LUHANSK, Ukraine – Despite heavy rain, hundreds of pro-Russian demonstrators reinforced barricades around their tent camp in the center of the far eastern provincial capital of Luhansk on April 10. Their mission is to protect and supply the armed separatists who seized the local headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, on April 6.
Some of them listened to speakers near the entrance to the building and shouted “Russia!” and “Referendum!”
Other people uncoiled barbed wire, gathered stones and made Molotov cocktails in anticipatation of a possible police attack to regain control of the government building.
The camp sprouted up after a group of pro-Russian separatists on April 6 smashed windows and broke down doors to enter the SBU building.
On April 8, the armed men, who called themselves the Army of the Southeast, mined the SBU office. The national SBU office said the armed insurgents had taken 60 people hostage on April 8 — a charge denied by the militants. The people inside, later identified as pro-Russian sympathizers of the militants, left the building early the next morning after negotiations with officials.
Meanwhile, dozens of armed people still remain in the SBU building, police say.
On April 10, residents of the tent camp were bracing for a police raid.
Andriy Senchenko, deputy head of the Presidential Administration, warned that the anti-terrorist operation would take place in Luhansk just the way it was done in Kharkiv on April 8, when police also freed the oblast state administration building that had been seized by a group of pro-Russian militants in that city.
But by the end of the day, the camp in Luhansk was left untouched.
Andriy Parubiy, deputy head of the National Security and Defense Council, reached some progress in negotiations with the captors, according to an Espresso TV report.
In the park near the smashed SBU office, dozens of tents and a field kitchen were set up. There are many anti-Western placards, including one saying in English: “USA and EU, take your hands off Ukraine.”
On the entrance gate to the barricade was written “Kyivan Rus” with a big Russian flag and another one that resembles the huge black and yellow St. George’s ribbon, a popular symbol of Soviet victory in World War II.
The protesters behaved very aggressively towards journalists. One placard read: “Don’t believe media, just come here and see.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]. Kyiv Post journalist Anastasia Vlasova contributed reporting to the story. She can be reached at [email protected]
