Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Mikhail Klimentyev/ Presidential Press Service/RIA-Novosti/AP) 
 
 In Russia, Vladimir Putin's face is a common sight on television, newspapers, T-shirts, book covers and patriotic graffiti. So it was no wonder that a Russian TV channel, Zvezda ("Star"), claimed that Putin's face could be seen in the outlines of a swarm of birds flying above New York. Zvezda is known for its strictly patriotic views and is owned by the Russian Defense Ministry. 
 
 The TV channel pointed to a YouTube video posted by someone named Sheryl Gilbert. The video was uploaded Tuesday and generated lots of comments in Russian on Wednesday after the Russian channel picked it up. "It's a warning to the U.S. that they shouldn't start a war with Russia," one user wrote. "Putin bribed American birds," commented another in Ukrainian. Someone else suggested that the outlines did not resemble Putin's face as much as that of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. But there wasn't much support for that view. 
 
 Gregory West, who claims to be the husband of Sheryl Gilbert, posted a link to the video on Twitter on Tuesday. "Saw it several days ago during a trip and that's amazing! Can you see the face? Who is it?" 
 
 Some suggested that it was Steve Jobs, Robin Williams or Jerry Mouse. But some think the video is a fake. Zvezda also warned that it cannot guarantee the authenticity of the video. ||||| NEW YORK, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- A video showing the "strange behavior" of birds in New York is going viral after a Russian news station spotted the shape of Vladimir Putin's face in the flock. 
 
 The video, posted to YouTube by Sheryl Gilbert, purports to show the "strange behavior of birds" flying in a flock near the Brooklyn Bridge. 
 
 The video went viral in Russia after news station Zvezda aired the footage and reporters said a shape seen in a close-up of the birds appears to be the face of President Vladimir Putin. 
 
 The station, owned by the Russian Defense Ministry, cautioned the video could have been faked, but Gregory West, who identified himself as Gilbert's husband, said on Twitter the footage was real and shot from a tour bus during a recent visit to New York. 
 
 "Saw it several days ago during a trip and that's amazing! Can you see the face? Who is it?" West tweeted. ||||| Matthew Dunn news.com.au 
 
 IT turns out Vladimir Putin was seen invading the skies of New York City last week. 
 
 OK, that might be a stretch, but if you believe an 11-second YouTube clip, the Russian president was definitely there in spirit. 
 
 Sheryl Gilbert was on board a tourist bus when she captured footage of a flock of birds swarming around the New York skyline. 
 
 What made the clip impressive was the fact the birds flew into a formation that resembled a human face. 
 
 And it is not just any face, but the face of Putin. 
 
 Since being uploaded to YouTube, the video has gained a lot of attention and has been viewed more than a million times. 
 
 While many are quick to condemn the video as a fake, a number of Russian YouTube users think the event is a message. 
 
 “This is a hint: imagine what we can do during the war, if we can now make your birds fly resembling the face of our president,” commented one user. 
 
 “It’s a warning to the US that they shouldn’t start a war with Russia,” wrote another. 
 
 Check out the video below and let us know your thoughts in the comments section or tweet us @newscomauHQ ||||| Video 
 
 Last Updated, 5:11 p.m. | 
 
 As my colleague David Herszenhorn reports , the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance on Russian television Thursday, asking President Vladimir Putin a question about surveillance during an annual call-in program in which Russia’s leader fields questions from the public for up to four hours. 
 
 #Snowden asks #Putin about #Russia surveillance during president’s televised q-and-a, stunning in-your-face move by #Kremlin against #US — David M. Herszenhorn (@herszenhorn) 17 Apr 14 
 
 Video of the exchange, with an English translation of Mr. Putin’s reply — that his nation does not have the same capabilities as the United States and intercepts communications only with court approval — was quickly posted online by RT, the state-owned satellite channel formerly known as Russia Today. 
 
 Photo 
 
 After a short comment on what he called the ineffectiveness of American surveillance, Mr. Snowden asked, in an apparently prerecorded video, “does Russia intercept, store or analyze in any way the communications of millions of individuals?” 
 
 Mr. Putin replied: “Mr. Snowden, you are a former agent. I used to work for an intelligence service. Let’s speak in a professional language.” 
 
 “Our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law,” he added. “You have to get a court’s permission first.” 
 
 Noting that terrorists use electronic communications, Mr. Putin also said that Russia “of course” used surveillance. “But we don’t use this on such a massive scale and I hope that we won’t.” 
 
