Reading Article for March 2014

Many Ukrainians Want

Russia To Invade
Pro-Russian citizens genuinely fear the new Ukrainian
government is fascistic and will persecute them
By Simon Shuster / Simferopol @shustryMarch 01, 2014

Baz Ratner / Reuters

A woman waves a
Russian flag as armed
servicemen wait near
Russian army vehicles
outside a Ukrainian border
guard post in the Crimean
town of Balaclava, March
1, 2014.

To many in Ukraine, a full-scale Russian military invasion would

feel like a liberation. On Saturday, across the countrys eastern and
southern provinces, hundreds of thousands of people gathered to
welcome the Kremlins talk of protecting pro-Russian Ukrainians
against the revolution that brought a new government to power
last week. So far, that protection has come in the form of Russian
military control of the southern region of Crimea, but on Saturday,
Russian President Vladimir Putin got parliamentary approval for a
broad military intervention in Ukraine. As that news spread, locals
in at least four major cities in the east of Ukraine climbed onto the
roofs of government buildings and replaced the Ukrainian flag with
the Russian tricolor.

(PHOTOS: Crisis in Crimea: Unrest in Russian Stronghold)

For the most part, what drove so many people to renounce their
allegiance to Ukraine was a mix of pride and fear, the latter fueled
in part by misinformation from Moscow. The most apparent
deception came on Saturday morning, when the Russian Foreign
Ministry put out a statement accusing the new government in Kiev
of staging a treacherous provocation on the Crimean peninsula.
It claimed that unidentified armed men had been sent from Kiev
to seize the headquarters of the Interior Ministry police in Crimea.
But thanks to the decisive actions of self-defense battalions, the
statement said, the attack had been averted with just a few
casualties. This statement turned out to be without any basis in
fact.

Igor Avrutsky, who was the acting Interior Minister of Crimea

during the alleged assault, told TIME the following afternoon that
it never happened. Everything was calm, he says. Throughout the
night, pro-Russian militiamen armed with sticks and shields had
been defending the Crimean Interior Ministry against the
revolutionaries, and one of the militia leaders, Oleg
Krivoruchenko, also says there was no assault on the building.
People were coming and going as normal, he says.

But the claims coming from Moscow were still enough to spread
panic in eastern and southern Ukraine. On Saturday, pro-Russian
activists in the Crimean capital of Simferopol staged a massive
demonstration in the city, calling on residents to rally against the
Nazi authorities who had come to power in Kiev. Whats
happening in Ukraine is terrifying, says one of the organizers of
the march, Evgenia Dobrynya. Were in a situation now where the
country is ruled by terrorists and radicals.

That is the picture of Ukraines new government propagated in the

Russian media, the main source of information for millions of
people in eastern and southern Ukraine. For months, Russian
officials and television networks have painted the revolutionaries
as a fascist cabal intent on stripping ethnic Russians of their rights.
Much of the coverage has amounted to blatant scaremongering.
The key posts in the new government, including the interim
President and Prime Minister, have gone to pro-Western liberals
and moderates, and they have pledged to guarantee the rights of all
ethnic minorities. But some of their actions have given Russia
plenty of excuses to accuse them of doing the opposite.

Within two days of taking power, the revolutionary leaders passed

a bill revoking the rights of Ukraines regions to make Russian an
official language alongside Ukrainian. That outraged the Russian-

2
speaking half of the country, and the ban was quickly lifted. But the
damage was done. With that one ill-considered piece of legislation,
the new leaders had convinced millions of ethnic Russians that a
wave of repression awaited them. So it was no surprise on Friday
when a livid mob in Crimea attacked a liberal lawmaker who came
to reason with them. Struggling to make his case over the
screaming throng, Petro Poroshenko was chased back to his car
amid cries of fascist!

Making matters worse has been the role of nationalist parties in

the new government, including a small but influential group of
right-wing radicals known as Pravy Sektor (Right Sector), which
embodies some of the greatest fears of Ukraines ethnic Russian
minority. Its leader, Dmitro Yarosh, has openly referred to Russia
as the centuries-old enemy of Ukraine, and has spent years
training a small paramilitary force to fight what he calls Russian
imperialist ambitions.

In the past week, Ukraines new leaders have been scrambling to

figure out what to do with Yarosh. His role in the revolution was
too significant for them to write him off. Having suffered dozens of
casualties in fighting off police during deadly clashes in Kiev last
month, his militia members are idolized as heroes by many
supporters of the revolution across the country. Its a real
problem, says the pro-Western lawmaker Hrihory Nemiriya,
whose fellow members of the Fatherland party now hold the
interim presidency and premiership. Right Sector people are very
popular, but they are not in the government.

Yarosh has, however, been offered top positions in Ukraines

security structures. Zoryan Shkiryak, a revolutionary lawmaker
involved in the negotiations over Yaroshs role in the government,
says the right-wing militant was in the running to become deputy
prime minister overseeing the security services. That was on the
table, Shkiryak tells TIME. After much debate, Yarosh was offered
the role of deputy head of the National Security Council, but
rejected it as beneath him. In his only interview with the Western
press, Yarosh told TIME last month that he planned to turn Right
Sector into a political party and run for office. He could run for
president, adds Nemiriya.

Even that possibility has been enough to horrify the Russians in

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the east and the south, and Moscow has played on those fears to
claim that Nazis are coming to power. On Saturday, when Putin
asked his upper house of parliament to allow an invasion of
Ukraine, the lawmakers had no trouble coming up with a
justification. Whats happening in Ukraine is a true mutiny, a
plague of brown-shirts, said one of the senators, Nikolai Ryzhkov.

In the Crimean capital of Simferopol, that logic took hold.

Thousands of people marched through the streets of the city on
Saturday carrying enormous Russian flags and chanting Fascism
will not pass! Dobrynya, the organizer, said her greatest concern
was the role of Right Sector in the new government. Were
supposed to accept these radicals deciding who is going to rule
Ukraine? That cant happen. So thank God we have these
wonderful guardians now, she said, gesturing toward the battalion
of Russian marines who were guarding the Crimean parliament
building. In four other cities of eastern Ukraine, major
demonstrations called for Russia to send similar contingents to
protect them from the fascists. Now, with the approval of his
obedient legislature, Putin seems to ready to oblige, surely
comforted by the fact that cheering crowds would come out to
greet the Russian tanks if they do roll over the border into eastern
Ukraine.

Read more: Many Ukrainians Want Russia To Invade |

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ukrainians-want-russia-to-invade/#ixzz2uphTZArW