Pro-Russian separatists on
Sunday seized control of the offices of regional state television in the
eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk and said they would take it off air and
broadcast a Kremlin-backed Russian channel instead.
A Reuters reporter said four separatists
in masks, with truncheons and shields, were standing at the entrance to the
building controlling access, while more separatists in camouflage fatigues
could be seen inside.
About 15 police officers were
standing a short distance away but were not
trying to resist the separatists.
One police lieutenant, who was sitting in a police vehicle nearby, said it
would have been pointless to intervene.
It was the first time the station
had been seized by the separatists, though previously a transmission tower in
the Donetsk region had briefly been seized and technicians forced to broadcast
Russian stations' output.
Pro-Russian separatists, some of
them armed, have seized about a dozen official buildings in eastern Ukraine.
They say they are rising up against a Ukrainian government they say is
illegitimate, but Kiev says they are proxies of the Russian government bent on
destabilizing Ukraine.
About an hour after the station
in Donetsk was overrun, it was still broadcasting its scheduled programs, a
children's show called "Circle of the Sun".
CHANGING CHANNELS
But the station's director, Oleg
Dzholos, who came outside to speak to reporters, said the people who seized the
building had ordered him to change the programming.
"They used force to push
back the gates," he said. "There were no threats. There were not many
of my people. What can a few people do? The leaders of this movement just gave
me an ultimatum that one of the Russian channels has to be broadcast."
Dzholos said three of his staff
were still inside the building, and that the separatists had not ejected him
from his office.
Separatists who swear allegiance
to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic already control the regional
governor's office and the city hall in Donetsk, the regional capital.
A man in a white shirt who came
out of the building and said he was a representative of the Donetsk People's
Republic said that from now on the station would be broadcasting Rossiya 24, a
Russian state-owned news channel.
Earlier, a crowd of around 400
people surrounded the building and shouted "Russia!" and
"Referendum!," a reference to a vote the separatists want to hold on
seceding from Ukraine. The protesters later drifted away, but the separatist
guards on the doors remained.
One of the masked men at the
entrance, asked why the building had been seized, said: "They show lies,
they try to influence the people and they broadcast misinformation."
The police officer sitting in his
vehicle nearby, who gave his name as Vitaly, said his superiors had ordered him
to protect the building after they received information that a crowd was
heading to the television station.
"I don't see any point in
using force," he said. "It would not have worked if we had tried to
stop anybody, there were a lot of people here."
Chapisha Maoni