KIEV, March 06. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine’s Security Service says the people’s governor of the eastern predominantly Russian-speaking Donetsk region, Pavel Gubarev, was arrested Thursday.

Gubarev was proclaimed governor of the heavily industrialized Donetsk region at a many-thousands-strong public rally on Donetsk’s Lenin Square March 1.

The regional branch of the Security Service has filed a criminal case against him on suspicions of appeals for changing the state borders of Ukraine.

Donetsk region, which is more broadly called Donbass across the former Soviet Union after the huge coalfields of the same name, has been the scene of numerous demonstrations of opponents of the new authorities in Kiev, which the local multiethnic population broadly believes to be illegitimate.