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“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
— George Orwell, 1946
EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24
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FTR#1237 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: This program continues our coverage of the Ukraine war. The title comes from the late, brilliant political comedian Mort Sahl’s 1976 autobiography Heartland. One of New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s investigation of the assassination of the JFK.
A new piece by Bill Arkin in Newsweek presents information from Pentagon sources—speaking on condition of anonymity—that contradicts the MSM/Azov Zelensky/Biden claim that Russia is “indiscriminately bombing” civilians in Ukraine. That dynamic has been highlighted by the massive explosions observed at a mall in Kyiv. A mall that Russia claims was being used to store MLRS rocket launchers. It’s a claim confirmed by independent reporters, underscoring how much of the fighting in Ukraine’s cities is taking place because that’s where much of the military hardware is located.
The anonymous Pentagon officials Arkin spoke with said that Russia has actually been holding back from engaging in the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas. According to these officials, we are seeing a highly limited urban bombing campaign primarily focused on military targets.
” . . . . ‘We need to understand Russia’s actual conduct,’ says a retired Air Force officer, a lawyer by training who has been involved in approving targets for U.S. fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. The officer currently works as an analyst with a large military contractor advising the Pentagon and was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly. In the analyst’s view . . . the Russian military has actually been showing restraint in its long-range attacks. . . . As of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast, the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war). . . .”
With the Azov Regiment in charge of Ukrainian military operations in Mariupol, we should be braced for characteristic Azov behavior–bloody provocations or “False Flag” operations branded as Russian “War Crimes.’
Indeed “Azov” Zelensky’s presidential campaign was largely funded by Azov-financier Igor Kolomoisky, who also owns the TV network on which Zelensky burnished his media chops. (The election monitors for his election were Azov’s National Druzhyna Militia.)
In FTR#1236, we noted that there are no longer any international reporters in Mariupol and that the information the world receives about what is going on there comes from the Azov Regiment.
Max Blumenthal has penned an excellent, and altogether necessary, expose of the Azov Regiment’s probable false-flag operation in Mariupol.
“ . . . . A closer look reveals that local residents in Mariupol had warned three days before the March 16 incident that the theater would be the site of a false flag attack launched by the openly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which controlled the building and the territory around it. Civilians that escaped the city through humanitarian corridors have testified that they were held by Azov as human shields in area, and that Azov fighters detonated parts of the theater as they retreated. Despite claims of a massive Russian airstrike that reduced the building to ashes, all civilians appear to have escaped with their lives. . . .”
Another Gray Zone article gives insight into how the Mariupol theater provocation becomes accepted fact in the Western media.
Ostensibly an objective media voice, presenting factual, unbiased coverage of the Ukraine war, the BBC has twined with British intelligence, employing an overt Ukrainian “nationalist’–Orysia Khimiak–to craft a propagandized account of the combat in Ukraine.
“Before serving as a fixer and reporter for the BBC in Ukraine, Orysia Khimiak handled PR for a start-up called Reface which created what the Washington Post called a ‘reality distorting app’ now serving as ‘a kind of Ukrainian war-messaging tool.’ . . . . As The Grayzone reported in February 2021, the British broadcaster’s non-profit arm, BBC Media Action, participated in a covert UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) program explicitly designed to ‘weaken Russia.’ As seen below, UK FCDO documents revealed that BBC Media Action proposed working through a private British contractor called Aktis to cultivate and grow pro-NATO media in conflict areas like the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, now the focal point of fighting between pro-Russian forces and the Ukrainian military. . . .The BBC’s secret information warfare initiative had turned the network into an arm of British intelligence, operating as an actor in a foreign conflict which its broadcast media arm was simultaneously claiming to cover in an objective manner. Now, the BBC has shed any pretense of objectivity by hiring an overtly nationalist Ukrainian public relations operative to shape its coverage of one of the most heavily disputed incidents in a war filled with cynical deceptions.”
1. A new piece by Bill Arkin in Newsweek presents information from Pentagon sources—speaking on condition of anonymity—that contradicts the MSM/Azov Zelensky/Biden claim that Russia is “indiscriminately bombing” civilians in Ukraine. That dynamic has been highlighted by the massive explosions observed at a mall in Kyiv. A mall that Russia claims was being used to store MLRS rocket launchers. It’s a claim confirmed by independent reporters, underscoring how much of the fighting in Ukraine’s cities is taking place because that’s where much of the military hardware is located.
The anonymous Pentagon officials Arkin spoke with said that Russia has actually been holding back from engaging in the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas. According to these officials, we are seeing a highly limited urban bombing campaign primarily focused on military targets.
It’s why most of the airports around Kyiv remain undamaged and much of the basic infrastructure of the country continues to operate and much of the West of the country has been largely untouched.
This “limited engagement” is part of Russia’s strategy.
As these anonymous Pentagon officials also note, there is altogether devastating damage to some urban areas, notably Mariupol– primarily been from ground fighting and the use of artillery. And, of course, we have to keep in mind that some of the high profile damage in places like Mariupol, home of the Azov Battalion, might be self-inflicted.
For all of the talk we’re hearing about the Russian military being forced to engage in medieval siege warfare now that Ukraine has refused to collapse without a fight, the indiscriminate killing of civilians has not taken place.
So far, the Russian assault appears to have been intentionally restrained for the vast majority of Ukraine.
Key points of analysis and discussion:
- “ . . . . Russia’s conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage—and it reveals the Russian leader’s strategic balancing act. . . .”
- “ . . . . Instead, his goal is to take enough territory on the ground to have something to negotiate with, while putting the government of Ukraine in a position where they have to negotiate. . . .”
- “ . . . . ‘The destruction is massive,’ a senior analyst working at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) tells Newsweek, ‘especially when compared with what Europeans and Americans are used to seeing.’ . . . .”
- “ . . . . But, the analyst says, the damage associated with a contested ground war involving peer opponents shouldn’t blind people to what is really happening. (The analyst requested anonymity in order to speak about classified matters.) ‘The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.’ . . . .”
- “ . . . . In the capital, most observable to the west, Kyiv city authorities say that some 55 buildings have been damaged and that 222 people have died since February 24. It is a city of 2.8 million people. . . .”
- “ . . . . ‘We need to understand Russia’s actual conduct,’ says a retired Air Force officer, a lawyer by training who has been involved in approving targets for U.S. fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. The officer currently works as an analyst with a large military contractor advising the Pentagon and was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly. . . .”
- “ . . . . ‘If we merely convince ourselves that Russia is bombing indiscriminately, or [that] it is failing to inflict more harm because its personnel are not up to the task or because it is technically inept, then we are not seeing the real conflict.’ In the analyst’s view, though the war has led to unprecedented destruction in the south and east, the Russian military has actually been showing restraint in its long-range attacks. . . .”
- “ . . . . As of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast, the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weaponsin the first day of the 2003 Iraq war). The vast majority of the airstrikes are over the battlefield, with Russian aircraft providing “close air support” to ground forces. The remainder—less than 20 percent, according to U.S. experts—has been aimed at military airfields, barracks and supporting depots. . . .”
- “. . . . ‘I know it’s hard … to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is,’ says the DIA analyst. ‘But that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians, that perhaps he is mindful that he needs to limit damage in order to leave an out for negotiations.’ . . . .”
- “ . . . . Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24 with an air and missile attack targeted against some 65 airfields and military installations. On the first night, at least 11 airfields were attacked. Some 50 additional military installations and air defense sites were hit, including 18 early-warning radar facilities. . . .”
- “ . . . . In these initial salvos, a total of some 240 weapons were expended, including 166 air‑, ground‑, and sea-based missiles. Though there were a good number of longer-range bombers (flying from Russian soil), most of the airstrikes were shorter-range and most of the missiles launched were also short-range types of the Iskander (NATO SS-26 Stone) and Tochka (NATO SS-21 Scarab) classes. . . .”
- “ . . . . The breadth of the attack—north to south, east to west—led many observers to compare the opening bombardment to a pattern seen in U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where large salvos concentrating on air defenses and airfields had the intent of establishing air superiority, a shock strike that would then open the skies for follow-on bombing at will.When it came to Ukraine, not only did many observers ‘mirror-image’ Russian objectives to match U.S. practices, they also made premature (and incorrect) observations that Russia was fighting such a conflict. . . .”
- “ . . . . Even before Russian ground forces reached Kyiv and other cities, this narrative goes, the air and missile forces would have so damaged Ukraine—including its communications and other infrastructure needed for defenses to continue working—that it would secure victory on the ground. . . .”
- “ . . . . Russia has not achieved any of these goals. Though the outlines of its first night of strikes suggested an air superiority campaign and an intense and focused destruction of Ukraine’s military, after a month of war, continued targeting tells a different story. Russia still hasn’t completely knocked out the Ukrainian air force, nor has it established air superiority. Airfields away from the battlefield are mostly still operable and some (in major cities) haven’t been bombed at all. The fabric of communications in the country continues to operate intact. There has been no methodical Russian attack on transportation routes or bridges to impede Ukrainian ground defenses or supplies. Though electrical power plants have been hit, they are all in contested territory or near military installations and deployments. None have been intentionally targeted. . . .”
- “ . . . . In fact, there has been no methodical bombing campaign to achieve any systemic outcome of a strategic nature. Air and missile strikes, which initially seemed to tell one story, have almost exclusively been in direct support of ground forces. . . .”
- “ . . . . Russia did not bomb stationary air defense emplacements protecting cities. U.S. analysts say Putin’s generals were particularly reluctant to attack urban targets in Kyiv. As a result, regardless of the Kremlin’s plans—whether Russia was actually seeking air superiority or intended to limit damage in Kyiv—there is no question that Putin has had to revise the long-range attack plan. . . .”
- “ . . . . Over the course of almost four weeks, missiles fired at Kyiv have been scarce.Ukrainian media have reported just more than a dozen incidents involving Russian cruise and ballistic missiles intercepted over the city and its closest suburbs since February 24. And all of them, U.S. experts say, have been clearly headed for legitimate military targets. . . .”
- “ . . . . ‘The fact that the mobile S‑300 SAM systems are still operating is a powerful indictment of Russia’s ability to conduct dynamic or time-sensitive targeting,’ the Atlantic Council asserted this week in a military brief. . . .”
- “ . . . . The DIA analyst disagrees: ‘For whatever reason, clearly the Russians have been reluctant to strike inside the urban megalopolis of Kyiv. . . .”
- “ . . . . ‘Yes they might not be up to the U.S. task [in dynamic targeting] or in establishing air superiority … But this is the Russian air force, subordinate to the ground forces. And this war is different: it’s being fought on the ground, where everything strategic that Russia might destroy in front of its forces—bridges, communications, airfields, etc.—also becomes unusable to them as they move forward.’ . . . .”
- “ . . . . From the very beginning of air strikes, both U.S. analysts agree, some of the limited air and missile attacks have also had some internal logic. Take, for instance, the airfield at Hostomel, northwest of Kyiv. It wasn’t directly attacked because Russia initially used it to land paratroopers, with the hope of advancing to the capital city. Instead the airfield and the surrounding countryside became the scene a major battle, as Ukrainian forces mounted a fierce defense. . . .”
- “ . . . . In the south, Kherson airport also wasn’t attacked. The reason has become clear: Russia is now using that very airfield to stage its own forces. . . .”
- “ . . . . In Kyiv, only one of the major airports was struck, in Boryspil. The news media reported that the ‘international airport’ was hit, but the dual civil-military airfield is also home to Ukraine Air Force’s 15th Transport Wing, including the presidential Tu-134 jet that might have been used by Ukrainian President Zelensky if he chose to evacuate. The other major civilian Kyiv airport, Zhulyany, has never been attacked. Nor have two civil airports in Kharkiv (Ukraine’s second largest city) been attacked. . . .”
