DONETSK, Ukraine — Celebrations to mark Victory Day in Ukraine were eclipsed on Friday by reports that Ukrainian security forces had violently clashed with pro-Russian separatists in the southeastern port city of Mariupol, reportedly killing more than 20 people and wounding dozens more.  Ukraine’s acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said “about 20” pro-Russian fighters were killed and four captured during a fierce gun battle that erupted outside the city’s police station around 10:30 a.m. local time. On the Ukrainian side, “our losses were one killed, five wounded,” he added.  Mariupol online news portal and Reuters, however, have conflicting numbers. The outlets are reporting that two and three people were shot dead and at least eight more were wounded during a fierce gun battle.  Avakov said the clash began after some 60 rebels with automatic weapons attacked the city police headquarters in an attempt to seize the building “without any preliminary demands.” The building has changed hands several times in recent days. Following the two-hour gun battle, the building went up in flames.  A police station is ablaze in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, Friday May 9, 2014. Fighting between government forces and insurgents in Mariupol has left several people dead.  Several witnesses, including journalists, also reported seeing pools of blood in the streets and at least one body lying outside the police building.  The body of a police officer lies outside a police station in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, Friday, May 9, 2014. Fighting between government forces and insurgents in Mariupol has left several people dead.  WARNING: Graphic. Video from #Mariupol shows one man bleeding on the ground, possibly dead http://t.co/tdp50iCLGg http://t.co/u4xtdjP3Xb  — Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) May 9, 2014  Russian state news agency RT reported that one of its videographers at the scene was shot in the stomach and was being treated in an area hospital.  According to Interfax, a pro-Russian rebel who took part in the shootout said Ukrainian forces used heavy guns to shell the building. His statement was corroborated by several other witnesses who said the Ukrainian forces used high-powered guns mounted atop their armored vehicles to suppress the rebel fighters who have besieged the industrial city of about a half-million people. They said some of those wounded during the skirmish were civilians.  One video apparently shows a Ukrainian officer firing a rocket-propelled grenade at the rebel-held police building.  Oleg Liashko, Ukraine's Radical Party leader and a presidential candidate who was in Mariupol at the time, wrote on Facebook that the Kremlin-backed rebels used automatic weapons and grenades against the Ukrainian forces. Several local police who he called “traitors” after defecting to the pro-Russian side also took part in the shootout, he said.  The politician also said the rebels kidnapped Mariupol police chief Valeriy Androshchuk during the shootout. Androshchuk, Liashko said, was taken by “terrorists” from the “burning police station in a car that was cut off by a sports utility vehicle."  "The fighters stabbed the jeep driver with a knife and placed Androshchuk inside the car trunk and drove off in an unknown direction,” he added.  The central government in Kiev has not released an official report of the event, and police could not immediately be reached for comment.  The shootout is merely the latest in a string of gun battles that have occurred in Ukraine’s eastern regions over the course of several weeks, leaving several dead.  A mother of one of the detained pro-Russian activists pleads with police officers to free her son, in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, May 7, 2014.  Pro-Russian rebels and their supporters here have seized more than 20 key government buildings in at least 11 cities in the regions. They hope to vote in a referendum on Sunday, which is supposed to separate them from Ukraine’s central government in Kiev.  The violence occurred as communists, war veterans and pro-Russian groups gathered in cities across the former Soviet Union to celebrate the 69th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s capitulation to the Soviet Red Army during the Great Patriotic War (as World World II is known here). The patriotic holiday, commonly known as Victory Day, is celebrated every year with large parades and rallies.  In the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, several thousand people turned out to at war memorials and outside the pro-Russian separatist-held regional government building to commemorate the day. War veterans marched in uniforms festooned with shimmering medals of valor as others waved the flags of Russia, the Soviet Union and the so-called “Donetsk People's Republic,” the self-proclaimed state that will hold a referendum on independence from Kiev on Sunday.  People cheered and sang war hymns trumpeted from speakers mounted atop barricades wrapped in razor wire at the regional government headquarters, which the separatists have controlled for weeks, before the group marched to central Lenin Square.  A pro-Russian gunman leaving the commemoration of Victory Day in Donetsk, Ukraine, Friday, May 9, 2014.  During the march, pro-Russian rebel-appointed governor of the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” Denis Pushilin, told Mashable that Friday would not only be a day to celebrate the Red Army’s victory over the Nazis, but to rally citizens in support of the May 11 referendum.  “There will be a referendum the day after tomorrow. And there will be a good result,” Pushilin said.  The pro-Russian separatists here decided on Thursday to go ahead with the referendum as planned despite Putin’s call this week to push it back. The vote is supposed to decide the future of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. But the central government in Kiev does not recognize the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic,” has called the referendum a farce and said it will have no legitimate power, regardless of the outcome.  In Sevastopol, the Black Sea port city of some 300,000 in the southern Crimean region annexed by Russia in March, it was a dual celebration. Following a massive parade that included several thousand soldiers at Moscow’s Red Square, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Crimea to observe a large-scale navy parade in an apparent move to boast of Russia’s victory in bringing the peninsula into the Kremlin's fold.  Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives on a boat in Sevastopol, Crimea, Friday, May 9, 2014. Putin extolled the return of Crimea to Russia before tens of thousands Friday during his first trip to Crimea since its annexation. The triumphant visit was quickly condemned by Ukraine and NATO.  Shortly after Putin's visit to Crimea, the Ukrainian government condemned the Russian president, calling his visit "unauthorized" in a statement:  Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine expresses the strongest protest against today’s unauthorised visit by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, temporally occupied by Russia.  Ukraine considers this step to be a blatant disrespect by the Russian side for the legislation of Ukraine, international law; gross violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, the United Nations Charter, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution "On Territorial Integrity of Ukraine ", as well as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation of 1997.  This provocation makes yet another clear evidence that Russia has been consciously escalating tensions in Ukrainian-Russian relations and unwilling to bring bilateral disputes to diplomatic solution.  We demand the Russian side to return to the civilized way of international relations, listen to the decisive voice of international community, as well as repeal all the illegal acts on occupation and annexation of the part of Ukraine’s territory.  Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.  Christopher J. Miller is an editor at English-language newspaper the Kyiv Post in Ukraine.
For pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces, Victory Day was just another bloody day in the embattled eastern Ukraine.