April 14, 2014

Pro-Russian militants today stormed another police station in another town in eastern Ukraine, Horlivka. After hurling rocks through the windows, gunmen took control of the station and raised a Russian flag. In Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, interim President Oleksander Turchynov stated that his government is preparing an “anti-terrorist operation” against militants occupying government buildings in the east. Yesterday, he issued an ultimatum to the activists–either disarm and leave government buildings within 24 hours or troops would be sent in to dislodge them. Responding to the ultimatum, the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the Ukrainian government must refrain from any violence against the protesters, otherwise it risks “sparking a civil war.” Ukrainian troops have yet to march into eastern Ukraine, and President Turchynov has called on the United Nations (UN) to send a peace-keeping force into Ukraine. (International affairs experts note that such a move is unlikely. The UN cannot undertake such a mission without the consent of the Security Council, and, as a permanent member of the council, Russia has veto power.)

More and more police stations and government buildings in eastern Ukraine are now under the militant’s control. Russian flags are flying in the cities of Donetsk, Luhansk, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Druzhkivka. Correspondents in the region report that many of the protesters carry Russian guns and look suspiciously like the Russian forces that took Crimea last month. They note that the fact that protesters were able yesterday to set up a roadblock on a main highway into a major city–Donetsk–is an indication of the scale of the central government’s loss of control in the region.

Pro-Russian separatists now control of a number of cities and towns across eastern Ukraine. (World Book map; map data © MapQuest.com, Inc.)

For additional information on the Ukrainian revolution, search Ukraine articles under Archived Stories.

Additional World Book article:

• Russia in the Post-Soviet World (a special report)