"A Puppet of the Kyiv Junta"
"The Russian Federation is sending special units to the east of our country, [where pro-Russian thugs] seized administrative buildings with the use of weapons and are putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of our citizens in danger."
Ukraine President Oleksandr Turchynovl
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Over a dozen government offices in eastern Ukraine have been seized and taken by pro-Russian forces over the past ten days, those events repeating the very same pattern perfected in Crimea. A formula that worked there, and that the Kremlin anticipates will continue to work for them very well indeed in the industrialized heartland of Ukraine.
Gangs of aggressive rioters, some wearing masks, carrying firearms, wearing military fatigues storm the buildings. That accomplished to great cheers from the accompanying crowds, shouting approval and incitement to carry on, the Ukrainian flag is replaced with the Russian flag. The 'military' personnel move on, and local thugs move in to secure the buildings.
A referendum on autonomy is then demanded for the eastern Donetsk region. The unidentified men who storm the buildings with military precision and with military fatigues and arms, just happen to have been inspired by the earlier successful proceedings in Crimea. The 'uprising' doesn't appear to have an expanded popular support from the numbers who have come out in their sparse hundreds.
But it is clear there is nothing 'spontaneous' or particularly grass roots about the events. They have been conducted with superb co-ordination, worthy of the military, disciplined and ordered, intent on their purpose, and accomplishing it with comparative ease. As though they are indeed part of a military machine, tasked to perform an essential service and pursuing that end with the single-mindedness of military minds.
The only part left of the familiar scenario is the final denouement, when an anguished Russia is forced to dispatch its forces into a formerly friendly collegial country upon which it is hugely industrially dependent, and dependent as well on its munitions-and-parts production, and the sharing of a certain culture and heritage. But a country must do what events beyond its control compel it to do, and in Russia's case, it is incumbent upon its honour to protect and safeguard ethnic Russians.
And to that end, it will reluctantly but purposefully, embrace the geography which sustains those ethnic Russians, along with much of the greater geography of Ukraine. Too bad for Ukraine, but that's what happens when a long-time ally looks outward toward other perceived opportunities, forgetting to its own peril where its tried-and-true interests lie. And since Ukraine started the breakage in cordial relations, it is a situation it will have to live with.
In desperation, President Turchynov has called on the United Nations to dispatch peacekeeping troops in his country's east. The disturbances gripping his poor tortured country are clearly the result of deliberate actions undertaken by the Kremlin. As for the activists, they claim to be protecting their interests, certain, they claim, that the new, Western-oriented government of Ukraine plans to oppress them as a minority withdrawing their rights.
Though no evidence exists that the Russian-speaking population has been subject to intimidation, the argument is a sustained one, an argument that Moscow has full appreciation and sympathy with. It is precisely that issue which has sustained Moscow's drive to protect its own, even if the intimidation and oppressive fear is Ukraine's alone, emanating from Russian threats of aggression and no other source.
In Horlivka, where a mob followed the military leaders in taking the police station, disarming the police and severely beating the police chief, Oleksandr Sapunov calling himself head of a public self-defence unit, claimed the crowd was impelled to fight against appointees of the Kyiv government, including the local police chief. And fight they did, beating him unmercifully for refusing them entry and pledging his loyalty to his country.
When the switchover of the flag from Ukrainian to Russian was initiated, police chief Col. Krishenko chased the man with the Russian tricolour, knocking him six metres to the ground. Which led the crowd to vent its fury, hurling stones at the police chief. When the police inside the station attempted to disperse the crowd with stun grenades and by firing guns in the air, the building was taken within an hour through force of numbers.
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| Ishmael N. Daro - A Ukrainian police officer receives medical care after being attacked by a pro-Russian mob that stormed a police station in Horlivka, eastern Ukraine |
Labels: Aggression, Conflict, Crimes, Russia, Threats, Ukraine
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, April 16, 2014
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