display of strength.
Early on Wednesday a column
of six armoured personnel carriers trundled
through the town of Kramatorsk, in eastern
Ukraine. Some 24 hours earlier Ukrainian soldiers
had recaptured a small disused aerodrome. Their next target appeared to be Slavyansk, the
neighbouring town, occupied by a shadowy
Russian militia. Was victory close?
The column didn't get far. At Kramatorsk's railway
junction, next to an open-air market and a shop
selling building materials, an angry crowd caught
up with it. Next armed separatists dressed in
military fatigues turned up too. Within minutes the
Ukrainian soldiers gave up. Without a shot being fired they abandoned their vehicles.
The pro-
Russian gunmen grabbed them. They raised a
Russian tricolour. They sat on top and went for a
victory spin. In theory this was happening in Ukraine, under
the control of a pro-western government in Kiev,
and several hundred kilometres from the Russian
border.
In reality large chunks of the east of the
country are now in open revolt. Ukraine is rapidly vanishing as a sovereign state. Its army is falling
apart. What happens next is unclear. But the
Kremlin can either annexe the east, as it did
Crimea, again shrugging off western outrage.
Or it
can pull the strings of a new post-Kiev puppet
entity. The militia who captured the armoured vehicles on
Wednesday looked like professionals. They had
Kalashnikovs, flak jackets, ammunition. One even
carried a tube-shaped green grenade-launcher.
Some hid their faces under black balaclavas.
Others
waved and smiled. All wore an orange and black ribbon – originally a symbol of the Soviet victory
over fascism, and now the colours of the east's
snowballing anti-Kiev movement. There was a flag
of Donbass, the Russian-speaking eastern region
with its main city of Donetsk.
After posing for photos, this new anti-Kiev army
set off. The armoured personnel carriers (APCs)
rattled past Kramatorsk's train station and turned
right over a steep dusty bridge. There was a cloud
of diesel smoke. Amazed locals jogged alongside
then piled into battered mini-buses to keep up.
White tread tracks on the tarmac pointed the way.
The column covered about six miles (10km)
before turning left at the entrance to Slavyansk. It
then drove serenely into town and parked round
the back of the city hall. Soldiers got off and
stretched their legs next to the White Nights cafe.
Slavyansk residents who had been fearing an
imminent attack from Ukrainian forces had a
moment of cognitive dissonance. Armed pro-
Russian gunmen seized control of the city
administration on Saturday. Ever since, Ukrainian
helicopters and planes had buzzed ominously overhead.
"I heard the sound of tanks approaching. I
thought that Ukrainian troops had arrived,"
Vladimir Ivanovich admitted, gazing at the APC s
now stationed opposite a small park and children's
playground. "I was wrong." So who exactly were
the soldiers in masks? "I don't know," he said. He added: "I'm not a radical or a separatist. I'm
actually more on the left.
I didn't much like Viktor
Yanukovych. I'm for peaceful coexistence. The
problem is that when the nationalists seized power
in Kiev they didn't think about the consequences. I
have my own prognosis about what will happen next. It's not comforting." The armed men, meanwhile, made little secret of
the fact they took orders from Moscow.
Many of
them appeared to be Russian troops from Crimea.
Asked where he had come from, one said: "Simferopol." How were things in
Crimea? "Zamechatelna," he said in Russian – splendid. He added: "The old ladies are happy.
Because of Russia their pensions have doubled." Had he served in the Ukrainian army and perhaps
swapped sides? "No, I'm Russian," he replied.
Within minutes, the captured APCs had become the
town's newest, most extraordinary tourist
attraction. Teenage girls posed coquettishly with
the men in balaclavas. Small children lined up too.
Someone put a cuddly toy next to a gun barrel.
"We were very afraid. Now we are reassured. The tanks are here to protect us," Olga Yuriyevna said.
She added: "I'm Russian-speaking. We have relatives in Russia. My husband fought in the
Afghan war."
Some people, though, were lacking in enthusiasm.
