Thousands of people waving Russian flags have occupied Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kharkov, RT and multiple media outlets report. They are demanding the restoration of the Berkut officers, the right to vote on a referendum on secession from Ukraine, and the ouster of Kiev-appointed governor Sergey Taruta.
The demonstrators used the confiscated shields to make their way through the main entrance of the building and occupied the balcony. The Ukrainian flag in front of the administration was replaced by a Russian standard.
Eventually, police blocked the demonstrators inside.
The violence in Donetsk might’ve been provoked by a banner saying “Goodbye, Russia,” which was placed on the administration, Life-News reports.
The administration headquarters were empty, with only guards inside, as Government officials don’t work on Sundays.
“The situation is pretty tense. The demonstrators are occupying the city council building and are demanding that an independence referendum is held to determine the future of the region of Donetsk,” activist Aleksandr Borodin told RT.
"The protesters are calling on officials to conduct a special session over the referendum situation. If it doesn’t take place, the demonstrators say they will organize an initiative group to settle the issue. The protesters say they will not acknowledge the Kiev-appointed authorities and are also demanding freedom for the recently elected so-called "public governor.”
Once again, the situation is flaring up. Russia performed military exercises 30 miles outside of Ukraine yesterday according to Dmitry Tymchuk.
BBC reports that Ukraine has called an emergency security meeting in response.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow has the right to protect the Russian-speaking population there.
Ukraine's leaders deny the country's Russian speakers are under threat and have said they will resist any intervention in their country.
Ukrainian Acting President Olexander Turchynov cancelled a planned visit to Lithuania and called a meeting of the country's security chiefs to deal with the unrest.
The Ukrainian government does not believe the protests are a legitimate expression of will, but that the protesters were paid for by Yanukovych.
Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov accused President Putin and Mr Yanukovych - who was forced from office in February following months of street protests and is now living in exile in Russia - of "ordering and paying for another wave of separatist turmoil in the country's east".
In a message posted on his Facebook account, he said: "The people who have gathered are not many but they are very aggressive. The situation will be brought under control without bloodshed. But at the same time, a firm approach will be used against all who attack government buildings, law enforcement officers and other citizens."
The BBC's Bridget Kendall says that Putin has always reserved the right to intervene as a last resort.
Although Moscow has repeatedly reassured the West that it has no intention of sending troops across the border, Mr Putin has reserved the right to intervene as a last resort.
So it is no wonder Ukraine's acting President Olexander Turchynov has cancelled his trip abroad and called an emergency meeting of his security chiefs in Kiev.
For him, it is vitally important to try to stop these rallies from getting bigger and the clashes from getting more violent, so Mr Putin cannot claim Kiev has lost control of eastern Ukraine, and therefore Russia has no option but to intervene for "humanitarian" reasons.
If Russia follows through and occupies these areas as a result of the unrest, they will stand to lose environmentally. That is because Ukraine is a signatory to the Aarhus Convention requiring public involvement in decisions regarding the environment. Russia is not.
Consequently, to the extent that Crimea will now be governed by Russian legislation, that territory and its people will be at significantly greater risk that the authorities will not pay close attention to environmental concerns and do not have to listen to popular complaints about them, Ozharovsky says.
Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Russian Natural Resources and Ecology Minister Sergey Donsky. They talked about Crimea, about the evidence of past environmental harm and about the status of specially protected nature preserves on the territory of the peninsula.
“These questions are important,” Ozharovsky says, “but there is another problem” that they did not discuss: Russia’s non-participation in the Aarhus Convention and the consequences that will have in the future.
This undermines the claim made by Russia that nobody will lose and everybody will gain from Russia's annexation. And another complication as a result of Putin's newfound adventurism is that he is bending over backwards to placate the Crimean Tatars.
This has infuriated the ethnic Russian nationalists that Putin has said he was protecting all along.
Consequently, many of them now say that the formation of a national cultural autonomy for the Crimean Tatars there is totally unacceptable and “absolutely impossible.” And they are increasingly directing their anger not at the Crimean Tatars, although there is enough of that, but at Moscow instead.
The attitude of the ethnic Russians in Crimea is echoed and amplified by Russian nationalists elsewhere. In an article yesterday, Konstantin Krylov, the editor of Voprosy Natsionalizma and an outspoken Russian nationalist, denounced what he described as Putin’s launch of “the Tatarization of Crimea”.
Krylov’s anger was sparked by what he called “the attempt at the seizure by the Mejlis of the Bakhchisaray historical-cultural park” and the failure of local officials to block that action as they should have done because most of the objects there “do not have any relationship to the Crimean Tatars.”
He argued that Russians must understand that “the policy of ‘multi-nationality’ being conducted in Crimea in the form of the seizure and diversion of the historical-cultural heritage is de facto a declaration of war against all Russian patriotic forces” and “a gift to Ukrainian propaganda.
And if Putin follows through and annexes the rest of Eastern Ukraine, then these problems will be compounded.