Saturday 08 March 2014 14.58 Ukraine's acting foreign minister said his country would not give up Crimea and would do all in its power to resolve the crisis over the Black Sea peninsula peacefully.
"Crimea is and will be Ukrainian territory and we will not give up Crimea to anyone," Andriy Deshchytsia told a news conference in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
Referring to deaths this year during protests against Ukraine's now deposed leader, Viktor Yanukovych, he said: "We are putting all our efforts into solving this matter through diplomacy - we have already had too many victims."
Meanwhile, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said warning shots were fired as monitors approached an entry point into Crimea.
A source said "probably three shots" were fired as a convoy, including the observers' buses, approached a checkpoint manned by pro-Russian forces, but added the shots did not appear directed at the observers.
Elsewhere, a convoy of hundreds of Russian soldiers in about 50 troop trucks drove into a base near Crimea's capital Simferopol.
The convoy was accompanied by eight armoured vehicles, two ambulances, petrol tankers and other hardware.
Russia says its only troops in Crimea are those normally stationed there with its Black Sea Fleet, an assertion Washington calls "(President Vladimir) Putin's fiction".
Kiev says there are 30,000 Russians in Crimea. The Pentagon estimates their number at around 20,000.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said the Ukrainian government was taking orders from extremists and denied Moscow had any direct role in the crisis in Crimea.
"The interim government... is not independent. It depends, unfortunately, on radical nationalists who carried out an armed coup," Mr Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow.
Russia said any US sanctions imposed on Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine will boomerang back on the United States.
The Kremlin also insisted that Crimea has the right to self-determination as armed men tried to seize another Ukrainian military base on the peninsula.
In a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State John Kerry, Mr Lavrov warned against "hasty and reckless steps" that could harm Russian-American relations, the foreign ministry said.
"Sanctions ... would inevitably hit the United States like a boomerang," it added.
Mr Kerry stressed the importance of resolving the situation through diplomacy and said he and Mr Lavrov would continue to consult, the State Department said.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Poland had evacuated its consulate in Sevastopol in Crimea due to disturbances by Russian forces.
Mr Sikorski said on Twitter: "Because of continuing disturbances by Russian forces there, we have reluctantly evacuated our consulate in Crimea, Ukraine."
Yesterday, armed men drove a truck into a Ukrainian missile defence post in Sevastopol, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene.
But no shots were fired and Crimea's pro-Russian premier said later the standoff was over.
Mr Putin denies the forces with no national insignia that are surrounding Ukrainian troops in their bases are under Moscow's command, although their vehicles have Russian military plates.
The West has ridiculed his assertion.
The head of Russia's upper house of parliament said after meeting visiting Crimean politicians yesterday that Crimea had a right to self-determination, and ruled out any risk of war between "the two brotherly nations".
The European Union, Russia's biggest economic partner and energy customer, adopted a three-stage plan to try to force a negotiated solution but stopped short of immediate sanctions.
The Russian Foreign Ministry responded angrily,calling the EU decision to freeze talks on visa-free travel and on a broad new pact governing Russia-EU ties "extremely unconstructive." It pledged to retaliate.
Senior Ukrainian opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko, freed from prison after Viktor Yanukovych's overthrow, met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Dublin and appealed for immediate EU sanctions against Russia, warning that Crimea might otherwise slide into war.
Brussels and Washington rushed to strengthen the new authorities in economically shattered Ukraine, announcing both political and financial assistance.
The regional director of the International Monetary Fund said talks with Kiev on a loan agreement were going well and praised the new government's openness to economic reform and transparency.
Ukraine's computers targeted by powerful virus: experts
Dozens of computer networks in Ukraine have been infected by an aggressive new cyber weapon called Snake, according to expert analysis.
The cyber weapon has been increasingly used since the start of this year, even before protests that led to the overthrow of Mr Yanukovych, British-based BAE Systems said in a report published yesterday.
The complex composition of Snake bears similarities with Stuxnet, the malware that disrupted Iran's nuclear facilities in 2010.
Snake - also known as Ouroboros after the serpent in Greek mythology - gives remote attackers "full remote access to the compromised system", BAE said.
Because it can stay inactive for a number of days, it is extremely hard to detect.
Although its origins are unclear, its developers appear to operate it in the same timezone as Moscow - GMT plus four hours - and some Russian text is embedded into the code, BAE says.
BAE has identified 14 cases of Snake in Ukraine since the start of 2014, compared to eight cases in the whole of 2013.
In all there have been 32 reported cases in Ukraine since 2010, out of 56 worldwide.
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