A Reuters journalist saw trucks driving off the Yamal 156, a large landing ship, at Kazachaya Bay near Sevastopol. One flatbed truck was carrying an armored personnel carrier (APC).

Crimea's pro-Russian authorities have denied there are any Russian troops on the peninsula outside the Sevastopol base, even though masked gunmen surrounding Ukrainian military installations drive vehicles with Russian license plates and identify themselves to Ukrainian soldiers as Russian troops.

A Ukrainian defense ministry official in Crimea said on Friday that witnesses in Kerch, a port at the eastern end of the peninsula, saw Russian armored vehicles landed. Vladislav Seleznyov wrote on Facebook that a train carrying 14 S-300 surface-to-air missile launchers was at the railway station.

He said another source reported a column of about 100 vehicles, including trucks and armored personnel carriers, was heading from the northern town of Dzhankoi toward Perekop, on an isthmus leading to mainland Ukraine.

Thousands of Russian paratroopers, artillerymen and more on Friday continued a large-scale military drill near the Ukraine border. On the same day, armored truck after truck toting long-range guns and other military equipment rumbled through northern Crimea.

Already, eight Ukrainian military units in Crimea have been taken over, 22 others are blocked, and 49 of 56 border patrol stations are in similar straits, Ukraine's foreign ministry said.