Moscow wins overwhelming Crimea vote, West readies sanctions

By Mike Collett-White and Alastair Macdonald

SIMFEROPOL/KIEV (Reuters) - Crimea's Moscow-backed leaders declared a 96-percent vote in favour of quitting Ukraine and annexation by Russia in a referendum Western powers said was illegal and will bring immediate sanctions.

As state media in Russia carried a startling reminder of its

power to turn the United States to "radioactive ash", President Barack Obama spoke to Vladimir Putin, telling the Russian president that he and his European allies were ready to impose "additional costs" on Moscow for violating Ukraine's territory.

The Kremlin and the White House issued statements saying Obama and Putin saw diplomatic options to resolve what is the gravest crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War.

But Obama said Russian forces must first end "incursions" into its ex-Soviet neighbour while Putin renewed his accusation that the new leadership in Kiev, brought to power by an uprising last month against his elected Ukrainian ally, were failing to protect Russian-speakers from violent Ukrainian nationalists.

Moscow defended a military takeover of the majority ethnic Russian Crimea by citing a right to protect "peaceful citizens". Ukraine's interim government has mobilised troops to defend against an invasion of its eastern mainland, where pro-Russian protesters have been involved in deadly clashes in recent days.

With three-quarters of Sunday's votes counted in Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula that is home to 2 million people, 95.7 percent had supported annexation by Russia, chief electoral official Mikhail Malyshev, was quoted as saying by local media.

Turnout was 83 percent, he added - a high figure given that many who opposed the move had said they would boycott the vote.

Russia's lower house of parliament will pass legislation allowing Crimea to join Russia "in the very near future", news agency Interfax cited its deputy speaker as saying on Monday.

"Results of the referendum in Crimea clearly showed that residents of Crimea see their future only as part of Russia," Sergei Neverov was quoted as saying.

Japan on Monday echoed Western nations in rejecting the referendum and called on Russia not to annex Crimea.

U.S. and European officials say military action is unlikely over Crimea, which Soviet rulers handed to Ukraine 60 years ago. But the risk of a wider Russian incursion, as Putin probes Western weakness and tries to restore Moscow's influence over its old Soviet empire, leaves NATO calculating how to help Kiev without triggering what some Ukrainians call "World War Three".

"We hope all parties can calmly maintain restraint to prevent the situation from further escalating and worsening. Political resolution and dialogue is the only way out," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Li Baodong told reporters on Monday, ahead of a visit to Europe by President Xi Jinping later this month.

China avoided making a comment on the Crimea referendum and has said it does not back sanctions on Moscow - a close diplomatic ally and key economic partner.

'RADIOACTIVE ASH'

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Two women hold flags reading "Crimea is with Russia" as people wait for the announcement o …

Highlighting the stakes, journalist Dmitry Kiselyov, who is close to the Kremlin, stood before an image of a mushroom cloud on his weekly TV show to issue a stark warning. He said: "Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash."

On Lenin Square in the centre of the Crimean capital Simferopol, a band struck up even before polls closed as the crowd waved Russian flags. Regional premier Sergei Aksyonov, a businessman nicknamed "Goblin" who took power when Russian forces moved in two weeks ago, thanked Moscow for its support.

The regional assembly is expected to rubber-stamp a plan to transfer allegiance to Russia on Monday before Aksyonov travels to Moscow, although the timing of any final annexation is in doubt. Putin may choose to hold off a formal move as diplomatic bargaining continues over economic and diplomatic sanctions that many EU states fear could hurt them as much as they do Russia.

"Cherish Putin, he is a great, great president!" said Olga Pelikova, 52, as fireworks lit up the night sky and fellow Crimeans said they hoped to share in Russia's oil-fuelled wealth after two decades of instability and corruption in Ukraine.

But many ethnic Tatars, Muslims who make up 12 percent of Crimea's population, boycotted the vote, fearful of a revival of the persecution they suffered for centuries under Moscow's rule.

"This is my land. This is the land of my ancestors. Who asked me if I want it or not?" said Shevkaye Assanova, a Tatar in her 40s. "For the rest of my life I will be cursing those who brought these people here. I don't recognise this at all."

A pressing concern for the governments in Kiev and Moscow is the transfer of control of Ukrainian military bases. Many of the bases are surrounded and under control by Russian forces, even though Moscow formally denies it has troops in the territory beyond facilities it leases for its important Black Sea Fleet.

On Sunday, the Ukrainian and Russian militaries agreed on a truce in Crimea until March 21, Ukraine's government said.