- “ . . . . The strikes inside major cities (Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa) have not only been limited, but the retired U.S. Air Force officer points out that even when long-range aviation—Russian Tu-95 ‘Bear’ bombers delivering cruise and hypersonic missiles —have flown strikes in western Ukraine, away from the battlefield, they have been directed at military targets. . . .”
- “ . . . . And there has been strategic logic, at least in Russia’s view. ‘They’ve been signaling,’ the retired officer says. ‘Western airfields [at Lutsk, L’viv, and Ivano-Frankivsk] were hit because they were the most likely steppingstones for donated fighter aircraft coming in from Poland and eastern European countries. When those targets were prepped,’ he adds, ‘there was also talk of a western no-fly zone where those [western] airfields might have been essential. . . .”
- “ . . . . ‘And the so-called peacekeeper training ground [in Yaroviv] was hit because it was the place where the ‘international legion’ was to have trained,” the officer says. ‘Moscow even announced that.’ . . .”
- “ . . . . Russia, the DIA analyst adds, has also been careful not to cause escalation onto Belorussian or Russian territory, or to provoke NATO.Despite operating from Belarus, Russian ground and air operations have mostly been confined to the southeastern portion of the country. And the attacks in western Ukraine, have been careful to avoid NATO airspace. For example, the Ukrainian airbase at Lutsk, home to the 204th Aviation Wing and just 70 miles south of the Belarus, was attacked March 13th by long-range bombers. The missiles were launched from the south, from over the Black Sea. . . .”
- “ . . . . ‘People are talking about Grozny [in Chechnya] and Aleppo [in Syria], and the razing of Ukrainian cities’ a second retired U.S. Air Force senior officer tells Newsweek. ‘But even in the case of southern cities, where artillery and rockets are within range of populated centers, the strikes seem to be trying to target Ukrainian military units, many of which by necessity operating from inside urban areas.’ . . .”
- “ . . . . He and the other analysts who spoke to Newsweekargue not only that the destruction is only a small fraction of what is possible, but also that they see a glimmer of hope in a fact-based analysis of what Russia has done. . . .”
- “ . . . . The second senior officer says that Putin obviously continues to apply pressure against Kyiv, but Russia hasn’t shifted much of its own forces and has continued to back off bombing in the city proper. ‘In that, maybe he is leaving room for a political settlement,’ the officer says. . . .”
- “ . . . . ‘I’m frustrated by the current narrative—that Russia is intentionally targeting civilians, that it is demolishing cities, and that Putin doesn’t care. Such a distorted view stands in the way of finding an end before true disaster hits or the war spreads to the rest of Europe,’ the second U.S. Air Force officer says. . . .”
- “ . . . . Heartbreaking images make it easy for the news to focus on the war’s damage to buildings and lives. But in proportion to the intensity of the fighting (or Russia’s capacity), things could indeed be much worse. ‘I know that the news keeps repeating that Putin is targeting civilians, but there is no evidence that Russia is intentionally doing so,’ says the DIA analyst. ‘In fact, I’d say that Russian could be killing thousands more civilians if it wanted to.’ . . .”
As destructive as the Ukraine war is, Russia is causing less damage and killing fewer civilians than it could, U.S. intelligence experts say.
Russia’s conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage—and it reveals the Russian leader’s strategic balancing act. If Russia were more intentionally destructive, the clamoring for U.S. and NATO intervention would be louder. And if Russia were all-in, Putin might find himself with no way out. Instead, his goal is to take enough territory on the ground to have something to negotiate with, while putting the government of Ukraine in a position where they have to negotiate.
Understanding the thinking behind Russia’s limited attacks could help map a path towards peace, experts say.
In nearly a month since Russia invaded, dozens of Ukrainian cities and towns have fallen, and the fight over the country’s largest cities continues. United Nations human rights specialists say that some 900 civilians have died in the fighting (U.S. intelligence puts that number at least five times UN estimates). About 6.5 million Ukrainians have also become internally displaced (15 percent of the entire population), half of them leaving the country to find safety.
“The destruction is massive,” a senior analyst working at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) tells Newsweek, “especially when compared with what Europeans and Americans are used to seeing.”
But, the analyst says, the damage associated with a contested ground war involving peer opponents shouldn’t blind people to what is really happening. (The analyst requested anonymity in order to speak about classified matters.) “The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.”
In the capital, most observable to the west, Kyiv city authorities say that some 55 buildings have been damaged and that 222 people have died since February 24. It is a city of 2.8 million people.
“We need to understand Russia’s actual conduct,” says a retired Air Force officer, a lawyer by training who has been involved in approving targets for U.S. fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. The officer currently works as an analyst with a large military contractor advising the Pentagon and was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly.
“If we merely convince ourselves that Russia is bombing indiscriminately, or [that] it is failing to inflict more harm because its personnel are not up to the task or because it is technically inept, then we are not seeing the real conflict.”
In the analyst’s view, though the war has led to unprecedented destruction in the south and east, the Russian military has actually been showing restraint in its long-range attacks.
As of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast, the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war). The vast majority of the airstrikes are over the battlefield, with Russian aircraft providing “close air support” to ground forces. The remainder—less than 20 percent, according to U.S. experts—has been aimed at military airfields, barracks and supporting depots.
A proportion of those strikes have damaged and destroyed civilian structures and killed and injured innocent civilians, but the level of death and destruction is low compared to Russia’s capacity.
“I know it’s hard … to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is,” says the DIA analyst. “But that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians, that perhaps he is mindful that he needs to limit damage in order to leave an out for negotiations.”
Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24 with an air and missile attack targeted against some 65 airfields and military installations. On the first night, at least 11 airfields were attacked. Some 50 additional military installations and air defense sites were hit, including 18 early-warning radar facilities.
In these initial salvos, a total of some 240 weapons were expended, including 166 air‑, ground‑, and sea-based missiles. Though there were a good number of longer-range bombers (flying from Russian soil), most of the airstrikes were shorter-range and most of the missiles launched were also short-range types of the Iskander (NATO SS-26 Stone) and Tochka (NATO SS-21 Scarab) classes.
The breadth of the attack—north to south, east to west—led many observers to compare the opening bombardment to a pattern seen in U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where large salvos concentrating on air defenses and airfields had the intent of establishing air superiority, a shock strike that would then open the skies for follow-on bombing at will. When it came to Ukraine, not only did many observers “mirror-image” Russian objectives to match U.S. practices, they also made premature (and incorrect) observations that Russia was fighting such a conflict.
Even before Russian ground forces reached Kyiv and other cities, this narrative goes, the air and missile forces would have so damaged Ukraine—including its communications and other infrastructure needed for defenses to continue working—that it would secure victory on the ground.
Russia has not achieved any of these goals. Though the outlines of its first night of strikes suggested an air superiority campaign and an intense and focused destruction of Ukraine’s military, after a month of war, continued targeting tells a different story. Russia still hasn’t completely knocked out the Ukrainian air force, nor has it established air superiority. Airfields away from the battlefield are mostly still operable and some (in major cities) haven’t been bombed at all. The fabric of communications in the country continues to operate intact. There has been no methodical Russian attack on transportation routes or bridges to impede Ukrainian ground defenses or supplies. Though electrical power plants have been hit, they are all in contested territory or near military installations and deployments. None have been intentionally targeted.
In fact, there has been no methodical bombing campaign to achieve any systemic outcome of a strategic nature. Air and missile strikes, which initially seemed to tell one story, have almost exclusively been in direct support of ground forces.
“Think of the Russian Air force as flying artillery,” says the retired senior U.S. Air Force officer, who communicated with Newsweek via email. “It’s not an independent arm. It has undertaken no strategic air campaign as American observers might be used to from the last 30 years of American conflict.”
Ukrainian air defenses, both fixed and mobile missiles, have proven resilient and deadly.
“The Air Defense’s survivability and efficacy have surprised many, not only in Kyiv, but also across the country,” Kyiv-based military expert Oleg Zhdanov told the Kyiv Independent.
…
Russia did not bomb stationary air defense emplacements protecting cities. U.S. analysts say Putin’s generals were particularly reluctant to attack urban targets in Kyiv.
As a result, regardless of the Kremlin’s plans—whether Russia was actually seeking air superiority or intended to limit damage in Kyiv—there is no question that Putin has had to revise the long-range attack plan.
Over the course of almost four weeks, missiles fired at Kyiv have been scarce. Ukrainian media have reported just more than a dozen incidents involving Russian cruise and ballistic missiles intercepted over the city and its closest suburbs since February 24. And all of them, U.S. experts say, have been clearly headed for legitimate military targets.
“The fact that the mobile S‑300 SAM systems are still operating is a powerful indictment of Russia’s ability to conduct dynamic or time-sensitive targeting,” the Atlantic Council asserted this week in a military brief.
The DIA analyst disagrees: “For whatever reason, clearly the Russians have been reluctant to strike inside the urban megalopolis of Kyiv.
“Yes they might not be up to the U.S. task [in dynamic targeting] or in establishing air superiority … But this is the Russian air force, subordinate to the ground forces. And this war is different: it’s being fought on the ground, where everything strategic that Russia might destroy in front of its forces—bridges, communications, airfields, etc.—also becomes unusable to them as they move forward.”
From the very beginning of air strikes, both U.S. analysts agree, some of the limited air and missile attacks have also had some internal logic. Take, for instance, the airfield at Hostomel, northwest of Kyiv. It wasn’t directly attacked because Russia initially used it to land paratroopers, with the hope of advancing to the capital city. Instead the airfield and the surrounding countryside became the scene a major battle, as Ukrainian forces mounted a fierce defense.
In the south, Kherson airport also wasn’t attacked. The reason has become clear: Russia is now using that very airfield to stage its own forces.
In Kyiv, only one of the major airports was struck, in Boryspil. The news media reported that the “international airport” was hit, but the dual civil-military airfield is also home to Ukraine Air Force’s 15th Transport Wing, including the presidential Tu-134 jet that might have been used by Ukrainian President Zelensky if he chose to evacuate. The other major civilian Kyiv airport, Zhulyany, has never been attacked. Nor have two civil airports in Kharkiv (Ukraine’s second largest city) been attacked.
Russia started the war with some 300 combat aircraft in Belarus and western Russia within range of Ukraine. Those and other aircraft pulled into the war have been flying about 80 strike sorties (individual flights) daily. Ukraine claims that 95 of those Russian aircraft have been lost, either shot down by air defenders or due to human error and technical problems. (Russia has moved additional aircraft from other bases to replenish most of its losses.)
The strikes inside major cities (Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa) have not only been limited, but the retired U.S. Air Force officer points out that even when long-range aviation—Russian Tu-95 “Bear” bombers delivering cruise and hypersonic missiles —have flown strikes in western Ukraine, away from the battlefield, they have been directed at military targets.
And there has been strategic logic, at least in Russia’s view.
“They’ve been signaling,” the retired officer says. “Western airfields [at Lutsk, L’viv, and Ivano-Frankivsk] were hit because they were the most likely steppingstones for donated fighter aircraft coming in from Poland and eastern European countries. When those targets were prepped,” he adds, “there was also talk of a western no-fly zone where those [western] airfields might have been essential.
“And the so-called peacekeeper training ground [in Yaroviv] was hit because it was the place where the ‘international legion’ was to have trained,” the officer says. “Moscow even announced that.”
Russia, the DIA analyst adds, has also been careful not to cause escalation onto Belorussian or Russian territory, or to provoke NATO. Despite operating from Belarus, Russian ground and air operations have mostly been confined to the southeastern portion of the country. And the attacks in western Ukraine, have been careful to avoid NATO airspace. For example, the Ukrainian airbase at Lutsk, home to the 204th Aviation Wing and just 70 miles south of the Belarus, was attacked March 13th by long-range bombers. The missiles were launched from the south, from over the Black Sea. . . .
