On May 1, 2014, the separatists lost Kharkiv.
This day they announced as the apogee of their “Russian spring”. At May Day they planned a march that meant to end with the seizure of power in the city. But something went wrong…
In the morning of May 1, 2014 several buses with “black men” stopped in Kharkiv. We had almost no weapons at that time, only pumps and carbines. But we were ready to stop the separatists’ march. Cut pieces of fittings were painted black. Our black guards uniform (the cheapest one), the same color of balaclava and black metal fittings made us a horror in the eyes of the Kharkiv separatists. If that march took place, the events would probably be no less bloody than the next day in Odesa.
But the march did not happen. The separatists got scared. They still remembered the fight on Rymarska. The rumors of “black men” sounded far worse than reality. The horror increased especially when we posted our video announcement “Ukrainian Right May Day”.
All day we were driving around the city and searched for the separatist militants. There were a couple of minor fights, but no more. That day, they just fled the city. Some of them were hiding in Moscow, Donbas. Some lay underground. These were the most dangerous. There were no more open attempts to capture the city. Ukrainian May Day defeated the “Russian spring”. Separatism in the Eastern capital has not been completely eradicated, but since that day it has acted only secretly.
It would seem that nothing outstanding has happened that day. But this “nothing” determined the further history of the city. Kharkiv escaped the difficult fate of Donbas and remained Ukrainian.