LUHANSK, April 18 (RIA Novosti) – Federalization supporters in the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk are engaged in talks with the country’s acting defense minister about turning the region’s militia into a lawful unit, a leading activist said on Friday.
The coordinator of local protesters, who identified himself as Oleh, said they have been in talks with acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov about the possibility of making the group of armed protesters a lawful paramilitary formation called “The Popular Army of Donbass.”
He added that a group of lawyers is working together with protesters to help them make legally correct demands to the government in Kiev.
He said the protesters, who have seized the local headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine, were armed but had no plans of engaging in any violent acts.
“We are not terrorists, we are peaceful people, members of a civil organization. Weapons are our last resort. The authorities in Kiev should pay attention to demands of the people in Luhansk and Donetsk,” the coordinator said.
He added that the protesters “need weapons to be heard.”
“Two weeks ago, no one paid attention to us… And now [interim Prime Minister Arseniy] Yatsenyuk speaks to residents of the east in Russian,” Oleh said.
Luhansk – along with Donetsk, Kharkiv and other cities – has remained one of the hotspots of popular protests that erupted in predominantly Russian-speaking southeastern Ukraine in March amid aggressive nationalist rhetoric by the interim government and its political allies.
The residents demand greater autonomy for their regions, while the government in Kiev accuses them of separatism.
The Kiev authorities declared a large-scale operation in the southeast to quell the unrest.
