Police help a bleeding and injured pro-Ukraine demonstrator who was attacked by a group by men from an opposing pro-Russia demonstration in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on March 14.
KIEV, Ukraine — At least
two pro-Ukraine protesters participating in an anti-war demonstration
were killed and more than a dozen others injured late on Thursday after
their group was violently attacked by men from an opposing pro-Russia
demonstration in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
The pro-Ukraine
participants had been waving blue and yellow Ukrainian flags as part of a
"For a United Ukraine" rally on Donetsk's Lenin Square when pro-Russian
activists began heaving firecrackers, eggs and stun grenades at them,
chanting, “Russ-i-a!” and “On your knees!”, according to eyewitnesses
and journalists from local news site Novosti Donbassa who spoke with Mashable.
Police tried but failed
to whisk away the pro-Ukraine demonstrators from the scene in a police
bus, but the pro-Russia activists smashed out its windows and clobbered
it with a barrage of firecrackers.
Two deaths have been
confirmed, according to reporters from Novosti Donbassa on the scene
Thursday. It is unknown whether a third person is alive or dead; another
is in serious condition and is undergoing an operation; two more are in
critical condition; and at least 50 people were injured, they reported.
Ukraine’s health ministry confirmed one death, while the news site TSN reported three fatalities, citing its own sources.
On Friday, Ukraine's
acting president and parliament speaker Oleksandr Turchynov ordered the
country’s Interior Ministry to immediately detain all parties
responsible for the deaths and injuries in Donetsk on Thursday, and
blamed Moscow-backed separatists for inciting the violence.
Turchynov
told police chiefs in Donestk to ensure "such tragedies never occur
again."The entire world has seen footage of this terrible massacre.
The utmost cynicism of all this is that the blood of Ukrainian citizens
who attended a rally in support of our country's unity was spilled in
their own home city," Turchynov said in astatement published
on his official website. "This is the true face of the Cossack
separatists who were sent there and who triggered the violence. The
lives of the people that they supposedly gathered to defend are not
important to them and their masters in the Kremlin. Every Ukrainian must
realize that."
"I am issuing an urgent
instruction to immediately investigate this situation, detain all those
involved in this bloodshed and punish them for the crimes they
committed, in accordance with the law," Turchynov added.
Four people suspected of
participating in the attack were arrested Friday morning, according to
Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s interim interior minister.
Post by Arsen Avakov.
The deaths and explosion
of violence are sure to stoke tensions here after Russia announced it
was holding war games with some 8,500 troops near the Ukrainian border
while its incursion into the autonomous republic of Crimea continued. A
looming Kremlin-backed secession referendum is set for Sunday.
Ukraine’s government and the West, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have called the referendum “illegal” and said they would not recognize the results.
Several Crimean residents who spoke to Mashable in
the Crimean cities of Simferopol and Sevastopol last week said they
believed voters would overwhelmingly vote to secede from Ukraine and
join the Russian Federation. Crimean Prime Minister Aksiyonv, leader of
the autonomous republic’s separatist authorities, said this week
At a United Nations
Security Council meeting in New York on Thursday, Ukraine’s interim
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, speaking in Russian, raised the
question to Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin as to whether his
country wanted war, following two weeks of Russian occupation and amid
reports that the country’s troops were mobilizing near the border.more
than 80% of the region’s people supported a break with Ukraine and union
with Russia.
Russia’s defense
ministry said this week that weapons such as rocket launchers would be
used by infantry, tanks and other troops during war games in Belgorod,
Kursk and Rostov regions near the Ukrainian border.
“Russia does not want
war and neither do the Russians, and I’m convinced the Ukrainians don’t
want that either,” Churkin barked back.
Yatseniuk told Churkin
he was convinced “that Russians do not want war” and said he hopes the
Russian government and its president, Vladimir Putin, “will heed the
wishes of the people and that we return urgently to dialogue and solve
this conflict.”
But many here do fear an all-out assault from Russia.
Ukraine's newly
appointed National Security and Defense Council Secretary Andriy Parubiy
warned that he has “every reason to believe” that will happen. “Ukraine
now faces the threat of a full-scale invasion,” he said at a press
conference in Kiev on Wednesday.
If necessary, Parubiy
said, Ukraine would rely on military, police and a newly formed National
Guard of some 20,000 volunteers to protect the country’s borders.
He estimates that more
than 80,000 Russian troops have assembled along the Ukrainian border,
along with as many as 270 tanks, 180 armored combat vehicles, 380 pieces
of artillery, 18 rocket launchers, 140 combat aircraft, 90 military
helicopters and 19 combat boats and ships.
In Donetsk on Friday
morning, the mood was solemn and the tension was palpable, said Oleksiy
Matsuka, the editor in chief of Novosti Donbassa. Mourners laid flowers
and said prayers at the site where one young man, 22-year-old Dmytro
Cherniavsky, was stabbed to death, he said.
According to Ihor
Slavhorodsky, head of the Donetsk regional branch of the Svoboda party,
Cherniavsky was the organization's activist and spokesman.
“Svoboda member Dmytro Cherniavsky is among those who died in Donetsk today,” Slavhorodsky wrote on his Facebook page.
Asked whether there were fears of further attacks on pro-Ukraine activists there, Matuska responded directly: "Yes."
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