Missing Plane: Cockpit Conversations Revealed

A transcript of the final conversations between the crew of flight MH370 and air traffic control has been revealed two weeks after the aircraft vanished from radar.

The transcript, between the co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid and the control tower, includes conversations as the aircraft was taxiing at Kuala Lumpur airport up until the final exchange with Malaysian air traffic control at 1.19am.

It also includes a repeated message about the aircraft's altitude at the same time as the plane's Acars signalling technology sent its last transmission before it was apparently disabled.

Excerpts from the cockpit conversations

At 1.01am it reads: "MH370 remaining in flight altitude 350 (35,000ft)."

Six minutes later, the co-pilot said: "MH370 remaining in flight altitude 350."

The final conversation in the documents, published in The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror, was at 1.19am as the plane left Malaysian airspace, and reads: "All right, good night."

But former pilot Alastair Rosenschein told Sky News too much could be read into the repetition of the plane's altitude.

He said: "You make a radio call confirming your altitude and then a few minutes later you think 'gosh did I make that call?', you don't know, the easiest thing is to make it again.

"So no it's not suspicious, at least I don't see it as suspicious.

Relatives of missing passengers shout for answers in Beijing on Saturday

"If he wanted to hijack the aircraft then this was an ideal spot because it lies between Malay air space and Vietnamese air space. So you've got that handover - the Malaysians are no longer interested in the aircraft because it's left them, they've handed it over, and the Vietnamese don't yet expect a call.

"Quite frankly if you wanted to take an aircraft and didn't want anyone to know, you wouldn't have done it on a Beijing flight - you're covered by radar the whole way.

"You would have done it on a flight from Kuala Lumpur say to London where you've got plenty of fuel."

Peter Marosszeky, an aviation expert at the University of New South Wales in Australia, added: "I've sat through many thousands of flights myself and it's not something that would really strike me as unusual.

"Without being able to hear the inflection in the pilots' voices, it's very difficult to determine whether anything said is truly noteworthy.

"I'd love to hear the actual voice level of communication to see if there's any level of anxiety that might have been driving the pilot to say what he did."

It comes after the search for debris spotted on satellite in the south Indian Ocean resumed on Saturday for a third day.

Six aircraft took off from Perth to search seas around 1,550 miles southwest of the city after two large objects were spotted earlier this week.

More aircraft and shipping is expected to join the operation over the next few days.

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US 'Preparing For Military Exercise In Poland'

Faces Caught In The Middle Of US-Russia Spat

Updated: 8:45pm UK, Thursday 20 March 2014

The fresh wave of US sanctions against Russia include banning some of the country's richest and most influential businessmen - and President Vladimir Putin's closest friends - from entering America.

Among the individuals targeted with and travel bans and freezing of US assets are billionaire brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg.

The co-owners of SMP Bank and SGM Group, a major supplier of construction services to Russian gas giant Gazprom, were judo sparring partners with Mr Putin.

The pair - friends of Mr Putin since childhood - also made billions in Sochi Olympics-related contracts.

Financier Yuri Kovalchuk, the largest shareholder of Bank Rossiya, is a personal banker for senior Russian officials - including, reportedly, Mr Putin. He is another close friend - and a neighbour - of the president.

They have known each other since the early 1990s when Mr Kovalchuk was deputy mayor of St Petersburg.

The bank - also on the hit list - serves some of the country's wealthiest officials and controls two big insurance firms - Sogas and SK Transneft.

High-level Kremlin officials including Mr Putin's chief of staff Sergei Ivanov and deputy chief of staff Alexei Gromov are also targeted, as well as Vladimir Yakunin, chairman of the board of the Russian state-owned company Russian Railways and a close confidant of the president.

Gennady Timchenko, a prominent businessman and owner of the private investment group, Volga Group, which specialises in investments in energy, transport and infrastructure assets is also named by the US.

President Putin's spokesman said some of the names on the list caused "nothing but extreme bewilderment" - and Russia immediately responded with its own list of sanctions on American officials.

These included Obama aides Caroline Atkinson (deputy assistant and deputy national security adviser for international economics), Daniel Pfeiffer (senior adviser and assistant ), and Benjamin Rhodes (assistant and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications and speechwriting), as well as senators Mary Landrieu, John McCain and Daniel Coats.

