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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Pro-Russia gunmen in Ukraine call captives POWs

Sergei L. Loiko Los Angeles Times

SLOVYANSK, Ukraine – Pro-Russia gunmen refused Saturday to release a group of European observers and accompanying Ukrainian army officers seized a day earlier in this eastern Ukrainian town, the epicenter of the pro-Moscow rebellion.

“These guys are not hostages but they are our POWs, and we intend to keep them in custody,” said Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, a separatist leader and self-proclaimed mayor of Slovyansk. “They are NATO officers and spies who infiltrated our territory illegally, without our permission.”

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe inspectors – from Germany, Poland, Denmark, Czech Republic and Sweden – “represent the countries that supply the illegitimate government in Kiev with arms and money,” Ponomaryov said. “We may exchange them for our activists held by the fascist junta in Kiev.”

The abduction of the 13-member OSCE team, including the five Ukrainian officers, and a driver could not have been undertaken without direct orders from the Kremlin, “which coordinates and openly supports armed terrorists who seize buildings, capture hostages, torture and kill people,” acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov was quoted as saying in a post on the Ukrainian parliament’s website Saturday. “The political leadership of the Russian Federation must bear responsibility for supporting and promoting terrorism.”

Adding heft to the allegations, Russian national Igor Strelkov, identified earlier by Ukraine’s Security Service as a Russian military intelligence agent and a principal organizer of the armed mutiny in Slovyansk and other eastern Ukrainian communities, appeared in a video interview published Saturday by the popular Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.

In the video, Strelkov, a lean and lanky man in his mid-40s dressed in an unmarked camouflage uniform, acknowledged that his group was behind seizing a police station in Slovyansk on April 12 and downing a Ukrainian military helicopter Friday.

“I won’t deny that the unit I led to Slovyansk was formed on the territory of Crimea,” Strelkov said. “A majority in the unit have combat experience.”

His men, he said, include Russian and Ukrainian citizens who have fought in Chechnya, Central Asia, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Syria.

The fighters are seeking an independent “Donetsk Republic” in the region around the eastern city of Donetsk, but are inclined to see it join Russia, he said.

Strelkov is wanted by Ukrainian authorities in the killing of a high-ranking Ukrainian law enforcement officer this month and on suspicion of organizing the kidnapping and slaying of Volodymyr Rybak, a councilman from the neighboring town of Horlivka. Rybak was buried Thursday.

Strelkov and his team from Russia are deeply respected by a small army of several hundred local volunteers, said Valery Rusanov, 47, a local carpenter and former Soviet army tankman.

“Our task is to assist in organizing a regional referendum that would split the (Donetsk) region away from Ukraine,” said Rusanov, garbed in a camouflage uniform and a tall, black woolen Cossack hat, with a Kalashnikov in his arms. He stood outside an Orthodox temple where a service was held for a comrade killed in a clash with government troops on Wednesday.