This time, eastern Ukraine’s gunmen have government support

ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine — It was roughly an hour before the automatic gunfire and explosions finally subsided, allowing residents to emerge from cover and survey the damage.

Members of the local pro-Ukraine paramilitary unit, the Artemivsk Battalion, had been dispatched to a shabby, three-story residential building in the center of town to detain a suspected rebel operative.

But he resisted, officials claim, provoking a fierce firefight that left the apartment destroyed, the suspect heavily injured, and his former wife and two children — all home at the time — in shock.

When the dust settled, neighbors gathered outside to wonder what went wrong.

“There wasn’t any other way to do this?” asked Andrei Oleynik, a 43-year-old resident who lives on the first floor. “It’s their job as a special unit to take him quickly and quietly, and then interrogate him.”

Here in eastern Ukraine, a chaotic sense of justice and order often prevails amid the government’s scramble to combat “terrorism,” the official term for the pro-Russia separatist rebellion that’s engulfed the region since April.

In cities freed from rebel occupation, official paramilitary units are filling power vacuums created by the breakdown of local governance and, in other places, sometimes dispensing vigilante justice as they see fit.

Thanks to a conflict that’s exacerbated social divisions, support for such outfits — which usually have sweeping, if not entirely clear, responsibilities — remains tenuous at best, casting doubt over the government’s ability to win local loyalty.

That’s particularly apparent in this sleepy industrial city of about 80,000, where ordinary life has resumed much of its usual rhythm after the military chased out the rebels last month.

Yet while the insurgent occupation here was not as thorough and violent as in other nearby cities, soldiers and militiamen — particularly volunteers from the Artemivsk Battalion — have made their presence known.

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Gunmen in mismatched camouflage patrol the streets and smoke in groups outside parked cars. They carry their Kalashnikovs into cafes for lunch, where they draw stares from other patrons.

It’s a curious sight, which some say conjures memories of rebel rule. But there’s one crucial difference: these gunmen enjoy official support.

Not only is the battalion a special forces unit subordinated to the Interior Ministry, but also its commander, Konstantin Mateychenko, was appointed by President Petro Poroshenko as head of the greater Artemivsk district. That makes Mateychenko the city’s acting mayor.

Its establishment last spring was part of the frenzy to beef up Ukraine’s traditionally weak military after Crimea’s annexation by Russia and heightening tensions in the east.

Mateychenko, a local politician with military experience, says the unit’s main task is to safeguard the population from separatist elements — or “criminal gangs,” as he calls them — a job he says is too serious for local law enforcement in an area so close to the front line.

The battalion is also involved in broadly ensuring public order, he adds, and “many other things that are similar to police work.” It can also be dispatched to the front.

“[The unit] is made up of those who are ready to fight to the end, toward victory, for the sake of their country,” said Mateychenko, a bullish man with a deep voice who refers to the separatist rebels as “scum.”

Its members received such a chance on Thursday, when they were tipped off that an allegedly armed and dangerous rebel was holed up in an apartment several blocks from the central square.

Tatyana Khodakovskaya, who was in the apartment with the suspect — her former husband Semyon Khodakovsky — and their two children, says men from the battalion urged her in a telephone call to open the door as they stood outside.

But Khodakovsky, himself a military veteran and an ardent critic of Kyiv’s post-revolutionary government, warned her against it and grabbed his automatic weapon “to defend his family,” Khodakovskaya said in an interview inside her charred apartment two days later.

She wasn’t sure who shot first. But when they did, a hail of gunfire began tearing through the door and both sides of the apartment.

Fighters outside lobbed a grenade into the bedroom where she was hiding under the bed with her children. After they fled to another room down the hallway, a volley of bullets narrowly missed them.

Khodakovksy — a veteran of the French Foreign Legion and a former member of the feared “Berkut” riot police — was eventually captured by the militiamen, and though he was heavily wounded, Khodakovskaya has not been informed of his whereabouts.

“This isn’t a police force,” she said, weeping as she recalled the events. “They’re simply bandits.”

The bout of violence was an anomaly in this typically calm city. But it’s made at least some local residents wonder whether they’re in fact better off after “liberation” by Ukrainian forces.

Rostislav Marchenko, Khodakovsky’s downstairs neighbor, says tensions in the city have grown thanks to “the fact that armed people are walking around with their finger on the trigger.”

“That’s how they walk into stores, around town,” said 51-year-old Marchenko, who chain-smoked outside the building shortly after the shootout. “You don’t know what’s going on in their heads.”

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Despite the fragile peace in Artemivsk, maintenance of public order in the city amounts to “de-facto martial law,” according to Vadim Mardiyan, a local newspaper editor.

While police and other local institutions still fulfill basic functions, Mateychenko and his battalion appear to wield close to full authority for now.

Mateychenko said the investigative agencies would decide Khodakovsky’s fate. The local police chief in Artemivsk is also a battalion commander a trusted ally.

Mateychenko dismisses suggestions that his battalion has stoked tensions in the city by noting that many local residents have in fact been eager to help.

He also says that meeting with the public and reassuring locals of his unit’s crucial task is a top priority.

“As the head of the local administration and a human being, I understand that this is probably even more important than fighting and shooting,” Mateychenko said.

The issue of questionable justice extends far beyond Artemivsk.

Several days ago, members of another Kyiv-backed volunteer paramilitary outfit, the Aidar Battalion, detained the mayor of the regional capital of Luhansk, a separatist stronghold in the east, as he attempted to leave the city.

His supporters, who credit him with attempting to keep the city running amid fierce fighting between Ukrainian forces and rebels, claim they don't know his whereabouts.

But more shocking has been the spate of dubious arrests by firebrand parliamentarian Oleh Lyashko, who with the help of similar paramilitary units has abducted and beaten a series of separatist allies or local officials suspected of aiding the rebels.

Amnesty International recently called Lyashko’s actions — which he films and shares online — a “flagrant violation of international legal standards.”

It’s not difficult to see how that might inflame tensions in a region already deeply distrustful of the post-revolutionary authorities.

Nevertheless, here in Artemivsk, local attitudes reflect a growing fatigue with the conflict in general, rather than clear support — or hatred — for one side or another.

Local residents GlobalPost spoke to throughout the last week generally approve of the Ukrainian military’s arrival, if only to restore a greater sense of order after a chaotic occupation by rebels.

But observers also suggest the surfeit of weapons still floating around — something Mateychenko himself confirms — combined with a sense of lingering resentment of the new authorities means tensions here and elsewhere in “liberated” eastern Ukraine can still boil over.

“Even if everything ends tomorrow in the military sense, and it becomes clear who won and who lost, the partisan war won’t end soon,” says Mardiyan, who edits the local newspaper Events.

How local militia forces such as the Artemivsk Battalion behave in that context will undoubtedly decide how long that war will last.