Watching them, tears welling, Irina Vorodinova whispered: “I am proud of them. They have done all they could. They shouldn’t have to leave like this.” Her son, a captain, was still inside. Her husband, a retired captain, was at another gate, also anxiously waiting for news. “Our family, our parents, have been in the military. Now our men are being treated like this. It’s not right,” she said.
The servicemen and women had mostly put on civilian clothes to leave the Ukrainian naval headquarters at Sevastopol. The few willing to speak, away from the cameras, were deeply apprehensive of the future; some claimed the Russians had broken an agreement to give those in the headquarters more time, and the men who had stormed in had been aggressive and insulting. One, Sasha, said: “ They came in when we were having breakfast and started throwing things on the floor.
These were not Russians, but Samoobrona [members of the separatist Self-Defence Force]. They were trying to provoke us: they accused us of being traitors because we would not change sides; I have no wish to join any side they are on.”
The fall of the Sevastopol base was a bitter blow to Ukraine: it had been the symbol of a proud fleet and also what was left of the tattered command and control of its forces in Crimea.
It saw Ukraine bow to the seemingly inevitable with Andriy Parubiy, its national security chief, saying they were “developing a plan that would enable us not only to withdraw servicemen but also members of their families in Crimea, so that they could be quickly and efficiently moved to mainland Ukraine”.
Sevastopol was the main point of communications with the Russians and the man who had been in charge of that liaison, Serhiy Hayduk, the commander of Ukraine’s Black Sea Fleet, is now missing. He was originally held by members of the Self-Defence Force, who accused him of “keeping people under his command prisoners” and threatened that he would face trial. He was said to have been taken away by officers from the Russian security service, the FSB.