#Ukraine Moves to Assert Control in East

At WSJ, "Ukraine Moves to Assert Control: Russia Warns That Use of Force Could Plunge Country into Civil War":

Ukrainian police took back a government building from pro-Russian separatists in one volatile eastern city Tuesday, but armed men dug in behind reinforced barricades in other cities, warning against an assault even as some disarray began to show.

Russia warned Ukraine's new government that the use of force to dislodge demonstrators who had taken over buildings in eastern Ukraine, where many ethnic Russians live, could plunge the country into civil war.

As the secessionists appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow said they should be allowed to participate in talks next week with Russia, Ukraine, the U.S. and the European Union aimed at calming the crisis.

Ukrainian officials and others have accused Russia of instigating the protests, which began Sunday in the industrial cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk. They have suggested that Russia is trying to orchestrate a takeover similar to its incursion into and annexation of Crimea last month.

Secretary of State John Kerry amplified the criticism, telling members of a Senate committee that Russian special forces and intelligence agents have been key catalysts behind the unrest, calling the maneuvers as "ham-handed as they are transparent."

"Quite simply, what we see from Russia is an illegal and illegitimate effort to destabilize a sovereign state and create a contrived crisis with paid operatives across an international boundary," Mr. Kerry said in Washington.

Ukraine's Interior Ministry said more forces were being sent to eastern regions to subdue the separatists and guard against further unrest.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov described an "antiterrorist" operation in Kharkiv early Tuesday that resulted in the arrest of around 70 separatists who had control of the regional administration building.

According to his account: roughly 200 pro-Russian agitators had barricaded themselves inside overnight and threw stun grenades and fired pellet guns at police and national guard officers surrounding the building.

The protesters then set fire to a wing of the building and smashed windows. After the fire was contained, special forces stormed the building, made the arrests and seized a cache of weapons.

"The night in Kharkiv was endlessly long," Mr. Avakov said. "The boorish, brutal, ordered and generously paid pro-Russian aggression of the 'protesters' was off the charts."

In Luhansk, armed men who have occupied the security-service building since Sunday were holding 60 people and have mined the building, the security service said.

In a video apparently made inside the building and posted online, a man in a balaclava demands a referendum on the region's status as three men holding automatic weapons stand behind him.

The man says the people inside are all locals and include veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, border guards and "representatives of peaceful professions." He also warned against any attempt to storm the building.

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