 The Kremlin’s official Twitter account also highlighted the president’s assertion that “there is no mass surveillance in Russia,” despite reports to the contrary. 
 
 The President on Edward Snowden’s question on surveillance: There is no mass surveillance in Russia and there cannot be any under the law — President of Russia (@KremlinRussia_E) 17 Apr 14 
 
 One feature of the public relations battle between West and East over Ukraine in recent months has been the repeated publication online of intercepted phone calls — in which both American officials and pro-Western Ukrainian politicians have been caught making impolitic remarks — which is widely seen as the work of Russian intelligence. 
 
 Mr. Snowden’s appearance on the broadcast, which is thought to be heavily scripted by the Kremlin, led to immediate criticism from some observers. One was the Slate columnist Anne Applebaum, who recently compared Russia’s destabilization of Ukraine to the work of Soviet intelligence agents in post-war Europe. 
 
 Edward Snowden has just officially made himself into a Russian propaganda tool //t.co/kNyTUts4Oq — Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) 17 Apr 14 
 
 Watching from Ukraine, the Kiev-based journalist Myroslava Petsa suggested that Mr. Snowden should have asked Mr. Putin about Pavel Durov, the founder of the Russian social network VKontakte. On Wednesday, Mr. Durov revealed in a post on the site that Russia’s intelligence agency had asked his company in December to hand over personal details of Ukrainians who were using the network to organize antigovernment protests in Kiev. His post included scanned images of the requests. 
 
 According to a translation from Mashable, Mr. Durov wrote: “Our response has been and remains a categorical refusal — Russian jurisdiction does not extend to Ukrainian users of VKontakte.” He added, “Giving personal details of Ukrainians to Russian authorities would not only be against the law, but also a betrayal of all those millions of people in Ukraine who have trusted us.” Not long after this refusal, Mr. Durov sold his shares in the company, effectively ceding control to a pro-Kremlin oligarch. 
 
 Video subtitled by Radio Free Europe, the broadcast network financed by Congress, showed that at another point in the show, Mr. Putin dismissed claims that Russian forces were among the insurgents in eastern Ukraine. 
 
 In response to a question from the newly annexed region of Crimea, Mr. Putin admitted that the mysterious and heavily armed “green men” who appeared there before it was taken over were in fact Russian soldiers, although he had categorically denied this at the time. 
 
 He also defended Ukraine’s ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was criticized by one questioner, a member of the riot police from Crimea. 
 
 Comander of Crimean Berkut unit: We were betrayed [by Yanukovych]. Has he always been such a slacker? //t.co/LQsJzAWD1d — Glenn Kates (@gkates) 17 Apr 14 
 
 At an earlier stage of the interview, as foreign correspondents in Moscow noted, Mr. Putin referred to eastern Ukraine as New Russia, an old name used in Czarist times. 
 
 Putin on East Ukraine: “This is Novorussia. East Ukraine regions were not part of Ukraine in Tsarist times.” — Laura Mills (@lauraphylmills) 17 Apr 14 
 
 Okay,guys,everyone can pack up and go:Putin calls eastern Ukraine Novorossiya (New Russia, term borrowed from the Russian imperial politics) — Nataliya Vasilyeva (@NatVasilyevaAP) 17 Apr 14 ||||| Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an interview with RT in 2013, said that he wanted to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams.” (YURI KOCHETKOV/AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list. 
 
 The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation. 
 
 Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia. 
 
 Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem. 
 
 There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. The tactics included penetrating the computers of election officials in several states and releasing troves of hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton in the final months of her campaign. 
 
 During a Facebook live discussion, reporter Caitlin Dewey explained how fake news sites use Facebook as a vehicle to function and make money. (The Washington Post) 
 
 “They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who along with two other researchers has tracked Russian propaganda since 2014. “This was their standard mode during the Cold War. The problem is that this was hard to do before social media.” 
 
 Watts’s report on this work, with colleagues Andrew Weisburd and J.M. Berger, appeared on the national security online magazine War on the Rocks this month under the headline “Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy.” Another group, called PropOrNot, a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds, planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns. (Update: The report came out on Saturday). 
 
 The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity. 
 
 PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times. 
 
 [Could better Internet security have prevented Trump’s win?] 
 
 Consider these points before sharing a news article on Facebook. It could be fake. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post) 
 
 Some players in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded, while others were “useful idiots” — a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts. 
 
