Interesting set of vox pops by our Russian Service. Muscovites seem happy that Russia is annexing Crimea, unsure about paying for it -- and generally supportive of sanctions against Putin and his inner circle.

Colonel Yuriy Mamchur, the commander of Ukraine's Belbek airbase, has gone missing since the base fell to Russian troops on Saturday.

Pro-Russian forces had already seized the base's control tower and airfield weeks earlier. Mamchur had deliberately kept his troops unarmed to avoid escalation, but refused to relinquish the base, saying he would not withdraw until told to do so by his superiors.

Nahlah Ayed of CBC News has a gripping account of Mamchur's standoff with a Russian emissary a day before the base fell:

"I didn't invite anyone to come here in the first place," [Mamchur] said. "I have a legal right to be here. If my superiors tell me otherwise, I will go."

The emissary wouldn't budge. "Let me correct you. You are not here legally. Your base is on the territory of a foreign state."

In faraway Moscow, President Vladimir Putin had just signed into law Crimea's absorption into the Russian fold.

The colonel was well aware of this, but he too was unmoved. "Until I get orders from my superiors..."

"Well, you know those orders will never come," was the biting reply from the Russian.

The mustachioed emissary was right.

The lingering question, as Colonel Mamchur and his men waited in limbo, is why.

Where was the new government in Kyiv? The same government that had repeatedly said Ukraine would go to war if Russia dared take Crimea. It had also once announced it had called up the reserves in preparation for combat.

The prime minister was in fact in Brussels, signing a deal on political cooperation with Europe. Otherwise, the government was contending with the chaos that comes with inexperience in governing.

Further, issuing a withdrawal order may be seen as capitulating, and that would be an unsavory position for the government. It chose instead to do nothing and continue with empty bluster.

Without a directive from Kyiv, some bases in Crimea also fell into disarray. At Perevalnoye, Ukrainian troops simply walked out, shortly afterwards replaced by Russians, this time without balaclavas.

Not at Belbek though, Crimea’s largest base, where the colonel just would not be moved.

Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, today ordered all Ukrainian troops to withdraw from Crimea.

Read the CBC story in full here:

A Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman has told journalists that Kyiv's ambassador to Belarus, Mykhaylo Yezhel, was recalled and a note sent to Minsk condemning Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's characterization of Crimea as "part of Russia." The spokesman, Yevhen Perebyynis, said that view contradicts international law and the stance of the "majority of the world's nations."

Asked yesterday about his refusal to publicly support Russia's moves on the peninsula, Lukashenka told reporters in Minsk: "As for recognition or not recognition, Crimea is part of Russia today. You can recognize it or not recognize this, but this will not change anything." Lukashenka added, however, that he thought Russia’s annexation of Crimea had set a "bad precedent."

On the topic of Yuriy Mamchur and Belbek, well worth watching the latest dispatch from VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky reporting from the base during the storming by Russian troops. Good footage of Mamchur in action.

Crimea's pro-Russian PM Rustam Temirgaliev calls on Russians to be patriotic and vacation in Crimea this year...

EU sells out Ukrainian gays, withdraws gay rights requirement in visa talks with Ukraine. via Justice Min Petrenko http://t.co/pDuaJexjm4

— Maxim Eristavi (@MaximEristavi) March 24, 2014

A grainy recording has been posted on YouTube that appears to catch Yulia Tymoshenko using salty language and calling for all Russians remaining on Ukrainian territory to be killed with an atomic weapon.

The publisher, "Sergiy Vechirko," alleges the call took place on March 18 -- two days after Crimea's referendum calling for reunification with Russia. He also identifies the speakers as Tymoshenko and the former deputy secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, Nestor Shufrych.

As Shufrych bemoans the state of affairs in Crimea, Tymoshenko brusquely cuts him off, saying, "Screw it, we should take up arms and kill the goddamned katsaps" -- a derogatory word for Russians -- "along with their leader."

She adds, "I'm sorry I'm not there right now -- there's no way they would have gotten Crimea away from me."

Shufrych goes on to say that a mutual acquaintance, "Viktor," asked what Kyiv should do about the 8 million Russians still living on Ukrainian territory.

"We should hit them with an atomic weapon," Tymoshenko answers back.

Tymoshenko has ackowledged on Twitter that the phone call was real but that the content was edited to appear virulently anti-Russian. Regarding the 8 million Russians, Tymoshenko claims her actual statement was "Russians in Ukraine are Ukrainians themselves." She added: "Hi FSB.: )"

The sudden appearance of the recording YouTube is reminiscent of last month's scandal in which two high-level diplomatic calls were recorded and leaked on social media, including one in which Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was caught saying, "F**k the EU."

Tymoshenko's disclaimers aside, the video is certain to play into Russia's hands by further amplifying the notion that Ukraine's ethnic Russians are in imminent danger of attack.

From the wires. Russia's Foreign Ministry has imposed sanctions on 12 Canadian politicians and the president of the Canadian-Ukrainian congress in response to sanctions the Canadian government imposed on 14 Russian citizens and a Russian bank.

Might be time politicians in Ukraine just stopped using the phone. #tymoshenko

— Andrew (@amgilmore) March 24, 2014