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发帖数: 42116 | 1 HARKIV, Ukraine — This past Monday, around forty protesters bearing
Communist flags gathered in the graying, barren central square of Ukraine’s
second-largest city. They said they were there to commemorate the
anniversary of the Red Army’s first liberation of Kharkiv in 1943. (The
current administration in Kiev doesn’t commemorate the date, since it
regards Soviet “liberation” as a synonym for “occupation.”) Gennady
Makarov, a leading pro-Russian separatist and one of the protest’s
organizers, bustled around the group, dispensing orders. Most of his fellow
flag-bearers were pensioners, including some Soviet Army veterans, but a
notable few were much younger. Across from them, on the other side of the
statue, stood a crowd of policemen and some half dozen riot buses. A
policeman approached Makarov and asked what they were planning. “Just give
us an hour,” Makarov responded. The policeman backed off, and the
protesters began to march through Kharkiv’s drab Stalinist streets against
the frigid morning wind, singing old Soviet songs. Russian and Ukrainian
journalists hurried behind them, documenting their every move.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/20/the-ukrainian-separatists-n |
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