Putin visits Crimea a day after war games

Vladimir Putin flew into Crimea on Friday a day after staging war games there, and said he hoped Ukraine would see “common sense” when it came to resolving a diplomatic crisis over the peninsula.

Two years after Russian troops seized the peninsula, it is again the focus of international tension, after the Russian President accused Kiev last week of sending saboteurs who clashed with Russian troops.

Kiev, which has also fought a two-year war against pro-Russian separatists in two eastern Provinces, denies the border incident ever took place and calls it a fabrication that could be used as a pretext for a new Russian invasion.

Troop mobilisation The Russian leader has used threatening Trhetoric, promising unspecified “counter-measures”, and has built up troops ahead of a big military exercise next month. He addressed the crisis again on Friday, opening a meeting of his Security Council at an air base near the naval port of Sevastopol on his first visit to Crimea since he made the initial accusations.

“It is clear that we have gathered for a well known reason after the infamous incident, after we thwarted attempts by groups of Ukrainian army saboteurs to break into [our] territory,” he said.

On Thursday, Russian naval and land forces practised swiftly moving military hardware and troops to Crimea, already one of the world’s most militarised areas.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday he did not rule out introducing martial law and a new wave of military mobilisation if the east Ukraine conflict worsened.