The weeks-long standoff in Ukraine’s rebellious southeast has reached a stalemate that may play into Kiev’s hands.
Anti-government protesters in Donetsk and Luhansk regions were able to mobilise enough support among the Russian-speaking population to assert full or partial control over key industrial centres, conduct a referendum on self-rule and declare independence from Ukraine, but their self-defence forces appear unable to drive away the Ukrainian military sent to quell the revolt. Government forces have surrounded the cities and towns under rebel control, but have not mounted any all-out assaults, opting instead for an attrition campaign.
Appeal for help On Monday, rebel military commander Igor Strelkov made a desperate appeal to the people of Ukraine’s east to join the self-defence forces. He complained that while thousands supported a breakup with Kiev, there were “no crowds of volunteers at the gates of our headquarters.”
Every day government forces and rebels exchange gunfire in which civilians get killed and wounded and their houses destroyed.
Rebel commander Strelkov admitted that the worsening crime situation in the region pushed residents to arm themselves.
On Tuesday, dozens of residents in Sloviansk, the stronghold of rebel resistance, vented their frustration over continuing fighting at a meeting with “People’s Mayor” of Sloviansk, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov.
Widespread hopes in Ukraine’s southeast that Russia would back their pro-independence movement with military force as it did in Crimea failed to materialise.
No ‘Crimea scenario’ On Tuesday Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev categorically refuted reports that Moscow could apply the so-called “Crimea scenario” to eastern Ukraine in order to annex it. In an interview to Bloomberg he dismissed such suggestions as “pure propaganda.”
A fragmentation of Ukraine is clearly not in Russia’s interest. This would inevitably make Russia shoulder the burden of supporting the breakaway eastern regions and raise the prospect of western Ukraine joining NATO.
All that Russia wanted was to transform Ukraine into a federation where eastern regions would have veto power over Kiev’s foreign policy decisions. However, Moscow seems to have underestimated the contagious effect its re-absorption of Crimea would have on Ukraine’s other Russian-speaking regions.
Ukraine’s presidential elections due on Sunday will put to a crucial test the rebels’ hold on Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which they have proclaimed independent “People’s Republics.”
