UN Security Council's meeting on Ukraine yields no effect

Ukraine gold reserves said to be put on plane 'for safekeeping' in US 

By Li Hongmei

Amid continuing tensions between Ukraine and Russia, the United States will send a dozen F-16 fighter jets to Poland as a part of a training exercise while Russian forces advanced in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, ignoring Western calls to halt a military takeover.

The Polish defense ministry said 300 US personnel will also be sent to Poland as part of the exercise. The deployment will be completed by Thursday.

Chuck Hagel, the US Secretary of State for Defense, and his Polish counterpart Tomasz Siemoniak agreed the deployment during a phone call, according to a statement from the Polish ministry.

"The unit will be composed of 12 F-16 planes and will transport 300 soldiers," defence ministry spokesman Jacek Sonta told AFP.

The fighters had been sent following a request from Poland.

The exercise was originally planned to be smaller but was increased and pushed forward because of the "tense political situation" in Ukraine, added Sonta.

The deployment in Poland comes after Washington announced it was also sending four F-15 planes to Lithuania to strengthen surveillance in the airspace around the Baltic.

According to Lithuania's defense ministry, the deployment was in response to "Russian aggression in Ukraine and increased military activity in Kaliningrad," the area which borders Poland and Lithuania.

While, Poland has 48 of its own F-16 fighter jets, the Baltic states do not have sufficient air resources and look to NATO to provide protection for its airspace.

At the same time, Russian forces planted minefields in the Kherson region, north of Crimea on Ukraine's mainland, and began to install border markers between the two regions, the Khersonskie Vesti news website reported Monday.

Ukraine's border service said Russian forces now control 13 border bases as well as the ferry crossing across the Kerch Strait to Russia, preventing guards from inspecting trucks arriving in Crimea.

Authorities on the peninsula ordered an anti-aircraft regiment in the city of Yevpatoriya to lay down its arms or its base would be taken over, the Interfax news service reported.

Ukrainian border troops will leave Crimea only if "forced," the head of the service, Pavlo Shysholin, told reporters yesterday in Kiev. The military moved groups of armored vehicles from its western Zhytomyr and Lviv regions toward the east and southeast, Russian television Rossiya 24 reported.

Moving Ukrainian troops to Crimea "hasn't been and isn't being envisaged," acting Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh told a government meeting.

Gunmen fired warning shots March 8 at observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, blocking them from entering Crimea, Tatyana Baeva, a spokeswoman, said by phone from Vienna.

Russia should "strongly support" getting observers on the ground in Crimea, US ambassador to the OSCE, Daniel Baer, said in website statement dated yesterday.

US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Lavrov on March 8 and he "made clear that continued military escalation and provocation in Crimea or elsewhere in Ukraine, along with steps to annex Crimea to Russia would close any available space for diplomacy," the State Department said.

The peninsula, where Russian speakers comprise a majority, will join Russia once parliament in Moscow passes the necessary legislation and there's nothing the West can do, according to Sergei Tsekov, the deputy speaker of Crimea's parliament.

"There's no comeback, and the US or Europe can't impede us," Tsekov said March 7 by phone from Moscow, where he met Russian officials to discuss the region's future. "Crimea won't be part of Ukraine anymore. There are no more options."

Has notorious US Blackwater mercenaries been deployed to Ukraine?

Speculation was growing last night that American mercenaries had been deployed to Donetsk after videos emerged of unidentified armed men in the streets of the eastern Ukrainian city.

At least two videos published on YouTube earlier this week show burly, heavily armed soldiers with no insignia in the city, which has been gripped by pro-Moscow protests.

In one of the videos onlookers can be heard shouting 'Blackwater! Blackwater!' as the armed men, who wear no insignia, jog through the streets.

A screengrab from a YouTube video showing armed men on the streets of Donetsk, a largely Russian-speaking city in east Ukraine which has been the scene of large protests against the country's new regime

Donetsk was this week the scene of civil unrest as pro-Russian elements among its citizens seized control of the regional administration headquarters and another government building.

Yesterday thousands of people gathered in the city centre waving Russian flags and calling for a referendum to determine the status of the strategically important coal-mining region.

Both the videos which purport to show 'Blackwater' mercenaries in Donetsk were uploaded last Monday, with their descriptions written in Russian.

The context of the videos is not clear, but it appears that the armed men had turned up at a street protest against the new regime. They wander around brandishing their weapons before suddenly fleeing the scene as passers-by shout 'Blackwater! Blackwater!'