Crimean leaders have said Ukrainian troops can serve Russia or have safe passage out of the region. But some leaders in Kiev have said they expect their forces to defend their positions.

SANCTIONS NOW

The White House said in a statement on the call with Putin that Obama "emphasised that Russia's actions were in violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity and that, in coordination with our European partners, we are prepared to impose additional costs on Russia for its actions".

The European Union will raise the stakes on Monday by slapping sanctions on officials. EU diplomats were haggling over a list of people in Crimea and Russia who will be hit with travel bans and asset freezes for actions which "threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine".

An initial list of 120 to 130 names will be whittled down to "tens or scores" before EU foreign ministers take the final decision in Brussels on Monday, diplomats said. Ministers are also expected to cancel an EU-Russia summit scheduled for June in Sochi, where Putin last month hosted the Winter Olympics.

The EU is working to revive a trade and aid deal with Ukraine which ousted president Viktor Yanukovich rejected in November in favour of cash from Moscow, triggering protests that led to bloodshed in Kiev and his flight to Russia last month.

The risk of Europe becoming locked in a damaging spiral of economic retaliation with Moscow, from which it buys much of its energy, depended on Russia, Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said ahead of the EU meeting in Brussels: "I would do anything possible to avoid sanctions, because I believe everybody will suffer if we get into sanctions," he said.

The U.S. administration is also preparing to identify Russians to punish with visa bans and asset freezes that Obama authorised this month. It, too, is likely to act on Monday.

INVASION RISK

The Kremlin statement again highlighted concerns, largely dismissed by Kiev and its Western allies, that Russian-speakers who make up a sizeable minority of Ukraine's 46 million people were facing violence and intimidation since Yanukovich fell.

"Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin drew attention to the inability and unwillingness of the present authorities in Kiev to curb rampant violence by ultra-nationalist and radical groups that destabilise the situation and terrorise civilians, including the Russian-speaking population," it said.

Putin suggested European security monitors should be sent to all parts of Ukraine because of the violence, it said.

There were pro-Russian rallies in several Ukrainian cities on Sunday, including one in Kharkiv where protesters burned books at a Ukrainian cultural centre where two pro-Russian activists were shot dead on Friday in a fight with members of Right Sector, a nationalist group that emerged during battles with riot police amidst the pro-European protests in Kiev.

In Donetsk, heart of the industrial east where a Ukrainian nationalist was killed in a clash last week, some welcomed the outcome in Crimea and hoped they too might vote to join Russia.

"This is a total victory. A 100 percent win," said one man who gave his name as Roman. "We here in Donetsk support Crimea. We don't support the Kiev authorities that are ruling today."

In Kiev and the Ukrainian-speaking west of the country the mood was sombre. "This isn't a referendum - it's a show for the Russians to legitimise taking over," said Kyrylo Sergeev in the capital. Another man in Kiev, Vasyl Olinyk, said: "This could be war, not between Ukraine and Russia but maybe World War Three."

As Ukrainian television channels played patriotic songs over images of tanks rolling in to reinforce the eastern border, where the president says Russia has massed troops ready to invade, the head of the national security council said a Moscow plot, codenamed "Russian Spring", to foment violence and justify invasion was failing to garner significant support.

"The plan has failed," Andriy Paruby said. "Despite all the Kremlin's technical powers, we have managed to keep control."

The Interior Ministry, possibly responding to reported threats by nationalist militants to attack pipelines carrying Russian gas exports to the EU across Ukraine, said its forces had taken control of the country's vital pipeline network.

A Western official briefed on security discussions suggested NATO governments were taking the risk of invasion seriously.

"Putin would be mad to invade Ukraine," he said, forecasting a quick victory over Ukraine's armed forces being followed by a long insurgency and civil war. "He is much better playing it long, fomenting rebellion among the ethnic Russians and waiting until the very weak Ukrainian government collapses.

"However ... Putin may decide to go for the jugular ... He has the means and he may decide to exploit events as they unfold to achieve his long-term strategic end: re-establishment of Russian power in its 'near abroad'."

As Russia closes in, Ukrainians fearful, defiant

Ukrainian servicemen run at a checkpoint near the village of Strelkovo in Kherson region adjacent to Crimea, March 16, 2014. CREDIT: REUTERS/VALENTYN OGIRENKO

By Alastair Macdonald

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian museum caretaker Valentin knows what it's like when Moscow sends in troops to occupy a reluctant ally - he was there, in Red Army uniform, when Soviet tanks rolled in to crush the Prague Spring in 1968.

