Ukraine crisis: 'Those fascists killed this girl and they will be in hell'

Weeping mourners laid red roses beside the dead woman’s frozen face, as her open coffin was borne aloft through a silent crowd. Soon, hundreds more people had joined the funeral procession, causing the town of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine to come to a halt in honour of Yulia Izotova, who was shot dead at the age of 21.

Her crime had been to carry trays of sandwiches to a checkpoint manned by the pro-Russian activists who now control this area. As she took her offering to the self-styled “defenders” of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” on Friday, Miss Izotova was shot in the street.

“For carrying food – for that, they killed her,” said one mourner, who was too overcome by emotion to give her name. “It was Pravy Sektor,” she added, referring to the Ukrainian nationalist militia that threw its weight behind the revolution in February. “Either that or it was the army of Ukraine. But it doesn’t matter because they are together – they are both the same. Those fascists killed this girl and they will be in hell,” she sobbed.

As Miss Izotova was laid to rest yesterday, her fate said much about the shadowy war now being waged in the rolling fields and hills of eastern Ukraine. Nobody can say for certain who killed her, the national army is spoken of in the same breath as radical extremists, the word “fascist” is used with abandon – and her funeral was the occasion for fear and anger as well as grief.

But the terror of those who mourn her is heartfelt – and it explains much about this crisis. Many people in Donetsk region believe they have been wilfully misunderstood by the outside world and, most of all, by the rest of Ukraine.

For good or ill, more than 80 per cent of them voted for Viktor Yanukovych, the fallen president, in the last election in 2010. After all, he was born in the region and had previously served as governor of Donetsk. Moreover, a large minority of the people in this area – almost 40 per cent – identify themselves as ethnic Russians.

When Mr Yanukovych was overthrown in the revolution in February, supporters in his home area did not see this as the richly deserved downfall of a corrupt, authoritarian leader. Some had indeed come to loathe him, particularly for the shameless theft that was the most striking feature of his rule, but even they tended to believe that the moment to get rid of him would arrive at the election in 2015.

So the consensus in Donetsk was that the revolution was a coup d’état. Worse, people saw that Ukraine’s hardline nationalists had been a part – but only a part – of the campaign that had swept Mr Yanukovych away.

This provided fertile ground for Russia’s formidable propaganda machine. Enraged by the removal of a pliant leader in Kiev, the Kremlin duly set to work to fan the fears of the people of Donetsk. The leaders of the revolution in Kiev were sedulously portrayed not only as illegal usurpers but “fascists” and “extremists”. Day after day, the Russian media gave the impression that Ukraine under the new post-revolutionary order was becoming a “Nazi” state in which no decent citizen could feel safe.

Never mind that the revolution was actually a genuine popular movement, supported by huge numbers of ordinary Ukrainians, including some in the east. And never mind that the new government was installed by an elected parliament with the support of Mr Yanukovych’s old party. The propaganda message might have been absurd, but it was clear, compelling and – in Donetsk at least – widely believed. A sign in English outside the town hall in Kramatorsk sums everything up: “We will protect Donetsk from the Kiev junta,” it reads.

^{Relatives mourn 21-year-old nurse Yulia Izotova at her funeral in Kramatorsk}

That building, like dozens of others across this region of 4.5 million people, is now in the hands of masked men who say they are “protecting” the people of Donetsk by rebelling against Kiev and declaring the birth of a new “People’s Republic”.

The road leading north from Donetsk city passes through the heartland of this revolt, which sometimes appears to have sprung from a surrealist’s imagination. Outside the town of Konstantinovka, now controlled by the “People’s Republic”, a barricade of tyres and tree branches has been thrown across the highway. Here, about 20 men stand guard, armed with sticks, clubs and, in one case, a sawn-off shotgun.

A man called Sergei, his face concealed by a black balaclava, searched my car and demanded my passport. The Roman alphabet of a British passport is incomprehensible to someone brought up in the Cyrillic world of Russian. Sergei thumbed his way through every page, asked whether I might be Dutch – and then freely confessed his bafflement. “I can’t understand anything in this passport,” he said, shaking his head in exasperation, before handing it back to me and waving me on my way.

These rebel checkpoints have sprung up in and around occupied towns. But they seem largely for show, a symbol of control, rather than a real security precaution or a barrier to be defended. They tend to be made of tyres, buttressed with wooden planks and, in some cases, fallen trees. Some defenders conceal their faces behind balaclavas or white surgical masks, while many others make no effort to disguise themselves.

They are suspicious of Western journalists, but not implacably hostile. “We still love the Beatles,” announced a smiling man in green camouflage when he learnt where I was from. At a later checkpoint, a polite teenager asked for “money for petrol”, but immediately added: “It’s OK if you don’t want to give anything.” I thought it would be prudent to make a small donation to the “People’s Republic” petrol fund – and this offering won a cheerful “Spaciba!”, or “Thank you”.

The footsoldiers of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” might look menacing, but the evidence suggests they are not spoiling for a fight. Ukrainian army and police checkpoints are also found on the highways, often within a few hundred meters of a pro-Russian outpost, yet clashes between them are the exception, not the rule.

In Donetsk itself, a knot of protesters has seized City Hall. All this means in practice is that a dozen men sit on the ground floor while work continues as normal around them – and the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag still flies from the building.

So is anyone really in control of this rebellion? Western governments are convinced that President Vladimir Putin is pulling all the strings. Russian soldiers have apparently been embedded with the rebels and Russian operatives from GRU military intelligence are supposedly coordinating the entire operation.

There is probably a lot more than a grain of truth to this. It strains credulity to believe that the seizure of public buildings in at least a dozen towns and cities across Donetsk and the neighbouring region of Luhansk could have taken place without professional planning. The funding, weapons and strategy must be coming from somewhere.

But Mr Putin’s greatest contribution may simply have been the ruthless propaganda offensive that has helped to generate such a climate of fear. The terrible incident in Odessa last Friday, when 32 pro-Russian protesters died inside a burning building that may well have been set alight by Ukrainians, has created still more ripples of terror.

Yet even the most ardent supporters of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” find it hard to outline their demands. Many deny any ambition to join Russia and resent being called “separatists”. They also dislike the word “federalist”, preferring to say that they want a form of autonomy within Ukraine. Exactly what form, they are at a loss to explain.

The only common thread is their terror of the supposed “fascists” in Kiev and an abiding fear of being left in their clutches.

This suggests there might still be room for a settlement that could avoid calamity. The government has announced an “anti-terrorist” operation to restore its control over Donetsk. Instead, Ukraine’s new leaders should set out to reassure the region’s people, perhaps by inviting some of their leaders to join the government and coupling this with a generous and specific offer of autonomy. Mr Putin has done all he can to stoke the terror; Ukraine’s rulers should do their best to calm the nightmares of a genuinely fearful people.