DHAKA: Crimea’s rebel leader urged Russians across Ukraine on Sunday to rise up against Kiev’s rule and welcome Kremlin forces whose unrelenting march against his flashpoint peninsula has defied Western outrage.

The call came amid growing anxiety among Kiev’s Western-backed rulers that Russian president Vladimir Putin, flushed with expansionist fervour, will imminently order an all-out attack on his ex-Soviet neighbour after being hit by only limited EU and US sanctions for taking the Black Sea cape.

‘The aim of Putin is not Crimea but all of Ukraine,’

Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council chief Andriy Parubiy told a mass unity rally in Kiev, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 2009 HRS, MAR 23, 2014