The crowd angrily shouted a collective, “No! We will not submit!”
Seeing that the situation was only escalating, the police tossed dozens of tear gas canisters into the crowd. As the people began to wail, screaming from the pain of the chemicals attacking their eyes and lungs, the officers stormed in, yelling with a unified roar to create the maximum psychological impact.
Several armed security personnel rushed the stage to protect Oleksandr and the other speakers as the riot police were clearly trying to make their way towards them. Then, without warning, a single shot rang out and hit Oleksandr in the head. The side of his face exploded, splattering skull fragments, brain matter and blood on one of the community organizers standing next to him. His body collapsed to the ground.
Several more shots rang out. More speakers on the stage began to drop. Some had been instantly killed like Oleksandr, while others howled from the enormous pain of their injuries.
A number of the armed security guards began to fire wildly at where they thought the snipers were. At first, the riot police were unsure if the shots were being fired at them, but when one of the police captains saw the armed guards on the stage start to shoot at something in their general direction, he ordered the officers around him, “Use your rubber bullets on the crowd!”
The people in the crowd began to drop like flies. Some were seriously injured by the impact of the fast-flying projectiles. Others were simply stunned with the shock of being shot.
Petro turned to tell his friend Andriy that they should try to get out of the square before the police blocked them in, when he saw dozens of military vehicles start blocking their avenues of escape. The shooting intensified, and the gas cloud from the teargas canisters continued to rise and move closer to them. “Andriy, we need to find a way out of here!”
Andriy could see the fear in his friend’s eyes. “I know. Over there, look. If we can get to that store, we can see if they have a back entrance we can use to get away from the soldiers and police.”
Petro nodded. They both bolted towards the store. As they ran, they almost ran straight into several other protestors. The people were all screaming and running in different directions. It was sheer chaos. They couldn’t believe what was happening. Someone had just assassinated Oleksandr Prasolov right in front of several thousand of his supporters. If they survived the evening, there was going to be hell to pay.
Andriy made it to the entrance of the store. He pulled on the doorknob, only to find the owner had locked it. He turned around to tell Petro when suddenly he was hit hard by something in the left shoulder. He grabbed at his shoulder and saw blood oozing through his fingers.
“Andriy! You’ve been shot! Are you OK?” Petro yelled over the screams of everyone around him.
The pain in Andriy’s shoulder overrode all of his other senses. He looked down. Through a hazy cloud, he saw that blood was really starting to pulse through his fingers. It was July, but he felt surprisingly cold. He glanced up and saw Petro yelling something at him, but he couldn’t fully make out what he was saying. It was just too loud and he was suddenly so very tired. He leaned his head against the doorsill to rest his head and close his eyes for a second… he drifted off and his body slumped to the ground.
By the time Petro got to his friend, he could see that Andriy had just died. “The bullet must have hit something important,” he thought as he rushed to his friend’s side.
Just then, a soldier ran up to Petro and whacked him in the side of the head with something heavy. His world went black.
Escalation
Ambassador Duncan Rice sat at his mahogany desk, reviewing several proposals for bringing eastern Ukraine back into the fold as he sipped on his morning coffee and nibbled on his everything bagel smothered with cream cheese. He wanted to go over the options again before his meeting with the Prime Minister tomorrow. The Ukrainian PM had pressed the Secretary of State for a review of the current options being pursued and asked if new political and military options could be drawn up. Ambassador Rice and his staff had worked around the clock for almost a month before the Secretary of State had finally given her blessing on the proposals.
The Embassy staff’s proposal was for a continuing of sanctions against Russia, maybe even a strengthening of them. This policy had been implemented by the previous President’s Administration with mixed results. The goal of the sanctions was to make the Russian government hurt enough that they would stop their support of the rebels in Eastern Ukraine. So far, all it had done was antagonize Russia into a tit-for-tat response; they had been sticking their nose into the affairs in the Middle East, and vetoing additional sanctions against North Korea, despite their continued violation of previous UN sanctions. However, as the sanctions stayed in place, they were starting to have an effect on a number of influential Russian businesspersons. The hope was that strengthening this approach would provide more expedient results.
The second proposal was put together by the non-diplomatic side of the Embassy, the CIA’s Chief of Station (COS) and the Defense Attaché’s Office (DAO). The plan involved sending U.S. Special Forces soldiers as advisors to direct the Ukrainians on how best to defeat the rebels. The Department of Defense’s Office for Defense Cooperation had helped to make this plan possible through a massive increase in foreign military aid since the start of the Gates Administration in January. As he read the proposal, he had to admit that it looked like it would work, though he still had a lot of concerns about how this might provoke an excessively negative response from the Russians.
Unlike most diplomats, Ambassador Rice had a good sense of how the military worked. He had served as an officer in the Marines before leaving to pursue a career in the diplomatic service of his country. He knew the enemy would respond in ways that could not yet be calculated, as in any military operation. Chances were, this plan, as good as it was, would not survive first contact with the enemy. His goal was to solve conflicts through diplomacy whenever possible. Military force should only be used as a last resort, and not a first option.
Duncan had been a career diplomat with the Department of State for nearly eighteen years. As a diplomat, his purpose was to represent the interests of the United States and to help diffuse tensions and conflicts in whichever country he was assigned. He still felt a peaceful solution could be found in Ukraine, though it was becoming increasingly difficult as tensions between Washington and Moscow continued to mount. Duncan sat back in his leather office chair and placed the papers down on the desk in front of him. He closed his eyes, thinking back to how he had become the Ambassador in Ukraine just four months earlier.
When it became clear that the former Secretary of State was not going to become the 45th President of the United States, he had seen a unique opportunity to help distinguish himself from his peers. Duncan quietly began jockeying to be reassigned to Ukraine. Having served ten years at the US Embassy in Russia and other Eastern European countries throughout his career, Duncan felt he understood the Russians and could help to defuse the conflict that had been going on in Ukraine for the past four years. He wanted to spearhead the efforts to establish a workable peace deal in the country, which was something that basically none of his other colleagues wanted any part of, especially under what many thought to be a novice President. Many of his peers held great disdain for the incoming President, and several even resigned in protest. While Duncan did not agree with or vote for the President, he recognized that Gates had been duly elected by the people, and he felt that it was now his job to help implement his country’s foreign policies.