AFP reports: Crimea’s rebel leader urged Russians across Ukraine on Sunday to rise up against Kiev’s rule and welcome Kremlin forces whose unrelenting march against his flash point peninsula has defied Western outrage.

The call came amid growing anxiety among Kiev’s Western-backed rulers that Russian President Vladimir Putin — flushed with expansionist fervor — will imminently order an all-out attack on his ex-Soviet neighbor after being hit by only limited EU and U.S. sanctions for taking the Black Sea cape.

“The aim of Putin is not Crimea but all of Ukraine,” Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council chief Andriy Parubiy told a mass unity rally in Kiev.

“His troops massed at the border are ready to attack at any moment,” he said a day after Russian forces used armored personnel carriers and stun grenades to capture Ukraine’s main Crimean air base. [Continue reading…]