SIMFEROPOL, Crimea -- Russian forces have taken over Ukraine's main military hospital in Simferopol today and a military transport base in Bakhchysari as the Kremlin's military operation stayed on the offensive at strategic locations in the peninsula.
The Russian move to consolidate their hold on Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula comes ahead of a referendum on March 16 that will ask voters in the two-million person peninsula to vote for independence from Ukraine and to rejoin Russia.
Some 20-30 men in military uniforms captured the military hospital at about noon today. They carried truncheons and threatened hospital workers and some 30 patients, who are Ukrainian soldiers or veterans.
“People are really fearing for their lives,” said Evgen Pyvoval, the hospital’s director. He said the captures crammed him into a bus and kept him there for 30 minutes. “We don’t know what their demands are,” Pyvoval said.
He said he reported the seizure to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and local police.
Meanwhile, in Bakhchysaray — a city between Simferopol and Sevastopol — Russian forces also captured a military transport base. The forces also held the base commander for some time before releasing him, but allowed the Russian and Ukrainian flags to be raised together.
When the Kyiv Post came to military, so-called self-defense militiamen were in charge and spoke to journalists outside. “No need to worry, people,” said one of them. “Nobody captured anything.”
But a group of armed men behind the fence, relatives of soldiers and an Orthodox Christian priest Oleksandr begged to differ.
Lt. Col. Volodymyr Sadovnik, the commander of a motor battalion on the base, said the situation was “under control” and “no one was shooting at anybody” even though some 15 armed men were inside the base. He thanked the invaders for letting them keep Ukraine’s flag on the mast, even though they raised the Russian flag nearby. Some of the captors had faces masked with balaclavas and threatened a photographer.
Sadovnik, who had scratches and bruises on his face, had been kidnapped a day ago near the base, moved to Simferopol and kept at the local recruitment office. “But they treated me well,” he said as they
the armed invaders surrounded him. Sadovnik said his battalion doesn’t have guns inside.
The takeover, however, prompted a second base in Bakhchisaray, one kilometer away, to strengthen their defenses. “Of course we are worrying,” the soldiers told the Kyiv Post from behind the fence.
Interfax Ukraine news agency said that the pro-Russian militias and Russian troops herded staff into a hall to “apparently meet the institutions’ s new directors.” It said 20 patients in the building were seriously ill.
In the port of Sevastopol, Russian soldiers disarmed servicemen at a Ukrainian army missile base, a Ukrainian military spokesman in Crimea said, Reuters reported.
Vladislav Seleznyov told Fifth Channel television that about 200 soldiers aboard 14 trucks moved on the building at about 1.30 a.m and threatened to storm it if the Ukrainian soldiers failed to give up their weapons.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
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