Today, Vitali Klitschko said that it was time that the barricades in Maidan were disassembled, and time for people to 'get back to normal'. Of the group of people who remain living in the tents on Maidan (about 100), there is disagreement as to whether it is time to dismantle the barricades--some say yes, time to go home, others say absolutely not, that yes Poroshenko may be in power now, but Maidan needs to remain to keep the Parliment/Parliamentarians accountable.
Discussions and debates continued throughout the day, according to journalists from Insider (Ukraine), amongst those living in the tents and passers-by. It is difficult to find someone who has not in one way or another, been at Maidan 'since the beginning', although many of those who lived in the tents travelled to the East (Donetsk and Luhansk). Many, according to those in Maidan Kyiv, have been killed.
excerpt from TANYA LOKSHINA, Open Democracy Russia
Last week, not far from Donetsk in southeastern Ukraine, a man wearing only camouflage underpants, with a stained sleeveless shirt, and brandishing a Kalashnikov assault rifle, demanded to see my passport. Over the past decade, lots of men with all sorts of weapons have asked me for my ID – some of them were far from pleasant, but at least they were all decently wearing trousers. My first impulse was to suggest that he get dressed before asking other people for identification documents. But his Kalashnikov made me reconsider, and I handed over the passport with a bright smile.
...
Granny Zina speaks to us in Ukrainian, the only language she knows. She does not understand what’s happening and says that she did not expect to see another war in her lifetime. As a matter of international law, the intensity of the fighting appears to fall short of being an armed conflict for which the laws of war apply, but try and explain that to Granny Zina and the others. A mortar shell strikes nearby and as the ground shakes from the explosion, I am no longer confident in my own legalese.
The next day, two journalists die in mortar fire in another village close to Slovyansk. One of them, Andrei Mironov, worked and survived through both Chechen wars, only to be killed here.
While in the rest of Ukraine, people were casting their ballots for a new president, all election-related activity was paralysed in the southeast of the country, with armed groups raiding election commissions, harassing, beating and even kidnapping commission members and staff. Ukraine's southeast, with its population of 6.5m people, is sliding into chaos, and essentially turning into a lawless enclave where armed people are running amok.
We were due to fly out of Donetsk on May 26, the day after the election, which for all practical purposes did not happen in this region, but early that morning, some armed men took over the local airport, and our flight was cancelled.
The taxi driver who drove us to the train station grumbled on the way, 'I’m not pro-Kiev, I’m not anti-Kiev, I just want someone to stop this mess.'
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