The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry informs that Russia deployed its Black Sea fleet and dispatched soldiers and munitions to Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities requested that Russia should withdraw its forces as it wasn’t asked to intervene, IPN reports, quoting an informative note from the Embassy of Ukraine in Chisinau.

The communiqué says that several hundred Russian soldiers with heavy weapons entered Ukraine on February 22-23, while the Black Sea fleet does not comply with the dispatch agreement signed in 1997.

The Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the UN called on the UN member states to stop Russia’s aggression on the Ukrainian state as Russia plans to extend its operations on the Crimean Peninsula on the pretext of defending the Russian citizens there.

Ukraine asked immediately convening the UN Security Council. It called on the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum (the U.S., China, the UK, and France) not to allow a military intervention in Ukraine.

Moscow decided to dispatch military forces to Ukraine and announced they will resort to military action if the lives of the Russian citizens in Crimea are in danger. The U.S. and NATO expressed their opposition to Russia’s acts. Russia was warned it will be excluded from G8 and economic penalties will be imposed on it.