Ukraine Orders Troops Out of Crimea
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Ukraine ordered its troops to withdraw from Crimea after Russia seized and annexed the peninsula in response to the fall of the Ukrainian government last month.
Oleksandr Turchynov, Ukraine's acting president, told top legislators that both servicemen and their families would now be relocated to the mainland.
"The national security and defence council has reached a decision, under instructions from the defence ministry, to conduct a redeployment of military units stationed in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea," Turchynov said in nationally televised remarks.
"The cabinet of ministers has instructions to resettle the families of soldiers as well as everyone else who today is forced to leave their homes under the pressure and aggression of the Russian army's occupying forces."
Al Jazeera's Nick Spicer, reporting from Crimea's capital Simferopol, said the Russians were moving "quicky to streamline the local adminitstration along Russian lines".
Crimea's pro-Kremlin deputy premier Rustam Temirgaliyev told Russia's RIA Novosti state news agency that "all Ukrainian soldiers have either switched to the Russian side or are leaving the territory of the Crimea".
In the Hague, the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine met for the first time on the sidelines of a two-day nuclear summit to discuss the crisis that has grown into one of the gravest security challenges to Europe since the end of the Cold War.
Sergei Lavrov outlined to his Ukrainian counterpart Andriy Deshchytsia the steps his country needs to take to defuse the crises, AP reported.
The order for troops to leave Crimea came less than a month after Putin won authorisation to use force in response to the February 22 ousting of pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovich by an oppostion seeking a closer alliance with Europe.