Mr McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate, and Mr Putin have long been engaged in a bitter personal feud.

During their last war of words in September 2013, the US senator accused Mr Putin of corruption, repression and self-serving rule in an opinion piece for a Russian website in response to a letter Mr Putin wrote in The New York Times, urging America not to use military force in Syria.

In an opinion piece headlined "Russians Deserve Better Than Putin", Mr McCain also accused the president of being "a friend to tyrants and an enemy to the oppressed" for siding with Syria's President Bashar al Assad.

Back in December 2011, Mr Putin let his views be known on Mr McCain after the US politician tweeted "Dear Vlad, The #ArabSpring is coming to a neighbourhood near you" at a time of huge protests across Moscow.

When pressed about the tweet during a televised phone-in, the Russian president hit back, calling the senator "nuts".

"Mr McCain fought in Vietnam. I think he has enough blood of peaceful citizens on his hands. It must be impossible for him to live without these disgusting scenes anymore," he said.

Mr Putin added: "Mr McCain was captured and they kept him not just in prison, but in a pit for several years. Anyone [in his place] would go nuts."

Earlier this month, Speaker of the House John Boehner, also on the Russian list, called Mr Putin a "thug" over its actions in Crimea, according to The Enquirer.

The Republican told the Cincinnati newspaper it was "time to stand up to Putin", adding: "At what point do you say enough is enough? We are at that point."

He, and Senators Landrieu, McCain and Coats hailed their inclusion on the Russian list as a "badge of honour", while the White House refused to comment.

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Malaysian Plane: Hope And Activity In Perth

Pearce Air Force base, just to the north of the western Australian city of Perth, has become the centre of activity and of hope in the search for the missing Malaysian airliner.

::Click here for the latest on this story as the debris search resumes

The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base, which is usually used only for flight training, is now hosting highly sophisticated P3 Orion surveillance planes and their crews.

Orion pilot Russell Adams briefs reporters after a search

Three P3 Orions have flown up from their base in South Australia to spearhead the new focus in the search for flight MH370.

A long-range Bombardier Global Express jet, usually used as an executive private plane, has also been brought in to assist the search.

A fifth plane, the US Navy's brand new P8 Poseidon, has joined the search from its base in Okinawa, Japan, and is flying its own sorties from Perth International Airport.

The planes typically spend 10 hours in the air during each search

The first RAAF P3 Orion left Pearce at about 9.15am. The journey to the search area deep in the southern Indian Ocean is 1,500 miles. It is closer to Antarctica than it is to Australia. 

The second P3 Orion departed two hours later at 11.15am. Fifteen minutes later, the Bombardier jet departed, and the third P3 followed at 12.45pm.

For the ground crew, whose usual daily task is coordinating the movements of small trainer aircraft, it is a busy time.

A P3 Orion search and rescue plane returns to Pearce base

In the searing heat, we spot the first of the P3 planes on the horizon. It is making its final approach back into Pearce after 10 hours in the air. Eight of those hours were spent travelling and just two searching.

As the pilot walks towards us for a few words, it's clear he is tired but upbeat. For the whole flight crew, the work is long and tiring. As well as operating sophisticated search equipment on the planes, they are using their eyes, too.

Their radar picked up nothing on Thursday and so they have spent much of Friday flying low; at times just 50 metres above the water.

The aircraft are equipped with the world's most advanced search technology

That sort of piloting is hard. It's also tough for the crews to keep their eyes focused on the water for so many hours. We discovered that much after seven hours on a search with the Royal Malaysian Air Force last week. Even small ripples in the water look like objects.

Add to that the fact that the search zone is in one of the most remote corners of the planet. It is an ocean where currents are strong, the waves are rough and the waters are among the deepest in the world.

There is a media circus here, too. Tents are lined up next to each other, the Australian networks, who made it here first, have the plumb spots. Next to them is the Sky News spot, the BBC and then the three main American networks.

CCTV, China's main TV network, also has a big presence here. Most of those on board the missing plane are Chinese.

The sorties cease as night falls. The difficult work resumes at first light.

