WASHINGTON — The Cold War-style clash over Crimea turned searing hot Tuesday when a Ukrainian officer was shot and killed and another was wounded in a base near the capital of Simferopol.
The shooting Tuesday came just hours after a defiant Russian President Vladimir Putin said “not a single shot” had been fired in the crisis, as he reclaimed Crimea as part of Russia.
Responding to the incident, the details of which remain murky, Ukraine told its soldiers in Crimea to use their weapons to protect themselves — after previously instructing them to avoid using firearms to prevent attack.
During an emergency meeting of Ukraine’s defense ministry, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk lamented that the conflict had moved from a “political one to a military one” and called the shooting incident “a war crime without any expiry under a statute of limitations.”
Ukrainian officials said unidentified and fully equipped gunmen with their faces concealed stormed the base and fired. They also revealed that a third service member was wounded after being beaten with iron bars.
The armed men who stormed the base arrived in two unmarked vehicles and began firing automatic weapons, a witness told the BBC. But Crimean officials told the network that both Ukrainian and pro-Russia troops came under fire from a single location, and that a member of the pro-Russia forces got killed.
Russian-speaking troops have surrounded multiple Ukrainian bases, where soldiers have been trapped for weeks, leading to tense confrontations but no apparent deaths until now.
In an earlier speech to the Russian parliament, Putin called Crimea an “inseparable part of Russia” and signed a treaty absorbing the territory — while delivering a diatribe-filled attack against the West.
“They cheated us again and again, made decisions behind our back, presenting us with completed facts,” Putin charged about encirclement by NATO.
He then vented about a “fifth column” of spies inside Russia, and compared the vote in Crimea with the US Revolutionary War and the reunification of Germany.
The 47-minute address was greeted by thunderous applause and chants of “Russia! Russia!”
Vice President Joe Biden, visiting Poland to shore up former Soviet republics fearful of further encroachment, slammed “skewed” history references and a Russian “land grab,” and indicated more sanctions were on the way.