By Adrian Croft and Aleksandar Vasovic

BRUSSELS/FEDOSIYA, Ukraine (Reuters) - NATO's top military commander said on Sunday Russia had built up a "very sizeable" force on its border with Ukraine and Moscow may have a region in another ex-Soviet republic, Moldova, in its sights after annexing Crimea.

Russia was acting more like an adversary than a partner, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove said, and the 28-nation alliance should rethink the positioning and readiness of its forces in eastern Europe.

Russian troops, using armored vehicles, automatic weapons and stun grenades, seized some of the last military facilities under Ukrainian control on Saturday in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russian President Vladimir Putin formally annexed the day before.

Breedlove was one of several Western officials and politicians to warn on Sunday that Russia may not stop there in a crisis that has taken East-West relations lurching back towards the Cold War since pro-Western protests in Ukraine ousted Moscow-allied President Viktor Yanukovich last month.

"The (Russian) force that is at the Ukrainian border now to the east is very, very sizeable and very, very ready," the NATO commander told an event held by the German Marshall Fund think-tank.

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Armed men, believed to be Russian servicemen, stand guard in front of a Ukrainian marine base in the …

U.S. President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken said the build-up might just be aimed at intimidating Ukraine's new pro-Western leaders but that Russia could invade the country's mainly Russian-speaking east. "It's possible that they are preparing to move in," he told CNN.

Russia said it was complying with international agreements and had no plans to invade. It has called the soldiers who took over Ukrainian bases in Crimea "self defense forces".

The United States and the European Union have targeted some of Putin's closest political and business allies with personal sanctions and have threatened broader economic sanctions if Putin's forces encroach on other eastern or southern parts of Ukraine with big Russian-speaking populations.

Ukrainian marine standards were still flying on Sunday alongside the Russian flag at the Crimean base of Ukraine's top military unit in Fedosiya, but the Ukrainian troops were getting ready to leave after the Russian military takeover.

"Our only issue is that we want to leave this place with honor, weapons and vehicles," one Ukrainian soldier said.

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Ukrainian marines load trucks at a Ukrainian marine base in the Crimean port city of Feodosia March …

Blinken said Washington was considering all requests for military assistance from the government in Kiev, but that it would be unlikely to prevent an invasion of Ukraine, which is not part of NATO. Breedlove said the military alliance needed to think about its eastern members, particularly the former Soviet Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

"We need to think about our allies, the positioning of our forces in the alliance and the readiness of those forces ... such that we can be there to defend against it if required, especially in the Baltics and other places," Breedlove said.

"VERY WORRISOME"

Breedlove said NATO was very concerned about the threat to Transdniestria, which declared independence from Moldova in 1990 but has not been recognized by any United Nations member state. About 30 percent of its half million population is ethnic Russian, which is the mother tongue of an overall majority.

Russia has 440 peacekeepers in Transdniestria plus other soldiers guarding Soviet-era arms stocks.

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Ukrainian marines load trucks at a Ukrainian marine base in the Crimean port city of Feodosia March …

Russia launched a new military exercise, involving 8,500 artillery men, near Ukraine's eastern border 10 days ago.

"There is absolutely sufficient (Russian) force postured on the eastern border of Ukraine to run to Transdniestria if the decision was made to do that, and that is very worrisome," Breedlove said.

The speaker of Transdniestria's parliament has urged Russia to incorporate the region, which lies to the west of Ukraine. The new leaders in Kiev have said Moscow could seek to link up pro-Russian regions in Moldova and Georgia to Ukraine's east in a destabilizing southern corridor with Crimea in the middle.

Russia's Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov was quoted by the state's Itar-Tass news agency as saying Russia was complying with international agreements limiting the number of troops near its border with Ukraine.

Moscow's ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov,

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Ukrainian marines carry weaponry at a Ukrainian marine base in the Crimean port city of Feodosia Mar …

said Russia did not have "expansionist views". Asked to give a commitment that Russian troops would not move into Ukrainian territory outside Crimea, he told Britain's BBC. "There is no intention of the Russian Federation to do anything like that."

