Pro-Russian activists seize Interior Ministry branch in southeast Ukraine

Donetsk, Ukraine, Apr 12 (EFE).- Ukraine's crisis deepened Saturday as pro-Russian activists seized the headquarters of Ukraine's Interior Ministry branch for the southeastern, majority-Russian-speaking province of Donetsk.

Flags of the self-proclaimed "popular republic of Donetsk" and the "popular militias of Donbass" (a coal-mining region in Donetsk) had been raised above the building in this regional administrative center.

Several dozen activists, some armed with baseball bats, were guarding the entrance to the Interior Ministry branch, outside of which a Russian border post was set up to symbolically mark the territory.

Police who had been guarding the building not only offered no resistance but even joined the ranks of the demonstrators.

Pro-Russian activists, meanwhile, also seized three police stations in that same southeastern Ukrainian province on Saturday, a leader of the occupants of the government headquarters in Donetsk told Efe.

Police stations were seized in the cities of Krasny Liman and Druzkovka, while another station was occupied earlier Saturday in Slovyansk, Oleksandr Filipov said.

The seizure of the police station in Krasny Liman, a city of nearly 25,000 people, was confirmed by a lawmaker with the pro-European Batkivshchyna party.

Authorities have not confirmed the takeover of the police station in Druzkovka, a city of more than 60,000 inhabitants.

The mayor of Slovyansk, Nelya Shtepa, expressed the local government's support for the armed activists who took over the police station in her city.

"I know many of them. They're our people and they're demanding that a referendum be held. We're all in agreement. I can't deny it," Shtepa told reporters outside the police station, where hundreds of citizens had gathered to support the action of the pro-Russian activists.

The Russian flag was raised at the local government's headquarters in Slovyansk.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, has responded to the unrest by firing the head of Ukraine's Security Service for the Donetsk region, Valeriy Ivanov, the office of the interim head of state said Saturday.

Long-simmering tensions between pro-European western Ukraine and the country's eastern region, which has close ties with Russia, were exacerbated by the ouster in late February of President Viktor Yanukovych, a Kremlin ally.

In the wake of his removal from office, Moscow sent troops to the strategic region of Crimea.

It subsequently annexed that peninsula last month - a move the West considers illegitimate - after its mostly Russian-speaking population voted in a referendum to break off from the Ukraine and rejoin Russia.

Moscow says Yanukovych was removed from office on Feb. 22 by far-right Ukrainian nationalists and claimed it has moved to protect ethnic Russians and Russian interests in Crimea in the wake of that development.

Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Deshchytsia, has demanded that Russia end its provocations in the country's predominantly Russian-speaking eastern region, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

The crisis that led to Yanukovych's ouster erupted at the end of November, when the Ukrainian president backed away from plans to ink a pact with the European Union and instead signed a $15 billion financial-aid package with Russia.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/agencia-efe/140412/pro-russian-activists-seize-interior-ministry-branch-southeast-ukra