Ukraine launches treason case against Navy chief who surrendered

02.03.2014
Ukraine launched a treason case on Sunday against the head of the navy, who surrendered his headquarters on Sunday in the Crimean port of Sevastopol on only his second day on the job.

Denis Berezovsky was shown on Russian television swearing allegiance to the pro-Russian regional leaders of Crimea.

Russian forces have seized the Black Sea peninsula and told Ukrainian forces there to give up their weapons.

"During the blockade by Russian forces of the central headquarters of the navy, he declined to offer resistance and laid down his weapons," said Viktoria Syumar, deputy secretary of Ukraine's Security Council.

"The prosecutor's office has opened a criminal case against Denis Berezovsky under statute 111: state treason," she said.

Another admiral, Serhiy Hayduk, was placed in charge of the navy.

Nervously looking out through their bases' perimeter wire, Ukrainian troops stationed in Privolnoye in Crimea are under siege from unidentified forces.

Surrounded by hundreds of men with trucks bearing Russian number plates and well-equipped with military small arms and heavier weapons, not a shot has been fired as of now.

As pro-Russian forces take over more and more of Crimea, the Ukrainian army has mobilised its reserves, and queues of people are forming to enlist. Ukraine has withdrawn its coastguards from Crimea and moved naval units to Odessa.

Simferopol, Crimea's regional capital, is now completely in the control of paramilitaries and Russian armed forces, which moved into the city in a column of vehicles from Russia's naval base in Sevastopol, a clear violation of the 1994 Budapest agreement signed by Russia, Ukraine, Britain and the US forbidding Russian military deployments on Ukrainian soil.