Ukraina valde Ryssland före EU - stora protester som följd, länkar i inlägg2

Ukraine's defense ministry said it had information that unknown "radical forces" were planning to try to disarm its military units in Crimea early Saturday morning and warned against such action.

"In the case of such unknown actions, the Ukrainian armed forces will act in accordance with the laws of Ukraine and the regulations of the Ukrainian armed forces," the ministry said in a statement on its Website.

Into this combustible mix appeared Vladimir Zhirinovsky, seen by many internationally as a somewhat absurd figure but not here, not in the current atmosphere.

The veteran demagogue of the Russian far right turned up at a roadblock outside Simferopol. Beaming members of the Crimean People’s Brigade were only too happy to help him on his way to Sevastopol, the home of Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet.

There, Mr Zhirinovsky held two addresses. One, in front of the local government offices, as befits a deputy state Duma speaker, was relatively restrained: “Russia will help the economic situation here in the south-east… We Russians don’t want to create the impression we will ‘take’ Crimea… Crimea should decide its future for itself.”

Later, however, an address to men wearing the orange and black ribbons of the Russian military order of St George, was different. “Be faithful to yourselves, be proud to be Russians; we were here long before there were any ‘Ukrainians’. These ‘Ukrainians’, they have their Maidan [Kiev’s Independence Square, the centre of the protest movement]. Well, we have our Magadan.”

There were loud cheers – the crowd knew he was referring to the gulag in eastern Siberia at the time of Stalin, where thousands perished.

Britain’s lax rules on disclosing the beneficial ownership of companies and their assets has meant the UK’s Companies House has become a popular destination for foreign billionaires seeking to mask their wealth.

But investigators claim to have uncovered a trail leading from Mr Yanukovych in Ukraine to London and then on to other opaque offshore locations. A similar pattern is reported around the assets of those close to the former President, with assets allegedly held in secrecy offshore via UK companies controlled by entities in Belize, Panama and the Seychelles.