Kiev: Ukraine is preparing to defend itself against Russia but will ask other countries for help if Russia expands its military action, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations said on Sunday. “We are to demonstrate that we have our own capacity to protect ourselves as decided today (on Sunday) in Parliament and we are preparing to defend ourselves,” Ambassador Yuriy Sergeyev said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “If aggravation is going in that way, when the Russian troops are enlarging their quantity with every coming hour, naturally we will ask for military support and other kind of support.”
Mr Sergeyev asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull back in observance of the Orthodox Church’s holy season of Lent, which starts on Monday. “If he demonstrates his Christianity, rather than preparing to kill us, he should pray for us,” Mr Sergeyev said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine withdrew its coast guard vessels from two ports in Crimea and moved them to other Black Sea bases on Sunday, a sign that Russian forces were completing their seizure of the isolated Black Sea peninsula. In a statement, the border guards said vessels from the Crimean ports of Kerch and Sevastopol had been moved to Odessa and Mariupol. The situation on Ukraine’s frontiers was stable apart from in Crimea, the statement said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared he has the right to invade Ukraine to protect Russian citizens. Russian forces have seized Crimea, where they have a naval base at Sevastopol, but have not entered other parts of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, during a 90-minute phone talk with the Russian President, US President Barack Obama said that Russia’s dispatch of troops to Ukraine flouted international law and warned he was courting political isolation if the incursion continues.
He also consulted with France and Canada’s leaders to discuss the crisis in Ukraine, vowing to work together on an aid package to the hard-hit country, the White House said. In Obama’s separate phone calls with French President Francois Hollande and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, “the leaders agreed that Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected” a White House statement said.
