Ukraine standoff has Cold War feel
Is the Cold War back? Because it kind of feels like it is.
Pro-Russian administrations are popping up all over eastern Ukraine, after pro-Russian protesters overran government buildings and set up roadblocks
Moscow looms over the events.
Russia has long said it reserves the right to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine. And NATO says up to 40,000 Russian troops are near the Ukraine border, just a hop, skip and a jump from flashpoint cities like Donetsk, Slaviansk, Kharkiv and Luhansk.
In response, Western diplomats have been beating a path to Kyiv to show their support for Ukraine’s pro-Western government and lining up billions of dollars in economic support.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is the latest to go. He’s scheduled to arrive in the Ukrainian capital on Monday, ahead of talks with acting President Oleksandr Turchynov and other key lawmakers on Tuesday.
Turchynov’s government has talked tough, but done little to curb pro-Russian activities in the east, possibly afraid that a crackdown could send Russian forces across the border. The occupation of buildings continued in about a dozen towns and cities across eastern Ukraine.
International monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe continue to visit many of the affected towns, but have had no success so far in persuading groups that have taken over buildings to relinquish them.
The OSCE presence was mandated by an agreement among Russia, the United States and the European Union last week to try to negotiate the handover of the buildings. In three towns, pro-Russian protesters and militants have made it clear to CNN they have no intention of moving until the “illegal” government in Kyiv also moves out of official buildings.
Shooting mystery
Ratcheting up the tensions in the region over the weekend was a shooting incident on a country road in eastern Ukraine that left several people dead.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, according to pro-Russian groups in the town of Slaviansk, one of their roadblocks to the west of the town came under attack. They say three or four vehicles approached the roadblock, and their occupants opened fire on the barricades’ defenders.
The new pro-Russian administration in Slaviansk said six people were killed in the shootout.
CNN was not able to confirm the number of dead. Efforts to contact the hospital in Slaviansk were unsuccessful. But pro-Russian leaders in Slaviansk briefly displayed a body outside the State Security building in the town, which they have occupied for a week.
They said the body was one of the alleged assailants.
There were conflicting reports on the number of casualties.
A statement on the Interior Ministry’s website said that four cars with unknown occupants approached a checkpoint at the entrance to the city and opened fire on people manning it, and shots were returned.
Three people were killed and three were wounded, that statement said.
Along with the body outside the State Security building, pro-Russian leaders displayed what they claimed were an identity tag and card as evidence that the attack was carried out by the ultranationalist Ukrainian “Right Sector,” along with substantial amounts of U.S. cash and ammunition.
The Right Sector immediately denied any of its members were in the area.
In the hours after the attack, the self-declared mayor of Slaviansk, Vyacheslav Ponomarev, called for a Russian “peacekeeping force” to protect against the National Guard and the Right Sector.
The Ukrainian State Security Service said in a statement that “armed offenders and saboteurs who are terrorizing the local population in Slaviansk had “resorted to cynical provocation.” It said one person had died in the incident.
Another deadly shooting
The shooting is the second deadly incident since Wednesday in eastern Ukraine.
Three people were killed during a demonstration outside a Ukrainian military base in the southern city of Mariupol. They appear to have been shot dead by Ukrainian soldiers after attempting to break into the base and throwing Molotov cocktails over its walls.