U.S. Senator John McCain, a Republican foreign policy specialist, told the same BBC show that Putin's actions in Ukraine were akin to those of Adolf Hitler in 1930s Germany.

"I think he (Putin) is calculating how much he can get away with, just as Adolf Hitler calculated how much he could get away with in the 1930s," McCain said.

"PANDORA'S BOX"

Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier underscored the huge potential repercussions of Russia's bid to redraw national borders in Europe.

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Ukrainian marines sit at a training ground of a Ukrainian marine base in the Crimean port city of Fe …

"I'm very worried the unlawful attempt to alter recognized borders in our European neighbourhood, 25 years after the end of the Cold War, will open Pandora's Box," he said.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia, accepted on Sunday that Crimea was now "de facto" a part of Russia, but said the annexation set a "bad precedent".

Speaking to reporters in Minsk, Lukashenko said Ukraine, which shares a long land border with Belarus, should remain "a single, indivisible, integral, non-bloc state".

Western sanctions lost some of their sting on Sunday when Russia's SMP bank, whose main shareholders were targeted by U.S. sanctions, said Visa Inc and MasterCard Inc had resumed payment services for its clients.

The bank said it was glad the two biggest international payments systems had listened to its arguments to reverse Friday's suspension of services as it was wrong to target the bank, which was not itself subject to any sanctions.

A spokesperson for Mastercard confirmed it was again serving clients of the bank but did not say why it reversed its decision. Visa said it had been informed by the U.S. government to lift sanctions against SMP bank and two other Russian banks because they did not meet the criteria for sanctions.

Putin and Russian media had mocked the sanctions, which did not stop the Russian military completing its takeover of Ukraine's military bases in Crimea. Russia's defence ministry said on Sunday that its flag was now flying over 189 Ukrainian military installations on the peninsula.

A referendum held a week ago after Russian troops had seized control of Crimea overwhelmingly backed union with Russia but was denounced by Washington and the European Union as a sham.

The EU emphasized its support for the new pro-Western government in Kiev, signing a political agreement with interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk last week.

It also promised financial aid for the government - which Moscow says came to power by a coup to overthrow Yanukovich after he rejected an EU trade deal in favor of closer ties with Russia - as soon as Kiev reaches a deal with the International Monetary Fund. The IMF will report on Tuesday.

(Additional reporting by Alexandar Vasovic in Simferopol, Alissa de Carbonnel and Oksana Kobzeva in Moscow and by Eric Beech in Washington; Writing by Will Waterman and Philippa Fletcher; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and Will Waterman)

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By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish armed forces shot down a Syrian plane on Sunday which Turkey said had crossed into its air space in an area where Syrian rebels have been battling President Bashar al-Assad's forces for control of a border crossing.

"A Syrian plane violated our airspace," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told an election rally in northwest Turkey. "Our F-16s took off and hit this plane. Why? Because if you violate my airspace, our slap after this will be hard."

Syria condemned what it called a "blatant aggression" and said the jet was pursuing rebel fighters inside Syria. It said the pilot had managed to eject before the plane crashed.

The Turkish general staff said one of its control centers detected two Syrian MIG-23s around 1 pm (1100 GMT) and warned them four times after they came close to the Turkish border.

One plane entered Turkish airspace at Yayladagi, east of the Kasab border crossing, it said. A Turkish F-16 fired a rocket at the Syrian jet and it crashed around 1,200 meters (1,300 yards) inside Syrian territory.

Amateur video released by rebel fighters showed smoke rising from wooded hills in the border area where they said the plane had come down.

Gunfire in Syria as much awaited aid is haltedPlay video

The rebels have been fighting since Friday for control of the Kasab crossing, one of several counter-offensives since they retreated this week from a crusader castle near the Lebanese frontier and town on a vital cross-border supply route.

Assad's soldiers, backed by Iran and Shi'ite forces from Iraq and Lebanon's Hezbollah, have been pushing rebels back in the center of the country around Damascus and Homs, but are still weak in northern and eastern Syria.

