Simferopol: Ukraine accused Russia on Saturday of sending thousands of extra troops into Crimea as the Kremlin vowed to help restore calm on the flashpoint peninsula and Washington warned of "costs" to Moscow should it use force.
Defence Minister Igor Tenyukh told the Ukrainian government's first cabinet session that Russia's armed forces had sent 30 armoured personnel carriers and 6,000 additional troops into Crimea in a bid to help local pro-Kremlin militia gain broader independence from the new pro-EU leaders in Kiev.
Tenyukh accused Russia of starting to send in these reinforcements on Friday "without warning or Ukraine's permission."
The defence chief spoke as dozens of pro-Russian armed men in full combat gear patrolled outside the seat of power in Crimea's capital Simferopol. Similar gunmen had seized the city's parliament and government buildings on Thursday and taken control of its airport and a nearby military base on Friday.
Ukraine's border guard service also reported that about 300 armed men dressed in "full battle fatigues" were trying to seize its main headquarters in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol under orders from Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.
The rugged peninsula jutting into the Black Sea -- host to a Kremlin fleet and with an ethnic Russian majority -- has now been effectively cut off from the mainland.
The international airport in Simferopol has not functioned since late Friday and militia armed with Kalashnikovs have established a checkpoint at the head of Crimea's main highway.
The volatile region has been thrust to the fore of a Cold War-style confrontation between the West and Russia over Ukraine -- a faceoff that has also exposed the ancient cultural rifts between the pro-European west and Russian-speaking south and east of this country of 46 million.
Nowhere has that divide been more apparent than in Crimea -- an autonomous region of nearly two million people that has housed Kremlin navies for nearly 250 years and which a Soviet leader gifted to Ukraine when it was still a part of the USSR in 1954.
The region's lawmakers deposed the Kiev-appointed prime minister on Thursday and called for a regional referendum -- moved forward on Saturday to March 30 -- that would proclaim even greater independence for Crimea.
Crimea's newly-chosen premier Sergiy Aksyonov followed that up on Saturday by calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to help restore "peace and calm" amid his standoff with Kiev's new Western-backed authorities.
Aksyonov added that all of Crimea's security forces -- including the region's border guards and police -- would now be subordinate to him.
Russia's lower house of parliament ratcheted up tensions by asking Putin to "use all available possibilities to protect the population of Crimea."
A source in the Kremlin administration told Moscow's three main news agencies that "Russia will not leave this request (from Aksyonov) without attention."
The ex-Soviet country's bloodiest crisis since its 1991 independence erupted in November when ousted president Viktor Yanukovych -- who has since fled to Russia -- rejected an historic deal that would have opened Ukraine's door to eventual EU membership in favour of tighter ties with old master Moscow.
The move triggered mass anti-Yanukovych protests and a week of carnage in Kiev claimed nearly 100 lives last week.
