Tensions continued to run high in Crimea following Moscow's takeover of the strategic Black Sea peninsula, as Russia's foreign minister warned the United States that Western sanctions over the crisis were 'unacceptable' and threatened consequences.
In the first fatalities stemming from the annexation, a Ukrainian serviceman and a member of a local self-defense brigade were killed by gunfire in Crimea on Tuesday, just hours after President Vladimir Putin's speech declaring the Black Sea peninsula part of the motherland.
An Associated Press photographer reported Wednesday that a unit of pro-Russian self-defense forces based in Crimea stormed the Ukrainian navy's headquarters in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol and raised the Russian flag on the building.
The unarmed forces waited for an hour on the square before they moved to storm the headquarters, but Ukrainian servicemen did not offer any resistance.
The AP photographer was able to enter the headquarters and saw the Crimean self-defense forces roaming around while the Ukrainian servicemen were packing up and leaving.
Meanwhile in Kiev, acting Ukrainian Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh said Ukrainian forces will not withdraw from Crimea even though Putin and Crimean officials signed a treaty Tuesday for the region to join Russia, according to Reuters.
While the treaty must still be endorsed by Russia's Constitutional Court and ratified by both houses of parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of the upper house, said those steps could be completed by the end of the week.
When asked by journalists on the sidelines of a government meeting if Kiev would pull its forces out of the peninsula, Tenyukh replied, 'No. We will stay.'
In a 40-minute speech televised live from the Kremlin's St. George hall on Tuesday, Putin dismissed Western criticism of Sunday's Crimean referendum - in which residents of the strategic peninsula voted overwhelmingly to break off from Ukraine and join Russia.
The West and Ukraine have described the Crimean referendum as illegitimate and being held at gunpoint.
With limited options, the U.S. and European Union are seeking ways to show they will not stand idly by. A day after freezing assets and imposing other sanctions against Russian officials and Ukrainian supporters, the Group of Eight world powers suspended Russia's participation.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Secretary of State John Kerry that Crimea made a 'democratic choice in line with the international law and the U.N. charter.' He said the sanctions were 'unacceptable and will not remain without consequences,' Reuters reported.
The two diplomats spoke by telephone hours after the treaty was signed. Kerry reiterated Washington's position that the referendum and the takeover of Crimea were 'illegal' and 'unacceptable,' State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
The White House said late Wednesday President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have discussed Russia's annexation of Crimea and agree that international monitors must be sent immediately to southern and eastern Ukraine.
The two leaders condemned Putin's move and agreed to continue to underscore to the Russian president that a diplomatic solution remains possible. Both leaders have agreed to stay in touch in the coming days, according to the White House.
Thousands of Russian troops had overtaken Crimea two weeks before Sunday's hastily called referendum, seizing some Ukrainian military bases, blockading others and pressuring Ukrainian soldiers to surrender their arms and leave. Putin insisted the Russian troops were in Crimea under a treaty with Ukraine that allows Russia to have up to 25,000 troops at its Black Sea fleet base in Crimea.
Late Tuesday, Putin attended a rally on Red Square where tens of thousands gathered to support Crimea joining Russia. 'Putin said it - Putin did it!' one banner read.
In Donetsk, the center of Ukraine's eastern Donbass coal-mining region, 37-year-old businessman Aleksei Gavrilov hailed Crimea joining Russia and said Donbass also historically belonged to Russia.
'Ukraine is just a made-up, fake project that was created to destroy Russia,' he said. 'Everything Putin said is perfectly correct, and I support him completely.'
Igor Nosenko, a bar manager watching Putin's speech in Kiev, said he felt like he was 'in some kind of surrealist world where a person is saying that white is black.'
'It can be dangerous for the whole world, since it is absolutely unclear what this person has in his head,' he said of Putin.
Border defenses were bolstered in Ukraine by concrete blocks placed across a highway that links the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and Crimea, Reuters reported. In Kiev, authorities were calling up recruits to an army they say was neglected under ousted president Viktor Yanukovych.
On and around the Kiev square from which the protest movement sprung up, crude barricades remain in place and within them, groups of men young and old in store-bought fatigues mill around, sharing jokes and warming themselves by barrel fires.
The plan is for people on the Maidan, as the square is known, to stay until a new and elected government is formed and to ensure that it lives up to its promises.
Vasily Volchenko, a 51-year old retired career military officer manning a stall of knick-knacks memorializing the bloody protests that culminated in Yanukovych's overthrow, said the loss of Crimea is not going down well.
'We had hoped the government, even though it is only provisional, would react quickly, but they have done practically nothing,' he said. 'If they think they can give up Crimea that easily, then they are quite mistaken. We will just self-organize, because we are not giving up our Ukraine to anybody.' The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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