Parubiy says anti-terrorist operation will continue as separatists in Luhansk, Donetsk reject Putin’s call to postpone referendum

Parubiy’s statement came minutes before separatist leaders in Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts announced that they will hold a referendum on accession to the Russian Federation on May 11 as planned, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s May 7 call for the vote to be postponed.

In a phone call with Interfax Ukraine, Myroslav Rudenko, the co-chairman of the Donetsk People’s Republic separatist government confirmed that “the referendum will be held on May 11.” Later, Luhansk self-defense leader Oleksiy Chmylenko, also speaking with Interfax Ukraine, said that Luhansk’s referendum “will not be postponed.”

Since April 6, when Kremlin-backed insurgents began seizing government buildings in Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk Oblasts, the Ukrainian government has been trying to quell separatist movements in Ukraine’s restive east.

Parubiy, who called the separatist referendums a “political adventure” conceived in “Putin’s maniacal imagination,” said that the anti-terrorist operation will continue “irrespective of the decisions of terrorist groups in eastern Ukraine.”

Separatist violence has not slowed in the wake of clashes in the port city of Odessa on May 2 that left dozens dead.

Parubiy announced that the most recent separatist attack “was carried out on a border unit on the border of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions from the Russian Federation” in the early morning hours of May 8.

Ukraine’s National Guard’s 2nd Reserve Battalion will soon be deployed to the east to combat separatism, Parubiy reported. They will join the 1st Reserve Battalion, which Parubiy said has been “very actively participating in the anti-terrorist operation in Sloviansk.”

The National Guard battalions will not, however, be involved in protecting polling stations during the May 25 presidential elections. That task will be left to NGOs, civil activists, and some 70,000 Interior Ministry troops.

When asked about Ukrainian peacekeeping troops currently serving abroad, Parubiy said the government had no plans to recall them to help mediate the crisis. He did, however, call on veterans to join the National Guard’s newly-formed battalions.

Parubiy said Ukraine’s security forces expect pro-Russian separatists to instigate violence in Kyiv and elsewhere on May 9, Victory Day, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945, and is one of Ukraine’s most important public holidays.

“We know what they are planning,” Parubiy told a packed briefing room at the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center, “and we are ready to deter and prevent provocations.”

He said checkpoints have been set up outside Kyiv in order to prevent infiltration by pro-Russian separatists from Crimea and the east.

Parubiy told journalists that the Ukrainian government has proof that Russia is supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine financially and militarily, calling the Kremlin the “epicenter of the problem.”

He said that former President Viktor Yanukovych and his associates, many of whom fled to Russia after being ousted from power by the EuroMaidan Revolution on Feb. 22, are directly involved in the separatist activity.

This confirms what Tetyana Chornovol, who is leading the Ukrainian government’s anti-corruption campaign, told the Kyiv Post on May 2.

“We need to fight them; they are still influencing the situation in Ukraine,” she said.

Parubiy said that Yanukovych’s inner circle is directly supporting separatism in the east: “Those who once stole from Ukraine are now financing terrorism.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Isaac Webb can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @IsaacDWebb