Dozens of pro-Russian gunmen in combat fatigues have seized parliament and government buildings on Ukraine's volatile Crimea peninsula the country's ousted leader won assurances that Moscow would protect him.
The dawn raid in Crimea came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered snap combat readiness drills to be held near the Ukrainian border, raising fears the Kremlin might use force to sway the outcome of a three-month crisis that has pitted Moscow against the West in a Cold War-style confrontation.
Ukraine's interim president Oleksandr Turchynov told a boisterous session of parliament that any movement of Russian troops out of their Black Sea bases in Crimea "will be considered as military aggression".
The same message was delivered when the Ukrainian foreign ministry called in Moscow's charge d'affaires for urgent consultations.
Ukraine's bloodiest crisis since independence in 1991 erupted in November when Viktor Yanukovych - deposed as president last weekend - made the shock decision to ditch an historic EU trade deal in favour of closer ties with old master Russia.
Yanuvkoych, in his first comments since fleeing Kiev, said in a surprise statement to Russian news agencies issued from an undisclosed location that he still considered himself to be president of Ukraine, a strategic nation of 46 million people.
News reports in Moscow said the fugitive leader's request for personal security had been "granted on Russian territory" but provided no other details.
Ukraine had appeared to take a decisive swing back towards the European Union by ousting Yanukovych's entire pro-Russian team and replacing it with a new brand of younger pro-Western politicians who will steer the nation - torn between a Russified east and pro-European west - until snap presidential polls are held on May 25.
A cabinet headed by 39-year-old caretaker prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk - a close ally of the freed opposition icon Yulia Tymoshenko - was unveiled to an emotional crowd of 25,000 late on Wednesday on the same barricade-riven Kiev square that had been the epicentre of the revolt against Yanukovych's rule.
MPs in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada parliament were due on Thursday to overwhelmingly confirm the new cabinet after ousting Yanukovych on Saturday in a near-unanimous vote.
The Russian flag flew Thursday over both the Crimean parliament and government buildings in the regional capital of Simferopol.
The Black Sea autonomous region's prime minister Anatoliy Mohilyov said that up to 50 men with weapons seized the buildings and were preventing government workers from entering.
But his predecessor Serhiy Kunitsyn told MPs in Kiev that his contacts in Crimea said the raid involved "about 120 well-trained gunmen armed with sniper rifles... and carrying enough ammunition to last them a month".
Yanukovych - wanted for "mass murder" - had been widely believed to have gone into hiding in Crimea with his two sons and a small team of heavily armed guards.
But Russian television reported on Wednesday that he was hiding in a government health resort near Moscow.
His statement Thursday did not disclose his whereabouts but stressed he was "compelled to ask the Russian Federation to ensure my personal security from the actions of extremists."
"I still consider myself to be the legal head of the Ukrainian state," Yanukovych in a statement released simultaneously by Russia's three main news agencies.
Yanukovych said he considered all actions being taken by Ukraine's parliament to be illegal.
The Kremlin had said Wednesday it had no information about where Yanukovych might be. But a security source strongly implied that the 63-year-old was already in Russia.
"Because president Yanukovych appealed to the authorities of the Russian Federation to ensure his personal security, I can say that this request has been granted on Russian territory," the unnamed source told Russian agencies.
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