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WASHINGTON — As Ukrainian leaders accused Russia of carrying out an armed invasion in the Crimea region, President Obama on Friday warned Russia not to intervene militarily, saying the United States would stand with the world to condemn a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s fragile new government accused Russia of trying to provoke a military conflict on Friday by invading the Crimea region, while in Washington President Obama issued a stern warning to the Kremlin about respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty, apparently in an effort to preclude a full-scale military escalation.
“There will be costs,” Mr. Obama declared in a brief statement from the White House. He said the United States government was “deeply concerned” by “reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside Ukraine.”
American officials did not directly confirm a series of public statements by senior officials in the new Ukrainian government, including its acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, that Russian troops were being deployed to Crimea, where Russia has a major naval base, in violation of the two countries’ agreements there.
He said any intervention militarily in Ukraine would be “deeply destabilizing” and would represent a “profound interference” in the Ukrainian people’s right to determine their own future.
Mr. Obama, however, cited “reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine,” and he said, “Any violation of Ukrainian sovereignty would be deeply destabilizing.”
Earlier, at the United Nations, the Ukrainian ambassador, Yuriy A. Sergeyev, said that Russian troops had taken control of two airports in Crimea and that the Russian Navy was blocking the Ukrainian Coast Guard.
“There will be costs,” Mr. Obama said in a hastily arranged statement from the White House.
Armed men of uncertain allegiance took up positions at two airports in Simferopol, the regional capital of Crimea, an area with stronger historical ties to Russia than to Ukraine’s central government in Kiev.
The pointed warning came after a day in which military analysts struggled to understand a series of unusual events in Crimea, including a mobilization of armored personnel carriers with Russian markings on the roads of the region’s capital, Simferopol, and a deployment of well-armed masked gunmen at Crimea’s two main airports.
Although there were no confrontations or bloodshed by evening, the appearance of a large number of masked men with assault rifles unnerved residents and travelers, who were buffeted by warnings from Kiev of military meddling by Moscow and statements from the deposed Ukrainian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, that the country had been taken over by fascists and “bandits.”
“The Russian Federation began an unvarnished aggression against our country,” Mr. Turchynov said in nationally televised remarks on Friday evening. “Under the guise of military exercises, they entered troops into the autonomous Republic of Crimea.”
In Simferopol, men dressed in camouflage and carrying assault rifles moved into position at the international airport and a second airfield nearby. Their military uniforms bore no insignia, and it was not clear who they were or who was commanding them. They declined to answer questions.
He said that Russian forces had captured the regional Parliament, as well as the headquarters of the regional government, and that they had sought to seize other targets, including vital communications hubs, and to block unspecified Ukrainian military assets.
Ukrainian International, Ukraine’s biggest airline, said on Friday that it had canceled flights into and out of the Crimea region because the airspace had been closed.
United States officials said they believed that the unusual helicopter movements over Crimea were evidence that a military intervention was underway, but cautioned that they did not know the scale of the operation or the Russians’ motives.
Moscow denied that its forces had moved into Crimea and attributed the presence of troops there to “internal political processes in Ukraine,” according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry. It said it had not violated agreements not to intervene in Ukrainian affairs.
Russia on Friday denied that it had or would encroach on Ukrainian territory, and claimed that any troop movements were in line with arrangements that allow it to station soldiers in the area.
Armored personnel carriers with Russian markings appeared on roads Friday outside Simferopol, sometimes alone but at other times in long columns of military vehicles. It was unclear whether the movements signaled a Russian push to occupy the city, a show of strength aimed at cowing far less numerous Ukrainian forces in the region, or simply a routine rotation of Russian hardware.
Still, developments in Ukraine sent Ukraine’s interim government, appointed just the day before, deep into crisis mode as it confronted the prospect of an armed effort to split off Crimea, an autonomous region with close historic ties to Russia, from the Ukrainian mainland.
Russia has many military facilities in Crimea, the most important of which is the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, in Sevastopol. Its military vehicles regularly move around the peninsula, but Friday’s activity was more intense than usual, according to local residents.
Analysts said the increase in the Russian presence in the area had parallels to steps Russia took before beginning a war with Georgia in 2008 over the largely ethnic Russian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but there was little to indicate whether President Vladimir V. Putin intended to escalate the challenge to Ukraine beyond the so-far nonviolent provocation of the mostly pro-Russian population in the region.
There were no immediate signs of panic in Simferopol, which has a large ethnic Russian population and has generally supported Moscow’s line that Kiev, 400 miles to the north, has been overrun by fascists who pose a grave threat to the interests of Ukraine’s Russian speakers.
Mr. Turchynov, the acting president, also made comparisons to Georgia.
The only visible military presence in the center of the city consisted of unidentified gunmen who seized the regional Parliament building and a government office complex this week. But Simferopol swirled with rumors, all unconfirmed, that Russian troops had seized Crimea’s main television station, the central post office and other strategic locations. Residents also exchanged information, apparently more grounded in reality, about sightings of Russian military transport planes landing at airports.