 The Russian campaign during this election season, researchers from both groups say, worked by harnessing the online world’s fascination with “buzzy” content that is surprising and emotionally potent, and tracks with popular conspiracy theories about how secret forces dictate world events. 
 
 Some of these stories originated with RT and Sputnik, state-funded Russian information services that mimic the style and tone of independent news organizations yet sometimes include false and misleading stories in their reports, the researchers say. On other occasions, RT, Sputnik and other Russian sites used social-media accounts to amplify misleading stories already circulating online, causing news algorithms to identify them as “trending” topics that sometimes prompted coverage from mainstream American news organizations. 
 
 The speed and coordination of these efforts allowed Russian-backed phony news to outcompete traditional news organizations for audience. Some of the first and most alarming tweets after Clinton fell ill at a Sept. 11 memorial event in New York, for example, came from Russian botnets and trolls, researchers found. (She was treated for pneumonia and returned to the campaign trail a few days later.) 
 
 This followed a spate of other misleading stories in August about Clinton’s supposedly troubled health. The Daily Beast debunked a particularly widely read piece in an article that reached 1,700 Facebook accounts and was read online more than 30,000 times. But the PropOrNot researchers found that the version supported by Russian propaganda reached 90,000 Facebook accounts and was read more than 8 million times. The researchers said the true Daily Beast story was like “shouting into a hurricane” of false stories supported by the Russians. 
 
 This propaganda machinery also helped push the phony story that an anti-Trump protester was paid thousands of dollars to participate in demonstrations, an allegation initially made by a self-described satirist and later repeated publicly by the Trump campaign. Researchers from both groups traced a variety of other false stories — fake reports of a coup launched at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and stories about how the United States was going to conduct a military attack and blame it on Russia — to Russian propaganda efforts. 
 
 [Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’] 
 
 The final weeks of the campaign featured a heavy dose of stories about supposed election irregularities, allegations of vote-rigging and the potential for Election Day violence should Clinton win, researchers said. 
 
 “The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. . . . It worked.” 
 
 He and other researchers expressed concern that the U.S. government has few tools for detecting or combating foreign propaganda. They expressed hope that their research detailing the power of Russian propaganda would spur official action. 
 
 A former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael A. McFaul, said he was struck by the overt support that Sputnik expressed for Trump during the campaign, even using the #CrookedHillary hashtag pushed by the candidate. 
 
 McFaul said Russian propaganda typically is aimed at weakening opponents and critics. Trump’s victory, though reportedly celebrated by Putin and his allies in Moscow, may have been an unexpected benefit of an operation that already had fueled division in the United States. “They don’t try to win the argument,” said McFaul, now director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “It’s to make everything seem relative. It’s kind of an appeal to cynicism.” 
 
 The Kremlin has repeatedly denied interfering in the U.S. election or hacking the accounts of election officials. “This is some sort of nonsense,” Dmitry Peskov, press secretary for Putin, said last month when U.S. officials accused Russia of penetrating the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations. 
 
 RT disputed the findings of the researchers in an e-mail on Friday, saying it played no role in producing or amplifying any fake news stories related to the U.S. election. “It is the height of irony that an article about “fake news” is built on false, unsubstantiated claims. RT adamantly rejects any and all claims and insuations that the network has originated even a single “fake story” related to the US election,” wrote Anna Belkina, head of communications. 
 
 The findings about the mechanics of Russian propaganda operations largely track previous research by the Rand Corp. and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. 
 
 “They use our technologies and values against us to sow doubt,” said Robert Orttung, a GWU professor who studies Russia. “It’s starting to undermine our democratic system.” 
 
 The Rand report — which dubbed Russian propaganda efforts a “firehose of falsehood” because of their speed, power and relentlessness — traced the country’s current generation of online propaganda work to the 2008 incursion into neighboring Georgia, when Russia sought to blunt international criticism of its aggression by pushing alternative explanations online. 
 
 The same tactics, researchers said, helped Russia shape international opinions about its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military intervention in Syria, which started last year. Russian propaganda operations also worked to promote the “Brexit” departure of Britain from the European Union. 
 
 Another crucial moment, several researchers say, came in 2011 when the party of Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused of rigging elections, sparking protests that Putin blamed the Obama administration — and then-Secretary of State Clinton — for instigating. 
 
 Putin, a former KGB officer, announced his desire to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams” during a 2013 visit to the broadcast center for RT, formerly known as Russia Today. 
 
