The New York Times reports: The airport in the regional capital of Simferopol was closed on Tuesday to all flights except those heading to and from Moscow, in the boldest display yet of Russia’s tightening control over Crimea.

The announcement that air links had been severed between Crimea and the Ukrainian capital of Kiev raised the possibility that the peninsula might be closed off indefinitely from the rest of Ukraine, and it immediately prompted a sellout of tickets for connecting flights on Aeroflot, the Russian national carrier.

Even as Russia consolidated its grip on the embattled peninsula, diplomatic efforts between the Obama administration and the Kremlin appeared stalled, with the two sides continuing to engage in menacing military exercises and trade threats of economic retaliation. [Continue reading…]

The Kyiv Post reports: After an evening prayer in the town of Bakhchisaray in southern Crimea, a handful of Crimean Tatars stand guard near the mosque where they pray to protect it and their people from a possible attack by pro-Russian militarized groups and ordinary criminals who they say increasingly roam the peninsula since the invasion of Russian troops in late February.

In recent days, unknown persons have been going around Crimean Tatar villages and marking their homes with white crosses, sowing panic among many women and outraging the men. The police here, who have been disoriented following the abrupt – and many claim illegal – change of power in Crimea last month, have neglected their duties.

This has left the Crimean Tatars themselves to move to ensure the safely of their homes and villages.

“Every evening men gather and patrol the streets to prevent provocations,” said Seitumer Seitumirov, 28, an economist by education. [Continue reading…]

The Los Angeles Times reports: As Ukrainian officials prepared to campaign in the United States this week for more international support ahead of a Russian-backed referendum on secession in Crimea, Moscow complained Monday of “lawlessness” in eastern Ukraine, raising fear it might widen its military intervention to include that region.

The Kremlin said in a statement that Ukrainian right-wing extremists, taking advantage of the “complete neglect” of the new Western-oriented government in Kiev, were threatening order in eastern Ukraine. In addition, the statement said, Russian citizens trying to cross the border into Ukraine were being turned back by Ukrainian border agents.

The allegations added to the increasingly heated rhetoric flying between Kiev and Moscow, and sparked concern that the Kremlin was setting up a pretext for a new military incursion. President Vladimir Putin has justified aggressive moves by pro-Russian forces in Crimea, in southern Ukraine, on the grounds of needing to protect ethnic Russians on the strategically valuable peninsula, though no independent group has identified any instances of danger or abuse. [Continue reading…]

Reuters adds: Unidentified gunmen have seized two Ukrainian journalists in Crimea, Reporters Without Borders said on Monday, warning that those behind attacks on the media were trying to turn the region into a “black hole for news”.

“The forces controlling the Crimea are responsible for the fate of these journalists,” Christophe Deloire, secretary general for the press freedom watchdog, said in a statement.

Time reports: Crimea, which voted to put the question of secession from Ukraine to a referendum, has released a ballot with severely limited choices, and all of the options come with strings attached

“No” is not an option in the upcoming referendum in Crimea on whether to split from Ukraine.

The Crimean parliament — which voted to put the question to a referendum Thursday, despite opposition from the new Ukrainian government and from the United States — has released the ballot for the March 16 on its website. The referendum gives voters in the autonomous region the option to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, or to return to policies that give Crimea even greater autonomy from Kiev — opening the door to join Russia down the line, the regional English-language news source KyivPost reports. But the status quo is not an option. [Continue reading…]

The Observer reports: The two Ural trucks, full of troops, arrived under cover of darkness and a pea-souper fog at the Ukrainian missile defence base outside Sevastopol late on Friday night, and rammed their way through the gates. Once inside, the Russian troops fanned out and screamed that they would shoot to kill if the Ukrainians did not surrender.

After some brief tussles the situation was calmed and the Russians eventually left, their trucks racing out of the base.

Outside, members of a local “self-defence” volunteer unit harassed journalists, and the deputy commander of the base briefly appeared to give comments. “We ignored their orders and eventually they left,” he said, as one of the masked volunteers shone a light in his face and tried to stop him speaking. “I guess they will be back soon.”

There are several thousand Ukrainian military personnel on more than a dozen bases across the Crimea, creating what could be the most explosive problem facing the Russians in their operation to annex the peninsula.

Uncertain of their status since the Crimean parliament announced that it wants the territory to join with Russia, the soldiers feel threatened by Moscow and abandoned by Kiev. Having sworn an oath to Ukraine, they could now, within a week, find themselves in one country and their homes and families in another. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Lashed by the wind as it whips across Crimea’s biggest lake, a third of Ukraine’s warships have nowhere to go and nothing to do but rise and fall on its choppy waves.

