Pro-Kremlin militants in eastern Ukraine have asked Russia to send troops in to protect them, after at least three people were shot dead near the flashpoint town of Slovyansk.
Russia and the separatists blamed Ukrainian nationalists Right Sector for the killings, but the group's activists and officials in Kiev accused Moscow of staging the attack to provide a pretext for invasion.
Russian president Vladimir Putin claims Ukraine is on the brink of civil war and insists he has the right to protect its Russian-speaking community, just as he did with Crimea before annexing it last month.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich, we are a small provincial town, and fascists are trying to defeat us. They are killing our brothers, and openly conducting military action against the people,” Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, Slovyansk’s self-declared “people’s mayor”, said in an appeal to Mr Putin. “We ask you to urgently consider the question of deploying a peacekeeping contingent, to protect the peaceful population from Right Sector and the national guard.”
Moscow and anti-government protesters say the Kiev government is backed by violent Russian-hating fascists, but a recent United Nations human rights report found no widespread discrimination against Ukraine's tens of millions of Russian speakers.
The national guard, with help from special forces, says it repelled an attack by pro-Russian militants on a base in the southeastern city of Mariupol last week, killing three of the alleged assailants.
Russian manipulation
The US, EU and Nato say Moscow has massed tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine's border, and claim Russian agents are assisting and organising militants who have seized official buildings in about 10 eastern towns.
Kiev's acting president Oleksandr Turchinov said Mr Putin intended "not just to take part of Ukrainian territory . . . but to destroy [its] independence".
Moscow and Kiev accused each other of failing to adhere to an agreement reached in Geneva last Thursday with the EU and US, which called on all illegal armed groups in Ukraine to relinquish weapons and leave occupied buildings.
“The Easter truce has been violated,” said Russia’s foreign ministry. “This provocation . . . shows the lack of will on the part of the Kiev authorities to rein in . . . extremists.”
Viktoria Syumar, the deputy secretary of Kiev’s security council, said “propagandists” would use the attack “to show that the situation in Ukraine is out of control, even on a holiday, to spread the theory of a civil war, and to conduct the next wave of ‘information-preparation’ to justify an invasion”.
In the village of Bylbasovka yesterday morning, police specialists collected bullet casings and examined two burned-out cars beside a makeshift checkpoint. “They were killed by professional snipers with a bullet to the bridge of the nose,” said Alexander, a villager who said the dead were school bus driver Sergei Rudenko and another local man called Pavel.
Ukrainian security officials said three people had been killed and that “only saboteurs and criminals supported and armed by [Russian military intelligence] officers” had been in Slovyansk at the time.
Alexander said the men at the checkpoint were unarmed when four SUVs pulled up in the early hours of Easter Sunday and threw their headlights on to full-beam, at which point the victims were struck by bullets from surrounding fields.
Flame-proof evidence
It was not clear who had riddled two of the alleged attackers' cars with bullets if the guards were unarmed. It was also unclear how the blaze had spared items presented as evidence of Right Sector involvement: a medallion, a business card for its leader, Dmytro Yarosh, and a sheaf of $100 bills.
