Putin Celebrates in Crimea as Clashes Continue East Ukraine

Local Editor

Russian President Vladimir Putin flew in to Crimea on Friday for the first time since it was annexed by Moscow, proclaiming as he marked the Soviet victory in World War II.

Earlier in the day, Putin had presided over the biggest Victory Day parade in Moscow for years.
Watching a military parade in Sevastopol on the Black Sea, he said: "There is a lot of work ahead but we will overcome all difficulties because we are together, which means we have become stronger."

"The iron will of the Soviet people, their fearlessness and stamina saved Europe from slavery," Putin said in a speech to the military and war veterans gathered on Red Square.

The United States said the trip to Crimea was provocative. For its part, the European Union said Putin should not have used the World War Two commemoration to showcase the annexation.
Similarly, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the visit "inappropriate".

For his part, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, in office since an uprising overthrew the Kremlin-backed elected president in Kiev in February, rejected the Russian view that his power is the result of coup backed by neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists.
"Sixty-nine years ago, we, together with Russia, fought against fascism and won," he said after a Victory Day church service in the capital. Now, he added, "history is repeating itself but in a different form". Where Russia and Ukraine stood shoulder to shoulder in the past against Germany, now Germany was "standing shoulder to shoulder with us", along with the United States and Britain.

In east Ukraine, where pro-Moscow rebels plan a referendum on Sunday to follow Crimea in breaking from Kiev, dozens were killed and wounded in chaotic fighting in the center of the port of Mariupol.
Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said 20 "terrorists" and one police officer were killed as 60 insurgent gunmen tried to capture the police station and were rebuffed.
Washington has voiced support for the bloody crackdown on anti-coup activists in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has condemned the actions of Ukrainian military in using force against pro-federalization activists and civilians in the city of Mariupol.
"I strongly condemn the violence, and call upon all parties to exercise maximum restraint and to take immediate steps to de-escalate a situation which has caused the loss of many lives, and created a climate of fear and anxiety," said Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan.

At the same time, US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki seemingly condemned the violence too, which she immediately blamed on "pro-Russia separatists."
"Well, we condemn the outbreak of violence caused by pro-Russia separatists this morning in Mariupol, which has resulted in multiple deaths," she said.
Ukrainian forces later withdrew from the town, a major industrial center with a population of about half a million.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after a telephone call with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday that Moscow hoped Washington would work with Kiev to end Ukraine's military operation against the separatists.

The ethnic Russian majority among Crimea's two million population broadly welcomed the Russian takeover that came in the wake of the Kiev uprising. Given by Soviet leaders to Ukraine only in the 1950s, many Russians long saw it as rightfully theirs. Western powers have imposed sanctions against Russia in response, but reactions have been muted.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team