Poland has asked Nato to station 10,000 troops on its territory as a visible demonstration of the alliance's resolve to defend all its members after Russia's seizure of Crimea.

Russian and American officials were preparing for talks in Paris to address the crisis in Ukraine.

After a rush of emergency meetings to frame its strategy, the West is now scrutinising the impact of a first volley of sanctions against Russia but doubts persist whether Europe will swiftly follow the United States in hiking up the pressure.

Russian forces have completed their takeover of the Ukrainian navy's assets in Crimea with the storming of the minesweeper Cherkessy.

Concern is growing that Western pressure, including a suspension from the G8, has failed to dent Russian President Vladimir Putins military ambitions.

Jolted by a sense that history has changed course, Western leaders meet this week to ponder a strategy for neutralising the threat of virulent Russian nationalism.

Russian armour smashed into a base of Ukrainian troops yesterday in the first serious military action in the confrontation over Crimea.

New Zealand's modest travel sanctions over Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine are largely symbolic, says Foreign Minister Murray McCully.

Ukraine warned its conflict with Russia had entered a "military stage" and authorised its troops to open fire in self-defence after suffering the first casuality since Crimea was seized.

Crimea has voted to embrace Kremlin rule, escalating an already grave international crisis to an incendiary level.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's Crimean gamble will face its biggest test tonight, when the EU and US ready sanctions to punish him for a land-grab.

A Ukrainian border patrol plane came under fire near the regional boundary with Crimea as tensions increased further in the contested peninsula yesterday.

With a handful of houses, a couple of shops and some crumbling Kruschev-era flats, the village of Lyubovnets, near the northern side of Sevastopol's bay, is not much to look at.

Russia's President is deserving of respect - the kind you would show if you were in close proximity to a hissing cobra, writes John Armstrong.

Unable to intervene militarily and with no direct economic levers to pull, the West believes it is successfully pressing Russia in the Ukraine crisis.

There is a huge amount riding on just how the West deals with Putin's incursion, with the Ukraine merely a pawn in the Russian president's geopolitical chess game, writes Fran O'Sullivan.

The trouble in Ukraine has left NZ in a critical position as it vies for selection to the United Nations Security Council, an expert in international relations says.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully has added his voice to international calls for restraint any further escalation of tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

Condemned to death at the hands of a private extermination company, around 150 of the stray dogs from Sochi's Olympic Park have been saved after the intervention of a Russian billionaire.

Vladimir Putin did not need to try to steal the limelight when this Olympic show, the most expensive the world has ever seen, was all his.

In Sochi, there is plenty on the Russian President's to-do list as he bustles about town, preparing for the opening of his Olympic Games.

Rod Emmerson's take on Vladimir Putin's law change.

An Islamic militant group says it was behind the Volgograd bombings that killed 34 people - and they'll give tourists at Sochi for the Olympics 'a present, too'.