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Robot Revolution Drives Pittsburgh Revival

By Hannah Thomas-Peter, New York Correspondent

The American city of Pittsburgh changed forever when the steel industry it became famous for collapsed.

Over 30 years later, it has managed to reinvent itself.

Its population is now growing, and the city's unemployment rate, which touched 17.1% in 1983, is below the national average at 6.2%.

In large part that reinvention has been driven by a high-tech revolution.

Companies like Google and Apple have outposts there, attracted to the pools of talent in engineering, healthcare, advanced manufacturing and in particular, a cutting-edge robotics scene.

Some of the biggest players in that field work at the city's Carnegie Mellon University.

We spent a day at its Robotics Institute filming some of the projects the scientists are working on.

Director Matt Mason said: "Pittsburgh has such a rich history, and everybody knows that it was the centre of steel production for a long time and they know the story of when we lost a lot of those jobs in steel and what a tragedy it was for this city.

"There's been this amazing comeback, and it's wonderful to be part of that, and really a great statement about the breadth of robotics and the ability of robotics to effect all parts of our lives."

There are just a handful of university and research teams across the world working on robots that look and move like snakes, and Carnegie Mellon is one of them.

The research team at Carnegie Mellon

In the basement labs, masters student Ellen Kappo showed us how the complex 16 joint machine, with a camera and light mounted on one end, could climb up legs, tree limbs, and slither along the floor.

She said: "Inspection is probably the biggest application.

"There's been a lot of interest in snakebot inspecting piping systems, nuclear applications, sewer and gas lines work ... There aren't a lot of conventional robots or machines that can get in to those spaces."

Leader of the snake robot team, Professor Howie Choset, explained that the device had already been used in miniature in medical procedures.

He said: "In medicine, the ability to reduce pain, reduce costs and bring people back to their daily lives more quickly because of an enhanced minimally invasive surgical tool, that's just profound.

"There are going to be procedures which in the past would have gutted a patient, not just open surgery but really gutted them, that may one day be an office visit."

Chimp is also a robot that could have a profound impact on our world.

It was developed in the aftermath of the Fukishima nuclear disaster as an answer to the problem of not being able to send humans in to such dangerous circumstances without huge risk to their health.

Chimp has strength, balance and basic manipulation skills, and could one day be used to shut down damaged plants.

The robot is housed in Carnegie's top-secret National Robotic Engineering Center.

It is where the university applies its skills to industry and government enterprise, engineering robots to solve the big problems facing the private and public sectors.

Carnegie Mellon University is at the centre of the city's robotics industry

We have to promise not to film anything other than Chimp because the work there is so commercially sensitive.

Engineering Center director Dr Anthony Stenz said: "My goal is to develop robots that could do work that is dull dirty and dangerous, and relieve people of those jobs, and put them in jobs where they control the robots, they repair the robots, they collaborate with the robots."

Collaboration is the key with Cobot, a robot that has been programmed to roam the corridors unaided, picking up mail, fetching coffee and water for people.

It looks like an iPad on a stick, with no arms.

But it "knows" its own limitations, and when it gets to a lift, or a sink, or a door, it will ask humans nearby for help.

PhD student Joydeep Biswas said: "That's the idea of symbiotic autonomy, that by asking humans for help with a simple task, the robot can do a wide variety of things which it couldn't have done on its own."

When he revealed his budget just a few weeks ago, President Barack Obama said the high tech sector is crucial to job creation and keeping America competitive.

There are plenty of other areas across the country vying for their place in the list of top tech cities.

But the academics at Carnegie certainly have ambition, working on projects like pilotless helicopters, autonomous helicopters and driverless Cadilacs.

Matt Mason said: There's so much going on here.

"Computer vision these days is doing things that we only used to dream about, and the ability to recognise objects and do scene recognition has taken off tremendously ... it's a very long list."

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Pope Tells Mafia: Repent Or Prepare For Hell

Pope Francis has warned members of the mafia that they will go to hell if they do not repent and renounce evil.

Speaking at a prayer vigil for relatives of victims of organised crime, the Pontiff said: "The power, the money, that you have now coming from so many dirty businesses, so many Mafiosi crimes, it's blood-stained money, blood-stained power, you can't bring it with you to your next life. Repent.

"There's still time to not end up in hell, which is what awaits you if you continue on this path."

