A Ukrainian flag was unfurled on the top of a Moscow skyscraper within sight of the Kremlin on Wednesday, officials said, as fighting in eastern Ukraine has frayed bilateral ties. The Soviet star crowning the Stalin-era skyscraper, located just a kilometre (half a mile) from the Kremlin, was also painted in the yellow and bluecolours of the national flag.
"The flag was attached by unidentified criminals to the top of the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment skyscraper," a spokesman for the Russian emergencies ministry, Roman Kilkeyev, told AFP. Workers were brought in to remove the flag and give a new coat of gold-coloured paint to the star atop the 176-metre (577-foot) high building. Tensions between Moscow and Kiev have soared since Viktor Yanukovich was chased from power in Ukraine and replaced with a pro-Western government in February. Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March, and a pro-Russian rebellion broke out in the east of the country that has led to some 2,200 deaths since April.