"UNPRECEDENTED" TURKISH INTERVENTION

The incident occurred six months after Turkish warplanes shot down a Syrian helicopter which crossed into Turkish airspace in the same border area.

Once a close ally of Assad, Erdogan became a fierce critic of the president's military response to Syria's uprising and has sheltered and supported rebels battling to overthrow him.

Authorities in Damascus say this week's Islamist rebel offensive around the Kasab border crossing marked a new escalation, accusing Turkey of firing tank and artillery shells into Syria to provide cover for the fighters.

A source at Syria's foreign ministry called Turkey's actions "unprecedented and unjustified", state news agency SANA said.

More than 140,000 people have been killed in Syria's conflict, while 2.5 million refugees have fled to neighboring countries and millions more need humanitarian aid.

Assad's forces have already lost control of most border crossings with Turkey during the three-year civil war but had held on to Kasab, gateway to the coastal province of Latakia which has remained an Assad stronghold.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said heavy clashes continued for a third day around Kasab, where rebels have seized control of the border crossing but Assad's forces, who still control the nearby Kasab village, have been fighting back, supported by air power.

The British-based anti-Assad Observatory said rebels also launched another attack in Latakia on Sunday in the village of Solas, about 25 km (15 miles) south of Kasab.

In the northern city of Aleppo, rebels said they had captured a former police station on the edge of the city's ancient citadel, as well as installations in the Layramoun district and a nearby hill overlooking the main road into Aleppo from the northwest.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans in Beirut; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

The jet is hit after it reportedly violates Turkish air space in a region where rebels are battling Syrian forces.
'Our slap ... will be hard'

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Gaza's Hamas premier Ismail Haniya warned Israel on Sunday it would pay dearly if it heeded its foreign minister's call to reoccupy the Palestinian enclave to try to halt rocket attacks.

"We tell the enemy and (Foreign Minister Avigdor) Lieberman who is threatening to reoccupy Gaza that the time for your threats is over," Haniya told a rally in Gaza City.

"Any aggression or crime or stupidity you commit will cost you a very high price."

On March 12, during a two-day flare-up in which Gaza militants fired at least 60 rockets into Israel and the Israelis responded with dozens of air strikes, Lieberman said Israel would have no choice but to reoccupy Gaza, from which it withdrew all troops and settlers in summer 2005.

"There is no alternative to a full reoccupation of the entire Gaza Strip," he told Channel 2 television.

Speaking to around 40,000 supporters at a public rally marking 10 years since an Israeli air strike killed Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Haniya warned Israel that Gaza militants had "far more capabilities than you imagine".

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Palestinian supporters of the Hamas movement rally to mark the tenth anniversary of the assassinatio …

He also restated his Islamic movement's opposition to peace talks between Israel and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority of president Mahmud Abbas.

"Stop negotiating with the enemy," he told the PA. "We will not recognise Israel."

The memorial rally for Yassin -- the wheelchair-bound co-founder of Hamas killed on March 22, 2004 -- took place under the watchful eyes of hundreds of Hamas policemen who closed off streets around the central Al-Sarraya square and took up positions on rooftops.

Senior Islamic Jihad officials and members of smaller groups attended the event but Abbas's Fatah, Hamas's bitter rival, stayed away.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military wing, sent threatening text messages to Israelis and foreign reporters in Israel on Saturday, the anniversary of Yassin's killing.

"If Gaza will be attacked the life of the Zionists will be hell" and "In the next war all the Land of Palestine will return," some read.

"Al Qassam has chosen you to be the next Shalit," another message stated, referring to Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was abducted and held in Gaza for five years until Hamas freed him in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

The email account of an Israeli security affairs newsletter, Israel Defence, was hacked and an email posted on Yassin's killing. "We don't forget the blood of our sheikh, We swear again to take revenge, and this time by taking off the head of your leaders," it said.

Former President Jimmy Carter believes U.S. intelligence agencies are spying on him — so much so, he eschews email to avoid government spies.

