You're reading: Sevastopol City Council refuses to recognize Kyiv leadership

The Sevastopol City Council on Saturday issued a statement saying it refused to recognize Ukraine's new leadership, that it would not take orders from it, and that "all legal methods of peaceful settlement of differences" between new authorities and their adversaries "have in effect been used up."

“We deputies of the City Council of Sevastopol hereby state our non-recognition of the authorities in Kyiv that have come to rule the country through an armed coup d’état and consider them illegitimate. We say a categorical NO to the so-called ‘new’ Ukrainian Maidan authorities in the Hero City of Sevastopol,” the statement said on Saturday.

The council decided to organize a provisional body for the day-to-day economic administration of the city and declared support for Alexei Chaly as “people’s mayor.”

“We believe that all the decisions that are being made by the so-called central authorities are illegitimate as they are being made in unconstitutional ways and with gross violations of procedures established by law. At the fault of the opposition that proclaimed itself to be hegemons of democracy and authority, all legal methods of peaceful settlement of differences have in effect been used up,” the statement said.

The deputies of Sevastopol City Council decided to join an all Crimean referendum scheduled for March 30, 2014, and to send the text of their statement to Viktor Yanukovych whom they believe to be the incumbent president. Yanukovych is currently in Russia.