The Russian parliament's upper house unanimously approved Saturday a request by President Vladimir Putin to send military troops into Ukraine, shortly after the Crimean peninsula's pro-Kremlin prime minister appealed to the Kremlin for military muscle.
Putin said ethnic Russians in Crimea and the personnel of a Russian military base needed to be protected for the “normalization of the political situation” in Ukraine. But the Russian president's official request for troops seemed to be merely a formality as Moscow appeared to solidify its iron grip on Crimea.
Armed troops believed to be Russian had already seized control of much of the strategic peninsula Friday and Saturday, taking over key airports and communications centers across the region. By Saturday they had seized an airfield used for military transports, and Ukraine moved to close its airspace Saturday after reports suggested at least eight Russian troop transport planes had touched ground in the Crimea. (TIME, 2014.3.2)
土曜日にロシア議会は、プーチン大統領によるウクライナへの軍隊派遣の計画を、全会一致で承認しました。ただ、そもそも金曜日と土曜日のうちに、戦略的に重要なウクライナ半島は、ロシア軍によって制圧されていましたので、ロシア議会はこれを追認したことになります。プーチン大統領はロシア軍を、ウクライナの政治的正常化までの間、クリミアに置くと発言していますが、その意図はむしろ、「 Iron Grip on Crimea 」を確固なものにすることであると、ＴＩＭＥは伝えています。
