Pro-Russian separatist leaders hold a news conference inside a regional government building in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine May 8, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Marko Djurica
Is This The Day Odessa Explodes? -- Will Cathcart, The Daily Beast
The massacre of May 2, when more than 40 people died, has set the stage for a new showdown on the Ukrainian city’s streets this Friday.
ODESSA, Ukraine—This Black Sea port and balmy resort has long felt immune to violent politics and revolutions, but right now it feels like it’s just a spark away from civil war. On May 2, more than 40 people died in mob violence that raged through the streets, culminating in an inferno ignited by Molotov cocktails—the weapon of choice on both sides.
Today, the only thing about which everyone seems to agree is that something else very bad is going to happen on Friday, May 9—the anniversary celebrated since the Soviet era as the day Nazi Germany surrendered and the Great Patriotic War (known in the West as World War II) came to an end in Europe.
The conflicts tearing apart Ukraine today echo that huge conflagration of 70 years ago, and are complicated by it, even as the opposing groups define themselves with new terms. On one side are the pro-Maidan activists associated with the European Union-leaning Ukrainian nationalist protest movement in Kiev’s Maidan Square that overthrew the country’s notoriously corrupt president in February and installed an interim regime pending national elections on May 25. On the other side are the anti-Maidan groups, aided and abetted by Moscow in a campaign that supports closer ties with Russia, where President Vladimir Putin is trying to revive old dreams of empire and claims the right to “defend” Russian speakers anywhere, especially those supposedly threatened by crypto-Nazis in the Maidan movement.
Read more ....
My Comment: My family/friends/contacts are all saying the same thing .... May 9 is going to be a bloody day in Ukraine. I still am in the other camp .... hoping that everyone will be listening to their better angels.
3 comments:
"The battalion of “elite” security forces who quietly arrived from Kiev late Monday night, and were supposed to restore order, have virtually disappeared."
If this statement is true, then the word is out in the military that "whatever is coming we can't stop it" it's time to let them decide it for themselves. This is very very bad if true.
I concur James. The disappearance of the military and the ineffectiveness of the police to protect Odessa is my biggest worry.
Well we'll see in a few hours.
Post a Comment