. . . . Evidence on the battlefield, where there has been grinding fight for territory—in Kharkiv, in the contested front line towns like Mariupol, Mikolaiiv, and Sumy in the east; and Chernihiv northeast of Kyiv—indicates that civilian deaths have been much higher where ground forces are operating.
Even though the majority of Russian airstrikes have taken place in these areas, the increased civilian harm is due to the use of artillery and multiple rocket launchers, not Russian air or long-range missile strikes.
“People are talking about Grozny [in Chechnya] and Aleppo [in Syria], and the razing of Ukrainian cities” a second retired U.S. Air Force senior officer tells Newsweek. “But even in the case of southern cities, where artillery and rockets are within range of populated centers, the strikes seem to be trying to target Ukrainian military units, many of which by necessity operating from inside urban areas.”
The officer requested anonymity because he is being privately briefed on the war by the Pentagon and is not authorized to speak to the news media.
He and the other analysts who spoke to Newsweek argue not only that the destruction is only a small fraction of what is possible, but also that they see a glimmer of hope in a fact-based analysis of what Russia has done.
“I was initially puzzled as to why more long-range missiles haven’t been sent into Kyiv and other major cities such as Odesa, and also why long-range aviation hasn’t been used more in strategic attacks,” says the second senior officer. “But then I had to shift to see the war through [Vladimir] Putin’s eyes.”
“Caught with his pants down, perhaps Putin indeed pivoted after he realized that Ukraine wasn’t going to be a cakewalk and that Kyiv wasn’t conquerable. Maybe he decided to solely focus on taking territory along the periphery and linking up his consolidations in the south, to be in a position to hold enough territory to extract concessions from Ukraine and the west—security guarantees or some demilitarized zone.”
The second senior officer says that Putin obviously continues to apply pressure against Kyiv, but Russia hasn’t shifted much of its own forces and has continued to back off bombing in the city proper.
“In that, maybe he is leaving room for a political settlement,” the officer says.
Sunday, Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN he is prepared to talk to the Russian president. “I’m ready for negotiations with him. I was ready for the last two years. And I think that without negotiations, we cannot end this war,” said Zelensky.
The fact that both sides are talking, experts say, indicates not only how shocked they are by the destructiveness of a land war in Europe, but are also stymied in achieving their military objectives. As Russia advances, it is running out of supplies. Its forces are also exhausted. As Ukraine continues its valiant defense, it too is reaching the limits of human endurance, facing major losses and running low on ammunition.
It is now absolutely clear, all U.S. observers agree, that Putin and his generals overestimated their own military prowess while grossly underestimating Ukraine’s defenses.
“I’m frustrated by the current narrative—that Russia is intentionally targeting civilians, that it is demolishing cities, and that Putin doesn’t care. Such a distorted view stands in the way of finding an end before true disaster hits or the war spreads to the rest of Europe,” the second U.S. Air Force officer says.
Heartbreaking images make it easy for the news to focus on the war’s damage to buildings and lives. But in proportion to the intensity of the fighting (or Russia’s capacity), things could indeed be much worse.
“I know that the news keeps repeating that Putin is targeting civilians, but there is no evidence that Russia is intentionally doing so,” says the DIA analyst. “In fact, I’d say that Russian could be killing thousands more civilians if it wanted to.”
“I’m no com-symp,” the analyst says. “Russia is dead wrong, and Putin needs to be punished. But in terms of concluding the war in a way that both sides can accept and where we don’t see Armageddon, the air and missile war provides positive signs.”
Every war is unique and awful, and Ukraine is no different. But Russia’s choice to modulate its destructiveness is an important counterintuitive element. Vladimir Putin can’t easily win; he can’t accept loss or retreat; and he can’t escalate. He has to keep destruction and pressure at a very careful, just-bad-enough level to keep some advantage.
“I know it’s thin consolation that it could be a lot worse,” the DIA analyst says, “but to understand how that is the case should really change people’s perspectives, even inside the U.S. government, as to how to end this.”
2. With the Azov Regiment in charge of Ukrainian military operations in Mariupol, we should be braced for characteristic Azov behavior–bloody provocations or “False Flag” operations branded as Russian “War Crimes.’
Indeed “Azov” Zelensky’s presidential campaign was largely funded by Azov-financier Igor Kolomoisky, who also owns the TV network on which Zelensky burnished his media chops. (The election monitors for his election were Azov’s National Druzhyna Militia.)
In FTR#1236, we noted that there are no longer any international reporters in Mariupol and that the information the world receives about what is going on there comes from the Azov Regiment.
Max Blumenthal has penned an excellent, and altogether necessary, expose of the Azov Regiment’s probable false-flag operation in Mariupol.
Highlights of Blumenthal’s reportage:
- “ . . . . A closer look reveals that local residents in Mariupol had warned three days before the March 16 incident that the theater would be the site of a false flag attack launched by the openly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which controlled the building and the territory around it. . . .”
- “ . . . . Civilians that escaped the city through humanitarian corridors have testified that they were held by Azov as human shields in area, and that Azov fighters detonated parts of the theater as they retreated. Despite claims of a massive Russian airstrike that reduced the building to ashes, all civilians appear to have escaped with their lives. . . .”
- “ . . . . Video of the attack on the theater remains unavailable at the time of publication; only photographs of the damaged structure can be viewed. The Russian Ministry of Defense has denied conducting an airstrike on the theater, asserting that the site had no military value and that no sorties were flown in the area on March 16. . . .”
- “ . . . . Kiev’s most emotionally potent allegation so far – that Russia deliberately bombed innocent children cowering inside a theater – has been undercut by testimonies from Mariupol residents and a widely viewed Telegram message explicitly foreshadowing a false flag attack on the building. . . .”
- “ . . . . On March 7, an Azov Battalion commander named Denis Prokopenko appeared on camera from Mariupol with an urgent message. Published on Azov’s official YouTube channel and delivered in English over the sound of occasional artillery launches, Prokopenko declared that the Russian military was carrying out a ‘genocide’ against the population of Mariupol, which happens to be 40 percent ethnic Russian. . . .”
- “ . . . . Prokopenko then demanded that Western nations ‘create a no fly zone over Ukraine support[ed] with the modern weapons.’ It was clear from Prokopenko’s plea that Azov’s position was growing more dire by the day. . . .”
- “ . . . . As Russia’s military rapidly degraded Azov positions throughout the second week of March 2022, Azov soldiers apparently directed elderly civilians as well as women and children into the wardrobe hall of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol. . . .”
- “ . . . . On March 12, a chilling message appeared on the Telegram channel of Dmitriy Steshen, a correspondent reporting from Mariupol for the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. According to Steshen, local residents told him an alleged Russian bombing of the Turkish-built Kanuni Sultan Suleyman mosque in Mariupol that day was a false flag intended to ‘drag Turkey into the war,’ and warned that a false flag attack on the Mariupol Drama Theater was imminent. . . .”
- ” . . . On March 12, Western outlets like the Associated Press repeated Ukrainian government claims that the Turkish mosque in Mariupol had been shelled by Russia with 80 civilians inside, including children. However, Turkish state media revealed that the Ukrainian government had misled Western reporters. The Kanuni Sultan Suleyman Mosque was not only fully intact, it had never been hit by Russian fire. ‘Our mosque remained undamaged,’ Ismail Hacioglu, head of the mosque’s association, told Turkey’s Andalou Agency on March 12. . . .”
- “ . . . . Just hours after Zelensky’s address, news arrived directly from the Azov Battalion’s press department that Russia had bombed the theater in Mariupol. With a monopoly over information from the scene of the supposed attack, with no other news outlets present, Azov’s press department disseminated photos of the destroyed building to media across the world. . . .”
- “ . . . . One day before the bombing, on March 15, a group of military-aged men were photographed in front of the Mariupol theater. No women were visible anywhere in the image. The men can be seen placing pallets against the side of the building, ferrying large objects across the theater grounds, and cutting down a fir tree. . . .”
- ” . . . . According to Human Rights Watch’s report on the theater incident, which contained no local testimony gathered after the attack, the men were ‘cook[ing] food on an open fire and collect[ing] water in buckets.’ As seen below, pallets and other objects were piled against the same area of the building hit by an explosive charge the following day. . . .”
- “ . . . . While the theater appeared to have been heavily damaged – ‘they bombed the building to ashes,’ claimed Ponomarenko – it turned out that not one person was killed by the blast. ‘It’s a miracle,’ the Kyiv Independent reporter chirped. . . .”
- “ . . . . Further, ABC claimed the theater had been hit by Russian artillery shelling, not an ‘air dropped Russian bomb’ as Ponomarenko and many others have claimed. Ukrainian media, meanwhile, has expressed confusion over the incident. The outlet 0629 has attempted to explain away the mysterious disappearance of the thousand civilians said to have been in the theater by claiming they were evacuated to the city of Zaporozhye a day before the supposed attack. ‘we are waiting for the official verified information and do not rush to conclusions,’ the paper declared. . . .”
- “ . . . . ‘When [Azov soldiers] were leaving, they destroyed the drama theater’ The Azov fighters were simply hiding behind us,’ she told a reporter. ‘We were their human shields, that’s it. They were breaking everything, all around us, they were not letting us outside. We spent 15 days in a basement, with kids… They gave us no water, nothing.’ . . .”
- ” . . . . Describing how the Azov Battalion placed its tanks in front of local bomb shelters, the woman offered a revealing detail: ‘When they were leaving’ she said, referring to the Azov Battalion, ‘they destroyed the drama theatre. People with shrapnel were brought to us.’ . . . .”
- “ . . . . Numerous evacuees echoed the woman’s testimony about Azov holding Mariupol civilians as hostages, and said they were targeted with gunfire as they escaped through humanitarian corridors. ‘They burned everything,’ an elderly woman recalled to Russian media. ‘They bombed [my] whole apartment…. They broke in and are sitting there, making Molotov cocktails. I wanted to come in, to take my things, but they told me: ‘No, you have no business here.’ . . . .”
Testimony by evacuated Mariupol residents and warnings of a false flag attack undermine the Ukrainian government’s claims about a Russian bombing of a local theater sheltering civilians.
Western media have reported that Russia’s military deliberately attacked the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, claiming that it was filled with civilians and marked with signs reading “children” on its grounds.
The supposed bombing took place just as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to US Congress for a no fly zone, fueling the chorus for direct military confrontation with Russia and apparently inspiring President Joseph Biden to brand Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, as a “war criminal.”
A closer look reveals that local residents in Mariupol had warned three days before the March 16 incident that the theater would be the site of a false flag attack launched by the openly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which controlled the building and the territory around it.
Civilians that escaped the city through humanitarian corridors have testified that they were held by Azov as human shields in area, and that Azov fighters detonated parts of the theater as they retreated. Despite claims of a massive Russian airstrike that reduced the building to ashes, all civilians appear to have escaped with their lives.
Video of the attack on the theater remains unavailable at the time of publication; only photographs of the damaged structure can be viewed. The Russian Ministry of Defense has denied conducting an airstrike on the theater, asserting that the site had no military value and that no sorties were flown in the area on March 16.
While the Russian military operation in Ukraine has triggered a humanitarian crisis in Mariupol, it is clear that Russia gained nothing by targeting the theater, and virtually guaranteed itself another public relations blow by targeting a building filled with civilians – including ethnic Russians.
Azov, on the other hand, stood to benefit from a dramatic and grisly attack blamed on Russia. In full retreat all around Mariupol and facing the possibility of brutal treatment at the hands of a Russian military hellbent on “de-Nazification,” its fighters’ only hope seemed to lie in triggering direct NATO intervention.