“They are provoking us into military conflict,” Mr. Turchynov said. “They began annexation of territory.”
“This is an open but unannounced aggression by the Russian Federation against the territory of Ukraine,” said Refat Chubarov, the leader of Crimea’s indigenous population of Tatars, a Muslim Turkic people, and a strong advocate of the region’s remaining part of Ukrainian territory. He said Russian military helicopters had flouted Ukrainian sovereignty by flying into Crimea without permission.
In his address, Mr. Turchynov added, “I personally appeal to President Putin, demanding that he immediately stop the provocation and withdraw troops.”
In Kiev, the speaker of Parliament, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, who is now the acting president of Ukraine, convened a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council to discuss the situation in Crimea.
The crisis in Crimea, along the Black Sea, is the latest development in a series of rapidly unfurling events that began after scores of people were killed in Kiev last week in a severe escalation of civic unrest that had been underway since late November.
Announcing the meeting in Parliament, Mr. Turchynov said, “Terrorists with automatic weapons, judged by our special services to be professional soldiers, tried to take control of the airport in Crimea.”
Protests started after Russia pressured Viktor F. Yanukovych, then the president, to back away from sweeping political and free-trade agreements with the European Union that he had long promised to sign, setting off an East-West confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War.
Mr. Yanukovych, in a news conference on Friday in Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia not far from Crimea, said the region should remain part of Ukraine, despite its historic, linguistic and cultural ties to Russia. “I think that everything that has happened in Crimea is a natural reaction to the gangster coup that happened in Kiev,” he said.
After the recent killings, Mr. Yanukovych reached a tentative truce with opposition leaders in talks brokered by the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland, but within 24 hours he fled the capital, and an overwhelming majority of lawmakers voted to strip him of power, saying he had abandoned his position.
He added, “People of Crimea don’t want to submit and they will not submit to Bandera thugs,” referring to a World War II-era nationalist leader, Stepan Bandera, who was vilified by the Soviet Union.
On Friday, a week later, Mr. Yanukovych resurfaced for a news conference in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, in which he said he was still the legitimate president and urged Russia not to intervene militarily in Crimea.
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on Friday with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, about the appearance of the armed men at the airports. “We raised the issue of the airports, raised the issue of armored vehicles, raised the issue of personnel in various places,” Mr. Kerry told reporters in Washington.
Mr. Obama’s warning suggested a deepening uncertainty among American officials about Mr. Putin’s intentions in the region despite a series of high-level contacts in recent days, including a telephone call between the two presidents one week ago. Mr. Yanukovych was an ally of Russia, and his toppling has left the Kremlin grappling for a response.
Mr. Lavrov asserted that Russia would respect the sovereignty of Ukraine, Mr. Kerry said. But Mr. Kerry said that he had told his Russia counterpart that “it is important for everybody to be extremely careful not to inflame the situation.”
Washington has struggled to make sense of the events in Crimea. While American officials said that intelligence indicated that a Russian operation was underway, Mr. Obama stopped short of calling it an invasion. Part of the confusion, one official said, was that Russia routinely moves troops between military bases in Crimea.
At the Simferopol airport, the armed men set up positions around a central administrative building, but they did not appear to enter the terminals. There were no roadblocks or checkpoints on the roads leading to the airport or on the grounds of the airport.
Another American official said that intelligence reports from the region are “all over the place,” but that the administration believed that Russia had moved some of its forces into Ukraine, while some of the movement, officials said, seemed to be an increase in protective measures around Russian military installations.
After nightfall, Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire member of Parliament, said outside the airport building that he had come to Crimea to negotiate with the regional Parliament on behalf of the national government in Kiev. He said his mission was “to do everything not to allow an escalation of violence” and to stress to the Crimeans that they were fellow Ukrainians and that Ukraine must not be divided.
Though he threatened an unspecified “cost” to Russia, Mr. Obama appeared to have limited options to respond to an intervention. Officials said he could cancel his participation in a Group of 8 meeting in Sochi, Russia, in June. The administration could also shut down talks on a potential trade agreement. Russia sent a delegation to Washington this week to explore closer trade and commercial ties.
He referred to the soldiers standing behind him as foreign and more than once gestured toward them with distaste. “What I cannot accept is the presence here of foreign troops,” he said. “We cannot accept the danger for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Crimea, a multi-ethnic region that was granted a large degree of autonomy in 1992 after Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union, has long been a source of tension with Russia and is the headquarters of some of Russia’s most important military installations, including the headquarters of its Black Sea naval fleet.
Meanwhile, another confrontation was underway at a second airport, called Belbek, that is used for military and some civilian flights.
As the international community reacted with consternation to the developments in Crimea, the Kremlin, as enigmatic as ever, remained largely silent.
