WarSclerotic

It is becoming increasingly clear: The key to Ukraine’s near future lies in Crimea.

Crimea, the only Ukrainian region with an ethnic Russian majority, is the last big bastion of opposition to the new leadership in Kiev since pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted last weekend.

The region also provides a base for the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet. Kiev’s new rulers said any movement by Russian forces beyond the base’s territory would be tantamount to aggression.

“Any military movements, the more so if they are with weapons, beyond the boundaries of this territory will be seen by us as military aggression,” said Oleksander Turchinov, Ukraine’s acting president.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had assured him by telephone that Moscow would not intervene militarily in its neighbor.

“I think Russia needs to be very careful in the judgments that it makes going forward here,” he said in an exclusive interview with NBC on Wednesday. “We are not looking for confrontation. But we are making it clear that every country should respect the territorial integrity here, the sovereignty of Ukraine. Russia has said it would do that and we think it’s important that Russia keeps its word.”

On Thursday, at a joint news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Kerry said: “We believe that everybody now needs to take a step back and avoid any kind of provocations. We want to see in the next days ahead that the choices Russia makes conform to this affirmation we received today.”

The United States pledged its support for the new Ukrainian government in a call on Thursday by Vice President Joe Biden to Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk.

Yatsenyuk said the country’s future lies in the European Union, but with friendly relations with Russia. He insisted the country would not accept the secession of Crimea. The Black Sea territory, he declared, “has been and will be a part of Ukraine.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to continue talks with Ukraine on economic and trade relations and to consult foreign partners, including the International Monetary Fund and the G-8 forum of nations, on financial aid, a statement on the Kremlin’s website said.

It said Putin also ordered the government to consider a request from Crimea for humanitarian aid.

Friday morning, dozens of armed men in military uniforms without markings were patrolling the airport in the Crimean capital.

Russian state television quoted eyewitnesses saying the men arrived at the Simferopol airport in the early hours on Friday.

An Associated Press photographer saw military men armed with assault rifles patrolling the airport Friday. The men, who were wearing uniforms without any insignia, refused to talk to journalists, and it was not immediately clear who they were.

Ukraine’s interior minister said Friday the Russian military was blocking Belbek international airport in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea, near the Russian naval base.

Arsen Avakov said in a Facebook post that the airport in Sevastopol is blocked by military units of the Russian navy. Avakov called the blockade “military invasion and occupation.”

Meanwhile, Yanukovych issued a public statement for the first time since he was deposed on Saturday, saying he remains the lawful president of Ukraine and asked Russia for protection. Moscow has reportedly granted his request.

Yanukovych said that people in its southeastern and southern regions would never accept the “lawlessness” brought by leaders chosen by a mob.

“On the streets of many cities of our country there is an orgy of extremism,” he said, adding that he and his closest aides had been threatened physically. “I have to ask the Russian authorities to provide me with personal safety from the actions of extremists.”

He was expected to hold a news conference in Russia on Friday.

Yatsenyuk denounced Yanukovych as the initiator of the deadly clashes between police and protesters in Kiev.

“He is no longer president,” Yatsenyuk said. “He’s a wanted man who is suspected of mass murder in connection with crimes against humanity.”

Yatsenyuk also accused Yanukovych’s government of stripping state coffers bare and said $37 billion of credit it had received had disappeared.

According to Yatsenyuk, in the past three years “the sum of $70 billion was paid out of Ukraine’s financial system into off-shore accounts.”

“I want to report to you — the state treasury has been robbed and is empty,” he said. “37 billion dollars of credit received have disappeared in an unknown direction,” he added.

The situation was so grave that there was no other alternative but to take “extraordinarily unpopular measures,” he said.

Russia has repeatedly declared it will defend the interests of its citizens in Ukraine, and on Wednesday announced war games near the border involving 150,000 troops on high alert.

Although Moscow said it would not intervene by force, its rhetoric since the removal of its ally Yanukovich has echoed the run-up to its invasion of Georgia in 2008, when it sent its troops to protect two self-declared independent regions and then recognized them as independent states.