Ukraine’s interim leaders yesterday established a new National Guard and appealed to the US and Britain for assistance against what they called Russian aggression in Crimea under a post-Cold War treaty.
Blaming their ousted predecessors for the weakness of their own armed forces, acting ministers told parliament that Ukraine had as few as 6,000 combat-ready infantry and that the air force was outnumbered nearly 100 to 1 by Moscow’s superpower forces.
There was no let-up in the war of words, with the pro-Russian regional parliament in Crimea approving a declaration of independence that will take effect if people on the Crimean Peninsula vote to unite with Russia in a referendum on Sunday.
Photo: Reuters
The national parliament in Kiev said it would dissolve the Crimean assembly if it did not cancel the plebiscite.
Former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych yesterday insisted from his refuge in Russia that he was still Ukraine’s legitimate president and commander-in-chief, saying he would return to Kiev and appealing to the armed forces to defy any “criminal orders” handed down by his foes.
In a defiant statement, Yanukovych attacked what he called the “band of ultranationalists and neo-fascists” that have replaced his government, and criticized their Western backers.
Photo: Reuters
“I want to ask the patrons of these dark forces in the West: Have you gone blind? Have you forgotten what fascism is?” Yanukovych told reporters in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
Acting Ukrainian President Oleksander Turchinov said the National Security and Defense Council had decided to raise a new National Guard among veterans, although he warned against provoking Russian action, saying that would play into Moscow’s hands.
The National Guard, based on existing Ministry of the Interior forces, would “defend citizens from criminals and from internal or external aggression,” he said.
Meanwhile, acting Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said that a 1994 treaty under which Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet nuclear weapons obliged Russia to remove troops from Crimea and also obliged Western powers to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty.
He said a failure to protect Ukraine would undermine efforts to persuade Iran or North Korea to forswear nuclear weapons as Kiev did 20 years ago.
The parliament passed a resolution calling on the US and Britain, co-signatories with Russia of that treaty to “fulfill their obligations ... and take all possible diplomatic, political, economic and military measures urgently to end the aggression and preserve the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine.”
NATO AWACs surveillance planes were beginning flights over Poland and Romania yesterday to monitor events in Ukraine and the US Navy was preparing for exercises in the Black Sea with NATO allies Bulgaria and Romania over the next few days.
The military exercises had been planned before the Ukrainian crisis began.
In other developments, the main airport in Crimea yesterday canceled incoming flights from Kiev, but allowed several planes from Moscow to land.
A Ukrainian airline plane was turned back on its way from Kiev to Simferopol, the region’s main city, and returned to the capital.
Airport passenger information also showed an incoming flight from Istanbul, Turkey, had been canceled.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS