The skirmishes and hit and run strikes between Ukraine’s military and eastern protester self-defense forces continue apace across Ukraine’s eastern regions, with the fighting centering mostly on Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, as usual.
The state of “not quite civil war” shows no signs of slowing down, and both sides are talking up escalation as they try to extricate themselves from the stalemated fights.
Eastern self-defense forces are considering calling up female volunteers to form their own combat forces, since they are running short of manpower in defending the cities they yet hold from army encroachment. The Right Sector is calling on the interim government to mass execute all protest leaders they manage to get ahold of in an effort to tamp down the secessionist movement.
Some in the east seem convinced the situation will remain unresolved in the long term, and say they intend to hold a full-scale election in mid-September to elect officials to the People’s Republic of Donetsk and Luhansk.