European Union foreign ministers added 13 people to their visa ban and asset freeze list over Ukraine’s crisis.

President Vladimir Putin flew in to Crimea yesterday for the first time since it was annexed by Moscow, proclaiming as he marked the Soviet victory in the Second World War that incorporating the former Ukrainian territory had made Russia stronger.

UEFA president Michel Platini has said he is fed up with politicians calling for a boycott of the 2018 World Cup in Russia over Moscow’s actions towards Ukraine.

Two servicemen have been taken captive after Russian forces stormed another Ukrainian military base on the Crimean Peninsula today, officials said.

Shots have been fired at a Ukrainian air force base in Crimea that has been blocked off by Russian forces.

President Vladimir Putin completed the annexation of Crimea yesterday, signing the peninsula into Russia at nearly the same time his Ukrainian counterpart sealed a deal pulling his country closer to Europe.

European Union leaders will today sign a trade deal with Ukraine designed to give economic support to the beleaguered state in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Ukraine’s government says it is drawing up plans to withdraw its troops from Crimea, where Russia is steadily taking formal control as its armed forces seize military installations across the peninsula.

The European Commission has proposed new financial assistance of up to €1bn in medium-term loans to Ukraine.

Despite the passage of time, there are many parallels between the German Sudetenland and Crimean crises,writes Bobo Lo

I’m not a fan of Henry Kissinger, but I agree with most of his article of March 5, about Ukraine, in the Washington Post. He wrote: “if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them … Ukraine should not join NATO”.

Polls have closed in Crimea’s contentious referendum on seceding from Ukraine and seeking annexation by Russia.

Russia is on a collision course with the EU and the US, with the referendum in Crimea on Sunday threatening to escalate the situation onto another level.

Russian forces tightened their grip on Crimea yesterday despite a US warning to Moscow that annexing the southern Ukrainian region would close the door to diplomacy in a tense East-West standoff.

Ukraine will not give up “a single centimetre” of its territory, the country’s prime minister said.

Accusing the West of encouraging an “unconstitutional coup” in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow reserves the right to use its military to protect Russians there but voiced hope it will not need to do so.

President Vladimir Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops participating in military exercises near Ukraine’s border to return to their base today as US Secretary of State John Kerry was on his way to Kiev.

President Barack Obama has accused Russia of being “on the wrong side of history” with its military intervention in Ukraine and said he’s examining diplomatic and economic steps to isolate Moscow.

Russian forces controlling the strategic region of Crimea have demanded that the crew of two Ukrainian warships must surrender, according to Ukrainian sources.

Ukraine, warning it is “on the brink of disaster”, has put its military on high alert and appealed for international help to avoid what it fears is a possible wider invasion by Russia.

A tense standoff was in place in the Crimea crisis tonight as Russian forces continued to surround a Ukrainian army base.

Ukraine’s United Nations ambassador has asked an emergency session of the world body’s Security Council “to do everything possible now” to stop Russian “aggression” as troops took over the strategic Crimea region.

Barack Obama has warned Moscow “there will be costs” if Russia intervenes militarily in crisis-torn Ukraine.

Russian forces have been accused of “an armed invasion” after units blocked a Ukrainian military airport in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea.

IN HIS 1979 novel The Island of Crimea, Vasily Aksyonov imagined the region’s flourishing independence from the Soviet Union.

WE have been here before.

Russia has questioned the authority of Ukraine’s acting government, with prime minister Dmitry Medvedev saying the country’s acting authorities have come to power as a result of an ’armed mutiny’.

Ukraine's acting interior minister has said a warrant is out for the arrest of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Ukrainian law enforcement agencies say they have no information about the whereabouts of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who has reportedly been seen in Sevastopol, a port on Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula which is the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

President Barack Obama and French president Francois Hollande have said they are committed to a political solution in Syria even as they prepare for potential military strikes.

Putin governs Russia with all the panache of a Bond villain, says Dave Kenny. Or so his photoshoots suggest

In a secret operation to secure nuclear material, the United States has helped Ukraine return to Russia enough uranium to build two atomic bombs.

OPPOSITION lawmakers hurled eggs and smoke bombs inside Ukraine’s parliament yesterday as the chamber approved an agreement allowing the Russian navy to extend its stay in a Ukrainian port until 2042.

Eggs and smoke bombs were thrown in the Ukrainian parliament today as it ratified a controversial agreement on extending the lease for Russia's Black Sea fleet.

THE death toll from an explosion that levelled an apartment building in southern Ukraine reached 27 yesterday as the country observed a day of national mourning, officials said.

An explosion tore through a block of flats in southern Ukraine, killing at least 17 people and leaving dozens more trapped under the rubble, emergency officials said today.

Washington would back Ukraine in case of a territorial dispute, a senior US diplomat said today.

Massive waves split a Russian oil tanker in two during a fierce storm, spilling at least 2,000 metric tons of fuel into a strait leading to the Black Sea.

Two more fishermen are feared drowned tonight after a second trawler sank off the Irish coast close to where five others died hours earlier.

The Ukrainian presidential election result was frozen today until the Supreme Court considers an appeal by the opposition candidate, who claims the vote was rigged.

Sewage is gushing into the Black Sea after a pipe burst in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.