The same sense of desperation informed Zelensky’s carefully scripted address to Congress, in which he invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and played a heavily produced video depicting civilian suffering to make the case for a no fly zone.
By instigating Western public outrage over grisly Russian war crimes, Ukraine’s government is clearly aiming to generate enough pressure to overcome the Biden administration’s reluctance to directly confront Russia’s military.
But Kiev’s most emotionally potent allegation so far – that Russia deliberately bombed innocent children cowering inside a theater – has been undercut by testimonies from Mariupol residents and a widely viewed Telegram message explicitly foreshadowing a false flag attack on the building.
Azov Battalion fighters grow desperate in Mariupol, plea for Western military intervention
The strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol has been held by the Azov Battalion since 2014. Since its seizure, it has served as a political and military base for the ultra-nationalist paramilitary as it launched assaults on pro-Russian separatists in the breakaway republic of Donetsk.
Gathered from the ranks of extreme right activists that provided protesters with street muscle during the 2013–14 Euromaidan coup, the Azov Battalion has been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard by the country’s Interior Ministry. It was founded by the openly fascist organizer Andriy Biletsky, who has vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen.”
With the Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel symbol emblazoned on their uniforms and flags, Azov fighters make no secret of their ideological goals. Despite having been identified by the FBI, US Congress, and its own fighters as a neo-Nazi unit, and implicated in an array of sordid human rights violations, Azov has collaborated openly with US and Canadian military trainers.
Having accused Azov of seeking to exterminate the ethnic Russians of Donbas, Putin has marked its base in Mariupol as the front line of his stated campaign to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Since Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, the city become the site of ferocious urban fighting, with Russian special forces and Donetsk People’s Republic People’s Militia forces waging a block-by-block fight for control as artillery rained down on Azov positions.
On March 7, an Azov Battalion commander named Denis Prokopenko appeared on camera from Mariupol with an urgent message. Published on Azov’s official YouTube channel and delivered in English over the sound of occasional artillery launches, Prokopenko declared that the Russian military was carrying out a “genocide” against the population of Mariupol, which happens to be 40 percent ethnic Russian.
Prokopenko then demanded that Western nations “create a no fly zone over Ukraine support[ed] with the modern weapons.” It was clear from Prokopenko’s plea that Azov’s position was growing more dire by the day.
As Russia’s military rapidly degraded Azov positions throughout the second week of March 2022, Azov soldiers apparently directed elderly civilians as well as women and children into the wardrobe hall of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol.
A video filmed inside the dimly lit building on March 11 featured a local man claiming that one thousand civilians were trapped inside and demanding a humanitarian corridor to allow them to escape. Only a small group of civilians could be seen in the video, however.
“I’m begging you to stop all this, give us the corridor to get people out, to get out women, kids, the wounded…” a bespectacled narrator (seen below) declared in the video.
Since Russia launched its invasion, Azov Battalion soldiers have been filmed preventing civilians from leaving Mariupol – even forcing men out of their cars and brutally assaulting them while they attempted to break through the paramilitary’s checkpoints. If testimony from many Mariupol residents was to be believed, Azov had used many of them as human shields.
Ukrainian neo-Nazi in Mariupol tells girl about cancellation of evacuation, “say thank you for not being shot” Azov’s battalion hiding behind civilians pic.twitter.com/2ypQwr4t9J— ZOKA (@200_zoka) March 5, 2022
Days before Mariupol theater incident, chilling warnings of a false flag “provocation”
On March 12, a chilling message appeared on the Telegram channel of Dmitriy Steshen, a correspondent reporting from Mariupol for the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.
According to Steshen, local residents told him an alleged Russian bombing of the Turkish-built Kanuni Sultan Suleyman mosque in Mariupol that day was a false flag intended to “drag Turkey into the war,” and warned that a false flag attack on the Mariupol Drama Theater was imminent.
The Telegram message read as follows:
“Look at what our readers from Mariupol sent us. If the information can be verified, it needs to be highlighted [for the media]:
‘Zelensky prepares two [false flag] provocations in Mariupol!!! One of the [false flag] provocation is against the citizens of Turkey, who hid in the mosque built by Akhmetov, and this provocation has already begun by the Ukrainian artillery gunners shelling the grounds of the mosque, from their positions at [Zinsteva] Balka in Nizhniaya [Lower] Kirvoka. Zelensky was unable to drag the EU, USA and UK into the war against the Russian Federation. Now, Zelensky is trying to drag Turkey into the war, pinning his hopes on the explosive emotional character and the love the faithful feel for their sacred shrines.
The second [false flag] provocation Zelensky is preparing for use by Western media, after unsuccessful provocation with the [Mariupol] maternity hospital, Ukrainian soldiers, together with the administration of the Drama Theater, gathered women, children, and the elderly from Mariupol in the Drama Theater building, so as to – given a good opportunity – detonate the building and then scream around the world that this was by the Russian Federation air force and that there should be an immediate ‘no fly zone’ over Ukraine.’”
Steshin’s message recounting the warnings from Mariupol residents has been seen by over 480,000 Telegram users. It is below and can also be viewed here.
[see screenshot of Telegram post]
On March 12, Western outlets like the Associated Press repeated Ukrainian government claims that the Turkish mosque in Mariupol had been shelled by Russia with 80 civilians inside, including children.
However, Turkish state media revealed that the Ukrainian government had misled Western reporters. The Kanuni Sultan Suleyman Mosque was not only fully intact, it had never been hit by Russian fire.
“Our mosque remained undamaged,” Ismail Hacioglu, head of the mosque’s association, told Turkey’s Andalou Agency on March 12.
Still filled with civilians, the Mariupol theater was next on somebody’s target list.
As Zelensky begs Congress for military intervention, news of a theater attack
Less than 48 hours after the debunked claims of a Russian attack on the mosque in Mariupol were introduced, humanitarian corridors finally opened up around the city. The flight of thousands of civilians toward Russian military positions further weakened the Azov Battalion, which was using Mariupol’s residents as collateral in its bid to compel a no fly zone.
On March 16, with his military collapsing under the Russian onslaught, the Ukrainian president and famed comedian-actor Zelensky appeared by video for a carefully scripted, elaborately produced presentation before an assembly of awestruck US members of Congress.
“I have a dream. These words are known to each of you today. I can say I have a need. I need to protect our sky,” Zelensky proclaimed. The Ukrainian president thus invoked the most famous words of America’s most revered antiwar activist, Martin Luther King Jr., to appeal for a no fly zone that would bring the nuclear-armed militaries of the US and Russia into direct confrontation.
Just hours after Zelensky’s address, news arrived directly from the Azov Battalion’s press department that Russia had bombed the theater in Mariupol.
With a monopoly over information from the scene of the supposed attack, with no other news outlets present, Azov’s press department disseminated photos of the destroyed building to media across the world.
The Azov Battalion’s watermark can be seen clearly in the lower right hand corner of the image below. Azov’s photo was republished by international outlets including Sky News, but with the paramilitary’s brand cropped out. When South China Morning Post ran the image, it removed the watermark and credited “Azov Battalion via AP.”
Among the first English language media figures to convey the Ukrainian government’s narrative of the incident to a mass audience was Illia Ponomarenko, a Kiev-based, US-trained reporter who has managed to rack up over a million Twitter followers since Russia’s invasion began.
The famous Drama Theater in Mariupol.De-nazified by a Russian air-dropped bomb today, on March 16, 2022.Fu ck you Russia. You’re going to pay for this. pic.twitter.com/ZQuGW6hL55— Illia Ponomarenko ???? (@IAPonomarenko) March 16, 2022
See this red roof?It’s a drama theater in Mariupol, we called it “the Dram.”See those little letters on the square? They read “KIDS” in Russian.That was a message to Russian bomber crews.But you know what – they bombed the building to ashes anyway.Because they’re animals. pic.twitter.com/xYOkC7CPm5— Illia Ponomarenko ???? (@IAPonomarenko) March 16, 2022
Ponomarenko happened to work for the Kyiv Independent, an outlet that has functioned as one of the most potent US information weapons in Ukraine. The paper had been set up with assistance from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US intelligence cut-out, and an “emergency grant” from its EU-funded cousin, the European Endowment for Democracy.
For his part, Ponomarenko has referred to the Azov Battalion as his “brothers in arms”, and boasted of “chilling out” with its fighters near “enemy lines.”
Seemingly swept up in the emotional maelstrom inspired by the news from Mariupol, President Joseph Biden blasted his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as a “war criminal,” a “murderous dictator,” and a “pure thug.”
Next, Human Rights Watch issued a hastily composed press release headlined, “Mariupol Theater Hit By Russian Attack Sheltered Hundreds.” The billionaire-backed NGO acknowledged it had not interviewed any Mariupol residents after the attack, and provided no evidence to demonstrate Russian responsibility. Indeed, HRW’s lone source fingering Russia as the culprit was the Ukrainian governor of Donetsk.
Was Russia’s military so bloodthirsty – and politically self-destructive – that it had deliberately targeted a building that was known to be filled with children? Or had the Mariupol residents’ prediction of a false flag from four days before come true?
Suspicious signs, holes in the Ukrainian government’s narrative emerge
Though Azov boasts a sophisticated press unit which films its exploits in the field, and soldiers are publishing even the most banal video of themselves on social media, footage of the theater bombing was nowhere to be found.
Photos supplied by Azov to media in Ukraine and abroad invariably depict the bombed-out theater without any people in sight, living or dead.
One day before the bombing, on March 15, a group of military-aged men were photographed in front of the Mariupol theater. No women were visible anywhere in the image. The men can be seen placing pallets against the side of the building, ferrying large objects across the theater grounds, and cutting down a fir tree.
According to Human Rights Watch’s report on the theater incident, which contained no local testimony gathered after the attack, the men were “cook[ing] food on an open fire and collect[ing] water in buckets.”
As seen below, pallets and other objects were piled against the same area of the building hit by an explosive charge the following day.
[see photo of objects piled next to theater before the bombing]
[see photo of same location afte the bombing]
While the theater appeared to have been heavily damaged – “they bombed the building to ashes,” claimed Ponomarenko – it turned out that not one person was killed by the blast.
“It’s a miracle,” the Kyiv Independent reporter chirped.
It’s a miracle – civilians that were hiding in a basement at the Drama Theater in Mariupol survived the air strike.Now they are getting evacuated from underneath the ruins.— Illia Ponomarenko ???? (@IAPonomarenko) March 17, 2022
In a 7‑minute-long March 17 package blending news and agitprop, ABC News claimed that all civilians had been saved from the theater, but that “hundreds were still missing.” Data on the modest-sized theater reproduced on its Ukrainian Wikipedia page puts its maximum seating capacity at 680, which raises questions about how “hundreds” could have fit in its basement.
Further, ABC claimed the theater had been hit by Russian artillery shelling, not an “air dropped Russian bomb” as Ponomarenko and many others have claimed.
Ukrainian media, meanwhile, has expressed confusion over the incident. The outlet 0629 has attempted to explain away the mysterious disappearance of the thousand civilians said to have been in the theater by claiming they were evacuated to the city of Zaporozhye a day before the supposed attack. “we are waiting for the official verified information and do not rush to conclusions,” the paper declared.
As Mariupol residents poured out of the city through the Russian military’s humanitarian corridors, testimonies began to emerge of ruthless Azov attacks on the fleeing civilians – and of a major deception at the local theater.
“When [Azov soldiers] were leaving, they destroyed the drama theater”
On March 17, a young woman delivered an eye-opening account of the situation inside Mariupol to ANNA, the Abkhazian Network News Agency.
“The Azov fighters were simply hiding behind us,” she told a reporter. “We were their human shields, that’s it. They were breaking everything, all around us, they were not letting us outside. We spent 15 days in a basement, with kids… They gave us no water, nothing.”
