SLOVIANSK, Ukraine -- When the Ukrainian army entered Donetsk Oblast, gripped by Kremlin-backed separatist protests, civilians gave them a hostile reception.
The citizens of Kramatorsk, a city of 250,000 people, were
outraged when several groups of Ukrainian paratroopers entered the city’s
suburbs on armored vehicles on the morning of April 16.
Confident that the army arrived to violently suppress the
protesters, the civilians blocked some 18 vehicles with soldiers in two
locations near Kramatorsk.
Six more vehicles were captured by armed insurgents in
Kramatorsk and taken to Sloviansk, a city some 15 kilometers away, where the
pro-Russian insurgents have been holding administrative buildings since April
12.
Dmitriy Di, a spokesman for the insurgents’ People’s Guard of
Donbas, said the vehicles will be used “at least for blocking streets.”
According to Di, a dozen Ukrainian soldiers who rode in the
captured vehicles surrendered and took the insurgents’ side. However, the insurgents kept the soldiers in
the seized city hall and refused to let anyone see them or talk to them.
“This is crap. They could not surrender,” said Dmytro,
19, one of the paratroopers blocked in Kramatorsk.
A guy named Dmytro stands near an armored carrier with a shabby
gun in his hands, surrounded by dozens of local citizens. Most of them seem
confident that the army means to act against the civilian anti-government and
pro-Russian protesters.
“You gave the vow to Ukrainian people. We are the Ukrainian
people. Are you going to shoot us? Are you?” a plump man in U.S.S.R.
t-shirt, sporty shorts and dusty rubber flip-flops asked the soldiers, cheered
by other locals.
“I gave the vow to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity,”
Dmytro responded in Ukrainian.
According to Dmytro and other soldiers, all the military that
showed up in Kramatorsk on this day came from a paratrooper base near
Dnipropetrovsk.
“We left the base around a week ago. We were told we were
going to have military exercises in Donetsk Oblast,” said a soldier who
identified himself as Oleh, 23.
Oleh said he had no idea whether his unit was participating in
an anti-terrorist operation initiated by the government against Russia-backed
insurgents in the east.
Sitting on an armored vehicle in a field next to the railway,
surrounded by 14 more vehicles and a crowd of several hundred angry civilians,
Oleh has to reduce his voice to say that he dislikes the separatist movements
and wants Ukraine to stay indivisible.
As for the blockade, Oleh said the soldiers won’t act unless the
civilians try to take their weapons or vehicles.
“If they do, we can start shooting,” he said.
Later in the day, three armored vehicles managed to break the
blockade and leave after a soldier threatened locals with a grenade.
Reacting to the actions of the Kramatorsk citizen, General
Prosecutor’s Office said on April 16 that opposing the army is a punishable
crime.
The civilians blocking the Ukrainian army in Kramatorsk don’t
believe in the presence of undercover Russian military forces in Ukraine’s
east.
“Haven’t seen any of them with my eyes, so I don’t believe
there are any,” said Mykhailo, 39, one of the civilians blocking the
vehicles near Kramatorsk. Like most of the separatist supporters, he refuses to
give his last name or be filmed, afraid that he can be arrested and prosecuted
as a separatist.
At the same time, the Ukrainian government keeps accusing the
Kremlin of backing the protests in eastern Ukraine, plotting to annex the
region and repeating the Crimea scenario.
Ukraine moved further with the accusations on April 16, when the
head of the counterintelligence service of the Security Service of Ukraine,
Vitaliy Nayda, told journalists that Russian forces were plotting to organize a
killing of some 100-200 people in the region to justify sending in the troops
officially.
Civilians supporting the insurgents cause problems for the army,
complicating the anti-terrorist operation, said Gen. Vasiliy Krutov, who is in
charge of the operation.
“Unfortunately,
they are the victims of propaganda and are often used as a human shield,”
Krutov said on April 15.
Kyiv Post editor Olga
Rudenko can be reached at rudenko@kyivpost.com
Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from the project www.mymedia.org.ua, financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action.The content in this article may not necessarily reflect the views of the Danish government, NIRAS and BBC Action Media.
