sometime around 3 a.m. Kiev time, bursts of gunfire rang out at a rural roadblock near Sloviansk in Ukraine’s industrial eastern heartland – where pro-Russian separatists have seized government buildings, taken up arms and demanded referendums on seceding from Ukraine. At least three people were killed and several others injured.
The deadly incident – whether staged or a sham – shattered a holiday armistice agreed upon by authorities in Kiev and Moscow on Saturday and threatened to undermine a deal hashed out in Geneva several days ago to defuse the ongoing crisis here.
It also has Russian and Ukrainian authorities exchanging accusations with one another.
http://mashable.com/2014/04/20/ukraine-gun-battle/
@Ukroblogger
Self-proclaimed #Sloviansk mayor calls on #Putin to invade #Ukraine after an apparent false-flag attack/shootout
The death toll and the allegiance of those involved were hard to confirm independently. Armed militias manning checkpoints and flying the Russian flag outside Slavyansk were reluctant to allow the Guardian to investigate on Sunday. At the bridge into the town, one commander armed with a pistol told the Guardian to leave. He punched the car with his fist, leaving a dent. “Get out of here,” he screamed. . . .
About 10 miles north of the town, locals were visiting Svyatogorsk monastery, built around a a steep hill and a series of caves, and overlooking the picturesque Seversky Donets river. In previous years tens of thousands of people flocked to the site. On Sunday, however, there was only a trickle of families, carrying brown wicker baskets filled with Easter eggs and cake.
“People are scared. They don’t want to come out,” Viktor Oneskehnko, a 53-year-old doctor and Chernobyl survivor said, walking with his wife and daughter towards the monastery’s white and turquoise 19th-century church. Oneshenko said he supported Ukraine’s territorial integrity. He was contemptuous of the separatists who he said had hijacked Slavyansk. “They’re opportunists and mafia”, he said.
“The separatists are actually not that numerous. Most people around here support Ukraine,” he added. “Russian TV has zombified some. And young guys often support maximalist positions.” Oneshenko said he was against the “Donetsk People’s Republic”, a self-elected pro-Moscow group which is demanding a referendum on the region’s status before 11 May.
“We don’t want it. It means marauding. It means stopping people in the street. It means being afraid. We want peace,” he said. He conceded that some older people were keen on the idea of union with Russia because they thought they would get bigger pensions. “I’ve travelled all over Russia. I’ve seen how people live there. They [pro-Russian pensioners in the east] are deluding themselves.”
@elocio
No attack in #Slovyansk #Slavyansk It was murder Victim: Pavlo Pavelko from Oleksandrivka http://t.co/z9UbSuizjF #Ukraine #Euromaidan #tcot
The Russian story about the shootout at Sloviansk
More amazing: even under fire from behind and the side the attackers managed to load their injured into the remaining two cars and drive off… while the Sloviansk men managed to get backpacks, guns, uniforms, a World War II era German machine gun, brand new dollar bills, etc. out of the burning cars… with nothing of that stuff being scorched… and, wondrously, neither are the two license plates of the burning cars scorched.
Need more hints that this is a staged fakery by idiots? In Sloviansk they display a body who supposedly had a Right Sector business card and a Right Sector medallion with him, but no ID documents whatsoever, and on the business card the Russian transliteration for Right Sector is used, because now we all die-hard Ukrainian nationalists are in love with Russian and don’t use Ukrainian at all.
To sum it all up: I expected the GRU/FSB to work more professionally when setting up faked accidents as pretense for Putin’s war.
The business card of Right Sector leader Yarosh supposedly found at the shooting quickly became an internet meme:
