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First Posted: 3/18/2014 KIEV, Ukraine &#8212;Apparent Russian snipers drew first blood Tuesday in the three-week standoff over Crimea, killing a Ukrainian soldier when they opened fire on a Ukrainian military center in Simferopol, Crimea&#8217;s capital.
The shooting death, the first in what had been a tense, but not deadly, Russian occupation of the Black Sea peninsula, came not long after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty to annex Crimea, to a standing ovation from his Parliament, and immediately prompted Ukrainian officials to change their rules of engagement, giving their troops the right to use weapons to defend themselves against Russian aggression.
At another Ukrainian military base at the Crimean town of Perevalne, a captain told McClatchy that his force, battle tested in Iraq and Kosovo, finally had received orders from Kiev after three weeks of being surrounded by Russian forces.
&#8220;Be brave, stand firm,&#8221; he said he&#8217;d been told by the interim president of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov, in a phone conversation. &#8220;If the Russians spill one drop of Ukrainian blood, the world will be with us.&#8221; The captain declined to be identified by name because he fears for the safety of his family.
Details of the shooting were sketchy, with news outlets describing the dead man as an officer in the Ukrainian military&#8217;s main mapping and navigation unit, but a Defense Ministry statement described him as a soldier. Another person, whom the Defense Ministry statement described as a captain, was reported seriously wounded.
The Ukrainian News website said that an invading force made up of Russian soldiers and Crimean &#8220;self-defense forces&#8221; stormed the center about 3 p.m., one hour after Putin&#8217;s speech, and told the Ukrainians they were under arrest and took away their papers. When the shooting occurred was unclear.
The shooting death came one day after the United States and Europe imposed what Ukrainians consider laughably weak economic sanctions on a handful of Russian officials in retaliation for Russia&#8217;s seizure of Crimea. Ukrainian officials made clear the killing had altered their view of the situation.
&#8220;It&#8217;s not a political conflict,&#8221; said Ukraine&#8217;s interim prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk. &#8220;It&#8217;s a military conflict.&#8221;
His words came after Putin and Crimea&#8217;s new leader, Sergey Aksyonov, signed the treaty in a ceremony that took place at 2 p.m. in Kiev. The treaty would create not just one but two new republics that would join the Russian Federation. One, of course, would be Crimea. The other would create a new republic out of Sevastopol, the sprawling port city that is home to Russia&#8217;s Black Sea Fleet and a favorite retirement spot for former Soviet and Russian military.
In addressing the Russian Parliament and asking it to approve the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol, Putin spoke widely of the deep and abiding relationship, even affection, between Russia and Ukraine.
At one point he noted the historic links between the two countries: &#8220;We are one nation,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Kiev is the mother of all Russian cities.&#8221;
But in Kiev, those words sent a chill through Ukrainians who saw them as a barely disguised threat.
&#8220;He means war,&#8221; said a Ukrainian woman as she stood in almost the exact center of &#8220;the mother of all Russian cities,&#8221; not far from what is traditionally viewed as the founding home of the Russian Orthodox Church. Nearby are a series of war memorials for Ukrainians who lost their lives in World War II, Afghanistan and other conflicts.
Putin in his speech tried to say that Ukraine had nothing to fear from Russia. &#8220;Don&#8217;t believe those who try to frighten you with Russia,&#8221; he said. &#8220;To those who scream that other regions will follow after Crimea, I say we do not want to partition Ukraine. We do not need this.&#8221;
But he also noted: &#8220;Russia will always protect its interests.&#8221;
Paired with frequent Russian government statements, including some that he alluded to during his speech, that the Ukrainian government is run by &#8220;fascists from Maidan,&#8221; that &#8220;Russian speakers are in grave danger&#8221; and that Russia has a responsibility to protect ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, many here agreed that his entire speech could be viewed as a threat.
Leading Ukrainian military analyst Oleksiy Melnyk, co-director of Razumkov Center, a research center in Kiev, said it didn&#8217;t require much analysis to hear the threat in Putin&#8217;s words. He added that clearly the risk of global isolation and the sanctions on Russian officials had not led Putin to back down.
&#8220;Every word of peace he spoke was really a word of war,&#8221; Melnyk said. &#8220;The intent of Western reaction, which is to ensure we don&#8217;t see a deepening crisis in Ukraine, is missing the point. The West is now in a state of war with Russia. It&#8217;s time they realized it.&#8221;

Ukrainian soldier killed as Putin’s words chill