Here is today's map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
DONETSK, Ukraine — The military commandant in this embattled city, Andrei Shpigel, was having an emotional discussion with officers and soldiers of his “DPR Army” on the veranda of a local restaurant. They were talking about the future of their self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. Would it eventually become a peaceful region of Ukraine, or be annexed by Russia, or stay an independent but unrecognized separatist territory?
For Shpigel and perhaps 15,000 other rebel soldiers controlling this part of eastern Ukraine, a return of Kiev’s legal and military authority over their “republic” would mean potential prison terms and even worse: “mass physical elimination,” they agreed, nodding at each other. The commandant told The Daily Beast that DPR forces would never allow their self-proclaimed republic to reunite with Ukraine.
And yet, the struggle for quasi-independence appears to have lost momentum. “Whatever happened to the Russian ‘blitz’ that everybody was predicting a month ago?” I asked the soldiers. Then, Kremlin-backed rebel forces launched a violent offensive on Ukrainian positions in Maryinka, a village outside Donetsk city. It seemed that the clashes were going to escalate through the summer, much as they had done last year.
A former separatist begs for money: