DONETSK, June 4 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine’s independence-minded republic in Donetsk, the DPR, and the broader Donbas region stand a slim chance of creating a sovereign state, a commander of the Vostok battalion in the Donetsk People’s Republic told RIA Novosti Tuesday.
“Donbas isn’t self-sufficient. It is fully integrated into Ukraine’s market system with other countries, in particular with Russia. It’s another thing if we were a natural economy, then we’d talk about full autonomy. But if we bud off from one economy, we’ll need to stick to another one,” said Alexander Khodakovsky.
Khodakovsky is the man behind the Donetsk People’s Republic most prominent defense force dubbed Batallion Vostok. His men have offered staunch resistance to Ukraine’s armed forces during the ongoing crackdown on the country’s south and east.
He said it was up to politicians to decide the status of the DPR, whether it should stay in Ukraine or secede. “People in the battalion are apolitical. They rose up in arms to fight against the prospect before us,” the commander added.
Khodakovsky said that by seizing control of the country by brute force, the current authority in Kiev demonstrated how little it cared about democratic values. “You can’t promote one set of values, and act on another one,” he explained.
“By coming to power like that they demonstrated how they were going to act from now on – trampling all laws, the ideas of decency and morality.”
Khodakovsky, who is a former chief of Ukraine’s Security Service unit Alfa, said the regime in Kiev also proved it was going to follow America’s lead on everything.
“To side with America now, at a time when the world is getting extremely polarized, means to go against Russia. But how can the southeast be against Russia? We are trying to prevent us from becoming an enemy of Russia,” the activist said.
Donetsk and Luhansk regions are home to a significant ethnic Russian population, with many residents having strong family or business ties in Russia.
“The southeast is part of the Russian world. We don’t like the prospect of being against the Russian world at all,” Alexander Khodakovsky explained.
Russian lawmaker Alexei Pushkov said earlier the United States was trying to turn Ukraine into an openly anti-Russian country that could then be brought into the fold as part of the military alliance NATO.
Washington has stepped up its anti-Russia rhetoric since the Ukraine crisis began in February this year, claiming Russia was behind the Ukrainian split. The Russian Foreign Ministry has multiple times denied this accusation saying it respected Ukraine’s sovereignty and never meddled with the country’s domestic affairs.
