Self-defense forces in the anti-Kiev stronghold of Slavyansk are Ukrainians, not Russians, who distrust the new regime and the Western powers that support it, New York Times reporters have discovered. The forces also said they are not being paid to fight.
Two New York Times reporters have spent a week in the city of
Slavyansk in eastern Ukraine, talking to members of the
self-defense forces. The journalists visited self-defense
checkpoints and observed the forces as they battled Ukrainian
troops amid a military assault on the city on Friday.
The resistance fighters of the 12th Company, part of the People’s
Self-Defense of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic,
deny claims made by Kiev and its Western sponsors that Russia or
private tycoons are paying them to fight.
“This is not a job,” one of the activists, Dmitry told
the NYT reporters. “It is a service.”
Armed with dated weapons, the self-defense activists said they
would have bought new weapons if they had financial support. The
NYT journalists reported seeing weapons from the 1980s and 1990s
in checkpoints and warehouses.
The activists explained that they purchased some of their
weaponry from corrupt Ukrainian soldiers, while taking others
from seized police buildings or confiscating them from captured
Ukrainian armored vehicles.
“Much of their stock was identical to the weapons seen in the
hands of Ukrainian soldiers and Interior Ministry Special Forces
troops at government positions outside the city,” the NYT
reporters said in an article published on Saturday.
“These included 9-millimeter Makarov pistols, Kalashnikov
assault rifles, and a few Dragunov sniper rifles, RPK light
machine guns and portable antitank rockets, including some with
production stamps from the 1980s and early 1990s.”
The head of Slavyansk self-defense, Yury, also chuckled at claims
made by Kiev authorities and the West that Russians are fighting
side by side with them.
“We have no Muscovites here,” Yury told the journalists.
“I have experience enough.”
Many of the Company’s 119 members, who range in age from their
20s to their 50s, have served in the Soviet or Ukrainian
infantry, airborne, special forces, or air-defense units, the
reporters said. Yury, in his mid 50s, noted that his experience
includes four years as a Soviet small-unit commander in Kandahar,
Afghanistan in the 1980s.
“There was no clear Russian link in the 12th Company’s
arsenal,” the reporters said.
While visiting checkpoints for more than a week, the NYT
reporters said they saw much support for the self-defense forces
from local residents, who primary provided the activists with
food.
“To the guys in Kiev, we are separatists and
terrorists,” Yury said. “But to the people here, we are
defenders and protectors.”
The people of eastern Ukraine, who show “passionate
distrust” of the coup-appointed authorities, felt threatened
after Kiev proposed to strip the Russian language – which most of
the region's population speaks – of its official status in
February.
“That was the turning point,” said Maksim, one of the
Slavyansk activists.
For Ukrainians in the east, many of whom have close ties with
Russia and families across the border, the move was a
“cultural assault.”
“All spoke of disgust with the interim authorities in
Kiev,” the NYT reporters noted in their article.
The eastern Ukrainians have made up their minds, Yury told the
journalists, adding that they are demanding a referendum and will
go to war in the case of a refusal. He added that people in the
region are puzzled by the West's support of the coup in Kiev and
blatant disregard for eastern Ukrainians' opinions and rights.
“Why did America support those acts, but is in opposition to
ours?” Maksim, a young former paratrooper asked. “These
are the contradictions of the West.”