"We were the occupiers then. Now we are the ones who are being occupied by the Russians," he said, shaking his head at the irony of history which sees Ukraine, long Moscow's closest partner, losing Crimea after Sunday's Kremlin-backed referendum there and fearing further invasion from the east.

But, surveying Kiev war museum's display of tanks and combat aircraft, he said Russian President Vladimir Putin must beware.

As Ukraine's government called up troops, and television ran images of Ukrainian armor on the move to a soundtrack of anti-Soviet patriotic song, he said the nation of 46 million would be no pushover: "We would resist. There would be a partisan war."

On a blustery weekend on the banks of the Dnieper, the 100-metre (300-foot), sword-wielding statue of "The Motherland", a hammer and sickle on her shield, towered overhead, a reminder of the common cause Ukrainians and Russians died for side-by-side in their millions in World War Two and which Putin says Ukraine is betraying by turning to "fascism" and an embrace by the West.

"Us fascists?" asked Valentin. "They're the fascists," he said, likening the "referendum at gunpoint" he expects to annex Crimea to the invasion he was part of as a young conscript, when Soviet leaders claimed to have been invited by Czechoslovakia to lend "fraternal help" against a purported right-wing plot.

Putin uses the role of far-right groups in last month's overthrow of his elected ally in Kiev to brand Ukraine's new leaders as neo-Nazis and to warn he may send troops to "protect" citizens of the "brotherly state". That offends staff and visitors to the memorial park, whose anger and confusion over a possible war reflects emotions felt by many in the capital.

"It's an insult. We were all together. Now we would like to be on our own - but friends," said Viktor, in his 40s, as he surveyed an exhibit that included the iconic T-34 tank which helped liberate Ukraine in 1944 and a Cuban Crisis-era missile launcher from the 1960s. "They just don't want to let us go."

Pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Ukraine bolstered …Play video

As shown by Crimean voters and eastern protesters seeking autonomy, many Ukrainians feel cut off from a Russian homeland by arbitrary post-Soviet borders. But they are in a minority, albeit concentrated in big, industrial cities near Russia.

RISKS

For old soldier Valentin, Putin's action could "backfire": "He's pushing us into the arms of the EU," he said, echoing a widespread view in Kiev after two uneasy decades trying to balance relations between the Kremlin and the West.

Svetlana, visiting from Poltava in the east, blamed Putin and corrupt Ukrainian leaders for the situation: "It's just terrible that people are talking about war. It's worrying."

A poll last week confirmed that few Ukrainians - about 3 percent - want to go to war to defend their territory, including Crimea. But appeals for support for the armed forces, including troops blockaded in bases in Crimea, and last week's formation of a new National Guard are contributing to a more martial mood.

On Kiev's Independence Square, the Maidan where bloodshed brought down president Viktor Yanukovich, camouflage-clad ultra-nationalists proud of forebears who fought Soviet rule say they are ready to fight again, this time against Putin's Russia.

"We'll push them all the way to Siberia," said one, who gave his name as Mykola. The Ukrainian government has urged militants to keep back, well aware that Russia cites their activities as proof of a threat to ethnic Russians that Kiev cannot control.

And another militiaman, Serhiy, was cautious: "We need a peaceful solution," he said. "If not, it'll be World War Three."

Ukrainians in Fresno react to Crimea votePlay video

Such fears are shared across the square, still barricaded and littered with the debris of three months of demonstrations and makeshift shrines to 100 dead protesters. In the modern, plate-glass shopping mall overlooking Maidan, shopkeepers said business is, slowly, picking up and hope to keep it that way.

Irina Tsarynok, 43, can survey the scene from her travel agency, offering getaways to foreign beaches - though, she says, no longer the local breaks once vital to the Crimean economy.

"There is now real hope that, if not for us, at least for our children, life will be better," she said, scoffing at Moscow for suggesting native Russian-speakers like herself faced danger and discrimination from "Banderites" - far-right admirers of 1940s anti-Soviet partisan Stepan Bandera.

"I'm not a radical like those men on the Maidan," she said, sitting coiffed and businesslike at her desk. "But if wanting a better life makes you a Banderite, then I'm a Banderite."

Having grown up with the empty shops of the Soviet 1980s, she no longer believed promises of prosperity from Moscow and, much as she saw Russians as family she saw them behaving as if they now thought, like Nazi Germans, they were a "master race".

"If you love someone, you hug them like this," she said with a gesture. "You don't grab them round the throat."

EMOTIONS

Across the square, 22-year-old Lenara Smedlyaeva has special cause to fret about Crimea being lost to Russia. Born into the Tatar community there, she now works at the "Crimea" restaurant on the Maidan and fears not just losing ties to family but that Tatars, persecuted under Soviet rule, could face new hardships.

