UKRAINIANS CONFIDENT TENSE EAST WILL NOT SPLINTER
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Crimea's impending attachment to Russia has raised concerns Ukraine may splinter further, but pro-unity activists in its Russian-speaking east are increasingly confident a referendum in their region would fail.
Despite ominous days of violence in ethnic-Russian majority Donetsk and Kharkiv ahead of Sunday's vote in Crimea, tensions in the eastern cities have since eased somewhat.
"I definitely don't think Russia will invade Donetsk. It will remain a region of Ukraine," said Sergiy Garmash, an activist at the pro-European website ostro.org.
Thousands of pro-Russian protesters rallied Sunday in the east to demand their own Crimea-style vote but while a referendum was still possible in Donetsk, the wording would be different to the one in the strategic Black Sea peninsula, Garmash said.
"There will be no question on joining Russia, but rather about federalisation or most likely on more autonomy," he told AFP.
"Opinions have changed. A week ago, more people supported pro-Russian ideas, but day by day there are fewer people doing so.
"People see that pro-Russian forces lead to chaos, they attack government buildings, shed people's blood, but people want peace and stability, not war," he said.
Oleksiy Matsuka, chief editor of online news site Novosti Donbassa, agreed.
"If the question is 'do you support a friendly relationship with Russia?' most of the people would say 'yes'," he told AFP.
"But if you ask 'do you want Donbass (the Donetsk region) as a territory of the Russian Federation, the vast majority of people will say 'no'.
"They would want to stay part of the sovereign state of Ukraine and wouldn't support the breakup of our country."
Ukraine's eastern cities saw last week the bloodiest violence since a popular uprising toppled pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych last month.
But Nataliya Todorova, an academic and pro-Ukrainian activist, said those behind the violence were a noisy minority.
"The majority of people don't go out and shout. Nobody wants a war," said Todorova, who teaches business at Donetsk National Technical University.
She cited a poll this month by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, that showed only one third of people in the Donetsk region backed union with Russia.
"Since independence, a whole generation has grown up under freedom, which they are not willing to give up," she explained.
But Matsuka also said there was a growing sense of a need for stability among people in blue-collar industrial Donetsk.
Pro-Ukrainians were staying indoors because "there is a great danger of provocation and that the violent reaction by pro-Russians will be repeated," he said.
Last week, a 22-year-old pro-Kiev protester was stabbed and killed in Donetsk during clashes with pro-Russian demonstrators.
Since then, the threat of more violence had eased because border guards had stopped the flow of "Russian extremists" into Ukraine, according to Matsuka.
But the security situation was still unclear given the inaction of the regional Kiev-appointed administration, headed by oligarch Sergiy Taruta.
"We don't understand whose interests they serve," said Garmash.
"We have a situation where the Russian flag has been flying on the main square of Donetsk for a week and nobody is replacing it, and this shows something."
For Todorova, this inaction was due to Ukraine's eastern elites wanting to maintain the status quo.
"Those in power don't understand that the protesters (in Kiev) were just seeking a better life," she said.
"Those in power, including the police, are either trying to sabotage (the process of reforms) or they are too scared of losing their jobs.
"But we are trying to be optimistic. This is our land and we have no other place to live."
Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 18 Mar 2014 11:37
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