Mayor in eastern Ukraine shot as pro-Russian militants gain ground
Disarray in eastern Ukraine as protest is attacked, mayor is shot
(about 2 hours later)
DONETSK, Ukraine — The mayor of Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, was shot in the back Monday while taking a morning swim and is now in surgery “fighting for his life,” according reports from city council members and Ukrainian media.
DONETSK, UKRAINE — With Ukrainian flags flying high and garlands of flowers in their hair, protesters marched through the heart of this city at sundown Monday.
Kharkiv Mayor Gennady Kernes is known through social media as a flamboyant character who was a staunch supporter and beneficiary of ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
“East and West together,” they chanted.
Kernes has swiveled his allegiance and now maintains civil relations with the new Ukrainian government in Kiev. His city was a hotbed of pro-Russian activists, but in recent weeks Kernes and police managed to retake government buildings once occupied by separatists.
But in Ukraine, even such anodyne appeals to unity can be a magnet for trouble. The protesters, including old men and grade-school-age children, were walking into a trap.
On Monday evening, a pro-Ukraine rally was broken up by club- and knife-wielding separatists who ambushed the peaceful crowd as it marched through the center of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine’s regional capital. Government security forces did little to stop the violence.
The club- and whip-wielding separatists who set upon these demonstrators were just the latest proof of the disarray that has engulfed eastern Ukraine in recent weeks. The attack marked a fitting coda to a day that also featured an assassination attempt on the mayor of the country’s second-largest city and the fall of yet another government building to pro-Russian militants.
Protesters who had been singing Ukraine’s national anthem and chanting for unity were rushed to the hospital with blood dripping from head wounds.
For the residents of this normally tranquil regional capital of 1 million people, it has been a shocking and sudden descent into lawlessness at the hands of shadowy forces that make their views known, but rarely their identities.
“These separatists are mentally diseased,” said Evgeniy Smirnov, a 62-year-old retiree whose skull was wrapped in bloody bandages. “We never had attacks with knives and bats in Donetsk before this.”
The men who attacked the pro-Ukrainian rally Monday evening wore black face masks and wielded clubs while announcing their allegiance to Russia.
Amid the escalating violence, the United States on Monday announced additional sanctions “in response to Russia’s continued illegal intervention in Ukraine and provocative acts that undermine Ukraine’s democracy and threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.”
“They shouted, ‘If you don’t throw away your flags, we’ll kill you. This place is Russia, not yours,’ ” said Olga Styagunova, 43, a marcher who ducked into a nearby bakery to escape attack.
Charging that Moscow has failed to live up a commitment to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine, the White House said the United States “is imposing targeted sanctions on a number of Russian individuals and entities and restricting licenses for certain U.S. exports to Russia.”
The fate of Kharkiv’s mayor, who was shot in the back while he was out exercising, suggested that the separatists make good on their threats.
The assassination attempt Monday was preceded by an assault to the south, where armed militants seized another government building in a new city as they expanded their pro-Russian campaign across eastern Ukraine.
Gennady Kernes, known through social media as a flamboyant character, was once a staunch supporter and beneficiary of pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
The masked, armed gunmen who took the building in Kostyantynivka wore camouflage and carried automatic weapons, according to local media reports. They were described as a more serious-looking group than the usual citizens’ militias in eastern Ukraine, whose members usually wield baseball bats and metal pipes.
But after Yanukovych was ousted in February, Kernes swiveled his allegiance and forged civil relations with the new, pro-Western government in Kiev. His eastern city was a hot spot for pro-Russian activists, but in recent weeks Kernes and police managed to retake government buildings occupied by separatists.
The attack on Kernes came a day after seven European military officers and a translator, held hostage by pro-Russia separatists, were paraded before the news media. Hours earlier, three captured Ukrainian security agents were shown on Russian television huddled in a room, blindfolded and bloody, without pants, their arms bound with packing tape.
As of late Monday, the mayor was in critical condition, and local officials said he was “fighting for his life.”
The Ukraine Security Service said Monday that pro-Russian separatists now hold more than 40 hostages in eastern Ukraine, most of them jailed in the breakaway city of Slovyansk.
The assassination attempt was preceded by an assault to the south, where armed militants seized a government building in a new city as they expanded their pro-Russia campaign across eastern Ukraine. They now hold city halls and security headquarters in about a dozen cities and towns.
In a statement, the agency named one leader of the separatist movement as a former colonel in the Russian army and said he was wanted for his alleged role in capturing the team of seven military observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Another man named by Ukrainian security is a former officer in the Soviet army who fought in Afghanistan and Chechnya and who is being sought for alleged involvement in the torture and murder of a local pro-Kiev politician.
The masked, armed gunmen who took the building in Kostyantynivka wore camouflage and carried automatic weapons. They were a more serious-looking bunch than the usual citizen militias in the region, which typically carry baseball bats and metal pipes.
Moscow has denied playing any role in the current crisis in eastern Ukraine and instead has called on the new government in Kiev to restore order and guarantee the safety of Russian-speaking residents in the region.
Meanwhile, in the breakaway city of Slovyansk, militants continued to hold dozens of hostages, including seven foreign military observers with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Russia has called for the men to be released, but the city’s self-appointed “people’s mayor” has suggested that he intends to try to swap them for some of his allies who have been jailed by the Ukrainian government.
The group Human Rights Watch said Monday that journalists and political activists are “at increasing risk of political-motivated violence, such as unlawful detention, abduction and assaults” in eastern Ukraine.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he had spoken with his Russian counterpart Monday and urged Moscow to use its influence with the separatists to win the men’s release. “It is Russia’s job to free the hostages,” he said.
