Events in Ukraine

The only corrective I would offer to the RT story is that reports are that life goes on, pretty much as normal and the numbers of protesters occupying buildings is allegedly quite small.

Kiev backpedals on 

referendums after deadline 

to stop protest expires

RT,

11 April, 2014

Just after a deadline set by Kiev for protesters in eastern Ukraine to vacate seized buildings expired, Parliament-appointed PM Arseny Yatsenyuk pledged to push through a law allowing regional referendums in the country.

Holding referendums on the status of their respective regions was among the main demands posed by anti-Maidan activists, who have taken over a number of governmental buildings in eastern Ukraine this week.

Ukrainian law currently does not allow regions to hold referendums separately from the rest of the country. It was one of the main arguments Kiev voiced in declaring illegal last month’s referendum in Crimea, which ended with the peninsula’s seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia.

Speaking in Donetsk, one of the regions engulfed by the anti-Kiev protests, Yatsenyuk said his government wants greater autonomy for Ukrainian regions, including the abolition of the offices of capital-appointed governors.

He was speaking just as a 48-hour deadline, which Kiev gave to protesters to liberate the seized buildings, expired. Previously the central authorities threatened to use force, including that of the military and even threatened their opponents as terrorists, unless they withdrew from the buildings.

Arseny Yatsenyuk (RIA Novosti / Grigoriy Vasilenko)

The U-turn comes after Ukraine’s elite Alpha unit reportedly refused to obey an order to besiege protester-held buildings. At a session of law enforcement officials in Donetsk, one of the Alpha commanders said that he and his men are a force intended for rescuing hostages and fighting terrorism and will only act in accordance with the law, local media reported.

 

The unconfirmed act of defiance comes days after the siege by police of a protesters-seized building in Kharkov, which ended with dozens of activists being arrested. On Thursday, a local police lieutenant-colonel spoke to the media, claiming that he and other officers had been deceived by the Kiev authorities. He claimed that they were sent to take over the building under the pretext that it was held by dangerous armed bandits. In fact the protesters had only improvised clubs and offered no resistance to the storming troops.

The officer, Andrey Chuikov, said he would no longer take “criminal” orders and announced his resignation from the police, adding that he would be sacked anyway by his superiors for speaking to the press.

Discontent with the new authorities in Kiev, which has been brewing in eastern and southern Ukraine for weeks, escalated on Monday, as protesters in several cities started to take over governmental buildings. Protests took place in the cities of Donetsk, Kharkov and Lugansk, while smaller protest actions and some clashes were reported in Odessa and Nikolayev.

Pro-Russian protesters hold placards during their rally outside the regional state administration building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on April 10, 2014. (AFP Photo / Anatoliy Stepanov)

Donetsk activists remain in control of the regional administration building and have built three lines of barricades to defend themselves from a possible siege. They have declared the Donetsk region, which is home to about one-tenth of the population of Ukraine, a “people’s republic” and have demanded a referendum on its future status. They also declared forming a “people’s army” in response to threats from violence form Kiev.

Negotiations between the activists and the Kiev-appointed authorities of the region were held on Thursday and into Friday morning. They are trying to hammer out a deal to deescalate the tension, which includes some sort of joint patrols formed by police and the activists of Donetsk and a possible relocation of the protesters to a nearby building.

In Lugansk, activists are maintaining their hold on a Ukrainian Security Service office. They also cordoned off a base of the Interior Ministry’s troops on Thursday night, saying this would prevent their deployment for a crackdown on the protest, although later the blockade was lifted.

After the deadline passed to leave the occupied buildings or face a crackdown, the anti-Kiev protesters have given an ultimatum to the post-coup government. They demand a referendum to be held within 10 days on whether to break away and join Russia.

Meanwhile, in Kharkov, where police on Tuesday captured a regional administration building and took more than 50 activists into custody, the protests do not seem to be calming down. On Thursday evening several hundred people picketed the building, despite a court ban on doing so. A mass protest rally is scheduled for Sunday.

Ukraine fails to break stalemate with pro-Russian protesters in east

Arseniy Yatsenyuk promises devolution to local government in hope of staving off demands for their independence from Kiev

the Guardian,

11 April, 2014

Ukraine's interim prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, attempted and failed on Friday to break a tense deadlock in the country's east, where armed pro-Russian protesters have barricaded themselves inside government buildings and demanded independence from Kiev.

Protesters in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk seized government buildings on Sunday. While police managed to clear the Luhansk protest site swiftly, protesters in Donetsk and Kharkiv remain entrenched.

