Eastern Ukrainians enraged by the Kiev military operation have used an RT video report to tell first-hand details of a Ukrainian army attack in Slavyansk. The Ukrainian troops raided a checkpoint and took all the food and medicine, they said.
Ukraine-based British journalist Graham Phillips was making a video report for RT on Thursday right after Ukrainian armed forces stormed a checkpoint near Slavyansk and were withdrawing from the area.
As Phillips was telling of the volatile situation in the background and reports of fatalities in the shootout, two locals approached his camera to have their say on what happened at the scene.
“Those who just left the checkpoint are f****** jackals,” an angry man shouted, pointing in the direction of the retreating Ukrainian troops.
“They robbed us – they took our food, medicines, they just looted the place!” he said.
Another man intervened, addressing the coup-imposed acting Ukrainian President Aleksandr Turchinov, who ordered the so-called “anti-terrorist operation” to resume in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday: “Turchinov feed them, will you?!”
“Turchinov, what the f***? Feed them, you motherf*****!” the first man chimed in.
This is not the first time reports from Ukraine hint at the poor state of the Ukrainian army, which has been sent to the south-east of the country to quell the anti-government protests. While Slavyansk activists told RT young soldiers were sent to shoot at them with no food supplies, some of the Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered to the locals told RIA Novosti they had to eat “a nettle soup,” which they gathered on the roadside.
Other video reports coming from Slavyansk on Thursday told a similar story to the men interrupting Phillips.
Ukrainian army drive off at high speed after #Sloviansk checkpoint attack, reports of fatalities. pic.twitter.com/dChfXxmxN7
— GrahamWPhillips (@GrahamWP_UK) April 24, 2014
Several Ukrainian troops “put a number of locals face down on the ground although they had no weapons whatsoever, after that the military drove away the rest and seized all the food from the checkpoint that was brought by the people to the fellows standing guard,” said a witness speaking to local activists on camera.
He added that one young activist was shot dead and another injured at a nearby checkpoint overnight. Both activists were unarmed, he said, calling the incident an “abuse” of Ukrainian troops’ duties.
The activists reporting from the barricades said the raided checkpoints are now being reinforced with concrete blocks and that the self-defense troops are bracing for a looming attack.
#Sloviansk now - car stopped, man taken out at gunpoint. A sight more common every day. pic.twitter.com/bxsxcgdANf
— GrahamWPhillips (@GrahamWP_UK) April 24, 2014
Asked later by Phillips, activists at a Slavyansk checkpoint said that the Ukrainian troops are attacking them because of Kiev propaganda.
“Why the Ukrainians are attacking us? It is because they do not look on us as people, they think of us as scum, separatists, terrorists. But we, in fact, are protecting our own native city,” an activist told Phillips.
Sloviansk checkpoint attacked by Ukr army pic.twitter.com/oNekbJhrxp
— GrahamWPhillips (@GrahamWP_UK) April 24, 2014
The idea that the Ukrainian army is underfinanced is not just coming from media reports, but is a frequent subject of discussion in the Ukrainian parliament, now dominated by the former opposition parties. However, soon after stating that “the treasury is empty,” the coup-imposed Kiev government preferred not to raise financing of the regular troops on the ground, but instead formed the armed National Guard, whose members are being picked “on the basis of patriotism.” Initially gathered from the Maidan self-defense squads which helped bring down President Viktor Yanukovich and then sent to southeastern Ukraine, the National Guard has last week been “urgently” reinforced by additional units by an order of coup-imposed Ukrainian Security Service head Andrey Paruby.