(3 Mar 2014) Pro-Russian protesters occupied the regional government building in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Monday.
Chanting and waving Russian flags, protesters climbed the gate and entered the building through a smashed window.
Ukraine's military admitted on Monday that pro-Russian troops had surrounded or taken over "practically all" its military facilities in the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea - a move that Russia's foreign minister defended as a necessary protection for the ethnic Russians there.
Meanwhile, a security analyst in London warned on Monday that the crisis in Ukraine had the potential to become "a full-fledged war in the heart of Europe."
Dr Jonathan Eyal, Director of International Security Studies at Royal United Services Institute, said nothing had been more serious since the Balkans conflict in the early 1990s.
"It also shatters all our ideas about peace in our time on the European continent," he said.
Outrage over Russia's military moves has mounted in world capitals, with US Secretary of State John Kerry calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull back from "an incredible act of aggression."
Kerry is to travel to Ukraine on Tuesday.
Putin has defied calls from the West to pull back his troops, insisting that Russia has a right to protect its interests and those of Russian-speakers in Crimea and elsewhere in Ukraine.
Eyal said if Russia were to stop in Crimea and not move elsewhere in the Ukraine - something he said was "one of the key objectives of Western governments" - that would "clearly be an encouraging sign"
But he warned: "Any spread of the conflict beyond Crimea to eastern Ukraine could immediately and almost inevitably involve a great deal of bloodshed."
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