Yatsenyuk met officials from the eastern regions in Donetsk and promised to expand the powers of local government bodies and preserve the status of Russian as a second official language. But he did not meet representatives of the protesters who have declared a "people's republic" from a Donetsk administrative building and demanded that a referendum on independence be held by 11 May

 

A 48-hour deadline to clear the occupied buildings announced by Ukraine's interior minister came and went without incident, despite persistent rumours of an impending assault by government forces. Protest leaders said negotiations to clear the building had come to a standstill.

In Luhansk, further east, dozens of men remained barricaded inside the state security service headquarters, armed with Kalashnikovs. They demand a referendum on federalising Ukraine.

"If we get federation, then people will decide whether they want to be inside of Ukraine or in Russia," said Aleksey Kariakin, one of the leaders of the group, who earlier held talks with Ukraine's security chief, Andriy Parubiy.

The protesters deny that they have been sustained, or prompted to action, by Russia, or have Russian nationals among their number. They claim they are backed only by hundreds of people who live in a tent camp set to protect and supply them.

"If they decide to arrest me, this group will act as a human shield," Kariakin said.

Tatiana Botsman, 29, is one of their hardcore supporters. She cooks meals for the occupiers and tea for participants of the tent camp. She is not afraid of a police attack. "If they come I will take a wooden stick and stand side by side with my husband," she said.

Protesters in Donetsk have called on Russia to deploy peacekeepers to facilitate a referendum on independence by 11 May.

Yatsenyuk did not agree to a referendum but suggested the system of regional administrations appointed by the president should be replaced by executive committees elected by regional parliaments, which would have "all financial, economic, administrative and other powers to control the corresponding region".

He also recommended that the parliament approve legislation that would change the constitution to allow for local referendums, a move strongly supported by the leaders of the Donetsk occupation.

Yatsenyuk said changes to the country's constitution should be approved before a presidential election planned for 25 May that the Kiev regime has said will fully legitimise the new government.

But Denis Pushilin, the chairman of the temporary government in Donetsk, told the Guardian on Friday afternoon he had not heard of these concessions and that any decision on them would have to be made by a loosely organised council of protest leaders.

"They haven't appealed to us with this offer," he said of the prime minister's promise of greater regional power.

The protesters refuse to recognise the new Kiev government, which they say is dominated by nationalists from western Ukraine. Their talks with the Kiev-appointed governor of the region have been mediated by Rinat Akhmetov – Ukraine's richest man and owner of many of the coalmines that form the core of Donetsk's economy.

Pushilin said talks broke down after the protesters' offer to give back two floors of the occupied 11-storey building so that regional officials could continue their work was rejected by Kiev officials who insisted they vacate the entire building: "Now it's all up in the air."

In another attempt to placate protesters, Yatseniuk said the government would not repeal a law that allows regions with ethnic minorities forming at least 10% of the population to declare a second official language. Language is an acutely sensitive political issue in eastern regions with large ethnic Russian populations such as Donetsk, where according to a 2001 census Russian is the native language of almost three-quarters of the population.

"No one will ever limit the Russian language and the right to speak it in Ukraine," Yatsenyuk said.

Shortly after President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted in February, Ukraine's parliament voted to cancel the second official language law. Although the acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, refused to sign the measure, the damage had been done. One of the main grievances voiced by protesters in Donetsk and Luhansk is a perceived campaign by the new nationalist regime in Kiev against Russian language and culture. The government has banned the broadcast of Russian television channels, further agitating many residents of Ukraine's southern and eastern regions.

Later on Friday, Yatsenyuk appeared on television in the eastern city of Dnepropetrovsk for a "dialogue with the east". During the interview, he promised that the poorest 30% of the population would receive assistance to compensate the cost of gas and heating, which is rising under an austerity program demanded by the International Monetary Fund.

Yatsenyuk has blamed Russia for exacerbating the crisis by doubling the price at which it sells gas to Ukraine.

"They understand that the gas price hike will lie on the shoulders of the population. Where is our brotherly relationship now?" he asked, referring to President Vladimir Putin's frequent comments that Russia and Ukraine were "brother peoples".

Putin tried to ease European fears of gas supply cuts on Friday after Brussels said it would stand with the new authorities in Kiev if the Kremlin carried out a threat to turn off the tap to Ukraine.

"I want to say again: we do not intend and do not plan to shut off the gas for Ukraine," Putin said in televised comments at a meeting of his security council. "We guarantee fulfilment of all our obligations to our European consumers."

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, also said that Russia did not want to take over more Ukrainian territory but repeated a call for Kiev to grant more powers to regional authorities. "We want Ukraine to be whole within its current borders, but whole with full respect for the regions."