On Sunday, pro-Russian activists took control of the state TV center in Donetsk without firing a shot. Members of a separatist movement called the Donetsk People’s Republic, aided by a fight club from Kharkiv, stormed the broadcast facility, saying they were sick of watching news aired through the prism of their enemies in Kiev and demanding an undiluted stream of Russian programming.
Andrey Kelin, Moscow’s ambassador to the OSCE, said that it had been “extremely irresponsible” of the organization to send monitors to eastern Ukraine but that Russia would do what it could to free them.
The day’s events showed eastern Ukraine slipping further into chaos, with armed separatists openly defying state authority and local police either folding in sympathy or admitting that they felt too intimidated to stop the pro-Russian groups.
Overall, the Ukraine Security Service said, pro-Russia separatists hold more than 40 hostages in eastern Ukraine, most of them jailed in Slovyansk.
There was no sign Sunday that the new central government in Kiev was pressing ahead with its “anti-terror” police and military operation to retake buildings and checkpoints in the east occupied by pro-Russian militants.
In a statement, the agency named one leader of the separatist movement as a former colonel in the Russian army and said he was wanted for his alleged role in capturing the OSCE observers.
As Moscow and Washington traded blame for a failure to halt the escalation in tension, diplomats moved to try to free the hapless European military monitors.
Another man named by Ukrainian security was a former officer in the Soviet army who had fought in Afghanistan and Chechnya and is being sought for his alleged involvement in the torture and killing of a local pro-Kiev politician.
There were also reports of vehicles being carjacked by pro-Russian activists and of a list circulating at anti-Kiev checkpoints with the photographs of 18 journalists to be arrested on the spot.
The advocacy group Human Rights Watch said Monday that journalists and political activists are “at increasing risk of political-motivated violence, such as unlawful detention, abduction and assaults,” in eastern Ukraine.
The Security Service of Ukraine said three of its officers were captured by pro-Russian militants in the city of Horlivka, where the agents were investigating the recent torture and killing of a local politician and a university student. Both men were supporters of a unified Ukraine. Their bodies were found dumped in a river near Slovyansk.
Moscow has denied playing any role in the crisis in eastern Ukraine and instead has called on the Kiev government to restore order and guarantee the safety of Russian-speaking residents in the region.
Captive in Slovyansk
Ukrainian officials say Russia is trying to provoke its smaller and far weaker neighbor into war. With tens of thousands of Russian troops lodged on Ukraine’s eastern border, the Kiev government has been paralyzed — unable to defend itself from the growing separatist threat without risking an invasion from Russia.
In Slovyansk, hard-core separatists staged a news conference to display their captives, who were in Ukraine as part of a military observer mission operating under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
That paralysis was on vivid display Monday evening as Ukrainian security forces looked on passively while the separatists clubbed the pro-Ukrainian demonstrators.
“We wish from the bottom of our hearts to go back to our homes as soon and as quickly as possible,” one of the observers, Axel Schneider, a German army colonel, said at the news conference.
The protesters gathered near dusk beneath a soaring statue of this city’s favorite son, Soviet pole-vaulting champ Sergey Bubka, and as they set off down a wide boulevard, the mood was upbeat. Children waved blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags. Everyone joined in for the national anthem.
The captives said that they were not “prisoners” but “guests” of the de facto mayor but that they did not know when they might be released. Their captors said they might use the hostages for a prisoner exchange.
But the atmosphere changed in an instant when the crowd was ambushed by dozens of armed young men, who swung their whips and hurled molotov cocktails after blowing past hundreds of government security forces.
Schneider said the men had “not been touched” and were in good health. “We are not fighters. We are diplomats in uniform. We came without weapons,” he said.
“Police knew that men with bats were coming, but they just let them do it,” said Oleg Saakyan, 19, a protest organizer whose ear was dripping blood. He was one of at least a half-dozen who were injured. Five others were captured by the separatists and detained at the regional administration building, which pro-Russian forces occupy.
The separatists, saying they had found the observers carrying maps indicating the location of checkpoints, labeled the captives “NATO spies.”
A police sergeant who declined to give his name said that he had compassion for the demonstrators but that police officers are in a difficult position.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the parading of the military officers before the news media was “repulsive” and “a breach of all the rules.” He appealed to Russia to pressure the separatists to free the monitors, who were arrested alongside five Ukrainian military officers and a driver.
“We support unity,” he said. “But I’m not going to get my head beaten for 2,500 hyrvnia [about $200] a month.”
Late Sunday, one of the monitors was released into the custody of international negotiators, according to Michael Bociurkiw, an OSCE spokesman. The freed observer was from Sweden and was probably released because he has a serious preexisting medical condition, the spokesman said.
The rising violence and seeming inability of the state to respond have left many in eastern Ukraine feeling deeply pessimistic.
Tepid support for separatists
“In two or three weeks, we will lose Donetsk,” said Oleksandr Yaroshenko, a local politician who is aligned with the West. “Russia doesn’t even need to invade, because we’re so weak. We won’t be able to control these thugs.”
Support for the separatists in southeastern Ukraine is thin. The government buildings they occupy in towns and cities across the region are often defended by no more than a few dozen protesters, and they have had trouble drawing large crowds.
Alex Ryabchyn contributed to this report.
Polls suggest that most people in the region, while favoring greater autonomy, do not want to be absorbed by Russia.
Only a few hundred demonstrators turned out for a rally in Donetsk’s Lenin Square on Sunday, despite nearly ideal spring weather and the promise of an appearance by the mysterious “people’s governor.”
The crowd — waving Russian and Donetsk People’s Republic flags — offered tepid applause as speaker after speaker railed against the “fascist government in Kiev.”
