Ukraine is falling apart

Eastern Ukraine appears to be falling apart. From the FT:

Ukraine’s acting president on Wednesday admitted that government authorities had lost control of the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk provinces to separatists, and said the challenge now was to “prevent terrorism from spreading to other regions”.

Oleksandr Turchynov also warned that pro-Russian groups were planning “subversive acts” in six other eastern and southern Ukrainian regions during Thursday’s May Day holiday, formerly one of the biggest events in the Soviet calendar for mass marches.

In Lugansk, capital of Ukraine’s easternmost province, gunmen were on Wednesday in control of several government buildings after easily overpowering them late on Tuesday, using weapons and explosives from the state security headquarters, which they seized control of earlier this month.

Lugansk’s city hall was being guarded by four men with Kalashnikov rifles, one with its curved grip swaddled in the red, blue and white of the Russian flag. When asked who was in charge, the man, Evgeniy Aleksandrovich, said: “The power is in the hands of the people.”

The province’s appellate court building was flying the Russian tricolour; at the prosecutor’s office across the street, the St George colours of orange and black – the emblem of the anti-Kiev protest movement – were flying, and the building was locked and barricaded, glass littering the pavement.

Lugansk’s regional administration building was also in separatist hands after a crowd easily seized control on Tuesday from police, who remained in the building and surrendered control. Residents of the depressed mining city, population 450,000, approached men guarding the building with gifts of cigarettes.

From AFP, here’s the map:

And Reuters:

Ukraine’s armed forces are on full military alert in case of a Russian invasion, the country’s acting president said on Wednesday, reiterating concern over Russian troops massed on the border.

“I once again return to the real danger of the Russian Federation beginning a land war against Ukraine,” Oleksander Turchinov told a meeting of regional governors in Kiev, Interfax-Ukraine reported.

“Our armed forces have been put on full military readiness,” he said.

Russia says it has no plan to invade eastern Ukraine following its annexation of the Crimean peninsula in March, but Turchinov’s remark made clear the pro-Western government in Kiev saw no reason to reduce the readiness of its armed forces.

Kiev, however, accuses Moscow of orchestrating an armed uprising in the industrial east by Russian-speaking separatists who have seized government buildings in a strong of towns and cities, largely unopposed by police.

Bit late for that. The invasion is happening from the inside. Stand by for civil war and internal fracturing as ethnicity seeks the comfort of the familiar.