What are we to make of this? The Czech-based Roma website Romea.cz [7] cites a report on German news agency Die Welt about an April 22 attack on Roma homes in the eastern Ukraine town of Slavyansk by pro-Russian separatists, who reportedly menaced residents at gunpoint, broke windows and fired shots, demanded gold and money, and voiced their intention to "purge" the area of "gypsies." Die Welt's own account only seems to be online (at least in English) at the aggregator WorldCrunch [8]. More mysteriously, the Romea.cz account quotes a local resident named Natasha Cherepovska describing the attack to the New York Times—yet a Google search [9] for the name or the text of the quote brings up no New York Times story. The report is all too plausible, given the attacks on Tatars [10] in the Crimea since the Russian seizure of the peninsula. But we note that there have apparently been attacks on Jews in eastern Ukraine both organized by pro-Russian agents to tar the Ukrainians [11] and by Ukrainian agents to tar the pro-Russians [12]. In other words, a completely murky, paranoid and poisonous atmosphere. We await more information on what happened in Slavyansk, and call upon Romea.cz to provide greater clarity—especially on the source of the cited Times story.
