"The Russian Army"

"I know this is of great concern to our NATO allies in the region, but it should be a great concern to all of us."
"When a major power acts in a way that is so clearly aggressive, militaristic and imperialistic, this represents a significant threat to the peace and stability of the world and it's time we all recognized the depth and the seriousness of that threat."
"The most important thing we need to do is to rally all of our allies throughout the western world and throughout the greater global community to understand that peace and stability is being threatened here in a way that has not been threatened since the end of the Cold War."
"We also know from history that anybody who makes it their historical mission to turn the clock back, as Mr. Putin has determined to do, that those kinds of missions always fail in the end. But we will do all in our power to make it fail."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada

Officials throughout the West and within Ukraine have stated unequivocally their awareness that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been orchestrating events in Ukraine, such as the pro-Russian groups that have occupied buildings in a dozen cities in east Ukraine recently. It doesn't take a roomful of geniuses to interpret the trajectory of recent events, the rehearsal that debuted in Crimea setting the stage for all other such events giving adequate testimony to the machinations of Moscow.

"There are very clear and disconcerting parallels between what is happening in eastern Ukraine and events leading up to Russia's illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea. I don't know who the Russian Federation thinks it's kidding when it tries to pretend that it has nothing to do with them", asserted Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird. The transparency of Russia's involvement in inciting ethnic Russians in Ukraine to criminal activity is impossible to overlook.

The relative handful of noisily aggressive protesters who gather on cue when Russian officers posing as incidental Russo-Ukrainians acting at the grass roots level, reveals the lack of depth of interest of the population at large. That the majority prefers to be uninvolved for fear of retribution from the Russian thugs imposing their separatist views on the entire population remains a problem. But the threat from within combined with the threat of the massed Russian troops without sends a powerful message of caution.

The ultimatum issued from Kyiv to surrender spurred the pro-Russian separatists instead to storm a police station in eastern Ukraine in their threat to assume control of the province they have themselves declared an independent "people's republic". Several hundred protesters seized police headquarters in Horlivka, 50 kilometres north of Donetsk. In the town of Slaviansk where the government's "anti-terrorist" operation involving the army was to begin, a call was sent out for Putin to intervene.

Should Russia succeed in manoeuvring itself successfully into a position where it takes possession of Ukraine's industrial heartland a huge blow against the future of the country will have taken place. The regional government in Donetsk has been occupied since April 7 by pro-Russian separatists. Young men armed with sticks, rocks and Molotov cocktails surrounded and stormed the Horvlika police headquarters.

Efrem Lukatsky/AP A pro-Russian mob attacks a police station in Horlivka, Ukraine Monday. Several government buildings have fallen to similar attacks.

There, the local police chief, Colonel Andrei Krishenko refused to lower the flag of Ukraine. Police fought the protesters tossing out stun grenades and tear gas from the windows. When the crowd eventually forced themselves into the station's yard the riot police deployed to turn them back, retreated. With a police baton in one hand, a fire extinguisher in the other, Col. Krishenko, his deputy Colonel German Pristupa at his side armed with an assault rifle and pistol, informed the crowd they could not pass.

"I'm doing my duty as an officer of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry and I'm defending this building from an armed attack. The crowd isn't coming in", he told the rioters as they called on him to surrender. The two officers were swiftly overwhelmed by the numbers of those involved, when most the police surrendered. They held on alone for an hour before being hauled outside by the mob. The Russian flag was placed over the station entrance, the building taken over by the protesters.

Page by Ishmael N. Daro - A Ukrainian police officer receives medical care after being attacked by a pro-Russian mob that stormed a police station in Horlivka, eastern Ukraine.

Col. Krishenko, surrounded by the mob, was given a vicious beating, and driven away in an ambulance. In a verbal exchange filmed at the scene, and later posted on YouTube, a man seen negotiating with the trapped police, informed them that he was a lieutenant-colonel. One of the policeman asked: "Of what?". The reply came: "The Russian Army."