags, an ITAR-TASS correspondent reports from the site.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama in a phone call condemned Russia's moves to annex Crimea but said "a clear path" remains to solve the crisis diplomatically.
Crimea provides itself with gas fully; if Kiev should try to disrupt electricity supply, that would be regarded as sabotage Crimea's Head of Government said.
Europe will have trouble weaning itself off Russian natural gas, analysts say, as its faces declining production at home and Asian competition for supplies.
NATO said several of its websites were targeted in a "significant" cyber attack on Saturday that was claimed by Ukrainian hackers in what appeared to be the latest bout of virtual warfare linked to the country's crisis.
Moscow on Saturday urged Ukraine to outlaw ultra-nationalist groups after two people were killed in fresh clashes in the Russian-speaking east of the country.
The head of the Russian North Caucasus republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said he would be offended if he did not top the European Union's black list compiled in connection with Russia's position on the situation in Ukraine.
The events in Ukraine have been conditioned by a scenario realised by external forces, primarily by the United States, that should be played in the course of presidential elections in 2015, former chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Aleksander Yakimenko said.
Beyond Sunday's referendum on whether Crimea should join Russia, one big question looms: how viable will the disputed peninsula be if it decides to split from Ukraine?
Ukraine's acting president has said the country will not use its army to stop Crimea from seceding, the latest sign that a Russian annexation of the strategic peninsula may be imminent.
Tehran, YJC. Ukraine’s ousted president, Victor Yanukovych, has sharply criticized the United States for backing what he calls a bandit regime in Ukraine.
Fifteen years have passed since the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined the NATO military alliance, a decision the ex-Soviet satellites now see as fortuitous given today's Ukraine standoff between Russia and the West.
Diplomatic efforts to calm the Ukraine crisis inched forward Monday, with Moscow saying it would consider Western proposals for talks on the standoff but insisting Crimea had the right to secede.