ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)
Moscow's United Nations envoy said on Monday (March 3) that Ukraine's ousted leader Viktor Yanukovich is the legal president of Ukraine and that his letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin requesting for Russian military intervention justifies Russian military presence in Crimea.
"I think it's important to realize that the person who we believe is legally president of Ukraine also shares our concerns of large segments of the Ukrainian population about what is going on and is appealing to Russia to use our armed forces to change the situation and to prevent the situation from further deteriorating," Russia's ambassador to the U.N., Vitaly Churkin told a group of reporters after an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
He showed reporters a photo copy of the letter.
Russian forces seized Crimea, an isolated Black Sea peninsula with an ethnic Russian majority, without firing a shot.
But Kiev's U.N. envoy said tha
