Update: as expected the denial of the propaganda didn't take long: PROTESTERS IN LUHANSK, UKRAINE, DENY HAVING EXPLOSIVES AND HOLDING HOSTAGES IN STATE SECURITY BUILDING
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While the source of the most recent developments in the Ukraine is the country's state security services and should thus be taken with the usual mine of salt, Reuters is reporting [6]that pro-Russian separatists have placed explosives in a building they seized in the eastern city of Luhansk and are using weapons to hold around 60 people against their will.
RU agents in #Lugansk [7] are holding about 60ppl hostage,not allow to leave&threaten them with weapons&explosives,SBU|PR pic.twitter.com/S2Hp5aEkko [8]
— Euromaidan PR (@EuromaidanPR) April 8, 2014 [9]
Reuters reports:
Pro-Russian separatists occupied the SBU building on Sunday evening in one of a series of attacks in the east of the country.
"The anti-terror group of the security services of Ukraine (SBU) .. has established that the criminals have mined the building ... and are holding around 60 people, threatening them with weapons and explosives," the SBU said in a statement.
As a reminder Luhansk, together with Donetsk and Harkiv, is among the cities in which violent anti-Kiev protests took place over the weekend culminating the the state building being taken over by pro-Russian protesters, and where the local population is increasingly demanding a referendum to follow in Crimea's footsteps into the safety of Russian borders.
As a further reminder, Russia reminds the world at every opportunity that while it would never invade Ukraine outright, protecting ethnic Russians in the east of the country is a paramount responsibility, which means that should the crackdown against "separatists" accelerate and lead to even more violence and/or casualties, it simply makes the Russian offensive incursion case that much stronger.
And a building lined with explosives, not to mention dozens of hostages held at gunpoint, could be precisely the pretext needed to step up local instability by just the wrong amount of notches.
What is worst is that the lay of the land is now such that all sides - Ukraine, Russia and the US - stand to gain by escalating the stand off to a more weaponized level. Don't believe us? Just out from the US senator of war:
- MCCAIN SAYS UKRAINIANS HAVE MADE CLEAR THEY NEED WEAPONS
And guess who will be happy to supply not only the weapons by the Blackwater experts, dressed in flamboyant local garb of course, trained in using them.