Republic had been a mistake. The Euromaidan protests came to a head in late February 2014, and Yanukovych and many of his ministers fled the capital on 22 February. After his flight, opposition parties and defectors from the Party of Regions put together a parliamentary quorum in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament), and voted on 22 February to remove Yanukovych from his post on the grounds that he was unable to fulfill his duties, although this legislative removal lacked the required three-quarter vote of sitting Rada members according to the constitution in effect at the time, which the Rada also voted to suspend. Arseniy Yatsenyuk was appointed by the Rada to serve as the head of a caretaker government until new presidential and parliament elections could be held. This new government was recognised internationally, though the Russian government said that these events had been a "coup d'état" and that the caretaker government was illegitimate. Annexation Start of the crisis The February 2014 revolution that ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych sparked a political crisis in Crimea, which initially manifested as demonstrations against the new interim Ukrainian government, but rapidly escalated. In January 2014, the Sevastopol city council had already called for formation of "people's militia" units to "ensure firm defence" of the city from "extremism". One of the initial Russian disinformation stories was the false allegation of a Corsun Pogrom, which claimed that pro-Maidan Ukrainians stopped several busses with Anti-Maidan protesters on 20 February. Russian media sources described beating and humiliation among the protesters, while a fake news documentary claimed multiple tortured and killed people. No such event actually occurred and when human rights organizations tried to contact the producers of the documentary they found that no such organization existed. Human rights group attributed the fake story to "pro-Kremlin trolls". The Verkhovna Rada of Crimea members called for an extraordinary meeting on 21 February. In response to Russian separatist sentiment, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said that it would "use severe measures to prevent any action taken against diminishing the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine". The party with the largest number of seats in the Crimean parliament (80 of 100), the Party of Regions of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, did not discuss Crimean secession, and were supportive of an agreement between President Yanukovych and Euromaidan activists to end the unrest that was struck on the same day in