Pro-Russian militants continue occupation of government buildings in eastern Ukraine
Pro-Russian militants ignore settlement, continue occupation of buildings in Ukraine
(about 1 hour later)
DONETSK, Ukraine — Pro-Russian activists continued their defiant occupation of government buildings across eastern Ukraine on Friday, though some of their leaders said they would surrender weapons and pull back if the Ukrainian security forces also withdrew.
DONETSK, Ukraine — Pro-Russian militants, boasting that they did not take orders from diplomats in Washington or Moscow, refused to end their armed occupation of a dozen government buildings across eastern Ukraine on Friday, upending hopes for a quick end to the standoff.
The pro-Russian militants occupying the Donetsk government offices said they supported an accord signed Thursday in Geneva that seeks to calm the potential for violence in the restive region. But they said they would lay down their weapons and leave only if the new national government in Kiev steps down.
The defiance came just hours after Russia, the European Union, Ukraine and the United States sought to de-escalate the conflict with an agreement signed in Geneva which urged restraint on all sides, and called on the pro-Russia activists to lay down their baseball bats and molotov cocktails and walk away from their barricades at the city halls and police stations.
“It is an illegal junta,” said Anatoliy Onischenko, of the leaders of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the organization that has occupied the regional parliament building. A separate group is occupying the Donetsk City Hall.
At a news conference Friday on the top floor of the regional government offices they stormed last weekend, Denis Pushilin, a leader of a group calling itself the Donetsk People’s Republic, said he and his men had no intention of abandoning their positions as long as the new government in Kiev still stood.
Other pro-Russian activists also said they would not leave the occupied buildings as long as pro-government protesters still were massed in Kiev’s Independence Square.
“It is an illegal junta,” said Anatoliy Onischenko, another separatist leader, of the Kiev government. “They should leave their buildings first.”
The pro-Russian activists did not appear to be preparing to decamp, and so the standoff looked likely to continue.
With young men in black balaclava masks over their faces standing behind him, Pushilin said that nobody from the pro-Russia groups in Ukraine were at the negotiating table in Geneva, and because they were not consulted, they had no obligation to do anything.
In the parliament in Kiev, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Friday that the new government was watching to see what the pro-Russian activists would do on the heels of the Geneva agreement. The accord, reached by top diplomats from the United States, Russia, Ukraine and the European Union, is intended to defuse the Ukrainian crisis and includes provisions aimed at stopping violence and provocative acts. The deal also calls for all illegal groups to be disarmed.
The Donetsk People’s Republic flag, sporting a Russian-style eagle, flew on top of the building. The protesters were camped in the offices and sprawled on the floors. Water came from fire hoses; the cafeteria was brimming with donated food, and someone had set up a makeshift infirmary.
The prime minister said parliament was ready to pass a bill that would grant amnesty to protesters who vacate occupied buildings and put down their weapons, but he said he did not have “unreasonable” expectations that the stalemate would quickly end.
The central government appeared to take a conciliatory approach late Friday, when in a joint televised address, acting President Oleksander Turchinov and Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk called for national unity and urged people to refrain from violence over the Easter weekend.
“Russia had no other choice but to sign the statement and condemn extremism,” he said. “Having signed this statement, Russia effectively asked these ‘peaceful protesters’ with Kalashnikov assault rifles and air defense missile systems to immediately disarm and surrender their weapons.”
Both men said they would support constitutional change to decentralize power and allow for more local control, giving regional governments their pick of an official language — a central demand of Russian-speaking protesters in the east.
"The Ukrainian government is prepared to conduct comprehensive constitutional reform which will strengthen the powers of the regions," Yatseniuk said. "We will strengthen the special status of the Russian language and protect this language.”
One of the new government’s first acts in parliament after ousting former president Viktor Yanukovych in February was to deny regional governments the power to make Russian an official language. The legislation was later vetoed, but the damage had been done in the eyes of Russian speakers, who feared second-class citizenship in the new order.
In another sign that Kiev is searching for compromise that would calm pro-Russia activists, the Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko, who had been imprisoned by the Yanukovych government, made a surprise appearance Friday in Donetsk, vowing to negotiate with the break-away protesters.
"I want myself to understand their demands, what they expect, whose interests they represent,” she said. "I hope these negotiations will serve a constructive role and that we can find a way to restore harmony between the west and east of Ukraine.”