"You know, I have felt that my own communications are probably monitored," Carter told NBC's Andrea Mitchell in an interview broadcast Sunday. "And when I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write a letter myself, put it in the post office and mail it.

"I believe if I send an email, it will be monitored," Carter continued.

The 89-year-old said the National Security Agency and others have abused the argument that gathering intelligence is critical to homeland security.

"That has been extremely liberalized and, I think, abused by our own intelligence agencies," Carter said.

The 39th president, however, stopped short of criticizing No. 44 over the handling of the N.S.A. scandal, the crisis in Ukraine or anything else.

"I don't have any criticism of him," Carter said of Obama.

He was asked if the the president ever asks him for advice.

"Unfortunately, the answer is no," Carter said. "President Obama doesn't. But previous presidents have called on me and the Carter Center to take action."

Why not Obama?

"That's a hard question for me to answer, you know, with complete candor," he said. "I think the problem was that in dealing with the issue of peace between Israel and Egypt, the Carter Center [took] a very strong and public position of equal treatment between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And I think this was a sensitive area in which the president didn't want to be involved."

Jimmy Carter believes U.S. is spying on him

The former president turns to a traditional form of correspondence when he communicates with a foreign leader.
'It will be monitored'

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian air force commander is being held after his base in Crimea was stormed by pro-Russian forces, and the acting president called for his release Sunday.

Col. Yuliy Mamchur is the commander of the Belbek Air Force base near Sevastopol, which was taken over Saturday by forces who sent armored personnel carriers smashing through the base's walls and fired shots and stun grenades. One Ukrainian serviceman was reported wounded in the clash.

It was unclear if the forces, who didn't bear insignia, were Russian military or local pro-Russia militia.

Ukraine President Oleksandr Turchynov, in a statement, said Mamchur was "abducted" by the forces. He didn't specify where Mamchur is believed to be held.

However, prominent politician Vitali Klitschko said Sunday that Mamchur is being held by the Russian military in a jail in Sevastopol, the Crimean city that is the base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Klitschko was one of the leaders of the three months of protests in Ukraine that culminated in late February with President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country and interim authorities taking power before a May 25 presidential election. The protests were triggered by Yanukovych's decision to reject a deal for closer ties with the European Union and turn to Moscow instead.

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Colonel Yuly Mamchur, right, holds flowers as other Ukrainian airmen line up to greet their comrades …

Yanukovych's ouster was denounced by Russia and much of Ukraine's ethnic Russian population as a coup. Soon thereafter, Russian forces took control of Crimea and the region held a referendum to break off from Ukraine and join Russia.

Russia formally annexed Crimea last week, a move that Western countries say is illegitimate. The U.S. and the EU have imposed sanctions on Russia in the dispute, but Moscow appears unmoved.

On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry said the Russian flag was now flying over 189 military facilities in Crimea. It didn't specify whether any Ukrainian military operations there remained under Ukrainian control.

At a Ukrainian marines base in Feodosia, troops were negotiating with Russian forces on handing over the base, Lt. Anatoly Mozgovoi told The Associated Press. The marines were loading 50-caliber machine guns into armored personnel carriers to take them to the base armory, but Mozgovoi said they hope to hold on to heavy weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades and cannon.

"I think from my personal opinion, the Russian Federation has enough weapons," he said.

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Colonel Yuly Mamchur, center, speaks to Lieutenants Galina Volosyanchik, left, and Ivan Benera, cent …

In Donetsk, one of the major cities in eastern Ukraine, about 5,000 people demonstrated in favor of holding a referendum on secession and absorption into Russia.

Eastern Ukraine is the country's industrial heartland and was Yanukovych's support base. Donetsk authorities on Friday formed a working group to hold a referendum, but no date for it has been set.

Russia has deployed thousands of troops in its regions near the Ukrainian border and concerns are high that it could use unrest in the east as a pretext for crossing the border.

On Sunday, Russian deputy defense minister Anatoly Antonov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying the number of Russian troops in the area of the Ukrainian border does not exceed international treaty limits.

___

Yuras Karmanau in Donetsk and Adam Pemble in Feodosia contributed to this report.