His appearance marked the first time a pope has attended the annual event - now in its 19th year - which is held on the first day of spring.

At the vigil held in Rome's San Gregorio church, Francis met around 900 relatives of people murdered by the mafia.

After expressing his solidarity with the family members, he said that he could not leave the service without speaking to those not present: the "protagonists" of mafia violence.

The Pope shakes hands with victims' families as he leaves the church

"I feel that I cannot finish without addressing those who are greatly absent today, the protagonists who are not here, the men and women who are part of the mafia. Please, change your lifestyle, convert, stop doing evil," he said.

"Convert, you still have time not to end up in hell, that is what awaits you if you continue on this path. You too had a father and a mother, think of them, cry a little and convert."

The brutality of Italy's gangsters was highlighted this week following the death of Domenico Petruzzelli, a two-year-old killed along with his mother and her companion in a suspected mob hit in the southern city of Taranto in which assailants opened fire on their car. 

In January, after the charred body of a three-year-old boy was found in a burned car alongside his grandfather and another woman, Francis urged the suspected mafia killers to "repent and convert to the Lord".

The Pope has spoken out frequently about the evils of corruption, and wrote a short booklet on corruption and sin in 2005 when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires.

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Five Skydivers Feared Dead In Plane Crash

Five people are feared dead after a plane used for skydiving crashed at an airfield in eastern Australia.

The aircraft took off before veering left, crashing and bursting into flames at Caboolture, 31 miles (50 kilometres) north of Brisbane.

A Queensland Fire and Rescue Service Official said: "We received a call from the airfield and sent three crews to a light plane that had crashed. The fire was extinguished in 10 minutes."

Queensland Police said: "It is believed that five people were on board and that all are deceased."

Tragedy happened at Caboolture, north of Brisbane

Bryan Carpenter, who works at the airfield, told Sky News the plane was a Cessna 206, which carried between five and six people on skydiving flights.

He added the burning high-octane fuel destroyed the plane within just one minute.

"On impact with the ground (the plane) immediately burst into flames and there were no survivors.

"This is the worst-ever fatality accident we've suffered (at Caboolture)."

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Dozens Burn To Death In Pakistan Bus Crash

Dozens of people have died after two buses smuggling illegal Iranian gasoline were engulfed in a fireball in a crash in southwest Pakistan.

Passengers burnt to death inside the vehicles because sealed windows and hydraulic doors meant they were unable to escape from the wreckage.

The first bus, which was bound for Karachi, hit a truck coming in the opposite direction head-on, the two vehicles were then hit by a second bus and another truck.

The police chief of Baluchistan province, Ahmed Nawaz, said both buses had been smuggling fuel and were also carrying diesel-filled canisters.

The scene of the crash

He said 25 people, including women and children, died at the scene, while 10 more victims died on the way to hospital. Some 20 people were being treated for severe burns at hospital in Karachi.

Senior administration official Amir Sultan said the dead bodies were "beyond recognition".

He said: "These passenger buses travelling between Baluchistan and Karachi have automatic hydraulic doors and their windows are sealed because the buses are air-conditioned, so most of the passengers were trapped inside."

It is common practise for inter-city buses in the province, which borders Iran, to smuggle fuel, according to a bus driver who works on the Quetta-Karachi route.

Fire ripped through the buses

Mohammad Hasan Lehri said: "It is routine, we are compelled to do this even though it is illegal and dangerous."

He claimed thousands of people were involved in the fuel trade and said a number then split the profits, suggesting even policemen were getting their share.

The accident happened near Gadani, which is 370 miles south of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.

Pakistan has one of the world's worst records for fatal traffic accidents, blamed on poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and reckless driving.

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Michelle Obama Tackles Human Rights In China

The US first lady has touched on human rights concerns during a visit to China, but stopped short of levelling any criticism against Beijing itself.

Michelle Obama briefly set aside her policy of 'soft diplomacy' on Saturday to give a speech advocating freedom of expression and open access to information.

She told a group of some 200 students at Beijing's prestigious Peking University that universal rights should not be dependent on a person's country of birth.

"When it comes to expressing yourself freely, and worshipping as you choose, and having open access to information - we believe those are universal rights that are the birth right of every person on this planet," she said.