In a post on his Facebook page, the interior minister, Arsen Avakov, said units believed to be affiliated with the Russian military had blocked access to the airport overnight, with some Ukrainian military personnel and border guards inside. Mr. Avakov wrote that the men blocking the airport were also wearing camouflage uniforms with no identifying insignia, but he added, “They do not hide their affiliation.”
Russian state television reported that Russian troops at arrived to secure the airport at Belbek, which is close to the Russian navy headquarters, but Russian officials did not confirm that information. The identity of gunmen who appeared at the Simferopol airport and at roadblocks on major roadways also remained unclear.
Mr. Avakov said that the airport was not functioning and that “there is no armed conflict yet.”
In a statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry acknowledged that the movement of armored vehicles from the base in Sevastapol had occurred “to ensure the security” of Russian forces, but added that the maneuvers were “fully in accordance” with the conditions of its lease, which was extended until 2042 as part of a deal in which Ukraine received discounts on Russian natural gas.
At the international airport, Mr. Avakov said, the Ukrainian authorities confronted the armed men and told them, “You soldiers have no right to be located here.” The uniformed men responded curtly, “We do not have instructions to negotiate with you,” he said.
While the movement of Russian military vehicles, equipment and personnel is common in the Crimea, Friday’s activity was extremely unusual, local residents said. It involved a number of strange components, including the deployment of heavily armed soldiers, wearing uniforms with no identifying marks, at the region’s two main airports.
“Tension is building,” Mr. Avakov wrote, adding: “I regard what is happening as an armed invasion and occupation in violation of all international treaties and norms. This is a direct provoking of armed bloodshed on the territory of a sovereign state.”
Before dawn, at Simferopol’s international airport, the soldiers initially posted themselves outside an administrative building, and through much of the day they did not interfere with departing or arriving flights.
Igor K. Tresilaty, who identified himself as assistant to the general director at the international airport, said Friday that the soldiers were remaining in common areas outside the airport, in the restaurant and in parking lots. He said he did not know who they were and expressed no curiosity about them, saying only that they looked professional.
By evening, however, the usual flight in from Kiev was canceled, and it was unclear whether any flights would go through Crimean airspace over the weekend. Similarly mysterious gunmen also appeared at a second airport, which is used for civil and military flights.
“They’re walking around, but we, nor the police, can’t have any complaint against them because they’re not violating anything, they’re not touching anyone,” Mr. Tresilaty said.
Journalists spotted a convoy of nine Russian armored personnel carriers on a road between the port city of Sevastopol, Russia’s main naval base, and Simferopol, the Crimean capital, a city of about 250,000. There were also unconfirmed reports that several planes carrying thousands of Russian soldiers had arrived in the Crimea on Friday night.
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet denied that its forces were involved in the deployment at one of the airports. But the national Parliament in Kiev appealed to Russia to “stop moves that show signs of undermining national sovereignty” in Ukraine, Reuters reported, and it urged the United States and Britain to honor commitments made in the early 1990s to protect the country’s territorial integrity.
Even more unusual, a Ukrainian telecommunications company, Ukrtelecom, said “unknown people” had seized control of several communications hubs disrupting telephone and Internet service between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine. In a statement, the company pleaded with law enforcement agencies to take control of the situation.
Parliament also called on the United Nations Security Council to debate the issue, apparently seeking to broaden the dispute.
While Western governments initially seemed hesitant to draw conclusions, officials in the new provisional government in Kiev said early Friday morning that they suspected Russian interference.
The rapid-fire developments came a day after a well-orchestrated power grab by pro-Russian forces played out across Simferopol: Armed militants took control of government buildings; crowds filled the streets, chanting “Russia, Russia”; and legislators called for a vote to redefine relations with Ukraine. The region is currently autonomous, meaning it has greater local control over its affairs.
Mr. Turchynov, who is speaker of Parliament, immediately convened a meeting of the newly-formed National Security and Defense Council to discuss the events in the south.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Crimea, a tinderbox of ethnic, political and religious divisions, has had repeated outbursts of pro-Russia fervor that all ultimately fizzled. But the events Thursday and Friday, coupled with the fragile state of Ukraine’s new and barely functioning central government, represented a much more serious challenge to the territorial integrity of the country and an already unsettled geopolitical balance between Russia and the West.
The situation here matches in some ways ones that previously played out in areas like Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where largely pro-Russia populations broke away from Georgia, a former Soviet republic like Ukraine, to effectively become Russian protectorates.
The pace of developments, set largely by well-organized pro-Russia groups that marched through Simferopol in military-style formations, has perhaps outrun even Moscow’s capacity for geopolitical machinations. Having mobilized its air and ground forces around Ukraine on Wednesday for previously unannounced military exercises in western Russia, Moscow has raised expectations among its most zealous supporters that it will intervene to support their cause.
But any open military intervention would risk plunging Crimea, a vital outpost for the Russian Navy, into bloody chaos and also undermine security inside Russia, particularly in heavily Muslim areas.
