Mediaboss Marketing

KIEV: Ukraine on Monday ordered its troops to withdraw from Crimea following the flashpoint peninsula's seizure and annexation by Russia in response to the fall in Kiev of a pro-Kremlin regime.

The dramatic announcement came just as world leaders gathered in The Hague for a nuclear security summit dominated by concern over the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.

A top commander in NATO had warned on Sunday that the Western military alliance was carefully watching massive Russian troop formations on the eastern border of Ukraine that could theoretically make a push across the vast ex-Soviet country at any point.

Ukraine's acting president Oleksandr Turchynov told top lawmakers that both servicemen and their families would now be relocated on the mainland.

"The national security and defence council has reached a decision, under instructions from the defence ministry, to conduct a redeployment of military units stationed in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea," Turchynov said in nationally televised remarks.

"The cabinet of ministers has instructions to resettle the families of soldiers as well as everyone else who today is forced to leave their homes under the pressure and aggression of the Russian army's occupying forces."

Crimea's pro-Kremlin deputy premier Rustam Temirgaliyev told Russia's RIA Novosti state news agency that "all Ukrainian soldiers have either switched to the Russian side or are leaving the territory of Crimea."

Turchynov's announcement came less than a month after Russian President Vladimir Putin won authorisation to use force in response to the February 22 ouster of pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych regime by more nationalist leaders who are seeking a closer alliance with Europe.

Ukraine's heavily outnumbered forces had been steadily losing ground on the Black Sea peninsula and saw their main airbase outside the regional capital Simferopol stormed by Russian troops on Saturday.

The assault by Russian forces and pro-Kremlin militias continued on Monday with the fall of a Ukrainian naval base in the east Crimean port of Feodosia.

Read more:

Ukraine orders Crimea military withdrawal