"Putin is a swindler," she said of Sunday's referendum that Tatars are boycotting. "Once again, Crimean Tatars will suffer."

Next door, gnawing national anxiety about the future is keeping Andriy Karachevsky and Galina Osadko busy. They are among psychiatrists working in a closed branch of the McDonald's hamburger chain that was turned into a drop-in counselling centre early in the protests. "How are we going to live now?" is the most typical question patients pose, Karachevsky said.

Strikingly, said Osadko, the trauma of witnessing death and violence during the protests had prompted relatively few to seek psychiatric help. A sense of purpose among protesters gave them strength to withstand emotional shocks. Whatever their worries, even suicide rates seemed to have fallen among the most active.

Instead, she said, calls were coming in from people sitting at home - especially among an older generation, brought up on Soviet certainties and "not used to making their own decisions".

They were also more likely to fall prey to speculation about war: "Those who watch television," she said, "are having more psychological problems than those who fought on the Maidan."

Said her colleague Karachevsky: "The biggest problem Ukrainians are facing is the uncertainty and what comes next."

Across town at the war memorial, Oksana, in her 40s from Kiev, had brought her daughter. "It's important she sees our history," Oksana said, looking over lines of tanks not too different from those now filling TV screens. "We thought we had put war into the museum. I only hope we can keep it that way."

(Editing by Ron Popeski)

Ukrainians fearful, defiant as Russia closes in

Most don't want war, but public appeals for military support contribute to a more martial mood. 'Referendum at gunpoint'

The region's parliament acts on the referendum vote, declares all Ukraine state property is now Crimea's.
What Moscow wants

Seoul (AFP) - South Korea urged North Korea Monday to stop what it called "provocative" and potentially dangerous rocket and missile tests, a day after Pyongyang test-fired 25 projectiles into the sea.

The North Sunday fired the volley of rockets into the Sea of Japan (East Sea), the latest in a series of launches in recent weeks that have sparked criticism from Seoul and Washington.

The show of force is apparently intended to express anger at the South's continuing joint military exercises with its ally the United States.

"The North should stop actions that cause military tension and unnerve its neighbours," Seoul's defence ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok told reporters.

"Provocative action made without any prior notifications... can pose significant danger to sea vessels and aircraft passing by the area," he added.

The South's military was closely watching the North's troop movements, Kim said, citing the possibility of more rocket launches.

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Map showing the test-launch site of 25 North Korean missiles on Sunday (AFP Photo/)

The rockets fired on Sunday were ageing versions of Russian-developed Frog rockets, he said, noting that the North fired more than normally expected.

The US State Department called on Pyongyang to refrain from "provocative actions that aggravate tensions".

Beijing expressed concern earlier this month after the North test-fired a rocket into the flight path of a Chinese airliner.

China's special envoy Wu Dawei arrived in Pyongyang Monday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a brief report which did not specify the trip's purpose.

The annual South Korean-US military drills started in late February and will run until mid-April.

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North Korean rocket launchers pass through Kim Il-Sung square during a military parade marking the 6 …

The North has habitually slammed the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises -- along with other military drills south of the border -- as rehearsals for an invasion.

Seoul and Washington say they are purely defensive.

Last week the North's powerful National Defence Commission threatened to demonstrate its nuclear deterrent in the face of what it called US hostility.

But Seoul's defence ministry said there was no sign of an imminent nuclear test by the North, which staged three atomic tests in 2006, 2009 and last year.

As the North continues to flex its military muscle, its leader Kim Jong-Un guided an air force and air defence exercise, KCNA said Monday.

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The North Korean rocket Unha-3, carrying the satellite Kwangmyongsong-3, lifts off from the launchin …

The servicemen vowed to bring down "robber-like US imperialists" when ordered by Kim as he praised their combat-readiness in the spirit of becoming "human bombs", it said.

Separately, Kim led a meeting of the ruling party's Central Military Commission to discuss combat-readiness and "important matters arising in increasing defence capability", the news agency said.

The meeting also discussed the military's "organisational issue", it said, suggesting possible personnel changes aimed at strengthening the young ruler's grip on the armed forces.

Former members of the commission included Jang Song-Thaek, Kim's once-powerful uncle who was executed last December for charges including treason.

Hyon Yong-Chol, who failed to secure a seat in this month's parliamentary election, was also a member of the commission. But he is believed to have been replaced -- or to be about to be replaced -- after being dismissed as military chief last year.

The latest in Pyongyang's string of tactical missile launches strikes a nerve.

'Pose significant danger'