Kiev, Ukraine. If anybody thought Donbass had heard the last of the radical neo-Nazi military forces that started the blockade in February that snowballed into a full fledged divorce between Kiev and Donbass, they had another thing coming.
The Ukrainian headquarters of the neo-Nazi military units originally blocking trade with the areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions outside of Kiev control have announced plans to begin a new stage of violent activity in two weeks.
“We believe that the enterprises which our forces can bring pressure upon are those controlled by Russian citizens in the Donbass, the pressure on which will make Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Poroshenko to take a decision to return our men held as prisoner now. ”
“The owners of these enterprises in Ukraine are posing a danger to our country’s security. In two weeks, we will begin our action to apply pressure to the sore spots of Russian business,” Anatoliy Vynohrodsky, second commander of the Donbas separate special forces battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard, told a press conference in Kiev on Friday.
He would not say what the blockade’s ‘second stage’ involved. But sources close to him had no problem pointing out that for the last two weeks heavy military hardware has been brought up to the “ATO” zone, with the intent of destroying the mines, factories and establishments across Donbass, so no part of these enterprises will generate funds for Kiev, Donbass or Moscow.
“To date, our headquarters has given the command to mobilize our supporters… We understand that trade with Russia is a very subtle moment and you can’t shut everything off straight away, we will be dealing with it directly soon enough,” Vynohrodsky said.
Today it is possible to stop importing coal from the breakaway areas and Russia, he said. “The decision to discontinue coal supplies from the breakaway Donbas areas has not been signed. We will press and, if need be, will destroy the coal mines ourselves,” Vynohrodsky said.