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Russia stares down UN pressure on Ukraine

US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt told reporters in Kiev on Monday that Washington “is not prepared to recognise any result of the so called referendum”.

The public vote will ask the peninsula’s mainly ethnic Russian population to choose between swearing allegiance to Moscow and declaring greater autonomy from Kiev while remaining part of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s interim Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya said that if Crimea’s leaders “want more rights and authority, then we are ready to do this”.

The country’s interim Defence Minister Igor Tenyukh meanwhile said the nation’s army — already on full combat alert had launched training exercises aimed at evaluating how the heavily outnumbered force could resist an offensive from its nuclear-armed neighbour.

– World Bank aid pledge –

The diplomatic wrangling continued as Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk prepared to fly to the United States to meet Obama and address the Security Council.

His first meeting with the US leader on Wednesday should add credibility to his untested government and give Ukraine a chance to iron out the details of crucial aid for its struggling economy.

Ukraine says it needs about $35 billion through 2015 to stay afloat after Russia froze a $15-billion bailout it promised Yanukovych as his reward for rejecting a European Union trade deal in November the initial spark for the protests.

The White House said Obama would discuss an economic support package that has already seen Washington pledge more than $1 billion and the European Union 11 billion euros ($15 billion) over two years.

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And World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said the bank was prepared to offer $3 billion in aid “to undertake the reforms badly needed to put the economy on a path to sustainability”.

In a separate development, NATO announced it would deploy reconnaissance flights over Poland and Romania to monitor the crisis in Ukraine.

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