When university student Alexander Gnezdelov joined the masked men taking over the state government building in Donetsk earlier this month, he believed it was for a good cause.

The building has since become a second home for Gnezdelov, and a last stand for dozens of others who dream of a self-determining Donetsk.

"To control this building, it's like symbolic," he said in an interview within view of the building, now surrounded by piles of tires, gleaming razor wire, sandbags and a constant crowd.

"This building is not private property, it belongs to the people. To all people…it's our property."

"If we take the amnesty, that means we will just give up," says Gnezdelov, who in regular life, studies Russian literature in Donetsk.

"We didn't have democracy here in Ukraine," he says. "The politics is just about some criminal oligarchs, fighting each other for power.


"We cannot tolerate Kiev anymore. We cannot tolerate all the corruption."

Gnezdelov, who says he is the only English speaker in the building, has become the de facto foreign press spokesman for the group.

He defies the menacing images of the pro-Russian masked men wielding guns or baseball bats who have come to represent his side of Donetsk's divide, and he makes the point that it is not imperative that Donetsk join Russia, as long as it becomes independent of Ukraine.

For anyone looking to reduce events here on the ground to a simple black and white, Cold War narrative, Gnezdelov and his fellow Eastern Ukrainians — on all sides — can make you think again.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/in-ukraine-crisis-the-family-feud-that-is-divided-donetsk-1.2620907