Daily Beast: Is Putin Turning to Terrorism in Ukraine?
ODESSA, Ukraine — On Sunday night a powerful explosion shook the heart of Ukraine’s most elegant city. The bomb went off right on the porch of the local Euro-Maidan Coordination Council, where volunteers store humanitarian aid for Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russian-backed forces in the east of the country. Authorities categorized the incident as “an act of terrorism,” the seventh bombing targeting strategic points of Odessa in the past few weeks.
The explosion destroyed the Council’s porch, tearing the entrance door to pieces, breaking windows in apartments on upper floors, and terrifying pedestrians on Gimnazicheskaya Avenue. Fortunately nobody was hurt seriously. But such are the tensions here that last week the central government in Kiev deployed two units of National Guards to launch an anti-terror operation in Odessa.
“We are convinced that money for terrorism comes from Moscow,” says Vitaliy Kozhukhar, a commander of Odessa’s self-defense forces. The special services of Russian President Vladimir Putin “seem to be happily organizing explosions in order to destabilize life in our peaceful city, which to their frustration does not want to become a part of Russia.”
Terrorism is bad news anywhere, but especially rough on Odessa, where the city motto seems to be “make love, not war.” It is the only tourist center Ukraine has left on the Black Sea, since Russia annexed Crimea last spring. Its graceful hotels and beautiful restaurants are totally dependent on the tourist trade. But most visitors stopped coming after the tragic events of May 2, when over 40 pro-Russian activists from the separatist movement and Ukrainian soccer fans were killed in a fire and in the violent clashes that surrounded it.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/06/is-putin-turning-to-terrorism-in-ukraine.html
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