Posted on 04/13/2014 3:45:10 AM PDT by wetphoenix
Kiev (AFP) - Ukraine's interior minister said on Sunday that both sides had suffered casualties during a raid launched by Ukrainian special forces on a police station in the eastern city of Slavyansk that was seized by pro-Russian gunmen.
"There are dead and wounded on both sides. On our side -- an SBU (Ukrainian Security Service) officer. The head of the SBU's anti-terrorist centre has been wounded, as have four others," Interior Minister Arsen Avakov wrote on his Facebook page.
"On side of the separatists -- an unidentified number. The separatists have started to protect themselves using human shields."
Avakov added that Ukraine's special forces have begun to "regroup" but he gave no other details.
About 20 pro-Kremlin gunmen on Saturday seized the Slavyansk police station and later occupied the city's SBU security service building.
The raids were accompanied by unconfirmed reports of police stations in other nearby cities in the heavily Russified east of the country also falling under gunmen's control.
Video footage aired on Ukrainian television showed gunmen opening fire on Saturday during a raid on a police station in the nearby town of Kramatorsk.
Ukraine's interior ministry had on Saturday denied that the Kramatorsk police station had also been taken by the armed separatists.
Avakov only said in his Facebook posting that "the people of Kramatorsk are unhappy with the actions of the invaders".
The east of Ukraine has been rocked by protests demanding that the region stage referendums on joining Kremlin rule similar to the one that led to Crimea's annexation by Russia last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Wow. Really? I mean, there's a lot of things that can be argued but...seriously?
I didn't say there was absolutely no support, or that the Russians can't pay enough people to come out and stand in a crowd. I said that 65 percent of the population did not support it, as confirmed by multiple polls conducted this month and in March, and also in the past. The few hundred extremists marched out by the armed goons choking and punching people (how come you don't post those pictures?), or the Russian Spetsnaz troops (the guys in green, some of whom have been identified) does not justify Russian invasion and annexation.
The Ukraine should demand a new referendum in the Crimea scheduled four years from now, and with international observers. Why have only one? The Russian government will make themselves even more unpopular in the Crimea with their world-class bureaucratic incompetence.
They should also send agents to Kaliningrad and agitate for a referendum there. Kaliningrad would be happy to vote to join Germany but they would probably even vote to join Ukraine if that was the only way to get out from under Moscow.
Haha - I was reading some days back that the Russkis have told the Crimeans “once “in”, you can’t leave.”
The Hotel Russia - You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.
They also told many people they could not vote in the joke of a referendum they conducted.
"I didn't say there was absolutely no support"
My mistake.
Obviously Russia is involved in whats happening in the east. Do you think the EU had no involvement with what happened in the west?
As long as the demented Russian goons (who mean us ill by the way)stick to their traditional breeding grounds, no harm no foul.
What is yanking our chain is the development of their tactics, and their attempt to expand.
Looks like CIA is going to piss in Putins cornflakes, and the communist in the WH can't stop them.
I’m not sure i follow. Why do you have a problem with that statement. As far as i am aware, there wasn’t much, if any violence perpetrated by Kiev protestors against the Yanukovych regime. Am i wrong?
The Maydan protesters did not start off with violence OR arms. It was only after protesters were beaten in large numbers by security forces that the situation ratcheted up. Only at the end did the Maydan protesters have anything like the quantity of military type light arms the separatists taking gov’t buildings in the Donbass region have had from the start... (Such arms are illegal in Ukraine - a few of the Right Sector types had ‘em, but that was about it.) In addition, it is telling that the Maydan protests, from a national standpoint, were relatively unorganized, while these actions in the Donbass have been impressively organized. They have obviously been well planned for some time.
Did the EU make the Russian puppet loot the Ukrainian government, leave a staggering amount of debt, tear apart the Ukrainian military, and systematically infiltrate Russian agents into every level of government? Why do you think his own party has denounced and rejected him? They themselves decry him as a thief and a traitor to his country, and a murderer too.
So was that a “no”?
~The Ukraine should demand a new referendum in the Crimea scheduled four years from now, and with international observers. Why have only one? The Russian government will make themselves even more unpopular in the Crimea with their world-class bureaucratic incompetence.
They should also send agents to Kaliningrad and agitate for a referendum there. Kaliningrad would be happy to vote to join Germany but they would probably even vote to join Ukraine if that was the only way to get out from under Moscow~
What a BS. Have you been to both nations? The difference between Ukraine and Russia is much more striking than it is between US and Mexico. And it is not Russia which stands for Mexico in this comparison.
~Did the EU make the Russian puppet loot the Ukrainian government, leave a staggering amount of debt, tear apart the Ukrainian military, and systematically infiltrate Russian agents into every level of government?~
In fact they had their puppets looting Ukraine before Yanukovych. Ukrainian government is all the same in nature for the last decades, regardless geopolitical orientation.
Yes, I have been to both nations including Moscow, Kharkov, Kiev, Luhansk, and Alchevsk and the comparison is all in Ukraine’s favor.
Do you realize that a police officer in Ukraine makes about $40 a week? McD’s minimal wage burger flipper in Russia has $3,5-4,7 per hour which is above upper middle class in Ukraine.
Do you realize that a skilled surgeon in Arkhangelsk makes enough to live in a small cramped apartment with his family. Surgeons in El Salvador fair much better and so do some in Ukraine.
~Do you realize that a skilled surgeon in Arkhangelsk makes enough to live in a small cramped apartment with his family. Surgeons in El Salvador fair much better and so do some in Ukraine.~
Probably a decade ago. I know a bunch of Russian doctors, none are poor by any standard.
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