Ukraine separatists settle in for Easter

Pro-Russian activists remain defiant

Masked pro-Russian activists play with a  ball as they guard a barricade at the regional administration building that they had seized earlier in Donetsk, Ukraine, Saturday, April 19, 2014. Pro-Russian insurgents defiantly refused Friday to surrender their weapons or give up government buildings in eastern Ukraine, despite a diplomatic accord reached in Geneva and overtures from the government in Kiev. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Masked pro-Russian activists play with a ball as they guard a barricade at the regional administration building that they had seized earlier in Donetsk, Ukraine, Saturday, April 19, 2014. Pro-Russian insurgents defiantly refused Friday to surrender their weapons or give up government buildings in eastern Ukraine, despite a diplomatic accord reached in Geneva and overtures from the government in Kiev. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

DONETSK, Ukraine - Pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine on Saturday prepared to celebrate Orthodox Easter at barricades outside government offices seized in nearly a dozen cities, despite an international agreement to disarm and free the premises.

In Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, a co-chairman of the self-appointed Donetsk People’s Republic, which is demanding broader regional powers and closer ties to Russia, vowed that insurgents will continue occupying government offices until the new pro-Western Kiev government is dismissed.

“We will leave only after the Kiev junta leaves,” Pushilin said outside the occupied regional administration building. “First Kiev, then Donetsk.”

Nearby, retiree Ksenia Shuleyko, 65, was handing out pieces of homemade Easter raisin cake, traditionally served for Orthodox Easter. Speaking from a red tent, decorated with a red hammer-and-sickle Soviet Union flag, Shuleyko expressed hope that Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula last month, also would wield influence in the Donetsk region near the border with Russia, known as the Donbass.

“We believe in Russia. It helped Crimea, it will also help the Donbass,” Shuleyko said. “God will help those who believe and we do believe.” Moments later, she performed a patriotic Soviet-era song with other demonstrators and could not contain tears.

The Easter preparations and fortification efforts come two days after top diplomats from Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union issued a statement calling for an array of actions, including the disarming of militant groups and the freeing of public buildings taken over by insurgents.

Those terms quickly became a heated issue as pro-Russian armed groups that have seized police stations and other government buildings in eastern Ukraine said they wouldn’t vacate unless the country’s acting government resigned. At the same time, Pushilin told Russia’s RIA-Novosti news agency that his group could take part in a nationwide round table on easing the crisis, which has been proposed by Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and candidate in the May 25 presidential election.

The insurgents say the Kiev authorities, who took power after pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in February after months of protests, aim to suppress the country’s Russian speakers. Eastern Ukraine, which was Yanukovych’s support base, has a substantial Russian-speaking population.

The new government insists it is legitimate and has no plans to resign, having been formed after Yanukovych fled Ukraine and approved by some members of his party. While Russia continues to criticize the new government, it has engaged in direct talks with it. The new government says it is working on constitutional changes, which will give eastern regions a greater voice in self-governance.

Ukraine’s turmoil has sparked the most severe East-West tensions since the Cold War. Washington and the EU imposed sanctions on Russia after it annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea last month after a referendum that overwhelmingly approved Crimean secession. Russia has positioned troops in regions bordering Ukraine, and critics say Moscow is encouraging unrest in eastern Ukraine and seeking a pretext for a military incursion.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk expressed fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin was seeking to restore Moscow’s previous geopolitical and territorial might.

“President Putin has a dream to restore the Soviet Union. And every day, he goes further and further. And God knows where is the final destination,” Yatsenyuk told NBC’s Meet the Press in excerpts released Saturday. The full interview will air today.

In east-Ukraine Slovyansk, pressure mounted on political dissenters and the media in ways that are commonplace in Russia but had not been normal in Ukraine until now.

Internet connections went dead Saturday, local news media reported, while Ukrainian television channels blinked off the air, replaced by Russian channels. Pro-Russian militants reportedly accomplished this by seizing a broadcasting tower.

Also in Slovyansk, local newspapers were not distributed after it became clear that at least some editors and reporters did not support the Russian-backed takeover of the town and intended to write critically about it.

In Slovyansk, the pro-Russian militants who a week ago overran City Hall, first said the mayor, Neli Shtyopa, would continue in her position but work in a separate building.

By midweek, this arrangement appeared to be unraveling. On Thursday, journalists who checked the new building, a dance hall, found it eerily empty except for a woman in a cloakroom who said nobody had shown up to re-establish the old City Council. Soon enough, all pretense of allowing the elected local government to continue functioning vanished - and then so did the mayor.

“She is with us,” Vyachislav Ponomaryov, who has declared himself the new mayor, the “People’s Mayor,” announced late Friday on a loudspeaker set up in front of City Hall, masked gunmen standing behind him.

“She’s in a normal condition,” Ponomaryov said, according to Donbass, an online news portal covering eastern Ukraine. “It’s just that yesterday she had a small crisis. She is recovering from an operation. She doesn’t feel well. She signed a letter of resignation.”

On Saturday, newsstands in Slovyansk displayed notices saying “no local press,” the online news portal Ukrainska Pravda reported.

One newspaper editor said in an interview last week that he intended to publish his weekly with the headline “Occupiers in Slovyansk,” which, not surprisingly, did not make it to newsstands.

Information for this article was contributed by Jim Heintz, Yuras Karmanau and Maria Danilova of The Associated Press; and by Andrew E. Kramer of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 7 on 04/20/2014

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