Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
...it's Ukrainians on one side, and "those people" (whoever they are) on the other side.
Eric, those people are actually locals, i.e. Ukrainian citizens. Even Ukrainian biased media doesn't go so far as to claim, that all (or even most) of them are Russians. Kiev just implies, that they are organized by some kind of Russian agents, spies, or whatever.

As for AKs - during Maidan 'uprising' military arsenals were robbed in Western Ukraine - in particular in Lviv (Feb 2014). Among stolen goodies there were 5000 AKs, about 2700 Makarovs, more than 100 machine guns, about 1500 grenades, etc. Some of it eventually spread over Ukraine (Viva la revolution!).
There also were loads of failed attempts, or at least they were reported as failed. So having some kind of weapon isn't a proof of external influence

Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
How many of them took hostages to achieve their goals? That is all what those "eastern guys" have been doing.
First, sorry, but this comment is rather ignorant. Please tone down your supriority a bit, ok?

Second, as Crocodile already pointed out, there were no hostages.
That's how local (Ukrainian) official media work. They print/post some nonsense, aimed at fuelling overall paranoia. Then after some time they admit that they were mistaken or "misinformed". But the harm is already done. Thousands of people've read it and it changed their attitude in a certain way.

Sometimes they even don't bother to mention their mistakes. There were hysterical articles as of Apr 8th claiming that "Russian tanks will invade Ukraine tonight" (meaning a full blown war at the border). Obviously, there were no tanks. But some people are still reffering to this imaginary tank battles as if they were real.

Frankly, it's ridiculous. It's like Ukrainian government and some "patriots" are living in an AU. They refuse to acknowledge what's happening under their noses (raising disquiet among local people in some regions due to wretched inner policy), at the same time getting fixated on something that have not really happened (or something could've happended, but of which there's no proof).