Describing how the Azov Battalion placed its tanks in front of local bomb shelters, the woman offered a revealing detail: “When they were leaving,” she said, referring to the Azov Battalion, “they destroyed the drama theatre. People with shrapnel were brought to us.”
Multiple people from #Mariupol said that Azov Nazis held civilians as human shields in the local theater. When the Russian advance forced them to retreat, they blew up the theater to frame Russian forces. This plan was published 3 days in advance by an Azov deserter. pic.twitter.com/Xh3C9vWNbC— Jake Morphonios ?? Blackstone Intelligence (@morphonios) March 17, 2022
Numerous evacuees echoed the woman’s testimony about Azov holding Mariupol civilians as hostages, and said they were targeted with gunfire as they escaped through humanitarian corridors.
“They burned everything,” an elderly woman recalled to Russian media. “They bombed [my] whole apartment…. They broke in and are sitting there, making Molotov cocktails. I wanted to come in, to take my things, but they told me: ‘No, you have no business here.’”
Asked by a reporter who attacked her and invaded her home, the woman replied, “Well, the Ukrainians, of course.”
#MARIUPOL—#2—Interviews with #Ukraine|ian refugees evacuating to #Russia-controlled zones.
[Transcript in 2nd tweet] 1/2#UkraineRussia #RussiaUkraine #UkraineRussiaWar #RussianUkrainianWar #MariupolDramaTheatre #UkraineCrisis #UkraineWar #UkraineUnderAttack #UkraineRussie pic.twitter.com/9JE3c0wrCX— Gleb Bazov (@gbazov) March 17, 2022
A man intercepted by an ANNA reporter after escaping Mariupol fought back tears as he pointed back to the Ukrainian military’s positions. “Azov, those bitches… people tried to evacuate… Azov… they executed the people… the monsters, scum… they shot them up, entire buses.”
“The Ukrainian army was shooting us, shooting at people,” said another man who fled Mariupol. “Right at our house.”
“Ukraine didn’t let us leave the city, we were blocked,” another evacuee stated. “The Ukrainian military arrived and said, under no circumstances are you to leave the city if the Russian Federation opens a humanitarian corridor for you. We want to continue to use you as a human shield.”
“We hate Ukraine! Thank you very much to the Russian army” Refugees from Mariupol tell how the Ukrainian army refused to open humanitarian ‘corridors’ from the city and shot at civilians.” pic.twitter.com/cYmpUBmKoX— Drebonacci (@andre_mihaescu) March 17, 2022 . . . .
3. BBC has become fully weaponized in its coverage of the Ukraine war and all things Russian.
- “ . . . . BBC reports on the suspicious destruction of a theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol were co-authored by a Ukrainian PR agent tied to a firm at the forefront of her country’s information warfare efforts. . . .”
- “ . . . . Before serving as a fixer and reporter for the BBC in Ukraine, Orysia Khimiak handled PR for a start-up called Reface which created what the Washington Post called a ‘reality distorting app’ now serving as ‘a kind of Ukrainian war-messaging tool.’. . . ”
- “ . . . . According to her Linkedin profile, Khimiak was the director of PR for Reface until October 2021. While working that job, Khimiak says she built ‘long-term relationships with editors and media representatives.’ She has also overseen a PR course for the Kiev-based Projector Institute, whose websitecurrently greets visitors with the slogan, ‘Glory to Ukraine. We Will Win.’. . .”
- “ . . . . Reface says its employees have joined “the territorial defense units and volunteers, and several teams have also joined the cyber troops to fight Russian propaganda.”
- “ . . . . With her wealth of media contacts, Khimiak now plays an instrumental role in shaping BBC’s coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian war. She has even shared a byline with the network’s Lviv-based correspondent, Hugo Bachega, co-authoring reports focused on demonstrating Russian culpability for the bombing of the Mariupol dramatic theater. . . .”
- “ . . . . Khimiak broadcasts her political bias in her Twitter bio, stating that she is ‘a fixer in Lviv for journalists for reporters who show honest image of Russian war against Ukraine. Ukraine will resist.’. . .”
- “ . . . . Khimiak’s Twitter background references the ‘Snake Island’ standoff which was widely reported by mainstream Western media outlets and heralded as a testament to Ukrainian military bravery. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, 13 Ukrainian border guards ‘defending an island base against the Russian Navy. ‘Russian warship, go fu ck yourself!’ were the soldiers’ final words, or so the story went. . . .”
- “ . . . . The Ukrainian guards ultimately turned up aliveas Russian captives. The entire story of courage under fire, including the Snake Island defenders’ famous last words, was a myth – one of so many stories fabricated or heavily distorted by pro-Ukraine elements that they have become impossible to count. . . .”
- “ . . . . On the Twitter page of the PR agent-turned-BBC correspondent Khimiak, the phony Snake Island stand-off is still treated as a real historical event. On her Twitter timeline, meanwhile, Khimiak takes creditfor the BBC’s reports on the destruction of the Mariupol dramatic theater. She and her co-author, Bachega, have yet to respond to a request for comment from The Grayzone. . . .”
- “ . . . . However, as this reporter detailed, the Mariupol theater was controlled by retreating Azov militants who were desperately appealing for military intervention by NATO. Several evacuees have claimed Azov detonated the theater to create the impression of a Russian attack that might draw the West into the war. Meanwhile, video of the alleged Russian attack on the theater has yet to materialize, and images of the supposed rescue of survivors or mass deaths at the scene remain unavailable. . . .”
- “ . . . . as this reporter detailed, the Mariupol theater was controlled by retreating Azov militants who were desperately appealing for military intervention by NATO. Several evacuees have claimed Azov detonated the theater to create the impression of a Russian attack that might draw the West into the war. Meanwhile, video of the alleged Russian attack on the theater has yet to materialize, and images of the supposed rescue of survivors or mass deaths at the scene remain unavailable. . . .”
- “ . . . . On March 25, nine days after the incident, CNN broadcastwhat it said was the first footage of the attack on the theater. The footage (seen below) was only 20 seconds long and showed a small group of civilians slowly ambling down a staircase to the ground floor of a building. A narrator can be heard behind the camera repeatedly referring to an airstrike but claiming that those on the first floor had survived. The video appeared to have been shot some time after the attack, as none of the smoldering present in video taken in the aftermath of the explosion could be seen. That video, seen below and taken on March 16, shows a smoking building with no rescuers or any people on site. . . .”
- “ . . . . CNN has also claimed that 300 civilians were killed inside the theater. The BBC also echoedthe official Ukrainian claim of 300 dead, but acknowledged, ‘Communication with Mariupol remains difficult so it is hard to independently verify information.’ Both networks relied on just a single source for the dramatic allegation: Petr Andryushchenko, an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol who recently saluted the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion as courageous ‘defenders’ of his city. The official’s evidence? According to the BBC, ‘officials were able to check the death toll because they had a record of who was in the theatre before the missile strike and had spoken to survivors.’. . .”
- “ . . . . Curiously, partisan Ukrainian reportersclaimed a day after the attack that everyone sheltering inside the theater’s basement had miraculously survived.[see screenshot of tweet] Also on March 17, Ukrainian government ombudswoman Ludmyla Denisova stated on Telegram: ‘The (theatre) building withstood the impact of a high-powered air bomb and protected the lives of people hiding in the bomb shelter.’ . . .”
- “ . . . . Among the most curious aspects of the incident of the theater was the disappearance of all vehicles from the parking lot in front of the structure hours before the explosion occurred.It seems that though they had been removed in order to avoid being damaged by the expected blast. . . .”
- “ . . . . On March 17, the day after the theater incident, Bechaga and Khimiak reportedthat ‘according to Ukrainian authorities, [the theater] was bombed by Russia…’ Their only local source said she left the theater one day before the building was destroyed – when most, if not all those on the grounds appeared to leave. ‘We knew we had to run away because something terrible would happen soon,’ she told the BBC. The BBC reporter and PR agent-turned-fixer co-authored a March 22 follow-up article quoting two local witnesses who said they were near the theater when a massive blast occurred. Both delivered cinematic accounts which open source intelligence analyst Michael Kobs called into question. . . .”
- “ . . . . The really questionable part of the story is the step-by-step narration of a process that in reality lasts maybe a tenth of a second. Here, however, a man has the time to throw himself into the path of the blast wave and flying splinters. twitter.com/FBIPLHwE9H— Michael Kobs (@MichaKobs) March 23, 2022. The male witness said he ‘saw plenty of people bleeding.’ However, in a time when nearly every person carries a smartphone, video of the harrowing scene he described has yet to surface. Finally, the BBC turned to McKenzie Intelligence, a private contractor founded by a former UK military intelligence officer, to hypothesize that a Russian 500-pound laser guided missile was used to destroy the theater. But as the open source analyst Kobs pointed out, ‘the center of destruction sits right in the middle of the stage, so two dumb bombs can’t possibly be to blame.’. . .”
- “ . . . . As The Grayzone reportedin February 2021, the British broadcaster’s non-profit arm, BBC Media Action, participated in a covert UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) program explicitly designed to ‘weaken Russia.’ As seen below, UK FCDO documents revealed that BBC Media Action proposed working through a private British contractor called Aktis to cultivate and grow pro-NATO media in conflict areas like the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, now the focal point of fighting between pro-Russian forces and the Ukrainian military. [see photo of document] The BBC’s secret information warfare initiative had turned the network into an arm of British intelligence, operating as an actor in a foreign conflict which its broadcast media arm was simultaneously claiming to cover in an objective manner. . . .”
BBC reports on the suspicious destruction of a theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol were co-authored by a Ukrainian PR agent tied to a firm at the forefront of her country’s information warfare efforts.
Before serving as a fixer and reporter for the BBC in Ukraine, Orysia Khimiak handled PR for a start-up called Reface which created what the Washington Post called a “reality distorting app” now serving as “a kind of Ukrainian war-messaging tool.”
According to her Linkedin profile, Khimiak was the director of PR for Reface until October 2021. While working that job, Khimiak says she built “long-term relationships with editors and media representatives.” She has also overseen a PR course for the Kiev-based Projector Institute, whose website currently greets visitors with the slogan, “Glory to Ukraine. We Will Win.”
With her wealth of media contacts, Khimiak now plays an instrumental role in shaping BBC’s coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian war. She has even shared a byline with the network’s Lviv-based correspondent, Hugo Bachega, co-authoring reports focused on demonstrating Russian culpability for the bombing of the Mariupol dramatic theater.
Khimiak broadcasts her political bias in her Twitter bio, stating that she is “a fixer in Lviv for journalists for reporters who show honest image of Russian war against Ukraine. Ukraine will resist.”
Khimiak’s Twitter background references the “Snake Island” standoff which was widely reported by mainstream Western media outlets and heralded as a testament to Ukrainian military bravery. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, 13 Ukrainian border guards “died heroically” defending an island base against the Russian Navy. “Russian warship, go fu ck yourself!” were the soldiers’ final words, or so the story went.
The Ukrainian guards ultimately turned up alive as Russian captives. The entire story of courage under fire, including the Snake Island defenders’ famous last words, was a myth – one of so many stories fabricated or heavily distorted by pro-Ukraine elements that they have become impossible to count.
On the Twitter page of the PR agent-turned-BBC correspondent Khimiak, the phony Snake Island stand-off is still treated as a real historical event. On her Twitter timeline, meanwhile, Khimiak takes credit for the BBC’s reports on the destruction of the Mariupol dramatic theater. She and her co-author, Bachega, have yet to respond to a request for comment from The Grayzone.
The incident at the Mariupol theater represents one of the most suspicious events of the war, with both the BBC and CNN citing a claim by one local Ukrainian official claiming hundreds were killed inside the building, but producing no evidence to verify it.