 “For them, it’s actually a real war, an ideological war, this clash between two systems,” said Sufian Zhemukhov, a former Russian journalist conducting research at GWU. “In their minds, they’re just trying to do what the West does to Russia.” 
 
 RT broadcasts news reports worldwide in several languages, but the most effective way it reaches U.S. audiences is online. 
 
 Its English-language flagship YouTube channel, launched in 2007, has 1.85 million subscribers and has had a total of 1.8 billion views, making it more widely viewed than CNN’s YouTube channel, according to a George Washington University report this month. 
 
 Though widely seen as a propaganda organ, the Russian site has gained credibility with some American conservatives. Trump sat for an interview with RT in September. His nominee for national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, traveled to Russia last year for a gala sponsored by the network. He later compared it to CNN. 
 
 The content from Russian sites has offered ready fodder for U.S.-based websites pushing far-right conservative messages. A former contractor for one, the Next News Network, said he was instructed by the site’s founder, Gary S. Franchi Jr., to weave together reports from traditional sources such as the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times with ones from RT, Sputnik and others that provided articles that often spread explosively online. 
 
 “The readers are more likely to share the fake stories, and they’re more profitable,” said Dyan Bermeo, who said he helped assemble scripts and book guests for Next News Network before leaving because of a pay dispute and concerns that “fake news” was crowding out real news. 
 
 In just the past 90 days — a period that has included the closing weeks of the campaign, Election Day and its aftermath — the YouTube audience of Next News Network has jumped from a few hundred thousand views a day to a few million, according to analytics firm Tubular Labs. In October alone, videos from Next News Network were viewed more than 56 million times. 
 
 Franchi said in an e-mail statement that Next News Network seeks “a global perspective” while providing commentary aimed at U.S. audiences, especially with regard to Russian military activity. “Understanding the threat of global war is the first step to preventing it,” he said, “and we feel our coverage assisted in preventing a possible World War 3 scenario.” 
 
 Correction: A previously published version of this story incorrectly stated that Russian information service RT had used the “#CrookedHillary” hastag pushed by then-Republican candidate Donald Trump. In fact, while another Russian information service Sputnik did use this hashtag, RT did not. ||||| • Obama: Putin is 'not fooling anybody' • Putin: there has been 'unconstitutional takeover' in Ukraine • Germany: 'no solution in sight to Ukraine crisis' • Russia warns US of response if sanctions imposed • No overnight assault but Crimea remains tense • Russia states Viktor Yanukovych asked for military help 
 
 01.30 We're going to leave it there for the night, please check our Ukraine page for the latest. 
 
 01.10 The White House is also briefing that Obama won't attend the G8 summit unless the situation is reversed. (Worth remembering that it isn't until June and who knows where we'll be by then). 
 
 <noframe>Twitter: ian bremmer - US announces will not participate in G8 meeting in Sochi. Putin doesn't care.</noframe> 
 
 00.40 Obama spoke to Angela Merkel tonight about the situation in Ukraine and the possibility of Germany acting as a mediator. We're also starting to get some detail of the so-called "off ramp" the diplomatic offer that would allow Putin to de-escalate without losing face. It would basically involve Russian troops pulling back to their bases in Crimea, bringing their numbers below 11,000, and international monitors to assuage Russian concerns that its nationals would face persecution, according to White House officials. 
 
 00.20 My Russian isn't up to much but Buzzfeed reports that this video shows a cheerful Russian soldier laughing about having no insignia on his uniform before finally admitting which military he's from. 
 
 23.50 Obama has been maintaining the appearance of normalcy despite the crisis in Ukraine. Today, he went to a primary school in Washington, an unlikely venue for foreign policy announcements, to talk about the budget. Tomorrow he's headed to Connecticut to talk about the minimum wage and then to Boston for a political fundraiser. 
 
 Supporters will say the level-headed president is refusing to allow Putin to derail his agenda but critics would argue it looks like the leader of the free world isn't paying attention. 
 
 23.40 Robert Gates, Obama's former defence secretary, caused serious headaches for the White House earlier this year with his tell-all book trashing the president's national security advisers. 
 
 But he's come to his former boss's defence on Ukraine, saying that Republican critics are trying to "egg him on" into provocative military gestures that would only inflame the situation. He told the Washington Post: 
 
 I’d even be cautious about sending warships into the Black Sea. It’s a threatening gesture, but if you’re not prepared to do something about it, it’s an empty gesture. 
 
