The BBC, citing the Russian Interfax news agency, reported that government forces had taken control of a TV tower and forced the insurgents to retreat deeper inside the city. Reuters reported that heavy gunfire could be heard closer to the center of town than in recent days, while at least two armored vehicles controlled by separatists were seen retreating.
Ukraine's interim interior minister, Arsen Avakhov, said that some government troops had been killed in the fighting, but it was not immediately clear how many had died.
The fresh fighting comes one day after army troops cut off the main road into Slovyansk as part of what the government has described as "anti-terror" operations meant to retake government buildings captured by insurgents in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea in March.
- Popular opinion has apparently been galvanized against the interim government by Friday's violence in the Black Sea port of Odessa, in which at least 42 people were killed. Most of the dead were pro-Russia activists who barricaded themselves in the city's trade union building, which was set on fire by pro-Kiev demonstrators outside.
The actions of the security force in Odessa drew condemnation from Ukraine interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who vowed that he would order an independent investigation into the conduct of the police. However, a BBC reporter who spoke to residents of the towns around Slovyansk said that she had been told that what happened in Odessa "cannot be forgiven."
Events threatened to further spiral out of the Kiev government's control Sunday, when pro-Russia protesters attacked the main police station in Odessa and freed 67 people who had been arrested in relation to Friday's violence. Late Sunday, thousands of pro-Ukraine protesters marched through the city to the regional police headquarters and the trade union building, singing Ukraine's national anthem.
In another sign of how fraught the situation has become, Reuters reported Monday that Ukraine's largest bank, Privatbank, had temporarily closed branches in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
"In the current circumstances we cannot and do not have right to make people go to work in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where armed people break into bank branches and seize security vans in the towns,'' Privatbank said in a statement obtained by Reuters. The bank's co-owner, Igor Kolomoisky, reportedly enraged pro-Russian fighters by reportedly pledging gifts of $10,000 per "saboteur" arrested by Ukrainian troops.
Also late Sunday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier began a push to hold a second round of talks in Geneva in the hope of stopping the violence.
Steinmeier told Germany's ARD television late Sunday all parties must push for a return to the accord reached in Switzerland last month encouraging all sides to lay down arms..........http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/05/05/ukraine-forces-encircle-slovyansk-as-germany-calls-for-new-geneva-talks/
5/5/14
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