KIEV, Ukraine — At least two pro-Ukraine protesters participating in an anti-war demonstration were killed and more than a dozen others injured late on Thursday after their group was violently attacked by men from an opposing pro-Russia demonstration in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
The pro-Ukraine participants had been waving blue and yellow Ukrainian flags as part of a "For a United Ukraine" rally on Donetsk's Lenin Square when pro-Russian activists began heaving firecrackers, eggs and stun grenades at them, chanting, “Russ-i-a!” and “On your knees!”, according to eyewitnesses and journalists from local news site Novosti Donbassa who spoke with Mashable.
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Police tried but failed to whisk away the pro-Ukraine demonstrators from the scene in a police bus, but the pro-Russia activists smashed out its windows and clobbered it with a barrage of firecrackers.
Two deaths have been confirmed, according to reporters from Novosti Donbassa on the scene Thursday. It is unknown whether a third person is alive or dead; another is in serious condition and is undergoing an operation; two more are in critical condition; and at least 50 people were injured, they reported.
2 подтвержденные смерти. 1 под вопросом - жив ии мертв. 1 в тяжелом состоянии, оперируют. 2 в крайне тяжелом. Пострадало минимум 50 человек.
— Новости Донбасса (@novostidnua) March 13, 2014
Ukraine’s health ministry confirmed one death, while the news site TSN reported three fatalities, citing its own sources.
On Friday, Ukraine's acting president and parliament speaker Oleksandr Turchynov ordered the country’s Interior Ministry to immediately detain all parties responsible for the deaths and injuries in Donetsk on Thursday, and blamed Moscow-backed separatists for inciting the violence.
"The entire world has seen footage of this terrible massacre. The utmost cynicism of all this is that the blood of Ukrainian citizens who attended a rally in support of our country's unity was spilled in their own home city," Turchynov said in a statement published on his official website. "This is the true face of the Cossack separatists who were sent there and who triggered the violence. The lives of the people that they supposedly gathered to defend are not important to them and their masters in the Kremlin. Every Ukrainian must realize that."
Turchynov told police chiefs in Donestk to ensure "such tragedies never occur again."
"I am issuing an urgent instruction to immediately investigate this situation, detain all those involved in this bloodshed and punish them for the crimes they committed, in accordance with the law," Turchynov added.
Four people suspected of participating in the attack were arrested Friday morning, according to Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s interim interior minister.
Post by Arsen Avakov.
The deaths and explosion of violence are sure to stoke tensions here after Russia announced it was holding war games with some 8,500 troops near the Ukrainian border while its incursion into the autonomous republic of Crimea continued. A looming Kremlin-backed secession referendum is set for Sunday.
Ukraine’s government and the West, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have called the referendum “illegal” and said they would not recognize the results.
Several Crimean residents who spoke to Mashable in the Crimean cities of Simferopol and Sevastopol last week said they believed voters would overwhelmingly vote to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. Crimean Prime Minister Aksiyonv, leader of the autonomous republic’s separatist authorities, said this week more than 80% of the region’s people supported a break with Ukraine and union with Russia.
At a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York on Thursday, Ukraine’s interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, speaking in Russian, raised the question to Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin as to whether his country wanted war, following two weeks of Russian occupation and amid reports that the country’s troops were mobilizing near the border.
Russia’s defense ministry said this week that weapons such as rocket launchers would be used by infantry, tanks and other troops during war games in Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions near the Ukrainian border.
“Russia does not want war and neither do the Russians, and I’m convinced the Ukrainians don’t want that either,” Churkin barked back.
Yatseniuk told Churkin he was convinced “that Russians do not want war” and said he hopes the Russian government and its president, Vladimir Putin, “will heed the wishes of the people and that we return urgently to dialogue and solve this conflict.”
But many here do fear an all-out assault from Russia.
Ukraine's newly appointed National Security and Defense Council Secretary Andriy Parubiy warned that he has “every reason to believe” that will happen. “Ukraine now faces the threat of a full-scale invasion,” he said at a press conference in Kiev on Wednesday.
If necessary, Parubiy said, Ukraine would rely on military, police and a newly formed National Guard of some 20,000 volunteers to protect the country’s borders.
He estimates that more than 80,000 Russian troops have assembled along the Ukrainian border, along with as many as 270 tanks, 180 armored combat vehicles, 380 pieces of artillery, 18 rocket launchers, 140 combat aircraft, 90 military helicopters and 19 combat boats and ships.
In Donetsk on Friday morning, the mood was solemn and the tension was palpable, said Oleksiy Matsuka, the editor in chief of Novosti Donbassa. Mourners laid flowers and said prayers at the site where one young man, 22-year-old Dmytro Cherniavsky, was stabbed to death, he said.
According to Ihor Slavhorodsky, head of the Donetsk regional branch of the Svoboda party, Cherniavsky was the organization's activist and spokesman.
“Svoboda member Dmytro Cherniavsky is among those who died in Donetsk today,” Slavhorodsky wrote on his Facebook page.
Asked whether there were fears of further attacks on pro-Ukraine activists there, Matuska responded directly: "Yes."
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Christopher J. Miller is an editor at English-language newspaper the Kyiv Post in Ukraine.