ML-Implode News - Growing Crisis in Its Backyard Snares Russia

Mr. Yanukovych's appeal for Russia "to secure my personal safety," and reports that he will hold a news conference in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Friday, have made it clear that the Kremlin has quietly provided at least tacit assistance to a humiliated leader who has been abandoned even by his own political supporters.
The seizure of the regional Parliament building in Crimea by masked gunmen vowing loyalty to Russia, and not Ukraine, has renewed fears that Mr. Putin could be provoked into a military intervention like the one in 2008 when Russian troops poured into Georgia to defend a breakaway region, South Ossetia, that it now recognizes as an independent country.

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Growing Crisis in Its Backyard Snares Russia - Ukraine