Halya Coynash: Moscow’s ‘Voice of the People’ in Slovyansk
“You should shut up, Obama” is the title given to an extraordinary interview which Gazeta.ru took of Viacheslav Ponomarev, self-styled “people’s mayor” of Slovyansk. As of Friday evening, his armed pro-Russian militants are holding OSCE military observers, and InfoResist reports Ponomarev as calling them “prisoners of war”. The exact whereabouts of at least 3 journalists and some others taken hostage earlier remain unknown. Unknown and of immense concern, given that two people who were almost certainly taken hostage by pro-Russian forces have been found murdered. Volodymyr Rybak, a Horlivka City Council deputy was abducted after a confrontation with militants when he tried to take down a flag of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. His body was found in a river near Slovyansk together with that of 19-year-old student, Yury Popravko. Both men seem to have been tortured before being thrown unconscious into the water.