CNN, BBC rely on single official pro-Azov source for claim of hundreds dead
Russian forces have caused widespread destruction across Mariupol, where they have been engaged in intense street-by-street fighting with Ukrainian forces led by the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.
However, as this reporter detailed, the Mariupol theater was controlled by retreating Azov militants who were desperately appealing for military intervention by NATO. Several evacuees have claimed Azov detonated the theater to create the impression of a Russian attack that might draw the West into the war. Meanwhile, video of the alleged Russian attack on the theater has yet to materialize, and images of the supposed rescue of survivors or mass deaths at the scene remain unavailable.
On March 25, nine days after the incident, CNN broadcast what it said was the first footage of the attack on the theater. The footage (seen below) was only 20 seconds long and showed a small group of civilians slowly ambling down a staircase to the ground floor of a building. A narrator can be heard behind the camera repeatedly referring to an airstrike but claiming that those on the first floor had survived.
[broadcast see video]
The video appeared to have been shot some time after the attack, as none of the smoldering present in video taken in the aftermath of the explosion could be seen. That video, seen below and taken on March 16, shows a smoking building with no rescuers or any people on site.
CNN has also claimed that 300 civilians were killed inside the theater. The BBC also echoed the official Ukrainian claim of 300 dead, but acknowledged, “Communication with Mariupol remains difficult so it is hard to independently verify information.”
Both networks relied on just a single source for the dramatic allegation: Petr Andryushchenko, an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol who recently saluted the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion as courageous “defenders” of his city.
The official’s evidence? According to the BBC, “officials were able to check the death toll because they had a record of who was in the theatre before the missile strike and had spoken to survivors.”
Western media did not see fit to mention that Andryushchenko was likely far from Mariupol, as he recently acknowledged “that we are forced to move in order to preserve our intelligence network.” His boss, Mayor Vadim Boychenko, reportedly fled the city several days ago.
Curiously, partisan Ukrainian reporters claimed a day after the attack that everyone sheltering inside the theater’s basement had miraculously survived.
Also on March 17, Ukrainian government ombudswoman Ludmyla Denisova stated on Telegram: “The (theatre) building withstood the impact of a high-powered air bomb and protected the lives of people hiding in the bomb shelter.”
Four days before the incident, Mariupol locals informed Russian media that the theater was to be the site of a false flag operation aimed at generating Western outrage and triggering NATO intervention.
One day after the incident took place, civilians evacuated from Mariupol testified to Donbas-based media that Azov fighters blew the theater up as they retreated. They went on to detail how Azov used them as human shields throughout the fighting, even sniping at them as they tried to escape.
Interview with #Mariupol refugee?? You know what happened at the drama theatre?–They blew up the drama theatre. So, it wasn´t a bombing but an explosion?–Nothing landed on it, it exploded from inside. Did Azov let ppl leave the city?–They didn´t let anyone leave#Ukraine #Russia pic.twitter.com/jKQDj8BLWj— Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli (@ProfessorsBlogg) March 22, 2022
Among the most curious aspects of the incident of the theater was the disappearance of all vehicles from the parking lot in front of the structure hours before the explosion occurred. It seems that though they had been removed in order to avoid being damaged by the expected blast.
[see photos]
[see photos]
[see photos]Ukrainian PR agent-turned-BBC fixer hand picks local sources
Ignoring the accounts of evacuees from Mariupol who said Azov militants had destroyed the theater before retreating, the BBC’s correspondent, Bechaga, and his fixer, Khimiak, initially turned to official Ukrainian sources and a resident who was not present at the theater on the day of the supposed attack.
On March 17, the day after the theater incident, Bechaga and Khimiak reported that “according to Ukrainian authorities, [the theater] was bombed by Russia…” Their only local source said she left the theater one day before the building was destroyed – when most, if not all those on the grounds appeared to leave. “We knew we had to run away because something terrible would happen soon,” she told the BBC.
The BBC reporter and PR agent-turned-fixer co-authored a March 22 follow-up article quoting two local witnesses who said they were near the theater when a massive blast occurred. Both delivered cinematic accounts which open source intelligence analyst Michael Kobs called into question.
The really questionable part of the story is the step-by-step narration of a process that in reality lasts maybe a tenth of a second. Here, however, a man has the time to throw himself into the path of the blast wave and flying splinters. pic.twitter.com/FBIPLHwE9H— Michael Kobs (@MichaKobs) March 23, 2022
The male witness said he “saw plenty of people bleeding.” However, in a time when nearly every person carries a smartphone, video of the harrowing scene he described has yet to surface.
Finally, the BBC turned to McKenzie Intelligence, a private contractor founded by a former UK military intelligence officer, to hypothesize that a Russian 500-pound laser guided missile was used to destroy the theater. But as the open source analyst Kobs pointed out, “the center of destruction sits right in the middle of the stage, so two dumb bombs can’t possibly be to blame.”
…
BBC fixer/correspondent worked for firm behind top “Ukrainian-war messaging tool”
The BBC’s choice of an overtly nationalist Ukrainian public relations agent to guide its coverage of the war highlights the network’s absolute alignment with NATO’s objectives.
Before her gig with the British state broadcaster, Khimiak handled public relations for a Kiev-based start-up that created an AI app enabling users to superimpose their faces on the bodies of famous people. Called Reface, the app has become “a kind of Ukrainian-war messaging tool” disseminating anti-Russian push notifications to millions of users, the Washington Post reported.
According to the Post, “reality-distorting apps like Reface are a way for users to absorb messages they might otherwise tune out. People have their guards up with political news on those platforms… But they lower them for an immersive experience like face-swapping.”
Reface now says it is engaged in a “viral battle against #russianterrorists.”
Turned off the #Reface app in #russia. According to our analytics, its audience couldn’t care less about the destroyed houses & women & children killed in #Ukraine. Read about our viral info battle against #russianterrorists & #StandWithUkrainehttps://t.co/aO8Skrfg35— Reface (@reface_app) March 17, 2022
As part of its efforts against Russia, Reface said it has blocked Russian users from accessing the app. Further, “everyone who opens the app sees a message to support Ukraine” along with a banner “with information about the real losses of the Russian army.” A watermark with the Ukrainian flag and the hashtag #StandWithUkraine is layered over each video that appears on the app.
Reface says its employees have joined “the territorial defense units and volunteers, and several teams have also joined the cyber troops to fight Russian propaganda.”
For her part, the former Reface PR director Khimiak-turned-BBC correspondent/fixer has not been reticent about Ukraine’s Russian adversaries. “I just can’t accept opinion that not all Russians are bad. All I feel is pain and hate, because their silence is a consequence of this war,” she declared on Twitter in reaction to a video depicting rescuers trying to save a young girl from rubble.
Though BBC proclaims in its own statement of values, “Trust is the foundation of the BBC. We’re independent, impartial and honest,” its hiring of a Ukrainian public relations specialist who has confessed to hatred of all Russians to arrange its coverage of the war in the country is hardly surprising.
As The Grayzone reported in February 2021, the British broadcaster’s non-profit arm, BBC Media Action, participated in a covert UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) program explicitly designed to “weaken Russia.”
As seen below, UK FCDO documents revealed that BBC Media Action proposed working through a private British contractor called Aktis to cultivate and grow pro-NATO media in conflict areas like the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, now the focal point of fighting between pro-Russian forces and the Ukrainian military.
The BBC’s secret information warfare initiative had turned the network into an arm of British intelligence, operating as an actor in a foreign conflict which its broadcast media arm was simultaneously claiming to cover in an objective manner.
Now, the BBC has shed any pretense of objectivity by hiring an overtly nationalist Ukrainian public relations operative to shape its coverage of one of the most heavily disputed incidents in a war filled with cynical deceptions.
———-
Claims of war crimes are again being leveled against the Russian military in Ukraine. The alleged indiscriminate slaughter of civilians by withdrawing Russian troops took place in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, where Ukrainian authorities showed videos of a block where a mass grave of over 200 people was found. Torture chambers were discovered. But perhaps the most shocking of the alleged atrocities was a block where around 20 bodies were just laying in the road, shot execution-style in the head with hands bound. It was was the kind of scene that, if it really was done by Russian forces, would have effectively been not just been a war crime but effectively an act of terrorism. Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy has already called it an act of genocide with Ukraine’s foreign minister declared that Russia is now worse than ISIS.
As we might expect in the wake of these claims, the calls across the West for a dramatic escalation in the amount of military aid for Ukraine have suddenly grown much louder. As we should also expect, Russia is condemning these claims are a Ukrainian provocation committed by Ukrainian radicals and has asked the UN security council to convene to discuss the situation.
So with the alleged Russian massacre of Bucha now the focus of this conflict, here’s a pair of articles about another Ukrainian town, Trostyanets, that was also recently taken back by Ukrainian forces and the stories of the civilian atrocities that took place there. As we’re going to see, there are some important details in the stories coming out of Trostyanets that could give us a better idea of what might be driving these civilian deaths.
First, it sounds like the Russian troops were generally quite friendly, if confused, during the first phase of Trostyanets’s occupation. But that changed in mid-March when the Russian troops rotated out and separatist fighters from the Donbass region were brought in. It was then when the atrocities began to mount.
Overall, it’s a scenario that sounds quite plausible. Those separatists presumably have significant grudges against their former fellow Ukrainians. But that’s also a very different scenario from Russian soldiers engaging in atrocities, and closer to the kind of brutalities we tragically should expect to erupt in a civil war. So that’s one angle that should be asked about all of the rest of the towns in Ukraine that are poised to change hands as Russian and separatist forces pull back: was it the Russian soldiers occupying the area, or separatists? Yes, it’s horrific if the separatists are committing war crimes, but it’s also an important distinction to make just in terms of understanding what is actually happening and driving civilian massacres.
It turns out there was also an attack on town hospital the day before the Russian-backed forces pulled out of the town. It doesn’t appear anyone was killed in the attack. One doctor and nurse were at the hospital at the time and moved patients to the basement. It sounds like a tank shell hit the building, although some reports describe it as artillery.
Locals accuse the Russian forces of firing into the hospital. Importantly, this attack on the hospital happened during a battle between the Ukrainian forces that had then surrounded the town and the retreating Russian forces. And that reminds us of a rather crucial detail to keep in mind during this phase of the conflict where Russian-occupied towns are being surrendered to Ukrainian forces: it’s now the Ukrainian forces who are forced attack their own towns. That’s how you dislodge the Russian forces there. And there should be every expectation that these battles are going to generate quite a few civilian casualties as Ukrainian forces retake these towns. So when it comes to the investigations into the mass graves in particular, it’s going to be grimly interesting to see how many people were killed via a gun shot execution-style vs being caught in the cross-fire between two armies engaged in mechanized urban combat.
Interestingly, as we’re going to see in the second AFP article below, it sounds like the Russian forces put up little to no resistance during this period of intense shelling on March 25/26th. No Russian bodies littered the streets and the only street battles that took place during that evening happened near the hospital.
It’s also worth noting that Ukrainian authorities accused the occupying forces of mining the hospital on March 27, the day after the town’s liberation. That suggests that the Russian forces were using the structure defensively during that final battle.
Finally, as we’re going to see, there’s the other side of the coin when it comes to reprisals: attacks on Ukrainian civilians accused of collaborating with the Russians. Or simply neighbors dealing using the war to resolve old grudges against each other.
It sounds like police chief is now forced to wade through all sorts of reports of townspeople who had collaborated with the occupation forces. It points to one of the important details any investigation into torture victims will have to explore: were the torture victims accused of being Russian sympathizers or collaborators?
