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| Ukraine's rebel movement was plunged into crisis on Thursday, when pro-Russian fighters backed by armoured personnel carriers seized the movement's headquarters in Donetsk and destroyed the barricades protecting it. The surprise move by a group called the Vostok Battalion, a heavily armed rebel unit that has been involved in fighting against the Ukrainian army, sparked speculation about an internal coup within the fractious rebel movement. There was also speculation that the move could have been an attempt by the leadership to purge undesirable elements with the Donetsk Peoples' Republic. Key rebel leaders, who were not in the building when the fighters arrived, insisted they were still in control and that they had even ordered the operation. "This is a police action directed against looters," a rebel source close to Alexander Borodai, the prime minister of the self-declared republic, said on Thursday afternoon. "There is no coup. Everything is under control." --Roland Oliphant in Donetsk, The Telegraph, May 29 2014 |
Not a tractor on this farm field
but a turreted tank,
a lumpy blue blanket and
close by a khaki tarp
sprouting a clenched hand
at one end. All around
a new spring crop
is pushing through.
Phyllis Wax muses on the news and politics from a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI. She's been widely published, recently in The Widows' Handbook: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival from Kent State University Press. When she's not writing you might find her escorting at a local women's clinic.