A pro-Russian separatist’s how-to guide for terrorizing eastern Ukraine includes advice on robbing banks, sabotage, and staging drive-by shootings.

ith each passing hour it looks increasingly likely that pro-Putin militants are responsible for shooting down the Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine. (President Obama said today that the missle that destroyed the plane came from “territory controlled by the Russian separatists.”) This really shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The pro-Russian fighters have already shown that they’re utterly ruthless in their efforts to subvert the Ukrainian state.

The pro-Russian fighters have already shown that they’re utterly ruthless in their efforts to subvert the Ukrainian state.

A recently released report by Amnesty International charges the rebels with “savage beatings and other torture meted out against activists, protesters and journalists in eastern Ukraine over the last three months.” Ukrainian officials accuse the separatists of using local civilians as “human shields” and of shelling apartment buildings. Pro-Russian militants have also firebombed vehicles as well as blown up bridges, mines, and refineries.

Such tactics are not random excesses. To the contrary, they are entirely premeditated — as one can see from a handbook for insurgents recently published by one of the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, as the leading separatist group in eastern Ukraine refers to itself. Pavel Gubarev, the self-styled “governor” of Donetsk and the leader of the Novorossiya (New Russia) movement, recently posted the manual, entitled “Methodological Guide for Struggle Against the Junta,” on his personal website. (The “junta” is the separatists’ name for the Ukrainian government in Kiev.) There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the document.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/07/18/strike_him_with_an_axe