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Ukraine's acting Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya speaks to the UN General Assembly on March 27.
Ukraine's acting Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya speaks to the UN General Assembly on March 27.

Live Blog: UN Backs Ukraine Integrity

Final Summary For March 27

-- The UN General Assembly has passed a resolution that affirms Ukraine's territorial integrity.

-- The IMF has announced "a staff-level agreement" with Kyiv on assistance of $14 billion-$18 billion in conjunction with a reform program that will "unlock" up to $27 billion over the next two years, pending final approval next month. Tthe U.S. Congress has also passed an aid bill for Ukraine.

-- Ex-PM Yulia Tymoshenko has announced plans to run for president.

-- Members of the Right Sector have been holding a demonstration outside the Ukrainian parliament building to vent their anger at the killing of prominent member Oleksander Muzychko earlier in the week.

-- Six Ukrainian military officers detained by pro-Russian troops in Crimea have been released, including Colonel Yuliy Mamchur, but five others are still being held captive.

-- Anonymous sources quoted by CNN say U.S. intelligence "concludes it is more likely than previously thought that Russian forces will enter eastern Ukraine."

-- U.S. President Barack Obama, in the keynote speech of his visit to Europe, chided Russia for its use of "brute force" in Ukraine and vowed that a determined alliance of the United States and Europe will prevail over time.


*NOTE: Times are stated according to local time in Kyiv
09:41 9.3.2014
Reuters quotes a spokesman for the Ukrainian border service as saying Russian forces now control 11 border-guard posts in Crimea. One of them -- the Chernomorskoye base on the western coast -- was taken over this morning without bloodshed, the report says, but trapping "about 30 personnel inside."
09:44 9.3.2014
Ukraine's Kanal 5 television quoting Ukrainian State Border Service spokesman Oleh Slobodyan as saying that a border guard unit was seized early this morning in Chornomorske, on the far western coast of the Crimean Peninsula.

"An armed attack against the border guard unit of the Border Service took place in Chornomorske. This happened at about 6:00 [a.m., local time]. The administration of the unit was seized by a group of 30 armed servicemen of the Russian Federation. The details are being established at the moment."

The television network also reports that technical "above water" surveillance posts were destroyed by Russian Black Sea Fleet servicemen on March 8 in what he said was part of a "continuing trend."
09:53 9.3.2014
09:56 9.3.2014
A reminder of this story from AP:

Four Central European nations are urging the United States to boost natural gas exports to Europe as a hedge against the risk that Russia could cut its supply of gas to Ukraine, but the White House says such a move would take more than a year.

Ambassadors from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic made their appeal Friday in a letter to John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. A similar letter was expected to be sent to Harry Reid, the Democratic leader of the Senate.
09:58 9.3.2014
Interfax reports:

Railroad transportation between Russia and Crimea may be organized through the Krasnodar Territory by passing Ukraine, Rustam Temirgaliyev, deputy prime minister of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, told Interfax.

"We are hoping railway flows will be re-directed to the Krasnodar Territory via ferry. We expect the bridge connecting Crimea to the Krasnodar Territory [over the Kerch Strait] to be built quickly so that the people of Crimea do not feel any discomfort while traveling from Crimea to Russia," he said.
10:04 9.3.2014
10:34 9.3.2014
10:35 9.3.2014
RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service reporting on the detention of Andriy Shchekun, leader of the Ukrainian Crimean Council, at a train station in Simferopol.

Shchekun in late February signed a statement by Crimea's Ukrainians calling on Kyiv to "protect all Ukrainian nationals residing in Crimea ... and not to succumb to acts of provocation staged by the forces acting against the state, according to Interfax-Ukraine. The statement also said that "Ukrainians living in Crimea and all those who supported EuroMaidan in Crimea, regardless of their ethnicity, are being threatened."
10:41 9.3.2014
AFP reports that Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said during a Kyiv rally that Ukraine will not give "an inch" of its territory to Russia.
10:49 9.3.2014
RFE/RL's Tom Balmforth reporting from Vitali Klitchko's presser in Donetsk that he appealed as a Russian speaker for Russians in the east to keep Ukraine together. Balmforth reports that a pro-Russia protest has started in the city, with a few thousand supporters assembled on Lenin Square. Russian firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky is said to be in town and expected to speak.

Klitchko is supposed to speak at a pro-Maidan rally that begins at about 3:00 p.m. local time.

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