Ok, first, here’s a NY Times piece on the roughly month-long occupation. As the article describes, the Russian (or separatist?) forces fled on the evening of March 25 amid a battle with Ukraine’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade, described as “a unit of experienced veterans who had seen combat off and on in the country’s separatist regions for the past seven years”. The Ukrainian forces surrounded the town, hit the Russian forces with artillery based at the train station. It was during this battle that the hospital was struck. Following the withdrawal of the occupying forces, the town authorities are now left to deal with a flood of neighbor-against-neighbor accusations of Russian collaboration:
“Interviews with more than a dozen residents of Trostyanets, a modest town of about 19,000 situated in a bowl of rolling hills roughly 20 miles from the Russian border, paint a stark picture of struggle and fear during the Russian occupation. The unrelenting violence from both Ukrainian and Russian forces fighting to retake and hold the town raged for weeks and drove people into basements or anywhere they could find shelter.The unrelenting violence from both Ukrainian and Russian forces fighting to retake and hold the town raged for weeks and drove people into basements or anywhere they could find shelter.”
Unrelenting violence between the Russian forces trying to hold the city and Ukrainian forces trying to take it back. That’s how the occupation of Trostyanets ended. But it sounds like the violence really got started in mid-March after the Russian troops were replaced with separatist fighters from the Donbass region. Keep in mind that many of these separatists probably know people living in this area. So if there were reprisal killings committed by these separatists that wouldn’t be entirely unsurprising. At the same time, as Dr. Volkova acknowledges in the case of an obvious torture victim, she can’t say who or why they were tortured. She can only say they were tortured. Was this torture victim accused of being a Russian collaborator? It’s a pretty crucial question to answer in these cases but for now we have no idea:
But while we don’t know who tortured these people or why they were tortured, it’s very clear that there are plenty of people being accused by their fellow townspeople of collaborating with the occupiers. And again, after the separatist forces moved in, we really shouldn’t be shocked if those forces really were mingling with some of the townspeople. They probably knew each other from before the civil war. So that’s going to be another important aspect of this story to keep an eye on as Ukrainian forces retake towns: just how widespread are the accusations of collaboration and what happened to the accused collaborators?
Finally, note how the Russian/separatist forces pulled out basically the same evening the hospital was attacked. And while locals accuse the Russian forces of carrying out the attack, no one actually knows. What we don’t know is that Ukraine’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade was engaged in a heavy assault on Russian forces headquartered in the train station. And we also know that Ukraine accused the occupying forces of mining the area outside the hospital. So while it wouldn’t be surprising if a Russian tank shell did indeed hit the hospital that evening, it’s difficult to see why we should conclude that’s the case given that it was the Ukrainian forces that had to effective retake that hospital:
Ok, and now here’s an AFP piece that gives us a few more details on the intensity of the fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces on March 25. As the article makes clear, the Ukrainian bombardment of the Russian positions was so intense those areas of basically rubble now. Russian positions that were located in the heart of the town at that the train station square. In other words, dislodging the Russian/separatist forces out of Trostyanets required the leveling of parts of the town:
“The Russians quit the city in the end, putting up little to no resistance, and there are no bodies of dead Russian soldiers in the streets.”
By all accounts, there was a pitched battle to retake Trostyanets on March 25/26. But a fairly one-sided battle, with the Russian forces apparently only putting up resistance in the south of the city near the hospital. So while we don’t have numbers of how many civilians were killed in that battle, we can be pretty confident that the majority of those deaths would have been due to Ukrainian fire. The Russian/separatists mostly just ran:
And, again, note the reports about the Ukrainian separatists being the primary sources of cruelty and looting. It underscores how one of the biggest unanswered questions right now: how much of the actual atrocities against civilians are acts of retaliation between Ukrainian Nazis and violent separatists and/or old score-settling?
So with the world outraged over the scenes coming out of Bucha and the gruesome images and claims of genocide and war crimes, it’s going to be important to keep in mind that, beyond the fact that we don’t actually know who killed these civilians, we also don’t yet even know yet which ‘side’ of this conflict they were on. Are these random citizens? Ukrainian partisans? Ukrainian Nazi extremists? Or people accused of collaborating with the occupiers. And as the stories coming out of Trostyanets make clear, we can’t begin to make sense of this situation until we answer those basic questions. Let’s hope international investigators are able to meaningfully investigate what happened in Bucha. Because there was either some egregious war crimes committed by Russian forces/separatist occupiers. Or a pretty egregious staged atrocity. Both worthy of international condemnation.
@Pterrafractyl–
Several of your points–especially the observation about the “score-settling” that might have driven separatist fighters from Donbas to say “payback time.”
Also the “score settling” that may have taken place against those–rightly or wrongly–viewed as “Russian collaborators” needs to be considered.
Several supplemental observations: Almost all of the “evidence” in these and other combat fatalities are what would be called “hearsay evidence” in a court of law, and inadmissible as such.
One the day previous to the “New York Times” article you cited, another story from the Gray Lady noted the Ukrainian unit involved in the combat in Bucha: the Azov Battalion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/03/world/europe/russia-war-crimes-ukraine.html
Whenever they are observed, the possibility of false-flags should not only be considered but viewed as probable.
They are Nazis.
Also: another “Russian War Crimes” story comes from someone referred to as Anton Heraschenko, an aide to the Ukrainian interior ministry.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/village-leader-family-found-buried-102801663.html
This was not a name with which I was familiar, but after a little internet searching, I discovered that the “H” was the newest Ukrainian transliteration of “Geraschenko.”
Yes, it’s our old friend Anton Geraschenko, who was the babysitter for “Profexor” the mysterious Ukrainian hacker behind the [alleged] hack of the DNC.
Ol’ Profexor–you recall–couldn’t find any malware to use other than an outdated PAS shell and then hard-coded his IP address into it.
This suggests the old “painting [Lee Harvey] Oswald “red” scenario.
This does not reinforce the credibility of Heraschenko/Geraschenko.
On the new Patreon site I have launched, there is a more detailed analysis of not only some of the Bucha photographic evidence but also other, anomalous coverage from NYT.
I am going to do some more on this subject.
Both previous discussion and the forthcoming material can be found at: https://www.patreon.com/DaveEmory
Keep up the great work!
Dave
As outrage continues to build over the alleged civilian massacres by Russian forces in Bucha, we’re seeing a disturbing if predictable consequence of that outrage: talk of peace negotiations have ground to a halt.
Even worse, we’re now hearing talk out of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that could be interpreted as a pledge to effectively recapture the separatists republics in the Donbass. At least that’s one way to interpret Zelenskiy’s comments asserting that the future of Ukraine will not be that of a a de-militarized neutral state like Switzerland, but instead follow the hyper-militarized model of Israel. As Zelenskiy put it, “We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas, there will be people with weapons. I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years.” Yep, Zelenskiy is openly predicting armed members of Ukraine’s National Guard — the institution that has formally incorporated Nazi units like the Azov Battalion — are going to be routinely stationed in all institutions, supermarkets, and cinemas a decade from now. Armed fascist militants everywhere wielding the force of the state.
But that Israel analogy also raises the other unspoken part of that future for Ukraine: plans to recapture the breakaway republics, and presumably quell those insurgencies with the kind of police-state tactics Israel deploys against the Palestinians. Yes, Zelenskiy didn’t openly say that. But it sure was hinted at. At least if there really are plans to recapture those republics.
Also keep in mind that if we do end up seeing a pattern emerge of reprisal killings and score settling carried out by separatist forces working with the Russian forces — like what may have taken place in the town of Trostyanets — that’s only going to make Ukraine more determined to recapture those breakaway republics. Which, again, raises the question: what sort of long-term model for securing those Republics does the Ukrainian government have in mind that doesn’t more less follow the Israeli model of a hyper-militarized state?
This talk of the ‘Israelization’ of Ukraine is also coinciding with growing demands for some sort of security guarantees for Ukraine from Western states, in particular the US. It sounds like Zelenskiy wants a kind of Ukraine-centric NATO-like treaty, where guarantor states would agree to an array of responses, from sanctions to military aid, the moment Ukraine is threatened by Russia. As Zelenskiy put it, “We need serious players who are ready for anything. We need a circle of states that are ready to provide any weapons within 24 hours. We need individual countries on which sanctions policy really depends, so that these sanctions are deeply elaborated in advance. So that in the first second when we feel the threat from the Russian Federation, these states will unite and within three days introduce everything at once, block everything.” Keep in mind that it was just last week that Zelenskiy was openly expressing his willingness to adopt a neutral status as part of a peace deal. It’s a reminder of how rapidly these peace negotiations can be derailed.
And then there’s the dynamic taking place inside Russia. As we’ll see in the second TPM piece below, there’s already open calls by Russian hardliners to accept nothing less than the full defeat of the Ukraine. Talk of peace is being compared to the 1994 peace treaty signed with Chechnya, and which obviously didn’t last. And it’s not just known far right hardliners like Vladimir Zhirinovsky making these demands. Igor Korotchenko, a member of the civil council of Russia’s Ministry of Defense and editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine, wrote on Telegram this week that “A peace agreement with Ukraine will not only be a mistake, but it will be a betrayal.”
So it’s looking like the prospects for peace talks aren’t just dwindling but effectively already gone and replaced with pledges of total victory. Which means if you’re someone who is hoping to see an extended blooding conflict that bleeds Russia and turns Ukraine into a radicalized permanently militarized state, total victory is in sight.
Ok, first, here’s a Jersualem Post article about Zelenskiy’s ominous prediction about Ukraine’s future. A prediction not of a de-militarized neutral state like Switzerland, but a hyper-militarized state like Israel with armed members of the military and National Guard (e.g. Azov) in all institutions and public places and a special NATO-like security agreement with guaranteed responses against future Russian aggression:
““We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas, there will be people with weapons. I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years,” he explained.”
Yes, not only is the ‘de-militarization’ of Ukraine not happening, but we’re looking at the likely militarization of public life in Ukraine for the foreseeable future. As well as a presumed ongoing hyper-militarization of Ukraine in preparation for future conflicts with Russia. A military build up that would be backed by the security-arrangement Ukraine is hoping to establish with as many Western partners as it can get:
At least there isn’t more talk about rearming Ukraine with nuclear weapons, although that’s presumably going to be just a matter of time if we end up seeing Ukraine and Russia fight to a kind of stalemate.
And that brings us to the following TPM piece about the increasing demands inside Russia for a total victory and the capitulation of the Ukrainian government. Demands that are being openly made by figures in the government, like Igor Korotchenkoon the civil council of Russia’s Ministry of Defense. As Korotchenkoon puts it, “A peace agreement with Ukraine will not only be a mistake, but it will be a betrayal”:
““A peace agreement with Ukraine will not only be a mistake, but it will be a betrayal,” Igor Korotchenko, a member of the civil council of Russia’s Ministry of Defense and a commentator, wrote on Telegram this week.”
If a peace treaty with Ukraine is seen as a betrayal by Russia’s hardliners, that really only leaves one option. And yet, that option — the complete military capitulation of the Ukrainian government — doesn’t appear to be realistic. At least not without the effective leveling of Kyiv. And even they do level Kyiv, it’s unclear if that would be enough to induce a collapse of the Ukrainian resistance. The kind of victory Russia’s hardliners are demanding at this point is effectively impossible. And yet thanks to misleading overoptimistic Russian media reports, the capture of Kyiv appeared to be just a matter of time. It’s the kind of dynamic that points towards Putin having no option but doubling and tripling down on this conflict. But it’s also the kind of dynamic that suggests we could see moves to oust Putin should this conflict go horribly awry for Russia:
Who is most likely to replace Putin should his grip on power weaken as a consequence of losing this war? A pro-Western figure like Alexei Navalny or an ultra-nationalist like Vladimir Zhirinovsky? Let’s hope Western policy-makers pining for an extended bloody conflict that drains Putin of his popular support are seriously asking these kinds of questions. Because the answers presumably depend quite a bit on whether or not the people ousting Putin feeling like the war was a horrible mistake or an existential necessity. Which, in turn, will depend quite a bit on the future stance Ukraine takes towards issues of neutrality and its official embrace of Nazi-like movements like Azov. Answers that we kind of already have.