Russian forces have blocked their only exit point to the Black Sea by sinking two ageing vessels there, and Russia’s well-armed Moskva missile cruiser can be seen treading water a short distance off the coast, with menace.

With six more of Ukraine’s two dozen warships similarly blockaded and Russian forces building up their strength ahead of a referendum that seems likely to result in Crimea becoming part of Russia, Ukraine is facing the humiliating loss of its navy.

Pacing up and down a spartan room in an outbuilding overlooking a row of warships, support vessels, and tugboats, Brigade Commander Vitaly Zvyagintsev says he can’t believe the Russian Black Sea Fleet – with whom the Ukrainian navy regularly held exercises in the past – has turned hostile.

“I have two theories,” he told Reuters in an interview. “The first is that they want to prevent Ukrainian ships leaving their base and blockading them as they are us now. The second is that they want to make sure that if and when Crimea joins Russia, Ukraine can’t get its ships back.”

“Georgia doesn’t have a fleet any more and the same thing could now happen with Ukraine,” he said gloomily, referring to the 2008 Russia-Georgia war which ended with Russian forces taking control of a fifth of Georgia’s territory.

The Ukrainian navy has around 25 warships including one submarine, 15 support vessels of different categories and around 15,000 men under arms, 10,000 of whom are based on the Crimean Peninsula. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: One of the biggest mysteries hanging over the protest mayhem that drove Ukraine’s president from power: Who was behind the snipers who sowed death and terror in Kiev?

That riddle has become the latest flashpoint of feuding over Ukraine — with the nation’s fledgling government and the Kremlin giving starkly different interpretations of events that could either undermine or bolster the legitimacy of the new rulers.

Ukrainian authorities are investigating the Feb. 18-20 bloodbath, and they have shifted their focus from ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s government to Vladimir Putin’s Russia — pursuing the theory that the Kremlin was intent on sowing mayhem as a pretext for military incursion. Russia suggests that the snipers were organized by opposition leaders trying to whip up local and international outrage against the government.

The government’s new health minister — a doctor who helped oversee medical treatment for casualties during the protests — told The Associated Press that the similarity of bullet wounds suffered by opposition victims and police indicates the shooters were trying to stoke tensions on both sides and spark even greater violence, with the goal of toppling Yanukovych.

“I think it wasn’t just a part of the old regime that (plotted the provocation), but it was also the work of Russian special forces who served and maintained the ideology of the (old) regime,” Health Minister Oleh Musiy said.

Putin has pushed the idea that the sniper shootings were ordered by opposition leaders, while Kremlin officials have pointed to a recording of a leaked phone call between Estonia’s foreign minister and the European Union’s foreign policy chief as evidence to back up that version.

This much is known: Snipers firing powerful rifles from rooftops and windows shot scores of people in the heart of Kiev. Some victims were opposition protesters, but many were civilian bystanders clearly not involved in the clashes. Among the dead were medics, as well as police officers. A majority of the more than 100 people who died in the violence were shot by snipers; hundreds were also injured by the gunfire and other street fighting. [Continue reading…]

The Los Angeles Times reports: An anti-submarine ship may have been the first casualty of the Russian incursion into Crimea, but it was hardly an act of violence, much less war: the Russian navy sank one of its own, junked vessels to create an obstacle, a Ukrainian official said on Wednesday.

Ukraine Defence Ministry spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Alexei Mazepa said Russian sailors pulled the anti-submarine vessel Ochakov out of a naval junkyard and sank it in the straits that connect the Black Sea with a body of water known as Donuzlav lake. He said the act was intended to prevent Ukrainian navy ships from leaving a nearby base and going to sea.

The sinking was the latest in a series of moves by Russian naval forces in the area that were jangling the nerves of Ukrainian officers. [Continue reading…]

AFP reports: Alim Aliyev, the Crimean Tatars’ representative in Lviv [a Ukrainian city close to the Polish border where Tartar families are seeking refuge], said he was optimistic about the region’s future. Tatar men were sending their families away so they could dutifully defend their land, he said.

“As long as Tatars are in Crimea, Crimea will remain part of Ukraine,” he said.

Tatars will launch a guerrilla war against the Russian forces if they do not pack up and leave the region, Aliyev warned.

“We will dance the haytarma and the hopak (traditional Tatar and Ukrainian folk dances) on the ruins of Putin’s post-imperialist ambitions,” he said.