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Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images
DONETSK, Ukraine — Government security forces on Sunday battled armed men who seized a police station in eastern Ukraine, the Interior Ministry said, and thousands gathered to hear belligerent calls to arms, amid deepening fears that Russia is preparing military action in the region.
The fighting in Slovyansk, about 55 miles north of the regional center Donetsk, appeared to be the first such gunfight in this part of Ukraine since the violent Maidan protests that deposed President Viktor Yanukovych in February. Ukraine’s acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said at least one security officer was killed and several were wounded in the fighting.
Simmering tensions in Donetsk and other eastern population hubs erupted a week ago when pro-Russian activists seized the main Donetsk government building and declared themselves members of the Donetsk People’s Republic. The activists have turned the building into a sprawling, makeshift military encampment, with snaking razor wire and tire barricades, sandbags, scrap lumber and masked men armed mainly with clubs and truncheons patrolling the grounds. Crowds have waxed and waned outside the building all week.
On Saturday heavily armed, well-organized men wearing masks stormed police stations and other buildings in Slovyansk and four smaller towns outside Donetsk. The timing of the seizures suggested that they were part of a coordinated action. In contrast to the Donetsk building occupation, some of the armed men had military-grade rifles, body armor and camouflage similar that worn by Russian special forces who helped seize the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea last month. Most of those armed wore St. George ribbons, which are associated with the Soviet victory during World War II.
As men helped erect a barricade of tires and riot police shields outside the police station and a Russian flag replaced a Ukrainian one, a man who gave his name only as Sergei said they seized the building to protect them from what he said were radicals from western Ukraine and “the junta that seized power in Kyiv.”
“We don’t want to be slaves to America or slaves to the West,” he told reporters inside the station.
Anatoly Shtepel, 60, said that Donetsk’s mainly industrial economy was closely tied to Russia’s and that most people are resentful of the central government in Kyiv and fearful that nationalists will discriminate against the ethnic Russian population in the east, such as by restricting the use of the Russian language in schools and workplaces.
“The [Russian] flag appeared on the building not because we want to be in Russia but because that’s the only country that helps us,” he said. “The only reason we’ve survived all these years is because of Russia.”
On Sunday, Avakov announced the beginning of “counterterrorism operations” in Slovyansk. Residents and local journalists reported gun battles in the city center, and video posted online showed helicopter gunships circling overhead. Avakov later said one security officer was killed in the fight and at least five others wounded, though it was not clear where exactly the shooting happened and when.
In the nearby town of Kramatorsk, video taken Saturday showed about 10 masked men with professional weapons and camouflage uniforms arguing with a group of civilians before yelling at them and firing scores of rounds into the air and entering a nearby police station.
In Donetsk, while the regional administration has been the center of the pro-Russia movement, the rest of the city of 1 million has more or less continued its business, either indifferent to or ambivalent about the building’s occupation and the occupants’ demands. Still, there are signs that tensions are spreading. A billboard along the main boulevard that advocated for closer ties with Russia was severely damaged overnight; in another part of the city, a series of sidewalk advertisement kiosks popped up bearing the flag of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
“I’m here, what, a few hundred yards from the barricades? Yes, you can hear the speeches and all, but it’s really had absolutely no effect on the rest of the city,” said a woman who gave her name as Sveta, who works as a barista at a small coffee shop off the main boulevard.
On Sunday as Russian Orthodox churchgoers left services at the main cathedral, carrying pussy willows to mark the Palm Sunday holiday, many said they feared that the impasse was spiraling toward violence.
“We’re worried, of course,” said Anna Ivanova, a 58-year-old retiree, as she sold pussy willows on a sidewalk in back of the main cathedral. “I want to stay a part of Ukraine. I don’t want to be part of Russia, but we need to find a way to live peacefully with Russia.
“If the guys in Kyiv stopped thinking only about their Mercedes and their sacks of money and came and talked to us and listened to us and heard what we have to say, we wouldn’t have all these [problems],” she said.
Outside the administration building, meanwhile, the crowd swelled to a few thousand by midday as cold drizzle fell. A group of mainly elderly woman wearing plastic ponchos bearing the name of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych huddled around a man listening to live reports from the gun battle in Slovyansk.
Standing in front of the building main entrance — now a kaleidoscope of graffiti and signs in English and Russian mainly blaming the United States and Europe for the current tensions —speakers asked for volunteers to drive to Slovyansk to help fight Kyiv’s security forces. One man gave the crowd a short lecture on the history of the U.S. Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund, calling them part of a “pyramid scheme.”
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