Ukraine's government has lost control of two regions in the country's east after police and security service units defected to pro-Russian rebels, the acting president admitted on Wednesday.
Oleksandr Turchynov spoke hours after gunmen seized more police stations and administrative buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the country's industrial heartland and now the centre of a pro-Russian insurgency.
"I will be frank: today, security forces are unable to quickly take the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under control," said Mr Turchynov at a meeting with regional governors in Kiev.
He described the Ukrainian security services as "helpless" and "unable to carry out their duties of protecting citizens". Mr Turchynov added: "Moreover, some of those units are either helping or cooperating with terrorist organisations."
Earlier, pro-Russian gunmen had seized the town hall and a police station in Horlivka, a town of 258,000 people in Donetsk region. The men, who wore the green camouflage uniforms of the self-styled "People's Militia", were already in the town hall when staff arrived for work at 9am. By the afternoon, they could be seen building a barricade of sandbags outside the building.
The takeover followed the seizure of the regional administration building, prosecutors' office and police headquarters in Luhansk, the capital of the neighbouring "oblast" or region. Together, the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk account for 15 per cent of Ukraine's entire population and 9 per cent of the country's surface area. They also hold the nation's biggest industries and almost 80 per cent of its coal reserves. Donetsk alone is the most populous region in Ukraine with 10 per cent of the country's people. Dozens of police stations and local government buildings across these areas have been seized since early April.
While daily life continues mostly as normal around the occupied buildings, the failure of police to resist the takeovers has left several towns - including Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, and Horlivka - effectively in the hands of pro-Russian rebels.
As well as admitting the loss of Donetsk and Luhansk, Mr Turchynov said that neighbouring regions, notably Kharkiv and Odessa, were now threatened in the same way. "Mercenaries and special units that are active on Ukrainian territory have been tasked with attacking those regions. That is why I am stressing: our task is to stop the spread of the terrorist threat first of all in the Kharkiv and Odessa regions," he said, according to Interfax news agency.
Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, has seen clashes between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian protesters, but the separatists have so far failed to establish a foothold there.
Tensions have risen in the industrial and university city since Gennady Kernes, the mayor of Kharkiv, was shot and nearly killed on Monday.
Mr Kernes is recovering from surgery in Israel, raising fears that insurgents may take advantage of his absence to seize control of the city.
Rebels loyal to the self-proclaimed "People's Republic of Donetsk" say they want a referendum on whether the region remains within Ukraine, declares independence, or joins Russia.
A date has been set for the poll on May 11, although whether the activists have the ability to organise the contest across the whole region is unclear. While the pro-Russian movement's leaders claim broad support, opinion polls suggests a more confused picture. Donetsk is overwhelmingly Russian-speaking, but 57 per cent of the region's people identify themselves as ethnic Ukrainians, according to the 2001 census, while 38 per cent consider themselves Russian.
A recent survey by the Kiev-based International Institute of Sociology found that 28 per cent of respondents in Donetsk supported joining Russia, while 52 per cent favoured staying in Ukraine.
