Ukraine: Russia Seizes Hospital, US To Investigate Corruption

Ukraine’s crisis drags on as invasive
pro-Russian forces continue to occupy the Crimean Peninsula and
gain more ground. Meanwhile, the U.S. is trying help stabilize
Ukraine, not through military action, but better bookkeeping.

Entering their second week of aggression, both “pro-Russian
militias and Russian troops” reportedly seized a military hospital
in the city of Simferopol today. The Kyiv Post
writes:

Some 20-30 men in military uniforms captured the military
hospital at about noon today. They carried truncheons and
threatened hospital workers and some 30 patients, who are Ukrainian
soldiers or veterans.

“People are really fearing for their lives,” said Evgen Pyvoval,
the hospital’s director. He said the captures crammed him into a
bus and kept him there for 30 minutes. “We don’t know what their
demands are,” Pyvoval said.

“About 10 unidentified armed men” also fired warning shots at a
Ukrainian naval base today and demanded 10 military trucks,

according to Reuters.

These are just the latest in a string of strategic locations
Russians have captured or attacked on the peninsula, which
President Vladimir Putin hopes to bring under his control. A former
Ukrainian military officer
claimed on Sunday that a Russian troops took one airfield and
surrounded a checkpoint at another. On Friday, around 200 troops
stormed a missile base,
but eventually relinquished control back to Ukrainian personnel. On
Wednesday, the Sydney Morning Herald
reported that two more missile bases had “come under partial
control by pro-Moscow forces” that day.

“Russian troops preparing to install air defense systems on the
peninsula territory, which includes the use of air defense missile
battalions of Ukrainian Armed Forces that are being planned to be
taken over,” explained
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yevhen Perebyinis.

So far, Ukraine’s government
has resisted responding to these sieges with force, lest it provide
Russia a
casus belli as Georgia did in 2008. 

And although the U.S. is flexing some military muscle by sending
a
warship to the Black Sea, it doesn’t
want to go too entangled. Instead, it is helping Ukraine’s new
government sort out the economic mess left behind by deposed
president, Viktor Yanukovych. American Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt

said at a press conference today:

We have already on the ground here, in Ukraine, experts from the
FBI, the Department of Justice and the Department of Treasury who
are working with their Ukrainian counterparts to support the
Ukrainian investigation… to uncover the financial crimes that were
committed by the previous regime and to see what can be done to
recuperate some of those assets (stolen from the state).

Ukraine’s unrest, which began in November 2013, was sparked in
part by a worsening economic situation. The nation’s interim
president is planning a trip to Washington to meet with President
Obama this Wednesday. 

For more Reason coverage of Ukraine, click here.