 23.12 The Kremlin has posted a full transcript of Putin's earlier press conference in Russia. 
 
 A lot of is pretty technical and I'm sure much has been lost in translation. But here's the key paragraphs on why Russia sees its incursion as justified. 
 
 What can serve as a reason to use the Armed Forces? Such a measure would certainly be the very last resort. 
 
 First, the issue legitimacy. As you may know, we have a direct appeal from the incumbent and, as I said, legitimate President of Ukraine, Mr Yanukovych, asking us to use the Armed Forces to protect the lives, freedom and health of the citizens of Ukraine. 
 
 What is our biggest concern? We see the rampage of reactionary forces, nationalist and anti-Semitic forces going on in certain parts of Ukraine, including Kiev. I am sure you, members of the media, saw how one of the governors was chained and handcuffed to something and they poured water over him, in the cold of winter. After that, by the way, he was locked up in a cellar and tortured. What is all this about? Is this democracy? Is this some manifestation of democracy? He was actually only recently appointed to this position, in December, I believe. Even if we accept that they are all corrupt there, he had barely had time to steal anything. 
 
 22.42 Caitlin Hayden, the White House's national security spokeswoman, confirms the US was made aware that Russia was planning today's missile test 
 
 <noframe>Twitter: ABC Foreign Desk - Nat'l Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden: "Russia provided advance notification of this launch to the United States."</noframe> 
 
 22.20 The US is talking about imposing sanctions on Russia within days but there's real anxiety in Washington about whether the Europeans can be rallied to the cause. The photographed Number 10 document, indicating British reluctance to cut Russia out of London's financial markets, is one source of concern. Another is whether Germany, Europe's economic powerhouse, can be relied upon given how dependent it is on Russia for its natural gas supplies. 
 
 Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said yesterday that the US should wait until it has its European allies lined up before imposing sanctions. 
 
 The most important thing is for us – the United States – to make sure that we don’t go off without the European community. We have to work with them. Their interests are really paramount if we are going to do sanctions of some kind. We have to have them on board with us. 
 
 21.45 Having spent the day in Ukraine, John Kerry has now touched down in Paris. 
 
 <noframe>Twitter: Andrea Mitchell - .<a href="http://www.twitter.com/JohnKerry" target="_blank">@JohnKerry</a> arriving now Paris brought Ukraine's foreign minister with him to talks and will try to engineer meeting with Russian FM</noframe> 
 
 He's got Andrii Deshchytsia onboard his plane for talks in France with other European ministers. 
 
 21.29 Obama: Russia is not being strategic. A clip from the president's address today. 
 
 21.28 Our correspondent Roland Oliphant reports from a military stand off at Belbek air base in Crimea 
 
 20.26 More than 1,000 demonstrators with Ukrainian flags took to the streets of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Tuesday, for the first time outnumbering pro-Moscow youths who have seized its government building, which flies the Russian flag, Reuters reports. 
 
 President Vladimir Putin's declaration on Saturday that Russia had the right to invade Ukraine was accompanied by pro-Russian demonstrations across Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking south and east. 
 
 But in the four days since, the tide of opinion in eastern cities appears to be turning back towards Kiev. 
 
 Bearing placards with slogans such as: "I am Russian. I don't need protection," the protesters marched near the occupied regional government building, staying far enough away to avoid clashing with the pro-Russian youths still inside. 
 
 19.52 Russia said it had successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, with tensions high over its seizure of control in the Crimea and its threat to send more forces to its neighbour Ukraine, according to a Reuters report. 
 
 The Strategic Rocket Forces launched an RS-12M Topol missile from the southerly Astrakhan region and the dummy warhead hit its target at a proving ground in Kazakhstan, Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Yegorov told state-run news agency RIA. 
 
 The Pentagon has told Luis Martinez of ABC News that the United States had been notified of the test, which was planned ahead of the recent and current unrest in Ukraine. 
 
 19.44 A UN envoy is en route to Crimea to assess the situation in the region, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky has said amid a confrontation between Russia and Ukraine. 
 
 The UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson has asked Robert Serry "to travel to Crimea to take stock and evaluate the situation there," Nesirky said. 
 
 18.06 Baroness Ashton held "useful" talks in Madrid today with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. 
 
 "We had a useful discussion which lasted over an hour," a European diplomatic source quoted the EU foreign policy chief as saying after the meeting held in the Russian ambassador's residence in Madrid. 
 
