No Hard Feelings, Right?

A few hundred Russian troops in league with a group of self-styled local "self defence militia" smashed the main gate to enter the Ukrainian navy's Black Sea Fleet headquarters in the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea. Crimea, after all, is now part of Russia. The Ukrainian military has no further role there. All those military posts that have been surrounded and their personnel hemmed in for the past two weeks, refusing to surrender their posts will now have to leave.

The Ukrainian navy based in Sevastopol is no more; under siege, resisting in their duty to their homeland, they have now been given instructions by Kyiv to withdraw. Officers of Russia's Black Sea Fleet entered the base while Ukrainian military personnel exited carrying personal possessions. Soldiers carrying machine guns, wearing the green camouflage minus identifying signia surrounded the base, though a large military truck bore the black-and-white license plate of the Russian forces.

Pro-Russian supporters sit on top of a Ukrainian APC after breaking into the territory of the naval headquarters in Sevastopol, Crimea. Photo: Reuters

A Russian flag soon made its appearance on the main flagpole; no shooting, no injuries. Capitulation forced by unavoidable circumstances. Bitter regrets and withdrawal. Asked why they hadn't fired in defiance, in self-protection: "We had no order and no weapons." Said another: "We met them empty-handed." Rear-Admiral Sergei Haiduk was detained after the storming of the fleet headquarters with the Russian state ITAR-Tass new agency reporting that Crimean prosecutors were questioning him.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned his country "will always defend its interests using political, diplomatic and legal means", a statement of such bald, banal absurdity that it's worth at least a painful grimace of bemusement. There are no plans to incorporate the Ukrainian eastern cities; Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv into Russia, at least at the present, the very present time, but who knows what will happen in a day or two? Matters move very swiftly now in Ukraine.

Unarmed members of Pro-Russian self-defense forces, left, force themselves through a chain of Ukrainian military men at the Ukrainian Navy headquarters in Sevastopol, Crimea.

The Acting government in Ukraine has stated it was ordering all 25,000 of its troops and their dependents remaining in Crimea to return to the mainland. There, they will be given new places to live, to call their own. Andriy Parubly, secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council stated that his government plans to seek United Nations support to transform the peninsula into a demilitarized zone. Hope springs eternal.

Ukraine plans to leave the Moscow-led Commonwealth of Independent States. The Kremlin will most certainly shrug indifferently at that little piece of news, at least for the present. If Ukraine finds itself traumatized by the speedy events of the past few weeks, it shares that emotional turmoil with nations along Russia's borders, reacting with defensive fear at the thought of a Kremlin with a mind to further expand its hegemonic territory.

Novoazovsk has become a border town on the frontier between Russia and the Ukraine. It is where Ukrainian soldiers have mounted a 30-metre-high cellphone tower to enable them to determine whether any Russian tank or infantry units might be on their way. A two-metre deep anti-tank trench has been dug, said to be about 160 kilometres long. Above the trench is a sign declaring in Russian: "This is the border of Ukraine."

Ethnic-Russian Ukrainians set up a roadblock up the road from Novoazovsk to Donestk. There to prevent Ukrainian troops and armour from reaching the border area. They've set up a Russian flag at their roadblock. Should Russian troops come along in the opposite direction, they will pass without delay.