Gunmen seize government buildings in Ukraine

 
Dozens of armed men seized the regional government administration building and parliament in Ukraine's southern Crimean region Thursday and raised the Russian flag in a challenge to the Eastern European country's new leaders.

Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula with an ethnic Russian majority, is the last big bastion of opposition to the new political leadership in the capital, Kiev, after Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's ouster Saturday.

The incident, coming a day after Russia ordered surprise military exercises on Ukraine's doorstep, has raised fears about the push and pull of opposing allegiances in a country sandwiched between Russia and the European Union.

There's a broad divide between those who support developments in Kiev -- where parliament was voting on an interim West-leaning, national unity government Thursday -- and those who back Russia's continued influence in Crimea and across Ukraine.

Yanukovych issued a defiant statement to Russian news agencies condemning the country's interim government and saying that everything happening now in the Ukrainian parliament is illegitimate, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported Thursday.

According to RIA Novosti, anonymous government sources said Thursday that he was in Russia and that Russian authorities have accepted his request for security. A warrant has been issued for his arrest in Ukraine.

Yanukovych will give a news conference Friday in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, Russian state media reported. If so, it would be the first time he's been seen in public since fleeing Kiev. CNN has not independently confirmed Yanukovych's whereabou