 17.52 The Russia Today host who criticised Kremlin (see below) has been sent to Crimea, Josie Ensor reports: 
 
 Russia Today management told Channel 4 that Miss Martin had been "misled by American mainstream media". 
 
 However, in Russia Today's official statement released on Tuesday afternoon it said: "Contrary to the popular opinion, RT doesn’t beat its journalists into submission, and they are free to express their own opinions, not just in private but on the air. This is the case with Abby’s commentary on the Ukraine. 
 
 "We respect her views, and the views of all our journalists, presenters and program hosts, and there will be absolutely no reprimands made against Ms. Martin. 
 
 "In her comment Ms. Martin also noted that she does not possess a deep knowledge of reality of the situation in Crimea. As such we’ll be sending her to Crimea to give her an opportunity to make up her own mind from the epicentre of the story." 
 
 A Russian soldier watches Ukrainian servicemen at Belbek airport in the Crimea region 
 
 16.57 Barack Obama has also been speaking at a school in Washington. He said Russian "meddling" pushes nations away from Moscow and that Vladimir Putin's rationale for his incursion into Crimea was not "fooling anybody": 
 
 There is a strong belief that Russia's action is violating international law. President Putin seems to have a different set of lawyers making a different set of interpretations. I don't think that's fooling anybody. 
 
 Secretary of State John Kerry places roses on the Shrine of the Fallen in Kiev 
 
 16.26 John Kerry is talking in Kiev: 
 
 The US reaffirms its commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty. The United States reaffirms its commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. According to international law, we condemn the Russian Federation's act of aggression. There is nothing strong in what Russia is doing. 
 
 These brave Ukrainians took to the streets to stand against tyranny and demand democracy, but instead they were met with snipers and picked off one after another. 
 
 The Russian government would have you believe that Russian actions are legitimate. 
 
 The larger point is that diplomacy, not force, can solve disputes like this in the 21st century. 
 
 The United States would prefer to see this de-escalate. [But if Russia does not continue this path, the US ] will isolate Russia poilitically, diplomatically and economically. 
 
 This is the 21st century and we should not see nations step back to the 19th or 20th century. 
 
 Ukrainians warm themselves next to a fire at Kiev's Independence Square 
 
 15.56 Ukrainian and Russian governments have begun high-level contacts on the crisis in Ukraine, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk has said. 
 
 15.05 A Russia Today presenter has apparently gone massively off message. In a report on the Kremlin-funded Russia Today television station, Abby Martin said she "wanted to say something from my heart about the ongoing political crisis in Ukraine and Russia's military occupation of Crimea". 
 
 Just because I work here, for RT, doesn't mean I don't have editorial independence and I can't stress enough how strongly I am against any military intervention in sovereign nations' affairs. 
 
 What Russia did is wrong. 
 
 14.55 David Cameron, speaking in Coventry, said: 
 
 On the issue of Ukraine and our attitude towards Russia, we should be very clear about this; Britain is working with our allies and partners, with America, with France and Germany, the leaders of which I spoke to yesterday through the European Union to make sure we take a very clear and strong approach in two vital respects. 
 
 First of all, to say to the people of Ukraine we back your ability to choose your own future. 
 
 You should be able to choose the path you take and you'll have the support of countries like Britain, France and Germany, the EU and America in doing so and we'll obviously be working through the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and other organisations to give Ukraine and the people of Ukraine the chance to choose that future. 
 
 We'll also be sending a very clear message, and are sending a very clear message, to the Government in Russia that what has happened is unacceptable. 
 
 A child plays near Russian soldiers as they guard the gate of a Ukrainian infantry base in Perevalne 
 
 14.45 Russian navy ships are blocking both ends of the Kerch Strait, Ukraine border guards have said - Reuters. 
 
 14.42 Channel 4's Lindsey Hilsum tweets: 
 
 <noframe>Twitter: Lindsey Hilsum - Suddenly masked paramilitaries turned up at <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23Belbek" target="_blank">#Belbek</a> airforce base <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23Crimea" target="_blank">#Crimea</a>. Said they were from <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23Sevastopol" target="_blank">#Sevastopol</a> <a href="http://t.co/FOtg4fLPUN" target="_blank">http://t.co/FOtg4fLPUN</a></noframe> 
 
 14.38 The Kremlin has released a full transcript of Vladimir Putin's press conference. 
 
 14.25 Dr Liam Fox, Britain's former defence secretary, has told the BBC that the intervention in Ukraine was the latest example of a "thuggish pattern of behaviour" by Russia: 
 
 Much of this crisis was made in the Kremlin and there are those there who have never really got over the idea of the break-up of the Soviet Union. 
 
