SIMFEROPOL: Ukraine said one of its soldiers had been killed in Crimea on Tuesday in the first case of bloodshed since Russian troops and pro-Kremlin militia seized the rebel peninsula almost three weeks ago.
Regional defence ministry spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov has said that the soldier 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 did not specify whether Russian soldiers or pro-Kremlin militia who were also patroling the peninsula stormed the base. The spokeman said another soldier was wounded in the attack.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a treaty claiming the Black Sea region of Crimea as Russian territory, setting of a firestorm of condemnation from Kiev and the West.
Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told an emergency government session in Kiev that his country's conflict with Russia was entering a "military stage".
"The conflict is shifting from a political to a military stage," Yatsenyuk told a nationally televised meeting that was attended by acting president Oleksandr Turchuynov.
"Russian soldiers have started shooting at Ukrainian military servicemen, and that is a war crime." Ukraine's navy chief Sergiy Gayduk said that an officer had been shot and injured in the leg "during an attack against a base in Simferopol". "Armed attempts to take over (Ukrainian) military units have multiplied in recent days," Gayduk said at the government meeting.
He did not specify where or when the incident happened or who was behind the attack.
However a 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 at the government meeting.
