TODAY: Russia seizes Crimea in move decried by international community; deployment of military forces approved by Russian parliament; G8 Sochi summit imperiled by Moscow’s moves; protestors against war detained in Moscow. Steel prices to remain flat; Armenia readies itself for customs union.

At the request of President Putin, Russia’s upper house of parliament unanimously approved a measure to deploy military forces in Ukraine as the situation in Crimea, where Russian troops have surrounded several towns and seized weapons, intensifies.  ‘This is not a threat: this is actually the declaration of war to my country’, says newly appointed Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk.  President Putin has apparently told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Russia’s actions in Ukraine are ‘fully congruent to the current extraordinary situation in that country‘.  Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has stated on his Facebook page that the Kremlin is ready to engage positively with Ukraine, but not with those who seized power in breach of the Constitution and other laws of the State.  The Kremlin has warned Kiev that it may lose a discount on the gas price it now pays to Gazprom due to its outstanding gas debt.  Around 50 demonstrators protesting against Russian military intervention in Ukraine were detained yesterday in Moscow, Dozhd television reported using police estimates, whilst independent detention monitoring website Ovdinfo.org put that figure at 360 people. RFE/RL has a video report.  In the Russian capital around 20,000 people turned out for a march in support of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine.  According to Russia’s border guard service around 675,000 Ukrainian citizens have migrated to Russia since the beginning of 2014 amid fears of political instability in their homeland.