Ukraine: siege mentality pushes south-eastern region to precipice of civil war
Sergei Chertkov leafs through a stack of documents with a heavy sigh. In the regional administration building in Konstantinovka paper has replaced emails in recent days; the computers have been stored in a safe place so that they cannot be looted if the building is seized by armed rebels.
The mayor fled the town (officially on "sick leave"
after the town hall was seized by the fighters of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic a week ago, while Chertkov and his regional administration are still standing, for now. But the situation in Konstantinovka is a microcosm of what has happened across south-east Ukraine in recent weeks.
After a week in which dozens of people died in clashes between the separatists and the Ukrainian army, the region is standing at the precipice of full-blown civil war. On Thursday the separatists insisted they would go ahead with a referendum on independence planned for Sunday, despite Russian president Vladimir Putin's surprise call to postpone it.
Konstantinovka, a town of about 75,000 people 40 miles away from the regional centre of Donetsk, has, like most towns in the area, been engulfed by the uprising that swept the region following the February revolution in Kiev, which led to President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing Ukraine and the formation of an interim government that Moscow has labelled as "neo-fascist".
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/ukraine-south-east-precipice-civil-war
Extensive article.