Outside the town hall one pensioner, Alexander
Ivanovich, said: "I'm Ukrainian. This should be
Ukrainian territory." Gesturing at the faceless
gunmen outside the entrance, he said: "I'm
suspicious of them." The soldiers had piled sandbags in front of windows, and created sniper
positions on the roof.
They had also, apparently,
ripped down the building's blue-and-yellow
trident, a symbol of Ukrainian statehood. A Russian
and Donetsk republic flag flew from the roof. The
impression was one of calm and vertical order. On Wednesday afternoon Ukrainian soldiers were
led out of the building and packed on to buses.
The Ukrainians had surrendered when crowds
surrounded their tanks.
They were missing their
weapons, now confiscated. The 40 or so
demoralised troops headed out of town in a westerly direction. At first the authorities in Kiev refused to believe
they had lost the army vehicles. The defence
ministry initially dismissed news reports as fake.
Later it admitted the disaster was true. As well as
APCs, Ukraine has lost control of another crucial
weapon in its losing battle with the Russian Federation: television.
On Tuesday the Donetsk
prosecutor turned Russian state TV back on again,
weeks after Kiev pulled the broadcasts on the
grounds they sowed lies and Kremlin propaganda.
Since President Viktor Yanukovych fled in February
Russian channels have consistently called Kiev's new rulers "fascists".
Outside Kramatorsk's aerodrome, meanwhile, at
the end of a rustic rutted alley lined with
sycamores and apricots, protesters had set up a
new camp. It boasted a parasol, a table decked out
with sandwiches, and a clump of empty beer
bottles. On Tuesday Ukrainian forces had opened fire, lightly wounding two anti-government
demonstrators who surged at them across a field.
On Wednesday Ukrainian troops were holed up
inside. They showed little enthusiasm for venturing
out. A felled tree blocked their route. "We're Russians. We live on Russian soil. So how
can we be separatists?" Sergei Sevenko, a 52-year-
old car mechanic, wanted to know. A handful of
female volunteers stood with him; they had kept
vigil until 1am. Sevenko added: "I've lived all my
life in Kramatorsk.
The economic situation here is horrible. We're just defending our town and our
property from fascists." Waiting to interview him
was a young female journalist from Moscow. She
was holding a microphone decorated with the
logo of Lifenews.ru, the Kremlin's favourite
website. By late afternoon another stand-off was
developing between a second Ukrainian armoured
column in Pcholkino, near Kramatorsk, and an
excitable, hostile crowd.
Helicopters dipped low
over shabby Khrushchev-era blocks of flats to see
what was going on, then scouted along the line of the railway. Close to where the column was stuck,
locals were building a checkpoint. "The helicopters
keep us awake at night. We can't sleep," one
complained. A van pulled up. It disgorged black
tyres.
A man wearing shorts and sunglasses,
possibly drunk, began erratically directing traffic. This febrile anti-Kiev mood has acquired a
momentum that increasingly seems unstoppable.
A vocal section of the population appears to
support the protesters' key demand for a
referendum on Ukraine's federalisation. A
"people's governor" has been appointed – though it is not clear by whom.
Many local politicians, the
security services in key eastern towns and the
police appear to have gone over to the anti-
government side. Kiev's powerlessness in this fast-
moving drama seems absolute. On Wednesday another gang of armed youths
seized control of the city hall in Donetsk.
Other pro-
Russian activists have occupied Donetsk's regional
administration building since 6 April. (They have
fortified it with a thicket of tyres. On one wall
someone had scrawled in Cyrillic script: "Fuck America".) Youths lounged in the entrance lobby
and ground floor of the city building.
They wore
white-and-red armbands bearing the name of a
murky sporting organisation and fight-club, Oplot.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine's other major eastern city,
Oplot has been closely linked with pro-Kremlin groups.
And with organised crime. One Oplot member, Alexander, showed off his
weapon. It was a US-made Remington 870
Express Magnum. "It's a hunting gun," he said.
"It's my own. I've got a licence for it." Alexander
said he had purchased his uniform himself: a light-
coloured khaki top and trousers, a flat jacket, and a matching hat.
He added: "I'm against America.
But I have to say they make good guns."
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