Donetsk (Ukraine): Pro-Russian activists who seized the main administration building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk proclaimed on Monday the creation of a sovereign “people's republic” independent of Kiev rule.
The decision was announced to reporters by a spokesman for the protesters who came out of the occupied building. Footage posted on YouTube showed one Russian speaker telling the packed assembly from a podium, “Seeking to crete a popular, legitimate, sovereign state, I proclaim the creation of the sovereign state of the People's Republic of Donetsk.”
The announcement was met by a huge roar from about a hundred men packed inside an auditorium of what appeared to be the Donetsk administration building.
The industrial eastern region’s Ostrov (Island) news website reported that the activists later resolved to join the Russian Federation in a move similar to the one taken by Ukraine's Crimea peninsula last month.
The news site said the resolution was met with cheers and chants of “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin, help!” The Interfax news agency reported that the self-proclaimed leaders of Donetsk vowed to hold a regional sovereignty referendum.
‘Russia bent on dividing Ukraine’
Kiev: Ukraine’s embattled Prime Minister on Monday accused Russia of trying to “dismember” his country by plotting seizures of government buildings in eastern regions that are seeking to break away from Kiev.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s latest volley against Ukraine’s giant neighbour came as his top lieutenants fanned out across the heavily Russified eastern swathes of the country trying to regain a semblance of control.
Thousands of irate pro-Russian activists broke through police lines on Sunday and occupied the administration buildings in the big industrial cities of Kharkiv and Donetsk as well as the headquarters of the regional security service in Lugansk.
AFP reporters saw pro-Russian activists leave the Kharkiv government headquarters on Monday morning even while a few hundred of their supporters continued to rally outside.
Russian marine kills KIev officer
Kiev: A Russian marine has shot dead a Ukrainian naval officer in Crimea, the Ukrainian defence ministry said on Monday, the second reported death since Moscow claimed the Black Sea peninsula last month.
The defence ministry said the incident occurred late Sunday in a military residence hall in the eastern Crimean village of Novofyodoro-vka, where Ukraine has an air base.
The Ukrainian officer was killed “at point-blank range by two shots fired from an AK-74 machine gun,” the ministry said in a statement.
It added that another officer in the residence hall “was brutally beaten and arrested by Russian soldiers.”Russian officials did not immediately comment on the Ukrainian defence ministry’s report.
The death is the second reported since Russia seized the region last month in a lightning swoop that led to its annexation by the Kremlin.