"It is so important for information and ideas to flow freely over the internet and through the media.

"My husband and I are on the receiving end of plenty of questioning and criticism from our media and our fellow citizens, and it's not always easy... but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world."

The first lady said human rights are a universal birthright

Obama has generally sought to steer clear of complicated political issues during her week-long visit to China and instead focus on building goodwill through soft diplomacy.

As such she was careful to avoid calling on China directly to offer its citizens greater freedoms. 

Censorship in Chinese media and online is widespread, with the so-called Great Firewall of China blocking access to any sites which touch on sensitive topics. 

The ruling Communist Party is quick to crack down on any signs of political dissent and deletes all material it considers objectionable. 

There are also concerns over China's treatment of religious groups, with regular reports of members of "underground churches" being arrested. 

Mrs Obama was joined on a tour of Beijing's Summer Palace by her daughters

The first lady also used her speech on Saturday to offer her condolences to the friends and relatives of some of the 239 passengers on board the missing MH370 Malaysia Airlines flight, the majority of whom are Chinese.

Obama said the US was committed to offering as many resources to the search as possible.

She said: "Please know that we are keeping all of the families and loved ones of those on this flight in our thoughts and in our prayers at this very difficult time."

Obama arrived in Beijing on Thursday accompanied by her two daughters and mother.  

Their trip has already taken them to Beijing's Summer Palace and China's historic Forbidden City.

A visit to the northern city of Xi'an, home to the famed Terra Cotta Warriors Museum, and to a panda breeding facility outside Chengdu in southwestern China are also on the agenda.

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Missing Plane: New Clues As Cyclone Threatens

The Chinese government has said it has located a large object in the sea after viewing satellite imagery.

During a news conference in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein was handed a piece of paper containing details of the apparent discovery.

The object is thought to be 42ft long (13m) and 74ft wide (22.5m) and was spotted somewhere in the southern search corridor in the Indian Ocean.

China's image was taken on March 18, two days after Australia's below

China said the object was captured by its high-definition earth observation satellite, Gaofen-1, and ships have been dispatched to the area.

The image was taken on March 18, two days after an Australian satellite located objects in the water. The China image shows the object is around 75 miles south of where Australia pinpointed two objects.

The Chinese location is just to the south of the patch of ocean being combed south and west of Australia.

During Saturday's search operation a civil aircraft reported sighting a number of small objects with the naked eye, including a wooden pallet, with a radius of three miles, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

A Royal New Zealand Air Force P3 Orion dropped a marker buoy to track the movement of the material and a merchant ship in the area has been relocated to try to identify the objects.

Relatives react angrily during a meeting with Malaysian officials in Beijng

But bad weather could affect the operation after a cyclone warning was declared for Tropical Cyclone Gillian, which is forecast to move into the southern search corridor.

Mr Hussein said: "Very strong winds and rough seas are expected there today.

Tropical Cyclone Gillian is expected to hit the Indian Ocean on Saturday

"In the area where possible objects were identified by Australian authorities, there are strong currents and rough seas. Generally, conditions in the southern corridor are very challenging."

Countries in the north search corridor, which includes China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Laos, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, said there had been no sightings of the aircraft on their radar.

It comes after angry scenes at a meeting in Beijing when Malaysian officials attempted to leave without answering questions on the search operation from relatives of the missing passengers.

One shouted: "You can't go. You can't leave here. We are here waiting for you 14 days. We want to know what happened, what the reality is."

Another said: "We don't even know if our family members are alive or dead. We should never let them treat us like this!"

Speaking at Peking University during a week-long visit to China, US First Lady Michelle Obama said the US was committed to offering as many resources to the search as possible.

She said: "Please know that we are keeping all of the families and loved ones of those on this flight in our thoughts and in our prayers at this very difficult time."

The plane disappeared on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing two weeks ago with 239 people on board, the majority of them from China.

Authorities face a race against time to locate the plane's black box voice and data recorder, which transmits an electronic signal only for 30 days before running out of battery power.

After that it will be much harder to locate the piece of equipment that is likely to hold the key to solving the mystery of what happened to the plane.

On Saturday, India said it had found no evidence the missing jet flew through its airspace after checking its radar records.

