DONETSK: Ukraine new pro-Western leaders lost effective financial control over a vital eastern industrial region on Monday when pro-Russian rebels seized the central bank building in the separatist stronghold city of Donetsk.
The surprise offensive by dozens of Kalashnikov-wielding pro-Russian gunmen further complicated Kiev's deadly and thus-far inconclusive two-month campaign to reunify the fractured ex-Soviet state.
The riverbank city of nearly one million mostly Russian speakers has been overrun by insurgent and left largely untouched by army units since early April.
But the gunmen had until now only occupied administration buildings and had no access to the vast sums flowing through the government's tax collection service.
That threatened to change on Monday as masked guerrillas escorted personnel out of the National Bank of Ukraine in Donetsk.
"We have been preparing this for more than a month," Oleksandr Matyushyn a senior rebel commander disinguished by his camouflage jacket and a crossed hammers tattoo on his neck told AFP as five separatist gunmen stood guard at the bank's main entrance and staff filed out of the building.
Matyushyn said his unit had entered discussions with local administrators about transferring control over the local treasury and tax collection service to the separatist leader of self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic".
"We are gradually taking control of the banking system. Our specialists have been working quite a long time to come to this stage," he said.
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