Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
UKRAINE’S DEFENCE MINISTRY has said its soldiers were “allowed to use arms” after suffering their first casualty in Crimea since Russian and pro-Kremlin troops seized the peninsula nearly three weeks ago.
“For their self defence and protection of their lives, Ukrainian servicemen… deployed in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea are allowed to use arms,” the Ukrainian defence ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told an emergency government meeting that “the conflict is shifting from a political to a military stage”.
“War crime”
“Russian soldiers have started shooting at Ukrainian military servicemen, and that is a war crime,” he said at the nationally televised session.
He was speaking after President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty claiming Crimea as Russian territory following the Black Sea region’s overwhelming vote on Sunday in favour of switching from Ukrainian to Kremlin rule.
Regional defence ministry spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov told AFP the soldier had died after being shot in the neck when a group of gunmen stormed a Ukrainian military base in the northeast of Crimea’s main city of Simferopol.
Seleznyov said another soldier was wounded but did not specify whether the base was stormed by Russian soldiers or pro-Kremlin militia who also patrol the peninsula.
The defence ministry spokesman said pro-Russian forces had by late Tuesday taken complete control of Ukraine’s Simferopol base.
“The centre has been taken under their full control. All the servicemen inside were lined up in a row and their documents seized,” he said.
“They were all informed that they were under arrest.”
Armed men walk a roof of an Ukrainian military unit in Simferopol. (Image Credit: AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
Seleznyov said he could not immediately say how many Ukrainian soldiers had been arrested or the number of pro-Russians involved in the attack.
There was no immediate reaction to the reported death from either Russian authorities in Moscow or the peninsula’s rebel leadership.
Russian forces took de facto control of the peninsula at the beginning of March after the toppling last month of the pro-Kremlin regime in Ukraine and the rise to power of a new Western-backed administration that is seeking closer ties with the European Union.
Injured
Ukraine’s navy chief Sergiy Gayduk had told the same government meeting that an officer had been shot and injured in the leg “during an attack against a base in Simferopol.”
He did not specify where or when the attack happened or who was behind it and it was not immediately clear if it was the same incident.
An AFP reporter outside a Ukrainian military unit in a suburb northeast of Simferopol heard a burst of gunfire coming from the building and saw two ambulances driving into the area
The region around the military unit was sealed off by what appeared to be pro-Moscow militants.
“Armed attempts to take over (Ukrainian) military units have multiplied in recent days,” Gayduk said.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Retrofitting is only available to the people with plenty of cash . Same as most other benefits .
All I read in the above article is that we need to lower our living standards drastically. I do not trust anyone who tells me we need to eat less meat and then replace it with processed crap.
@An Drew Bearla: Yes, all that came out of the big meeting in Davos is that we must stop eating meat and dairy or the world will starve, and we must share our cars or cycle or walk, all the mullarkey Ryan is spouting and all from a bunch that then sat down to a four course meat laden lunch after flying in on 1500 private jets. The narrative to blame the ordinary consumer and deflect away from their lavish carbon laden lifestyles is ridiculous. Animal farm springs to mind
Will do this, will improve that. All talk and no action. The government has no motivation to implement any of these policies. Still using diesel commuter trains ffs.
@Tomo: We are making progress faster than ever before. I would live to speed it up too, but denial of what’s happening is nor helpful.
Bottom line is what comes out of our chimneys and out of the vehicle tailpipes isn’t good for us and has resulted in worse health for our population and more deaths. Even if you think climate change isn’t real (it is) then only a fool would continue to not tackle us poisoning ourselves.
@Barry Somers: a few more new taxes will sort everything.
That’s the problem, the greens solution is to tax the problem with no alternative. Of course, people are turning against it
@Jim Buckley Barrett: Not true.
@Nicholas McMurry: Yes it is true. Tax tax tax from a fella that knows about as much about climate change as my 8yr old. All the solutions Eamo is pushing for at present are financially or infrastructurally unviable like hydrogen which is inhibitively expensive to make or offshore wind which we have no way due to planning restrictions and lack of infrastructure make, but which are the chief objectives of E3G which ol Eamo is/was a senior associate of, as usual the self serving bull we have gotten used to in Irish politics. Any man that signs off on tax incentives for fuel for private jets and the writing off of carbon footprint for such is not green. No viable alternatives for anything, no reduction in our carbon footprint despite all the waffle, lying about our agricultural footprint throwing our farmers and food producers under a bus because they are a soft target while letting big corporations off the hook by giving them all our carbon credits from our grasslands, hedgegrows and forestry. Ireland is not one of the worst polluters as we are so often told to justify taxing the life out of us we just fall foul of the carbon credit rules that the large industrial countries set up to make themselves look far better than they really are, America, Germany France etc
@Nicholas McMurry: of course its true, if the government and greens in particular wanted to actually do something that wasn’t a punitive tax measure, it would be a shock.
Insulation is the most effective measure, yet they persist in making the retrofitting policy, part of the convoluted seai scheme which requires “trained” certified installers, when homeowners could, depending on their current skills learn to install it just as effectively themselves, by watching a few instructional videos, just like the “trained” installers did…
Subsidising insulation for domestic projects with a zero vat rate, would encourage more people to retrofit insulation to their homes themselves, reducing the amount of heating from all sources, along with particulate and carbon emissions across the board.
Better put the old age pension up. Where will all the food come from? More homes will be needed.
Anyone find those TRVs (main image) a complete waste of time?
I find that after a year the da*n thing is stuck on full heat. (I’ve checked the pin underneath and it seems to move freely) Was this just another way for the plumbers to make a few bucks :) ?
So, if we live in England or Wales and insulate our homes we could live for 836,000 years. I don’t want to live that long.
Why does an article in an Irish publication write about a foreign country without stipulating that it is a study done in that foreign country?
have your say