DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — The Donetsk People’s Republic is starting to smell.
Rotting
garbage is piling up in the hallways of the government office building
seized by separatists in eastern Ukraine. Telephones ripped from the
walls are piled atop broken furniture and mounds of old files. The
stench of sweat and stale cigarettes is everywhere.
The guards,
slouching men with pistols shoved in their pockets or flapping loosely
in holsters, look increasingly bored.
It’s been six weeks since
they took over the building, a week since they declared independence
from Ukraine. But the authority of the alleged nation barely extends
beyond their ten-story office tower and a few heavily armed checkpoints
on roads leading into this industrial city 80 kilometers (50 miles) from
the Russian border.
In the streets of Donetsk, the separatist
leaders and their followers are increasingly derided as a collection of
heavily armed, barely employed misfits. Outside of the rebels’
headquarters, it can be difficult to find anyone who agrees with their
calls to secede from Ukraine and link this part of the country — with
its generations of ethnic and linguistic ties to Russia — to Moscow.
"All
this shouting about us being a republic. What kind of a republic is
this?" asked Leonid Krivonos, a 75-year-old retired miner, angry that
the separatists are refusing to allow Ukraine’s upcoming presidential
election. "The young ones still have a future to look forward to, and
they risk seeing that all destroyed."
The interim Ukrainian
government hopes Sunday’s presidential election will unite the country
behind a new leader, but separatists across the east have vowed to block
the vote.
Donetsk’s separatist leader waves away any prospect of
an election. After all, insists Denis Pushilin, chairman of the
self-declared Supreme Council, Donetsk is not in Ukraine anymore.
"How
can we hold an election of a neighboring country on our territory?"
said the 32-year-old Pushilin, smiling in an interview in his
tenth-floor office.
A few feet away, his bodyguard fell asleep in a desk chair, one hand clutching a holstered pistol.
If
the tide of opinion has appeared to turn against the separatists
recently — with Russian President Vladimir Putin supporting Ukraine’s
presidential election and billionaire industrialist Rinat Akhmetov
calling on his 300,000 employees to stand up to the mutineers — Pushilin
is unconcerned.
His movement’s support is vast, he says,
extending north from the Azov Sea for hundreds of miles (kilometers) in
eastern Ukraine.
"It’s people from different towns, from different political views, from different political
organizations," he said.
His
skin is pale from weeks spent living and working in the building. He is
exhausted. But Pushilin has a talent for words. Until recently, he was a
salesman for a pyramid scheme that attracted millions of Russians and
Ukrainians ("Financial pyramids are not forbidden and are not illegal,"
he said, explaining his involvement). Talking points spill from him
effortlessly.
"The junta in Kiev has destroyed Ukraine as a
state," he said, insisting his government is supported "by all the
people who live in the region."
Polling — and residents — say otherwise.
An
April survey by the nonpartisan Washington-based Pew Research Center
found that 77 percent of Ukrainians want the country to maintain its
current borders, with the number falling to 70 percent in eastern
Ukraine. The percentage drops more among Russian-speakers but even 58
percent of them want the country to remain unified.
"Ukraine is
one country, and should stay as one country," said a retired high school
teacher who asked to only be identified by her first name, Lyudmila,
fearful of criticizing the separatists.
She wants unity even though, like many people in the east, she detests the interim government in Kiev.

"Our natural disaster," she called them on a recent morning, working in a flower-filled garden
behind her apartment building.
Distrusting
politicians is second nature to many Ukrainians, frustrated by years of
crippling corruption. But those suspicions are magnified in the east,
where people see a central government in Kiev dominated by
Ukrainian-speaking westerners who rose to power after protests prompted
President Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia in February.
Ukraine’s
complex divisions emerged from centuries of war and politics, but
today’s divide largely plays out between a Ukrainian-speaking west,
where most people are eager to join the European Union, and a
Russian-speaking east rooted in ties to the Soviet Union and Russia.
The
divide was magnified a few days after Yanukovych fled, when Putin
deployed soldiers in Crimea, Ukraine’s Russian-speaking Black Sea
peninsula. He then annexed Crimea in March.
Soon, separatist
uprisings were flaring across the Russian-speaking east, with mutineers
believing they, too, would be annexed by Russia.
Donetsk, the
largest city in eastern Ukraine with nearly 1 million residents, has the
largest self-proclaimed government, with a cabinet, a legislature and
its media-friendly leader. It has a flag and a press department that
issues credentials to reporters. A foreign ministry office is in the
works.
What it doesn’t have is a country.
Except at their
headquarters, the separatists are rarely seen in the city. When they do
appear in public, as they did briefly Tuesday, descending from an
armored vehicle on a city street to display their weapons and insist
they were keeping order, their actions seem more like intimidation than
anything else.
People glance around nervously as they speak of the separatists. Some critics have been beaten.
"They can chase you, track you down," said a local businesswoman who asked to be identified
only as Angela.
A
Donetsk teacher named Antonina said she and her family received death
threats from the separatists because she was on the local election
commission preparing for the presidential vote. She said gunmen stormed a
meeting and seized all the voting documents.
"I am really scared for my children," she said, asking that her last name not be used.
Meanwhile,
in Slovyansk, a city in the Donetsk region where rebels and Ukrainian
troops have been trading gunfire for weeks, an angry crowd of 200
heckled a separatist commander Tuesday, complaining that the rebels were
drawing retaliatory fire toward their homes.
"They must stop with
this banditry so that there can be peace!" resident Lina Sidorenko
said. "How much longer can this go on? We had a united country and now
look what’s happened."
In Donetsk, though, life functions despite
the separatists. Schools, stores and offices are open. The city’s
streets are busy. The summer heat has come early this year and the parks
are full of young couples. The police and the city’s elected officials
are lying low but basic services — water, electricity, the fire
department — are operating normally.
Pushilin acknowledges his movement emerged in "a chaotic way" but clearly wants it to look
serious.
On
Monday, the separatists called the first meeting of their Supreme
Council, gathering in an auditorium in their headquarters. About 20
percent of the group was armed, carrying everything from hunting knives
to assault rifles. A handful wore body armor. There was an abundance of
homemade tattoos, a variety of camouflage and lots of tight black
T-shirts.
Few in the room, including the organizers, appeared to know what to do.
After
selecting a deputy for the Supreme Council — the vote for the only
candidate was unanimous — an official announced that people were needed
to staff various departments. A young man walked to the front of the
auditorium, took the microphone and said he wanted a job.
"I want to do something with agriculture," he said. His campaign speech was short: "Will
you vote for me? Please support me."
A
few hands went up, apparently votes in his favor, but someone else
grabbed the microphone and asked the man to sit down. Other people stood
to make speeches. An angry man wanted to discuss a possible
constitution. The new deputy speaker spoke about the need to find
experts for the foreign ministry.
As the situation grew increasingly chaotic, Pushilin, facing the gathering from the stage, took the
microphone.
"You
are acting like you are in a kindergarten and not a Supreme Council!"
he said, glaring at the room, which quickly went silent. Many people
hung their heads. "I feel ashamed."
Minutes later, the session was adjourned. There was no word if the young man’s hopes for a job had
materialized.
___
Yuras Karmanau in Donetsk and Alexander Zemlianichenko in Slovyansk also contributed.