Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Kiev Has Lost Control Of It's Police Forces In Eastern Ukraine

Pro-Russian demonstrators scuffle with police during a rally in Donetsk March 16, 2014 (Reuters / Stringer)

Ukrainian Policemen Stand By As Pro-Russian Separatists Seize Control -- Simon Shuster, Time

Defections, informants and fear of arrest have eroded the ranks of Ukraine's police and security services as pro-Russian separatists advance in the country's east


On Sunday afternoon, Lieutenant Vitali Artyukh, the deputy commander of an elite police squadron in eastern Ukraine, was standing guard with a detachment of his men at the state television headquarters in the city of Donetsk. Through the windshield of his police car, he saw a crowd of several hundred people moving up the street toward the gates of the building. It was led by a small group of masked men armed with clubs and metal shields, but mostly they were regular locals, many of them elderly, a few carrying Russian flags. Artyukh’s team, made up of about a dozen men armed with assault rifles, stood aside as the crowd surged through the gate and into the building. Within a few hours, the local news station’s frequency – channel 27 – was showing the Russian state network Rossiya.

Read more ....

My Comment: Simon Shuster is on the ground in eastern Ukraine .... his observations in the above report on what is happening to Ukraine's security forces in the eastern part of the country is a must read.

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