Pro-Russian militia defy Kiev's latest deadline to end occupations
Ukraine's interim president had ordered pro-Russian protesters to hand back occupied buildings or face a crackdown, but so far neither has happened, leaving Ukraine in a tough spot.
Ukraine's interim president had ordered pro-Russian protesters to hand back occupied buildings or face a crackdown, but so far neither has happened, leaving Ukraine in a tough spot.
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Protesters seized another police station in eastern Ukraine Monday, as the government's latest deadline for pro-Russian militia to leave the government offices they have occupied for the past week passed without signs of withdrawal or crackdown.
In a televised Sunday address,聽acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchinov set a deadline of 9 a.m. for protesters to pull out. CNN reports that there was聽no sign of movement from occupied buildings in the regional capital, Donetsk, or the flashpoint city of Slovyansk. And at least 100 armed protesters stormed the police headquarters in Horlivka, a small city about 20 miles northeast of Donetsk, in a clash that apparently injured several people, Reuters reports.
Sergei Taruta, the Kiev-appointed governor of Donetsk, said on Monday morning that an "anti-terrorist operation" was underway in the region and asked citizens "not to react to provocations," writes the Guardian.
Mr. Turchinov on Sunday had warned that protesters would face a "full-scale anti-terrorist operation" if they did not hand back the buildings they have occupied across Ukraine's Donbass region, its industrial heartland that is home to a large ethnic-Russian population. Many in Kiev and the West fear that Russia is stirring up Donbass to create a pretext for military intervention, as it did in Crimea.
Kiev will not allow "any repetition of the Crimean scenario,"聽CNN quotes Turchinov as saying.聽"I have signed a decree that would allow those who did not shoot at our officers to lay down their arms and leave the occupied buildings by Monday morning without fear of being prosecuted."
US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen voiced similar warnings about the Crimea parallel, the Guardian notes.
Regardless of Russia's involvement, FRANCE24's chief foreign editor, Robert Parsons, comments that the pressure is on Ukraine to show that it is in control of its own territory. If 鈥渢he central authorities in Kiev do manage to regain initiative and start forcing some of these paramilitary groups out of these city administration buildings where they鈥檝e set themselves up鈥� then that could begin to force Vladimir Putin鈥檚 hand. But at the moment he鈥檚 in a pretty comfortable position," he said.
But Judy Dempsey of Carnegie Europe writes that Ukraine is in "a dangerous no-win situation."