By 11 a.m. residents in Slovansk reported that the choppers had gone. Its defenders expected the assault to begin at any time and were working continuously to build up the barricades. Up to that point one person had been killed and nine injured from the Pravy Sektor and Kiev forces.
Why Was Slovyansk Prepared?
When acting Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk came to Donetsk to offer a compromise on federalization, what he offered actually took away the very thing its people are demanding. The referendum he proposed was about the standing of ethnic Russians and not about their powers of self-governance. On his departure, Yatsenyuk and the Kiev government had resolved nothing except the opportunity for a sound bite on state-controlled TV. The important issues surrounding second-class citizenship for people living in their own country had remained totally unaddressed.
From the point of view of people who had first witnessed the Kiev coup against a democratically elected president, and then the formation of a government that willfully overlooked their interests, no level of trust could be generated. Almost every ministry and position in the Kiev government is filled by someone tied to West Ukraine and motivated by ultra-nationalism. This map will give you an idea of how small an area is represented by the current government. The red and black land space is the Galician Region. You can get a sense of what the ethnic-Russian minority in Ukraine is up against in this video, which shows Kiev MPs Farion and Nalyvaichenko speaking at Dimitri Yarosh's camp last year, preparing the leaders of " the 100s needed to fight " for revolution.
As tensions started building with the protesters, Kiev ordered Berkut units--the Special Security forces, including the Special Forces Alpha unit that stood down during Euro Maidan--and various police units to squelch the protests. All refused. None would fire on his own people. Instead, they joined the protesters in order to protect them if they were attacked by the government. In the picture below, Pravy Sektor has a new look. You can still see mismatched Ukrainian uniforms.
The Berkut--including those
that were heroes in Kiev--are under no
obligation to just stand and take
it when government forces attack civilians. Combined with the Ukrainian Special
Forces operators, they are proving potent at maintaining the peace.
The military and former military have been joined by the police from throughout the region. They won't accept what they consider to be illegal and unconstitutional orders from the Kiev junta. The laws they passed providing protection and amnesty for protesters weren't limited to a particular time period or location.
The actions of the Kiev Maidan revolution, manned exclusively by the ultra-nationalist Bandera Galicia, culminated in a coup and an entire change in government and law. The demand of the Donbass regions of Ukraine is simply federalization. Yet, far from receiving equal treatment, the protesters, the police, and military are being attacked throughout the regio n.
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