On the morning of April 23, tractors began clearing the barricades on Independence Square in Kyiv. At first, seemed like it might be a small step towards fulfilling the provisions agreed upon by the U.S., EU, Russia, and Ukraine in Geneva on April 17.
The quadrilateral Geneva Statement, which was aimed at de-escalating separatist tensions in eastern Ukraine also applies to protesters in Kyiv. It stipulates that those who surrender government buildings, vacate public spaces, and lay down their arms will be offered amnesty, unless they have committed a capital offense.
Though the Geneva Statement has provided a glimmer of hope that the ongoing crisis in Ukraine will be resolved diplomatically and peacefully, the barricades aren’t going anywhere, and neither are the men behind them: city workers on the barricades on Independence Square told the Kyiv Post that they simply wanted to clear scorched tires, plastic bags, and other detritus, and that they would allow the protesters to refortify their barricades.
Protesters remain on the Maidan in part because of the fear that the Russian troops that recently began popping up in eastern Ukraine will soon be on Kyiv’s doorstep.
In an interview aired on Russia Today on April 23, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did little to allay protesters’ fears.
“If our interests, our legitimate interests, the interests of Russians have been attacked directly, like they were in South Ossetia for example, I do not see any other way but to respond in accordance with international law,” said Lavrov, drawing a parallel to the alleged repression of ethnic Russians in Georgia that served as the pretext for a Russian military invasion in 2008.
Inside Ukrainian House, an exhibition hall turned dormitory that is located one block from Independence Square, men from Maidan self-defense brigades have set up a seemingly permanent residence.
Dozens of men sleep and take nourishment in the building, and intend to continue to do so for the foreseeable future, regardless of Kyiv’s international agreements.
Evgeniy Shugin, a Maidan self-defense fighter, left his job as an engineer in Alushta, Crimea shortly before the March 16 referendum on joining the Russian Federation was held. He says now that Crimea belongs to Russia, he has no home to return to.
“I came here to help the Crimean people. If you want us to leave here,” he says, we’ll be forced out “on the streets. Do you want me to be homeless?”
The Maidan protesters, who still occupy Ukrainian House, City Hall, and several other buildings near Independence Square, have yet to relinquish the guns they used to defend themselves from armed riot police and snipers who fired on them from February 18 to 20.
Shugin says that the post-revolutionary government is no more trustworthy than that of disgraced former President Viktor Yanukovych: “They have exchanged one mask for another.”
The Geneva agreements don’t seem to have gained traction among separatists in eastern Ukraine, either.
Since the Geneva Statement was signed, armed insurgents have seized the police station and local State Security Service (SBU) building in Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, as well as the training grounds of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry in the village of Vasylivka in central Donetsk Oblast. At the same time, a part of the Donetsk regional administration building was freed by the separatists.
Thirteen people have been kidnapped since the Geneva agreements were signed, including several prominent Ukrainian and Western journalists. American journalist Simon Ostrovsky of Vice News was taken hostage on April 22 and remains in captivity. Many journalists have had their cameras and phones confiscated or destroyed.
On April 22, the body of Horlivka city council member Volodymyr Rybak was found, mutilated, on the bank of a tributary of the Seversky Donets River. Another body was found along Rybak’s, but has yet to be identified.
Despite the renewed violence over Easter weekend, monitors for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who have a mandate from the Geneva conference to mediate the crisis in eastern Ukraine, say they are seeing progress towards resolving the separatist violence.
“We are experiencing incremental progress; at the moment we can point to a handful of buildings that have been partially evacuated,” Michael Bociurkiw, spokesman of OSCE mission to Ukraine told the Kyiv Post.
Still, the OSCE mission has continued to express concern about the failure of separatists to comply with the Geneva Statement.
In a report issued on April 22, the OSCE said that its team of monitors had not found “any indications that the Geneva Statement was starting to be implemented in the Luhansk region,” noting that people occupying the government buildings there claimed they would only “demobilize once the occupied buildings in Kyiv are vacated.”
About 100 OSCE observers are now working in all regions of Ukraine, though Bociurkiw says he expects that number to rise to as many as 500 in the coming weeks.
Despite the OSCE’s calls for a nonviolent resolution, interim President Oleksandr Turchynov announced on April 22 that Kyiv would restart the active phase of its anti-terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine, which it had suspended following the signing of the Geneva agreements.
“Terrorists who have taken hostages in Donetsk region stepped over the line when they started to torture and kill patriots of Ukraine. They dared to challenge not only our country, but the whole world…following the decisions adopted in Geneva,” said Turchynov.
Kyiv Post staff writer Isaac Webb can be reached at @isaacdwebb or [email protected]. Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko contributed to the reporting and can be reached at [email protected].
