The crisis in Ukraine, after calming down, has flared up again. Armed men in Solvyansk, Ukraine, have seized control of the police station there. It is 55 miles south of Donetsk. Yesterday, an ultimatum issued by the central government in Kiev passed without any action. The failure of the central government to resolve the situation has only emboldened the pro-Russian activists, who have now gone on to seize more buildings.
It only took 40 men to seize control of the police station in Slavyansk. That means that there is a serious breakdown in civil society there to the point where the national guard and the police are not answering to the central government anymore.
A masked attacker in Slavyansk, who gave his name only as Sergei, told The Associated Press they have "only one demand — a referendum and joining Russia."
The man said they seized the building because they wanted to protect it from radical nationalists from western Ukraine and "the junta who seized power in Kiev."
"We don't want to be slaves of America and the West," he said. "We want to live with Russia."
While the interior ministry promised a "very tough response," they promised that last time and didn't deliver. The economy over in the east has deteriorated to the point where nothing that the government says or promises means anything to the people there anymore. Some pensioners there are living on as little as $80 per month.
Russia has made four demands of Ukraine as a precondition for offering aid.
Ukraine should recognize Crimea’s independence, reform the country’s constitution, regulate the crisis in its eastern regions and guarantee the rights of Russian speakers if it wants to get financial help from Moscow, Russia’s finance minister has said.
“If Ukraine fulfils these four conditions, then Russia will be able to propose further steps on additional help both on financial and gas issues,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said after meeting with his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schauble, in Washington.
The problem is that Ukraine will never recognize Crimea's secession and Russia's annexation. It may well be in Ukraine's best interest to do so. The US is not going to risk war with Russia even if they were not a nuclear armed nation. That was the fundamental miscalculation that Ukraine's leaders made when they overthrew Yanukovych. The US is not even interested in a Marshall Plan similar to what they did for Europe. And the IMF loan that is still being discussed would only be a drop in the water.
But there are three worse alternatives for Ukraine, none of which is palatable. One is that civil war will ensue and Ukraine will become a failed state similar to Somalia and Libya. The next is that Russia will decide to go to war to collect the $18 billion that they say Ukraine owes. The third is a prolonged state of perpetual unrest similar to what is happening now exacerbated by the fact that Russia has a much higher standard of living than Ukraine.
Ukraine needs to understand the position they are in. Even some of the security forces are not following orders.
Anti-Maidan protesters stopped two buses full of security forces which were heading from Donetsk to Slavyansk, Rossiya 24 TV channel reported. After negotiations, the security forces turned back to their Donetsk HQ.
“I can’t say there was a conflict between the police and activists, the latter just accompanied the Special Unit forces back to their HQ,” said a Rossiya 24 correspondent, who was at the scene.
Protestors in Donetsk seized new buildings.
Later in the day, the Interior Ministry in Donetsk was also reportedly seized by gunmen.
The attacks, just like the ones that led to Russia's annexation of Crimea in March, appeared to catch the Ukrainian government off-guard. After police repelled an assault on the Donetsk general prosecutor's office earlier in the day on April 12, the takeover of the oblast's Interior Ministry headquarters and two other police stations in the oblast crippled any visible or effective response from law enforcement.
The Kyiv Post says that the seizures had support from within the Ukrainian government.
The swiftness and scope of today's attacks, as well as the support of the armed takeovers by the mayor of Sloviansk, suggest that the operation was planned well in advance and had support from within the ranks of Ukraine's government, including its law enforcement agencies, in Donetsk Oblast.
Masked gunmen also set up at least three checkpoints, including two near Sloviansk and one near Horlivka. Gunmen piled sand and tires in the median with a Russian flag on top at one of the checkpoints, where the Kyiv Post saw four armed men dressed similarly to Russian soldiers. They stopped trucks and mini-buses and appeared to be there to intercept weapons that could be brought in by Ukraine's government.
Pro-Russian protestors also seized the police station in Chervony Lyman. They were turned back in Shakhtarsk as well as the prosecutor's office in Donetsk.
The Kiev-appointed governors say that they need more decentralization and more resources so that they could push through an aggressive development program that they say could quell the protests.
Referring to himself as a “crisis manager,” Donetsk Governor Serhiy Taruta proposed that the Cabinet of Ministers approve a development program for the industrial Donbass region – constituting Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv oblasts. He submitted a proposal during the meeting. If enacted, Taruta sid the program “would in three to four months quell the desire of people wanting to join Russia.”
On April 6, pro-Russian demonstrators seized the regional government headquarters of Donetsk and have barricaded themselves inside while declaring an independent republic consisting of Donetsk Oblast, where 10 percent of Ukraine's population lives.
As in Luhansk and Kharkiv, they want Russian to become an official language and are calling for more autonomy from Kyiv. Some also want to join the Russian Federation.
Taruta, a multi-millionaire industrialist, proposed an eight bullet-point plan for the region that emphasizes decentralization as a way to arm him with tools to “fight poverty, corruption, support small and medium-sized businesses, revive industrial production, and develop civil society.”
But in the meantime, in many places in Eastern Ukraine,
the police have simply disappeared.
At occupied government buildings in eastern Ukraine, there is plenty of razor wire, sandbags and Molotov cocktails.
One thing is conspicuously absent, though — law enforcement.
When protests in Eastern Ukraine started on Sunday, police were everywhere.
The forces protecting a government building stood shoulder-to-shoulder in riot gear as protesters pounded on their shields. Protesters eventually broke through, taking over government buildings in three eastern cities.
But since then, law enforcement seems to have disappeared from the barricades.
It is going to be awfully hard to redevelop the country when there is a general breakdown of law and order in Eastern Ukraine that has led to these mass protests.