Main News of March 7

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Ukraine’s Crimean city of Sevastopol has voted to become part of Russia, mirroring an earlier vote by the region’s parliament and consolidating support for the majority ethnic Russian region to formally secede from Ukraine in an upcoming popular vote.

* Crimea, a majority ethnic Russian region within Ukraine, decided to ignore a presidential order on a technicality and proceed with an upcoming vote to secede and join Russia.

 

RUSSIA

* Russia’s upper house of parliament said it would welcome the addition of Crimea to the country's territory if residents there choose to secede from Ukraine in a referendum scheduled next week.

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Washington against "hasty and reckless” steps over the crisis in Ukraine that could harm Russia-US relations.

* Russia accused the European Union of taking an “extremely unconstructive stance” on the Ukrainian political crisis by freezing negotiations with Russia on a visa-free regime and a new cooperation agreement.

* The head of Russia’s state-run energy company Gazprom said that Ukraine has stopped paying for Russian gas supplies, which could trigger a repetition of 2009’s so-called “gas war” between the two countries.

* Russian investigators said that they are opening a case against a prominent Ukrainian nationalist on suspicion of torturing and murdering at least 20 Russian servicemen during the conflict of the early 2000s in Chechnya.

* The web domain of the Russian government’s official newspaper was defaced and taken down by alleged supporters of the Ukrainian uprising that led to the toppling of the country’s president.

* Russia has moved to protect its domestic caviar industry by raising import duties for US imports of the delicacy, the RBC Daily newspaper said.

 

DEFENSE

* All military flights previously transiting through a US air facility in Kyrgyzstan have been transferred to a new base in Romania, a representative of the Manas Transit Center in the Central Asian country said.

 

SPORTS

* Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the 11th Paralympic Winter Games open at a grandiose opening ceremony in Sochi.