In the morning, pro-Russian protesters broke into the headquarters of the Ukrainian security forces in the city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine and seized weapons. Ukrainian police closed the entrances to the city. In other cities, protesters have also taken over Ukrainian government buildings in the past 24 hours.
According to police, nine people were injured in the riots.
Meanwhile, a rare violent incident occurred this morning in Novofiodorovka, when a Russian soldier shot and killed a Ukrainian naval officer in Crimea. It is currently unclear under what circumstances he killed him. This is a relatively rare violent confrontation since Russia's quiet takeover of the Crimean peninsula, which until last month belonged to Ukraine.
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The escalation began last night when pro-Russian protesters took over a government building in the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, a city considered primarily pro-Russian, and this afternoon they announced the establishment of the "Sovereign Republic of Donetsk." The statement, who owns the house here, is clear.
According to the Russian news agency Interfax, the activists who declared Donetsk independence called for a referendum on the region's sovereignty by May 11 at the latest and urged Putin to send a "peacekeeping force" to Ukraine, amid harassment by the new, pro-Western government in Kiev. This move is reminiscent of the move by the residents of Crimea, who, after the ouster of the Ukrainian government in the region, held a referendum last month in which they voted in favor of transferring the peninsula to Russia - with direct backing from Moscow. The annexation of Crimea to Russia was then completed.
Following the escalating events in the east of the country, the President of Ukraine said today that these indicate that "the second phase of Russia's special operations against Ukraine" has begun.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said earlier that the pro-Russian protesters who occupied public buildings in three cities in eastern Ukraine this morning, a region considered mainly pro-Russian in contrast to the pro-European western Ukraine, are acting as part of a plan to destabilize Ukraine and drag Russian forces deeper into Ukraine.
Yatsenyuk said Ukrainian troops are now just 30 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. "An anti-Ukrainian plan is being activated," Yatsenyuk said, "under which foreign forces will cross the border and take over Ukrainian territory. We will not allow this.".
At noon, Syrian President Bashar Assad sent a message to his Russian counterpart, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, that he does not intend to follow in the footsteps of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and leave power. "The Syrian president told me: 'Tell Putin that I am not Yanukovych and that I will not leave power,'" former Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin said at a press conference in Moscow upon his return from Damascus.
""I met the Syrian president at his residence to inform him that Moscow always supports his fight against terrorism and to thank him for destroying chemical weapons," said Stepashin, who has been in Syria since last week, along with a Russian delegation, to convey a message to Assad from his close ally Putin.
""Unlike Mr. Yanukovych, Assad has no enemies in his immediate environment, and he undoubtedly knows what he is doing," said Stepashin, who currently serves as president of the non-governmental organization "The Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society," "and physically, he is in good shape.".
