NATO warns Russia against \\\'historic mistake\\\'

NATO warned Russia on Tuesday against making an "historic mistake" by provoking a flaring secession crisis in eastern Ukraine that Moscow itself conceded could degenerate into a civil war. Ukraine's embattled interim leaders have been waging an uphill battle to keep their culturally splintered nation of 46 million together after last month's ouster of a pro-Kremlin regime and subsequent loss of Crimea to Russia. An eery echo of the Black Sea peninsula's crisis sounded on Sunday when militants stormed a series of strategic government buildings across a swathe of heavily Russified eastern regions and demanded that Moscow send its troops for support, according to AFP.