The first attempts to recapture Kramatorsk and Slovyansk ended in humiliating defeats for the Ukrainian forces, although the shooting was rather sparse. On April 16 near Kramatorsk six Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicles appeared. Their job was to retake the city. However, city residents showed up, got in their way, surrounded the vehicles, and didn’t let them pass. As a precaution, they blockaded the road with a marshrutka, a private minibus. Standing by the vehicles, dozens of people are trying to convince the soldiers not to “shoot at their own.” This is absolutely sufficient for the soldiers to abandon their plans. According to the Defense Ministry, “representatives of Russian subversive and terrorist groups” instigating the local population were spotted among the blockaders.
It is interesting that initially the ministry claimed that no such an incident had ever taken place, and photos and videos were just “fakes.” But they could no longer be called a lie after a plethora of pictures and videos appeared in the media and on the internet. The Defense Ministry then admitted that the IFVs were from Kramatorsk and belonged to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
“As a result of the siege extremists took over the vehicles and the convoy moved towards Slovyansk. At 3 p.m. the convoy approached one of the administrative buildings in the center of Slovyansk. Armed people in military uniforms are nearby, but they have nothing to do with the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” you could read on the Ministry’s Facebook page. But what happened to the soldiers? Nobody knows. The separatists were boasting that they had joined them, but judging by the fact that no Russian media managed to interview them, this was just wishful thinking. It is known, however, that the vehicles ended up in the separatists’ hands without any struggle.
While the confusion about the personnel carriers was going on, in Donetsk some armed militants from Oplot, a pro-Russian organization founded in Kharkiv, took over the City Council. Its employees were evacuated. Moments later in Yenakiieve, the birth place of Yanukovych, pro-Russian demonstrators captured the City Council, too, and detained its officials inside. Skirmishes broke out in Mariupol, when militants attacked a Ukrainian military unit. One person was killed and a dozen were wounded. In the end, the Ukrainian forces managed to hold on, but at that point the city was under the separatists’ control. According to Oleksandr Zakharchenko, a member of Oplot, the purpose of taking the buildings was to force the government in Kiev to organize a referendum about the status of the Donetsk region.
To save face, the Ukrainian authorities carried out the so-called stage one of the antiterrorist operation, which they considered a success. Getting Ukrainian checkpoints closer to Slovyansk was to be its accomplishment.
At the same time, Ukrainian forces were supposed to retake Sviatohirsk from the separatists, although when I had gone there two days earlier, the Ukrainian flag was there but not a single armed person. There was no published information that “ownership” had changed hands. So whom did the Ukrainian troops fight? Probably nobody. Kiev had joined the propaganda war started by the Kremlin. Without blinking an eye many Ukrainian journalists decided to give up accuracy for “righteousness.” The group who believes that “you can only win by telling the truth” is in the minority even today and has no impact on Ukrainian media accounts.
Fighting against Kremlin propaganda is a daunting task, if you consider the means, expertise, and structures at Russia’s disposal. In Ukraine the media represent the interests of their wealthy owners, but now the state has an exceptional opportunity to fit information to its needs. Ukrainian journalists soon lost the opportunity to visit the separatist-controlled territories, so they had to rely mainly on reports published by state organs that very often were simply false.
The Security Service of Ukraine announced that the separatists’ checkpoint on the road to Kharkiv had been captured. I decided to check this out. When I arrived I noticed that nothing had changed: separatists with rifles were controlling the traffic. When I approach them to find out what has happened here, I meet with the nervous reaction of a man in a Berkut uniform and police helmet. As I learned later, his nickname was “Lynx.” The same name was visible on his license plate of his car. Supposedly, Lynx served in the Ukrainian special forces.
“Who are you?!”
“A journalist from Poland,” I reply.
“Who sent you? Do you have a press pass?”
“What press pass?”
“From the SSU.”
In response I shook my head. Before I even uttered that such a thing didn’t exist, I heard:
“Sit here and don’t move. We saw how you presented the events on the Maidan. We don’t trust you.” He walked to our car with two photographers and a taxi driver inside. Meanwhile, I sat down next to two other armed “berkuts.” They were not eager to talk.
“You have my permission. You can do interviews and take pictures,” said Lynx when he realized that there was nothing interesting in the car. Once again I tried to find out something more about the allegedly captured post.
“Did any clashes take place here?”
“Two days ago, only not here, but a few kilometers away.” Lynx is talking about burning checkpoints near Khrestishche. “Today some Ukrainian personnel carriers were nearby, but they left. There was no fighting.”
Similarly incomprehensible events took place at the TV tower located between Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. The tower was, at least symbolically, a critical point in the information war between the two parties. The militants were disconnecting Ukrainian stations, and Ukrainians were disconnecting Russian stations. The tower would change hands, but without serious clashes. After disconnecting the opponents’ TV, soldiers would simply go away.
At last the Ukrainian forces began the blockade of Slovyansk. Checkpoints of the Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry forces were placed mainly north and west of the city. Journalists went there immediately, just to see whether it was true.
We have arrived at a checkpoint north of Slovyansk. National Guard troops, including snipers, police, and the armored carriers are stationed there. We are about to leave, when one of the policemen shouts, “Move over!”
A man dressed in black is walking toward the checkpoint. He is wearing a bulletproof vest and a strap across his shoulders. From the distance you cannot see what is attached to it. “It’s a machine gun,” claims one of the policemen and instantly the atmosphere gets tense. What was hardly visible, too, was the press ID, partially covered by his shoulder strap. It soon turned out that he was a journalist from Russian LifeNews who had decided to “pay a call” to the police.
“Please, stop!” shouts the uniformed man. The journalist keeps walking. After the next warning he stops and… kneels down. The officers approach him and check his documents. When it becomes clear that there was no gun attached to his strap but just a regular bag, they let him stand up and he goes free.
Together with the other journalists who had been inspected at that checkpoint I wondered what was the purpose of this incident. The explanation came a few hours later when LifeNews broadcast some footage shot by a cameraman who oddly enough had been standing a few hundred meters away from the checkpoint, recording the whole event. The viewers learned that the journalist had been forced to the ground to be denigrated, and threatened with a weapon, although “he was not doing anything illegal.” Indeed, the footage was edited in such a way that it looked like the “Kiev junta” officers were harassing the journalist only because he was Russian.