HORLIVKA, Ukraine – The fuel is local, but the matches are Russian. That in a nutshell is how the insurgency threatening the survival of Ukraine as a unified state is increasingly unfolding.
Over the past 10 days, more than a dozen government offices in eastern Ukraine have been taken over by pro-Russian forces, with most of the seizures following the same pattern.
Those capturing the buildings insist they are carrying out the will of the people and have demanded a referendum on autonomy for the eastern Donetsk region.
The Ukrainian government’s inability to quash the pro-Russian insurgency was highlighted by acting President Oleksandr Turchynov’s call Monday for the deployment of United Nations peacekeeping troops in the east of his country. He said the presence of Russian meddling was clear in the unrest gripping his country.
Peacekeepers, however, would have to be authorized by the U.N. Security Council, where Russia holds a veto.
The relative ease with which pro-Russian groups have been able to overwhelm resistance was in full display Monday in the Donetsk region city of Horlivka.
Hundreds of local people gathered in a square in front of the local police station. Oleksandr Sapunov, who described himself as the head of a public self-defense unit in Horlivka, said the crowd was fighting against appointees of the Kiev government, including the local police chief.
“The people came to tell him that he is a puppet of the Kiev junta and they won’t accept him,” Sapunov said.
Then came the moment for the switchover of the flag from Ukrainian to Russian. But in Horlivka, the head of the police force came to the ledge, chasing the man with Russian tricolor and knocking him 20 feet to the ground, where he banged his head.
The crowd vented its fury. Within seconds, the people hurled stones. The police inside sought to disperse them with stun grenades and by firing guns into the air, but the building was taken within about an hour.
Shortly afterward, men in fatigues marched the chief of police, blood gushing from his head, to an ambulance outside. The onlookers shouted “Donbass! Donbass!” the name of the Donetsk region, and “Ros-si-ya,” or Russia.
Other assaults also followed similar scripts.
