*eyebrowraise*

[tangaroa]

"Armed men seized the regional government headquarters and parliament on Ukraine's Crimea peninsula on Thursday and raised the Russian flag."

Edit Feb 28: Ukraine has accused Russia of carrying out an armed invasion by sending naval forces to occupy Sevastopol airport in the Crimea region... Sevastopol is by name an international airport, but civilian flights stopped some years ago, and it is owned by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence. So it would be of no real consequence that soldiers are guarding a military base were it not for the fact no-one knows whose orders they are obeying.... The BBC has seen eight trucks with the black plates of the Russian army moving towards Simferopol.

---

Edit Feb 28 #2

jaduncan at MeFi has a theory:

An act is being pushed in the Duma to allow foreign territories to join the Russian Federation after a referendum. There's a referendum on Crimean status scheduled for May 25 by the Crimean government supported by the Kremlin (as can be seen in the RT coverage).

From BBC: "Ethnic Ukrainians made up 24% of the population in Crimea according to the 2001 census, compared with 58% Russians and 12% Tatars." Also, Russia's navy is hosted there at Sevastapol so Russia would not have needed to bring any personnel or military equipment in. It would already have been there.

The revolt against Yanukovich was funded by USAID and Pierre Omidyar. "Over 200 Peace Corps Ukraine volunteers were working in the areas of education and youth and community development."

According to two sources, Ukraine's new Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatseniuk, is accusing the Yanukovich administration of embezzling about $70 billion. Switzerland and Austria are investigating Yanukovich for money laundering.