 Their insistence on having what they call 'the near abroad', in other words those countries that they demand to have control over, is anachronistic and destabilising. 
 
 We have to make very clear at all times that sovereign nations have to be able to exercise their self-determination free from hindrance and interference. 
 
 A coffin with the body of Volodymyr Topiy, 59, who was found burned in the house of trade unions during recent clashes, is carried along a street during his funeral in Kiev's Independence Square 
 
 13.45 Reuters reports that an official travelling with John Kerry in Kiev said: 
 
 We want to very visibly embrace Ukraine. Part of that is through an IMF package, part of it will be through bilateral assistance but in conjunction with our partners to try to support Ukraine. 
 
 13.44 The Turkish Air Force scrambled eight F-16 fighter jets on Monday after a Russian surveillance plane flew parallel along its Black Sea coast, the military has said. 
 
 US Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Kiev 
 
 13.34 A good piece from Patrick Donahue and Tino Andresen at Bloomberg on the complex relationship between Germany and Russia - and Merkel and Putin: 
 
 While Merkel and Putin have clashed over topics from civil liberties and gas imports to art looted by the Soviets at the end of World War II, they have a shared history. 
 
 A Lutheran pastor’s daughter who faced discrimination at her East German school due to her father’s religion, Merkel learned Russian so diligently that she won prizes and a trip to Moscow. Putin is a fluent German speaker who served as a KGB officer in the East German city of Dresden during the Cold War. 
 
 13.03 We have put together some graphics and maps to help explain what is at stake in Ukraine: 
 
 12.38 In the House of Commons, William Hague has praised Ukraine's interim government for refusing to rise to Russia's ''deliberate provocation'': 
 
 I commend the Ukrainian authorities for refusing to rise to provocation and I urged them yesterday when I was in Kiev to maintain that posture through all circumstances and at all times. And I believe they will be determined to do so. 
 
 This continues to be a serious risk, particularly that deliberate provocation could give rise to a dangerous incident. 
 
 12.32 US officials say the White House will announce $1 billion in energy aid to Ukraine, AFP reports. 
 
 12.25 John Kerry's plane has landed in Kiev. 
 
 12.18 Roland Oliphant reports from the Belbek airforce base that the standoff is now over. Ukrainian troops have retreated. 
 
 Russian troops order Ukrainian troops back at Belbek airforce base 
 
 13.06 Here's footage of the Russian soldiers firing warning shots as Ukrainians approach on Belbek airport, demanding their jobs back. 
 
 11.50 Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, is also speaking - he states that Moscow's move in Crimea was correct and that forces had seized arms and explosives. 
 
 Unarmed Ukrainian troops confront soldiers under Russian command occupying the Belbek airbase in Crimea 
 
 11.12 Vladimir Putin still speaking. He claims that sanctions will backfire on the West and denies that Russian forces had surrounded Ukraine bases in Crimea. He added that deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych had no political future but asserted he was legally still head of state. "I think that he has no political future. And I told him this," Mr Putin said, 
 
 11.10 Observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe will go to the Crimea region where Russian forces have taken control, Ukraine's top security official, Andriy Paruby, has said, adding that the situation in Crimea was complicated but stable. 
 
 Vladimir Putin speaks on TV 
 
 10.40 Vladimir Putin is speaking, claiming there has been an "unconstitutional takeover" in Ukraine. Putin says that Yanukovich fulfilled all conditions of the February 21 agreement with the opposition and that he effectively gave up all power. 
 
 There can only be one assessment of what happened in Kiev and Ukraine as a whole - this was an anti-constitutional takeover and armed seizure of power. 
 
 The acting president is not legitimate. The legitimate president is Yanukovich. 
 
 Ukraine is not our closest neighbour but is our brother. Ukrainian troops and Russian troops will not be on different sides of the barricade, they will be on the same side of the barricade. 
 
 [There is no need to use force in Crimea or send troops to Ukraine] but Russia will do so as a last resort. Russia reserves the right to use all means to protect citizens in Ukraine. 
 
 Market turmoil is a tactical, temporary decision by investors... Russia is ready to host the G8 but [if Western leaders do not want to attend] they don't need to. 
 