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Russian Special Forces Storm Crimea Base

Russian special forces have stormed a Ukrainian airforce base in Crimea, smashing through two walls, with one Ukrainian soldier reported shot.

It comes after a deadline to hand over the base to Russia expired at 12.30 GMT.

"They came through the walls in armoured personnel carriers, said Sky News Chief Correspondent Stuart Ramsay, at the scene.

"There have been explosions, blast bombs, one Ukrainian soldier has been shot."

"We believe they are special forces," said Ramsay. "They are all balaclaved and have slightly different uniforms to regular Russian soldiers.

"There was a lot of firing, probably into the air, it is hard to know. I've seen at least one injured soldier."

Armoured carriers smashed their way into the airbase near Sevastopol

Ramsay also heard "big explosions" which he said were probably blast bombs to disorientate the Ukrainian troops, who have now been lined up on a parade ground.

The Ukrainian commander at the Belbek base had expected the attack and told his forces to resist, instructing them they could fire warning shots before fighting back.

He has now been taken into custody by the Russians. A live camera shot of the base was also disabled after a Russian soldier climbed a mast to disable it.

A soldier pulled the plug on one of the cameras overlooking the base

Ramsay said an "air defence weapon" had earlier been loaded by the Ukrainians and the troops told to stand their ground and not surrender the base.

He said that the Ukrainians had been "massively outnumbered and outgunned" by the Russians, with just small arms and a few machine guns.

Russian soldiers had surrounded the airbase - near Sevastopol -  from a nearby hill, while militia wearing balaclavas and Cossack-type hats gathered outside the base.

Sky's Foreign Affairs Editor Sam Kiley said the base was an important capture for the Russians.

Russian troops were keeping a lookout on a hill surrounding the base

"It is a base that is home to a significant number, possibly a third, of the main combat aircraft of the Ukrainian air force - the MIG-29s - and their support aircraft and the structures that go with them.

"If you look at that and the blockage of the Ukrainian Navy in the shared port of Sevastopol in Crimea, what you see here is the Russians doing two things.

"The first is to seize territory that they now lay claim to and the second is to cripple the Ukrainian armed forces.

"That is extremely important to them if they want to move into the Ukrainian eastern provinces where there are a predominance of Russian speakers."

At the Kremlin on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed legislation incorporating Crimea into Russia and hailed it as a "remarkable event".

Crimea's annexation was celebrated in the region's capital Simferopol

International monitors are due to arrive in Ukraine in the next 24 hours to monitor the political and security situation in the country.

Russia agreed the move - claiming it would help stop "nationalist bandits" in the country - but has barred the observers from going to Crimea.

It also hit back at the widening of sanctions, calling them "divorced from reality" and said it reserved the right to impose sanctions of its own.

Moscow celebrates the annexation of Crimea with a fireworks display

The 57 member countries of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) agreed an initial deployment of 100 monitors to regions in the east, south and west of Ukraine.

They will spend six months in the country and 400 more could be added "as necessary and according to the situation", diplomats said.

Western countries have been pushing hard for an observer mission as a way of preventing an escalation of tensions in Ukraine following Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula.

Russia had blocked the plan on previous occasions.

OSCE vice-chairperson Thomas Greminger welcomed the decision as a "very meaningful contribution to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine".

Sanctions against Russia's ultra-rich are still on the table, says the PM

But, in a statement on Saturday, Russia's Foreign Ministry made it clear Crimea is a 'no-go area' for the observers.

It said: "The mission's mandate reflects the new political and legal realities and does not apply to Crimea and Sevastopol, which became a part of Russia."

"Russia hopes that the objective and impartial work of the international observers will help to overcome the internal Ukrainian crisis, stop rampant nationalist banditry, eradicate ultra-radical tendencies."

Prime Minister David Cameron and other EU leaders have imposed travel bans and asset freezes on 12 more people to punish Moscow for its takeover of the Ukrainian territory.

There are now 33 Ukrainians and Russians on the list, accused of playing some part in what Western powers say is an illegal land grab of the region.

Russia said the move was necessary to prevent oppression of Russian-speaking people on the peninsula following the Ukrainian  political crisis which saw President Viktor Yanukovych flee the country.

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