It Is No Longer A Game For Separatist Militia
Updated: 12:32am UK, Saturday 26 April 2014
By Sam Kiley, Foreign Affairs Editor in Slavyansk
Their rifles were cocked. The safety catches off. Triggers were fingered. The car lurched to a stop.
Shrill nervous orders were barked in Russian. Men in an assortment of camouflage uniforms lay spread eagled on the roadside glaring down their sights.
A quick search followed. Then a man with a new AK74, probably nicked from the local police station, squinted, his face covered with a balaclava, perhaps attempting a faceless smile.
"Sorry for any inconvenience," he said and waved the car through.
The mixed messages of their behaviour, both aggression and politeness, both bravado and fear, point to a wider conundrum - do they really understand what they're getting in to?
One of their comrades had been shot dead that morning about a mile away on the road out of Slavyansk by an Ukrainian army patrol - probably probing the outer defences of these pro-Russian separatist militants.
Four more, the government said, had been killed in other clashes around the town.
They stand accused of kidnapping the city's elected mayor.
They have taken over city hall and are sandbagging it against an attack and yet they often appear to be no more than young or old boys playing at soldiers.
Occasionally one comes across a trained soldier. Fit and quiet they slink in the background of the occupied buildings.
They may be Russian agents, or former Ukrainian police from the disbanded Berkut who were responsible for sniper attacks on revolutionaries in Kiev.
But the ordinary militants, who are led by local politicians and allegedly funded either by Moscow or allied oligarchs, are clearly being used.
They are the teaspoons the Kremlin is using to keep the east of Ukraine swirling with dark rumours of anti-Russian ethnic cleansing.
Allegations of persecution of pro-Russian groups are entirely false.
But while the militants swagger about the streets, take over government buildings and harass their political opponents, they face a crack down from Kiev.
The nervous men at the road block feared an Ukrainian government attack on the bases in Slavyansk.
They were also facing the reality that what may have felt like a nationalistic camping trip with the added spice of gun play, may no longer be a game.
They may fold under a professional attack by Ukrainian troops.
But if they do not, there will be blood.
And if it flows from Putin's local pawns then so may Russian troops pour in from the east.
He may win, but they will not be around to see his victory.
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