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Spirits Lag as Eastern Ukraine Enters Deadlock

With a presidential election scheduled for May 25, the crisis in the industrial east has hardened into a stalemate.
Photo via AP/NurPhoto

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued his latest pledge to withdraw his troops from Ukraine’s border. There is as yet no sign of the promised pullback, however, and the crisis that has rocked the country’s east appears to be at a stalemate.

Recent efforts to rally separatists in Donetsk have looked decidedly limp. A pro-Russia rally on Sunday only managed to draw a crowd of a couple of hundred. Protesters who had gathered in Lenin Square waved flags and gave a few halfhearted regional cheers of “Donbas” before disappearing to enjoy the rest of the weekend.

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“It’s hot and people are tired,” Ilya, a 25-year-old spokesperson for the separatists, told VICE News by way of explanation. On the outskirts of the square, just a few hundred meters away from the city’s rebel headquarters, women in high heels and micro-shorts sat under parasols sipping low-fat lattes and swapping gossip, seemingly oblivious of the tension gripping the city.

‘We’re fed-up, we just want peace and quiet.’

Igor Stelkov, the commander of the separatists’ southeast army, released a video rant over the weekend bemoaning that not enough men were signing up to fight while others were using the revolution as a “cover for their banditry.” Strelkov grumbled that these delinquents thought that Russia would do all the handwork for them.

“Tens of thousands just sit at home calmly watching television and drinking beer,” he said.

Ukraine is now detaining journalists too. Read more here.

With summer fast approaching, temperatures in Ukraine’s east are now edging into the nineties. Most Donetsk residents seem to prefer enjoying the sunshine with their families rather than engaging in political activities that could, depending on the circumstance, earn them a trip to the SBU basement or a stint in a Kiev jail, where many captured rebels are reportedly being held.

“There’s no difference between the two sides,” a 17-year-old named Nastia told VICE News while out on a stroll with her friend in the city center. “We’re fed-up, we just want peace and quiet.”

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When pedestrians were pressed to comment on the impasse, most expressed frustration with a lack of options.

“I’m against the government in Kiev because they took power by force, but there’s no one I want to vote for either,” a cigarette vendor told VICE News before an elderly woman interrupted him. She also complained about the choice of candidates in the presidential election, which is scheduled for May 25, and said she just wanted to be left to die in peace.

It may be impossible to hold the vote in rebel regions. Read more here.

An attempt on Tuesday by Rinat Akhmetov, the country’s wealthiest man, to mobilize workers from his steel and coal mines in Donetsk in support of Ukrainian unity looked just as pathetic as the weekend's pro-Russia rally. Out of Akhmetov’s thousands of employees, roughly three hundred assembled at the Shakhtar stadium to watch a pre-recorded video of him delivering a speech on the big screen. The demonstrators were dwarfed by the stadium’s capacity, which holds nearly 32,000 people. They waved the local soccer team’s flag and yelled a few hearty rounds of “Glory to Ukraine” before clearing off — presumably back to work.

Akhmetov’s recent efforts in the southeastern port city Mariupol fared better than the rally in Donetsk. Last week, the oligarch deployed patrols of his workers to clear barricades that ringed the city and force separatists from occupied buildings in the city center. The effort appears to have driven pro-Russia demonstrators from the streets, but it didn’t seem to take much to persuade them to go home.

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“These patrols are just a few tens of men eating pistachios and strolling round with the police," said VICE News reporter Henry Langston, who had lately visited Mariupol. "People appreciate their presence but there aren't huge numbers of them.”

Donetsk’s separatists have retaliated by threatening to nationalize the region’s factories, including those belonging to Akhmetov. How they would actually enforce this is unclear.

Elsewhere in the industrial east, clashes and mortar exchanges between the Ukrainian army and militia groups have become an almost daily occurrence, but neither side has won substantial ground.

Pro-Russia rebels step up campaign of violence to halt Ukraine's presidential election. Read more here.

The Ukrainian army is countering the separatists’ guerrilla hit-and-run tactics by steadily surrounding Slovyansk, the hub of the rebel militia’s operations. Complementing this isolation strategy, the government in Kiev announced on Monday that it would suspend welfare payments to Slovyansk residents to prevent the money from funding separatism.

Despite rumors that Russia is funding the insurgency, a diminishing cash flow appears to be affecting the rebels’ administrative center in Donetsk as well.

“We’re volunteers, for now, but we’re talking about ways to try and get some money coming in,” a spokesman for the Donetsk People’s Republic named Sasha told VICE News. “We’re in negotiations with some local business.”

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The crisis might appear to be slowing, but it’s far from being resolved. The armed gunmen who have seized power in the east have more in common with Kiev’s Euromaidan protesters than they think. Both sides are driven by a fierce anger at the political elite that has robbed the country for years.

“Every year the rich in Ukraine are getting richer, while the poor are getting poorer,” Alex Popov, a camouflage-clad member of the Luhansk militia, told VICE News. “This government is the same as the last and the one before, they’re all thieves.”

His complaint could just as easily have come from one of the protesters still camped out in the Maidan, who also deplore the corruption of Ukraine’s political class.

Unfortunately, the problems that sparked unrest in the first place look set to worsen before they improve. Ukraine’s economy was already in crisis before being further crippled by events in Kiev and the country’s east. The presidential candidates are the usual mix of oligarchs and veteran politicians. Compounding the difficulty are the angry factions across the country that have been armed and radicalized by the events of the last few months.

Unlike Putin’s army, they’re going to be much harder to command to pack up and go home.