SampanViking, you may confront your theory with what's here:
(google-translate should work; a Czech eye-witness (somebody who was in Odessa on May 2) confirms the pictures are authentic, he's taken similar by himself -- this discomforted some people on a Czech leftist server heheh). You may even tell us if you still think that firearms were used by the members of a protective detail of a local politician ...
Sorry for necroposting. You can discern two armed groups with clear distinctions.
There is the Russian militia with Russian flags on helmets and hexagonal wooden shields. They wear also medieval armour. Reenactment in Eastern Europe has been a very violent and dangerous trashing during previous years. Seems like it was training for shield wall combat with other groups and not "reenacting" a period.
The other group wears orange helmets and has rectangular shields, a few of these are wooden, but most are metal and many of the same construction as police shields. Seems like someone handed them over supplies. A few metal shields are special construction with big holes just on the upper end and not on the lower, making them unlike police shields. These also appeared during the protests in Kiev and seem a special manufacture for the unfolding events.
All firearms depicted not as part of the police do belong to the orange helmet faction that poses with these in Spetsnaz T-shirts, despite being not having the trained bodies of such soldiers.
Looking at the age range, orange helmet faction is not depicted as composed just of youngsters, unlike hexagonal shield faction.
The police is depicted in attempts to communicate with both groups.
One image shows that the police was possibly few in numbers and not very respected and neutralized with garbage boxes.
The depicted march is under Ukrainian colours of blue and yellow, includes women that are not depicted among the guys with shields, but there are women picking up stones.
It seems clear to me that both sides knew each other's shield pattern and adapted theirs for an envisioned confrontation. The pro-Ukrainian protest march under the colours seems genuine with the pro-Ukrainian militia force intent on coming to grips with the group of pro-Russian youngsters that possibly got some shield wall training from reenactors. This pro-Ukrainian militia force worries me, they are simply too old to play knights, they openly carry firearms and they have Spetsnaz T-shirts (blue-white narrow stripes).
You do not buy a Spetsnaz T-shirt and pose in it with a gun as part of protests if you believe in democracy. Orange construction hemets, shields and clubs are OK for defending your march column during these times, but guns?
It is possible that a local politician did indeed have trained bodyguards with guns, who reacted under the impression of a threat. Professional bodyguards do not pose with their guns, unlike our "Spetsnaz" friends.
