Ukraine vows not to fight Russia over Crimea
Kiev: Ukraine’s acting President said he would not wage war over Crimea as the ex-Soviet state’s premier prepared on Wednesday to seek US President Barack Obama’s help against Russia’s expansionist threat. The first meeting between Obama and Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk comes with Europe’s largest nation in danger of breaking apart when the predominantly ethnic Russian region holds a Moscow-backed referendum Sunday on switching over to Kremlin rule.
NATO deploys surveillance planes
Berlin: NATO deployed two surveillance planes to fly over Poland and Romania on Wednesday to monitor the crisis in neighbouring Ukraine. The military alliance said two AWACS, or Airborne Warning And Control System, reconnaissance planes took off from bases in Germany and Britain. The surveillance flights won’t leave the airspace of its member nations, thus not crossing either into Ukrainian or Russian airspace, a spokesman for NATO’s operational headquarters said in Belgium.
Senior Tatar figure in Moscow for Russia talks
Moscow: One of the most senior representatives of the Tatar minority in Crimea was expected to hold talks in Moscow on Wednesday, amid concern about the fate of the Muslim community as Russia takes control of the Ukrainian region. Mustafa Dzhemilev is a former head of the assembly for the Turkic Tatar minority in Crimea and is currently a lawmaker in the federal Ukrainian Parliament for the Batkivshchyna party of former premier Yulia Tymoshenko.