Horror in Odessa as Fire Shatters Jewel of Czarist Russia

Vladimir Kiriyev says he was walking with his children near their apartment in Odessa when he saw an attack on a pro-Russia camp as the assailants backing Ukrainian unity set tents on fire and beat everyone who tried to flee.

That was just one in a series of clashes in Ukraine’s third-largest city on May 2 that culminated in the deaths of at least 40 pro-Russian activists who were chased into a building that went up in flames. The violence, not seen here since World War II, is fanning fear of a full-blown civil war like the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia that left more than 100,000 dead and millions more displaced in the 1990s.