Kiev government powerless as east Ukraine slips out of its control
Source: Guardian
Ukraine's beleaguered government appeared to have lost control of law and order in the east of the country on Tuesday, after police again failed to stop a pro-Russian crowd from seizing a key administrative building.
Some 3,000 activists – some in masks and military fatigues – stormed the regional government HQ in the eastern city of Luhansk. Police supposed to guard the building let the crowd inside. A pro-Russian militia had occupied the security service office in Luhansk, a town of 465,000, just 20 miles (32km) from the Russian border.
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But in recent days Kiev's tentative grip on local law enforcement in the east appears to have slipped completely. In Luhansk riot police stood passively in a courtyard, kettled in by separatists armed with bats and hammers. "The regional leadership does not control its police force," Stanislav Rechynsky, an aide to the interior minister in Kiev, told Reuters. "The local police did nothing."
In a statement on Tuesday, Ukraine's interim president, Oleksandr Turchynov, said: "The vast majority of law enforcement officials in the east are not able to fulfil their obligation to protect our citizens."
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/kiev-losing-control-east-ukraine
Why Ukraine is dialing back its military offensive in anarchic east
A recent poll found that most people in eastern Ukraine oppose the seizure of government buildings, but half of respondents think President Turchynov is 'illegally occupying his post.'
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Experts warn that the two eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk are in danger of slipping entirely out of Kiev's control. In much of eastern Ukraine local police have refused to obey orders from the central government or abandoned their posts, and a military operation aimed at reclaiming government buildings appear to have stalled.
http://news.yahoo.com/why-ukraine-dialing-back-military-offensive-anarchic-east-195455850.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Sorry about Ms. Nuland's luck. 
Good debunk that won't make any headway, since the Fauxsers know best.
Of course Rand Paul always looks good to some, too.
Far out, man.
It's just cowed.
The "peaceful activists" are under the de facto protection of Putin. Whenever an act is taken to stop them Putin scares everybody shitless with his army, as his supporters crow. (They're avid imperialists, as long as the US/West is on the losing side; at some point they'll realize it's a zero sum game and the "balance" they seek won't exist or be stable.)
Things got quiet as far as take overs and some areas started to return to Kiev's control, and then tanks went up to a Lugansk border crossing and stopped there, engines running, for a few hours. Kiev stopped the operations.
The next day the "peaceful activists" started seizing a string of objectives. If they are confronted, they know that their patron will support them. They've called in supporters from Khar'kov, from Kiev, from Odessa, from Crimea, from all over (making their worries about the Right Sector doing the same thing seem reasonable to them--they've done it and assume the Right Sector has done the same thing already, or earlier).
At some point the local authorities start getting the idea. It doesn't matter what they want. They see what happens to traitors. If you're militia and your building's taken over, you will be humiliated, shamed, and possibly beaten. You will get no income. You may be threatened. The "peaceful activists" main supporter is more willing to engage in war, intimidation, ethnic violence than those appointed by the democratically elected Rada.
It fits the narrative: The West is weak, effeminate, corrupt, lacks will, while the Russian is strong, virile, and has the will to power. When Putin says the West has no right to impose sanctions, it makes sense: The weak have no right to impose their will on the strong, it's contrary to nature. (Such was the thinking behind the government that supported "Progress Publishing House," a noted Soviet publisher. With the same interesting use of the word "progress."
And the armed militants in Eastern Ukraine (or as RT calls them, "protesters" have effectively created a human shield type of situation. Ethnic Russians are a minority even in eastern Ukraine, but a sizable one, and one which the armed militants (who I believe are a mix of local ethnic Russians, former Berkut and Russian military agents) can easily exploit. So you'll see unarmed civilians blocking the roads and access to where the militants are holding the government buildings by force. And the Ukrainian military has shown notable restraint in their response because of this. It's not that the officers are disobeying orders from Kiev; I don't think the Ukrainian government ever wanted to see a free-wheeling, civilians be damned, Beslan style assault from its military.
Why? Well, first of all, this government was born out of the ashes of a situation where the previous president has been alleged of shooting unarmed protesters. And there's always a human tendency not to want to look like blatant hypocrites in situations.
But even if they didn't care about being labeled hypocrites--and who knows, maybe they don't--the even bigger disincentive not to go out guns-a-blazing in the situation lies across the eastern border of the country, where thousand of Russian regular troops are amassed. And any story of a civilian bloodbath by Ukrainian troops, no matter how distorted, would give Russia the reason it needs to roll its regular army into Ukraine to protect "their people." And lay claim to Novorossiya in the process.
So what might be considered a "weak" response by the Ukrainian government at this time might not be as weak as one might think. The Ukrainian government, not wanting to provoke a war with Russia, might just be letting the militants lie for the time being with the thought being they might lose most of the support that they may currently have. As it stands right now, the "people's mayor" and "self-defense forces" aren't doing a whole lot of good for their image, as stories of kidnapped journalists and murdered politicians grow. The Ukrainian government might just be giving them the rope to hang themselves with.