 Russian and Ukrainian troops face off at Belbek airbase in Crimea 
 
 10.33 Telegraph correspondent, Roland Oliphant, reports from Crimea: 
 
 The most intense conflict yet in the Russian takeover of Crimea is currently underwayat the Belbek airforce base. It was occupied by Russian forces some days ago, but this morning the Ukrainian garrison commander led his men back to the base unarmed and demanded access to their weapons. 
 
 The Russians responded by firing in the air, which led to the ongoing stand-off. A Ukrainian officer, who did not want to be named, told me that if the Ukrainina forces had arrived armed, there is "no doubt" the Russians would have shot them all. 
 
 10.24 John Kerry, US secretary of state, is on his way to Kiev to give support to its new leaders. He stopped off in New York to visit his new granddaughter, who was born Monday morning: 
 
 Secretary of State John Kerry boards his plane at Andrews Air Force Base en route to Ukraine 
 
 10.21 Russia's Gazprom announces it is to end gas price discount for Ukraine from April 
 
 10.03 Ukraine prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, is to meet EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday. Herman Van Rompuy, EU president, tweeted: 
 
 <noframe>Twitter: Herman Van Rompuy - EU HoSG will discuss situation in <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23Ukraine" target="_blank">#Ukraine</a> with PM Yatsenyuk in Brussels Thursday prior to extraordinary summit <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23euco" target="_blank">#euco</a> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Yatsenyuk_AP" target="_blank">@Yatsenyuk_AP</a></noframe> 
 
 09.51 Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, says there is "no solution in sight" to the Ukraine crisis after a "difficult" meeting in Geneva with Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov: 
 
 I had a difficult, long and very serious talk but it wasn't enough to say that a solution is in sight. 
 
 I can't run up a flag to say that we are on the way to finding a solution and that Ukraine and Russia are about to start talking. 
 
 Russian military armoured personnel carriers (APC) drive on the road from Sevastopol to Simferopol 
 
 09.45 What are the potential ramifications of the Ukraine crisis for the UK economy: 
 
 Much has changed in the past decade in financial relations between Britain and Russia – and not just for Chelsea FC, whose on–pitch success has been funded by owner Roman Abramovich. 
 
 His fellow oligarchs have fuelled the London property market, with Knight Frank data showing that Russians were the biggest foreign buyers of £1m–plus homes in the capital last year, spending more than £500m on some estimates. Their regular rows have also kept the UK legal profession in pocket. 
 
 09.34 Vladimir Putin is due to give his first comments on the Ukraine crisis in a press conference this morning. 
 
 Ukrainian service men wait in a column at Belbek airport 
 
 09.28 Fears of an assault by Russian forces on Ukrainian military bases surrounded in Crimea did not materialise overnight. Vladyslav Seleznyov, the defence ministry spokesman for Crimea, told AFP: 
 
 The night was quiet... No more declarations have been made by the Russian side. 
 
 09.20 Telegraph video of Vladimir Putin inspecting troops in western Russia yesterday: 
 
 09.12 Ukraine's parliament ratified an agreement on Tuesday to accept a 610 million euro loan from the European Union, agreed in February 2013 but never ratified under deposed pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich. 
 
 09.01 A Kremlin aide has said that Russia could reduce to zero its economic dependency on the United States. Sergei Glazyev, Kremlin economic aide said: 
 
 We would find a way not just to reduce our dependency on the United States to zero but to emerge from those sanctions with great benefits for ourselves. 
 
 An attempt to announce sanctions would end in a crash for the financial system of the United States, which would cause the end of the domination of the United States in the global financial system. 
 
 09.00 London (GMT), 11.00 Kiev (EET), 13.00 Moscow (MSK), 01.00 Washington (PST) Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the Ukraine crisis
– Is Russia's leader glowering over America? A YouTube video purporting to show Vladimir Putin's face forming in a flock of birds above New York City has gotten a lot of online attention—especially in Russia, UPI reports. Posted under the name Sheryl Gilbert, it was aired last week by Russia's state-owned and "strictly patriotic" Zvezda news station, notes the Washington Post. Russian users quickly weighed in, posting comments like "It's a warning to the US that they shouldn't start a war with Russia" and, from a Ukrainian, "Putin bribed American birds." Many say the 11-second video is fake, Australia's News Network reports, but no one has described the alleged fakery in detail. Gregory West, whose Twitter account describes him as a "Patriot," "Conservative," "Political Blogger" and "Proud Husband of @ _SherylGilbert," tweeted, "Saw it several days ago during a trip and that's amazing! Can you see the face? Who is it?"