The besieged Odessa Union building. A Molotov cocktail has just exploded in the top right corner of the frame. Dozens died in the ensuing fire. YouTube screenshot.
Pro-Russian activists in the village of Yasnohirka blame Kiev and its western backers for recent violence.
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine ? Flames, smoke and acrid fumes filled the air here just after noon on Saturday, blackening the faces of a local man and his pro-Russia separatist pals. They coughed as they worked to rebuild a checkpoint destroyed an hour earlier by Ukrainian forces carrying out the latest stage of an operation against the pro-Russia militants in the eastern part of the country.
The Ukrainian crisis cannot be resolved through the political manipulation of the region’s historical memories. By invoking inflammatory slogans like “Putin is Hitler” and “Ukrainians are fascists”, both Russian and western leaders distort the realities of 21st Century Ukraine.