Eurasia Press & News
Crimea’s Parliament voted to join Russia on March 6 and its Moscow-backed government set a referendum within 10 days on the decision in a dramatic escalation of the crisis over the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula.
The sudden acceleration of moves to bring Crimea, which has an ethnic Russian majority and has effectively been seized by Russian forces, formally under Moscow’s rule came as European Union leaders gathered for an emergency summit to find ways to pressureRussia to back down.
The Crimean parliament voted unanimously “to enter into the Russian Federation with the rights of a subject of the Russian Federation.”
The announcement, which diplomats said could not have been made without Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approval, raised the stakes in the most serious east-west confrontation since the end of the Cold War.