The Ukraine prime minister said Friday that parliament was ready to pass a bill that would grant amnesty to protesters who vacate occupied buildings and put down their weapons.
But he said his government did not harbor “unreasonable” expectations that the stalemate would quickly end.
“Russia had no other choice but to sign the statement and condemn extremism,” he said. “Having signed this statement, Russia effectively asked these ‘peaceful protesters’ with Kalashnikov assault rifles and air-defense missile systems to immediately disarm and surrender their weapons.”
On Thursday, Ukrainian forces engaged pro-Russian separatists in what appeared to be the most intense battle yet in restive eastern Ukraine, killing three militants and wounding 13 after what the Interior Ministry described as a siege of a military base.
On Thursday, Ukrainian forces engaged pro-Russian separatists in what appeared to be the most intense battle yet in restive eastern Ukraine, killing three militants and wounding 13 after what the Interior Ministry described as a siege of a military base.
“A mob of 300 militants, wielding guns, molotov cocktails and homemade explosives, attacked the Ukrainian military outpost in the city overnight,” Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in a statement. The attack, he said, was repelled by National Guard and police in Mariupol, a southeastern city on the Sea of Azov.
It is not clear exactly what the pro-Russia militants want.
After a “short battle,” Ukrainian commandos and counterintelligence units fanned out into the city by ground and helicopter in an operation to round up militants, Avakov said. He said 63 separatists have been detained in the operation, which he described as ongoing. Avakov reported no causalities among Ukrainian forces.
Some leaders said they would like to see ousted president Yanukovych, who is from the Donetsk region, returned to power; others called him a coward and a traitor. A few men said they wanted to see oligarchs arrested, salaries raised and corruption ended.
“Weapons, communication equipment and mobile phones were confiscated,” he said. “The identities of the detained persons are being established.”
Many of the activists wanted Ukrainian troops to leave the region. It wasn’t even certain that they wanted to become part of Russia; some said they just wanted Russia’s protection from a government in Kiev that they view with hostility and suspicion.
Speaking at the parliament Thursday morning in the capital, Kiev, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said the pro-Russian gang attempted to storm the base three times and carried automatic weapons, according to an Associated Press report.
Outside of Donetsk, in the gritty industrial city of Gorlovka, protesters kept vigil at a makeshift barricade of tires, pallets and concertina wire outside the city police station, whose windows were smashed in a confrontation this week.
Avakov said Ukrainian forces opened fire only after being attacked and firing warning shots in the air. “Following further warnings, they executed ‘shoot to kill’ instructions in compliance with their charter, after they were attacked once again,” Avakov said.
“Why would we leave? Who told us to leave?” said one of the leaders of the men, Alexander, a shop owner who declined to give his last name.
A dark YouTube video purportedly documenting the clash captured the sound of gunfire and militants hurling molotov cocktails into the outpost. Separatists yelled, “Go home, Bandera,” a reference to Stepan Bandera, a controversial World War II-era Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the Nazis and is seen as a symbol of the divisions between eastern and western Ukraine.
“Nobody in Geneva who signed this agreement gives a damn about us. They’re interested in gas deals, in coal, in drilling. They don’t care about us,” Alexander said. “We’re not just poor. We’re completely poor, and nobody cares what poor people think.”
In Mariupol, a grisly tableau of bloodstains lined the scene beyond the ruined gates of the military base Thursday. A wrecked jeep — its windows and tires broken and its frame dented and partially crushed — rested in front of two military trucks being used as impromptu barricades. Remains of molotov cocktails were scattered inside the entrance to the base, where nervous young soldiers tried unsuccessfully to keep onlookers from gazing at the wreckage.
As he talked, an old man stood patiently at his elbow. “What do you want, father?” Alexander asked. “Are you hungry?” When the elderly man nodded yes, Alexander said, “see?”
In the afternoon, the city remained calm, but tensions were high at the scene of the clash, where clusters of pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian residents were engaging in heated arguments over the future of the country. Pro-Ukrainians accused some present of being on the payroll of local Russian operatives. One pro-Russian man, who gave his name only as Konstantin, was accompanied by a man carrying video cameras, who described himself as a journalist supporting the militants who have taken over official buildings in the eastern region of Donetsk.
At the Gorlovka city hall nearby, the pro-Russia protesters who massed there Thursday had vanished, but they left behind a mystery.
Waving his finger, Konstantin, who said he had formerly served in the Soviet military, accused residents who support the Kiev government of being American lapdogs. “Don’t listen to them; they are trying to turn brother against brother,” he said, referring to Russians and Ukrainians.
One of the city council deputies, Vladimir Rybak, who opposes the pro-Russia separatists and who wants Ukraine to remain undivided, came back to work to take down the Donetsk People’s Republic flag and replace it with the Ukraine banner.
“Why did they open fire? These were peaceful protests!” Konstantin continued. Moments later, however, he conceded that the pro-Russians who had gathered here last night had hurled molotov cocktails at the Ukrainian troops.
Asked to address the gathering, he was jostled by the crowd, and then, according to his wife Elena and a video posted on local news Web site, a man in military camouflage and a black mask chased Rybak down the street. He was caught, hustled into a car and has not been heard from since. The crowd shouted, “throw him in the trunk!”
The base sits only a short distance away from the Mariupol City Hall, which was seized by pro-Russian militants last week and remained under their control Thursday. Eyewitnesses and military officials said the clash began at 7:50 p.m., when hundreds of pro-Russian activists — some in green camouflage and wearing balaclava masks — marched to the gates and demanded that the military surrender weapons that had been moved to the base for safekeeping from police stations around this port city.
“He was kidnapped,” said his wife. “I am very scared, because previously he was a policeman, and it would have taken a lot to force him into a vehicle.”
Witnesses said the protest seemed to start peacefully, but by 8:30 p.m. local time, the crowd grew belligerent, throwing makeshift explosives over the gates and firing bullets. A 75-year-old who lives next door to the outpost and gave her name only as Klavdia said she heard a Ukrainian military official ask the crowd to disperse.
Asked who would have taken her husband, Elena Rybak said: “I don’t know. There’s a lot of Russians around. There are others. There are lots of people who would want to get rid of him.”
She said the soldier called out: “Please put down the weapons and molotovs. We don’t want blood.’’
Alex Ryabchyn contributed to this report.
But his warning was ignored, she said, and troops fired in the air. Enraged protesters soon stormed the gates, leading to exchanges of gunfire that left the bodies of dead and wounded strewn on the asphalt outside.
The Ukrainian military set up checkpoints around Mariupol on Thursday, and newly arrived special forces were apparently seeking to identify the camps being used by pro-Russian militants. But there was no immediate sign of an attempt to raid the occupied City Hall, where anti-Kiev militants could be seen patrolling the grounds.
Ukraine is struggling to restore order in the eastern part of the country, where it says Russian special operatives are aiding local separatists in organized and well-armed occupations of official buildings in cities including Mariupol, a municipality of almost half a million people.
Ukrainian forces have seemed to be treading carefully, out of fear both of wounding civilians and of giving Russia a pretext to openly join the fight.
On Wednesday, a squad of separatists backed by seven masked gunmen in camouflage stormed the headquarters of Donetsk’s mayor and local council. By afternoon, more than 40 pro-Russian militants had occupied the building but were allowing officials to go about their business inside.
City workers shuffled to and from meetings under the watchful gaze of militants — many of them clutching automatic weapons — who loitered in the corridors. A few police officers strolled outside without attempting to intervene, evidence of the government’s tenuous grip on the region.
The militants said they are not connected with a similar group that occupied the regional headquarters in this city 10 days ago, but they issued at least one similar demand. They called for a referendum on May 11 with two questions: whether the populace agreed with the creation of a new Donetsk People’s Republic and, if so, whether it should be part of Ukraine or Russia.
“Why should we consider Russia a hostile state?” asked Alexander Zakharchenko, a commander of the militants at City Hall. “They are the closest people to us in the world.” He commands the Donetsk branch of a group called Oplot, a pro-Russia movement that started as a fight club of young men in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, to the north.
In this region of coal mines and machinery plants, where according to a local saying, “people work, not protest,” residents often tend to vote with their stomachs.
And there is no doubt that bread-and-butter issues are influencing the debate here. There are mixed feelings in the east, for instance, over the new government’s move to sign a trade deal with European Union that could lead Russia to slap higher duties on Ukrainian imports.