So with the prospects for peace looking extremely unlikely, and both sides looking like they are preparing for a drawn-out conflict that could last for years, it’s going to be worth keeping in mind that Gaza might be a more appropriate analogy for Ukraine’s peace-free future.
Here’s something you don’t see every day: NATO officials are saying the quiet part out loud about their thoughts on the conflict in Ukraine, albeit anonymously in most cases. The quiet part about how this war is viewed by some as a proxy war being fought on behalf of Europe. And a conflict they don’t want to see ending without a decisive Russian defeat. If Ukrainians need to continue fighting and dying in order to ensure Vladimir Putin isn’t able to secure anything that can be spun as a victory, so be it. That’s the price that needs to be paid in order to stop Putin from further attacks on European territories. Anything less is an invitation for future war. The fight in Ukraine is the front-line in an existential broader conflict between Russian and a free Europe.That’s apparently the attitudes held by a number of NATO member governments, in particular in the Baltics.
It also sounds like these NATO governments view any sort of territorial concessions as part of a possible peace treaty with Ukraine as a dangerous precedent. It’s not entirely clear if they’re referring to additional territory outside of Crimea and the separatist republics. But the fact that these NATO members are also apparently uncomfortable with the idea of Ukraine giving up its NATO ambitions suggests there really is a goal of not just repelling this invasion but recapturing the separatist regions and maybe even Crimea. Because there’s no joining NATO while those regions are occupied and the borders are unresolved.
Also keep in mind that the recapture of that territory will likely be conducted with Nazi units like the Azov Battalion leading the way. In other words, while we haven’t yet heard reports about civilian atrocities being committed in the separatist regions, that phase of this conflict is coming. It might take months or years. But if the NATO plan is to see Ukraine recapture all of their territories, it’s just a matter of time:
“Even a Ukrainian vow not to join NATO — a concession that Zelensky has floated publicly — could be a concern to some neighbors. That leads to an awkward reality: For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe.”
Yes, the fact that some Ukraine’s NATO ‘partners’ would rather see Ukrainians keep fighting an dying in order to avoid a peace that would be seen as ‘too costly’ is indeed an ‘awkward reality’. Very awkward.
But part of what makes that reality so awkward is what appears to be viewed as ‘too costly’ a concession for peace. Like territorial concessions. It’s a stance that implies the goal of these NATO members really is to see Ukraine recaptures the separatist regions in the Donbas and potentially even Crimea. At least that’s what we can infer from the logic that views any territorial concessions as an invitation for future invasions elsewhere in Europe. It even sounds like we could see a situation where Ukraine and Russia arrive at a peace treaty that includes territorial concessions, but the West keeps the sanctions on Russia indefinitely in response to those concessions:
But also note how, while the West insists Ukraine is in control of these negotiations, there’s still quite a bit of indirect leverage and influence Western nations have over the direction these negotiations take. Not only in terms of the type of volume of military aide, but just finally giving Ukraine a hard ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on NATO membership. Don’t forget that the unresolved status of the separatist republics and Crimea are one of the rules that prevents Ukraine from joining NATO right now, so continuing to dangle the prospects of NATO membership directly incentivizes the recapture of those territories. Will that dangling continue throughout this conflict?
Finally, with these anonymous NATO officials sounding like they’re actively hoping to see Ukrainian forces fully recapture the separatist Donbass regions, it’s worth keeping in mind that if there’s one thing that could be guaranteed to inflame the passions of the Russian populace and shore up any waning support for Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, it would be reports of the massacre of ethnic Russians living in those separatists regions. Especially if those massacres were committed by Ukrainian Nazi units like the Azov Battalion. And we can be pretty confident there’s going to be some brutal reprisals against civilians in those territories at this point if Ukrainian forces really do push to retake those them. So if the recapture of those territories is seen as the end of this conflict by breaking the will of the Russian public, policy-makers may want to reconsider that strategy. But that’s assuming seeing an end to this conflict is a strategic goal.
There was a grizzly update to the the story of the alleged civilian massacres in Bucha and the mass grave seemingly discovered outside a church by Ukrainian forces shortly after the recapture of the Kyiv suburb. The NY Times reported on a new video floating around Telegram of Ukrainian soldiers executing Russian POWs. The video shows a still living man in a Russian soldier’s uniform being shot to death, next to three other dead bodies in Russian uniforms with their hands bound behind their backs and bloody pools near their heads. “These are not even humans,” states one of the soldiers.
It’s not entirely clear which Ukrainian units carried this out, but a Ukrainian new agency posted the video on March 30 claiming it was members of the Georgian Legion. Recall how Professor Katchanovski’s forensic analysis of the 2014 Maidan sniper attacks covered the five Georgians who testified that they received weapons, payments, and orders to massacre both police and protesters. Those orders came from specific Maidan and Georgian politicians and instructions from a far-right linked ex-US Army sniper. They also testified that they saw Georgian, Baltic States, and Right Sector-linked Ukrainian snipers shooting from Maidan-controlled buildings. Given that recent history, it shouldn’t be too surprising to learn that a unit of Georgian volunteers was indiscriminately killing POWs.
Of course, when you have a unit of foreign fighters known for their brutality and track-record for killing civilians during false flag operations, the discovery of this video should raise all sorts of questions about how many of the recently discovered civilian atrocities in the Bucha area were actually carried about by these Georgians or other foreign fighters. Don’t forget that the Russian withdrawal from Bucha was preceded by weeks of intense fighting in that area between Ukrainian and Russian forces. That’s an enormous opportunity for civilian deaths, both accidental and intentional.
Another part of what makes the video so significant in relation to the alleged Bucha civilian massacres is fact that this video appears to have been shot from a location just seven miles south of Bucha. As we’ll see, when Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba addressed these apparent war crimes, he seemingly partially excused the executions by pointing out that the soldiers who did this have have been shocked by the atrocities they witnessed in the area. Note that, if this explanation is accurate, it implies the soldiers who carried out this ambush had already routed the Russian troops from Bucha and seen the mass grave before the March 30 ambush.
But another part of what makes this video potentially so significant is the timing. Because the world didn’t receive videos and news about the civilian massacres in Bucha until around April 3. Russia denials that it committed the atrocities revolved on claims that its forces withdrew on March 31. This led to a series of back-and-forth accusations that eventually led to the publication of satellite images by a primate firm, Maxar, seemingly showing how roughly a dozen bodies that journalists found lining a road in Bucha had been laying there for weeks.
And while the evidence of those bodies laying there for weeks was quite compelling, it’s also been effectively used as further evidence that the suspected hundreds of bodies in a mass grave at the church were also victims of the Russian occupation in what amounted to a civilian terror campaign, where the mass slaughter of civilians isn’t even covered up but just left there for the world to find in a mass grave.
And that brings us to what could end up being a crucial piece of evidence in terms of who filled that mass grave and when it was filled with bodies: The same satellite firm, Maxar, also published a report seemingly showing the building of the mass grave at that church. Maxar published a ‘before’ photo from March 10 that shows what it claims is the start of the excavation process, although it’s not at all clear there’s any sort of grave site excavation going on. And then an ‘after’ photo from March 31 showing what appears to be a large grave site.
Now, according to reports, Russian troops were driven from Bucha by March 30, in keeping with the videos post on March 30 of the executed Russian POWs just seven miles south of Bucha. In fact, we are told by the Ukrainian government that the capture of these executed POWs took place during an ambush of withdrawing troops.
And that raises the question: are there satellite images of a mass grave site in that same spot from, say, March 25-March 30? How much time does it take to for mechanized armed forces to dig a large ditch, fill them with bodies, and partially cover them with dirt? More than a day? Because if Russian soldiers were filling that mass grave with their civilian victims before being driven out of Bucha there presumably would be satellite image evidence of them, right? So does Maxar have any photos of that area during this period? Was there cloud coverage blocking the view? If there’s photographic evidence of a large ditch that’s already been filled when the Russian soldiers were clearly in control of the area, mystery solved! And thanks to this POW video, it’s becoming clear that Russian forces were effectively getting routed from the area by March 30. But Maxar only released March 10 and March 31 photos for some reason.
Ok, first, here’s the NY Times ‘live update’ from April 6 about the video of the killed POWs. Video that has not only been verified by the NY Times but confirmed by the Ukrainian foreign ministry. What has yet to be confirmed is whether or not it really is the Georgian Foreign Legion who carried it out:
“The killings appear to have been the result of a Ukrainian ambush of a Russian column that occurred on or around March 30, as Russian troops were withdrawing from small towns west of Kyiv that have been the scene of fierce fighting for weeks. Oz Katerji, a freelance journalist, posted videos and pictures of the destroyed column on Twitter on April 2 and wrote that soldiers told him that the Russians had been ambushed 48 hours earlier.”
Weeks of intense fighting around Kiev forced the withdraw of these Russian forces who ended up getting ambushed and executed on or before March 30. An ambush that took place just seven mils southwest of Bucha. And while the Ukrainian unit in the video isn’t clear, Ukrainian news agencies described it as the work of the Georgian Legion:
Next, here’s a CNN piece on the video that mentions a second video taken from the incident and posted. The article also includes statements by Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba, who confirmed that a potential war crime did take place, but then went on to suggest that these soldiers criminal acts may have been motivated by atrocities they saw in Bucha. Which, if true, would be further evidence that Ukrainian forces had largely driven the Russian forces out of Bucha by March 30:
“A different video of the scene, filmed from a different angle, appeared on the Telegram channel of UNIAN, a Ukrainian news agency, on March 30. It shows the same bearded man and the caption says the video shows the Georgian Legion, a group of volunteers fighting on the Ukrainian side, in an operation to clear the Kyiv region of Russian troops.”
Is the mystery bearded man seen in both videos a member of the Georgian Legion or not? It seems like that should be verifiable at some point.
And note the implications from the comments from Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba about the troops potentially having been motivated to carry out these executions due what they saw in Bucha. It will be interesting to see what if any future reports we’re going to hear about the Georgian Legion playing an important role in the liberation of Bucha:
Now, here’s a piece in Time from April 3 about the initial reports of civilian massacres in Bucha. According to the report. the Russian troops rolled into Bucha in the early days of the invasion and stayed up until March 30. So the day the video was first posted of that ambush execution of Russian POWs was the same day Russians were fleeing Bucha:
“The discoveries followed the Russian retreat from the area after Moscow said it was focusing its offensive on the country’s east. Russian troops had rolled into Bucha in the early days of the invasion and stayed up until March 30.”
So with March 30 being the date Russians left Bucha, that raises the question of whether or not there’s any evidence of the existence of that mass grave site pre-March 30. And that brings us to Maxar, which showed the a March 10 satellite image show what the company claims was the start of the excavation process at that site, although its very unclear what if anything is taking place in that area. Along with a March 31 satellite image showing what looks like what could be a filled grave site in that same spot. So there’s a 21 day gap between those before and after videos, with the ‘after’ video coming a day after Russia lost control of the area. Does Maxar happen to have any photos of that area around March 25–30th?:
“Reuters could not immediately verify the images. It was not clear if the images disseminated by Maxar were of the same church visited by Reuters journalists on Saturday.”
Yeah, it’s not actually clear if Maxar’s photos even correspond to the same church where the mass grave was found. Shouldn’t that be relatively easy to confirm? Are we dealing with ‘before’/‘after’ satellite photos for a completely different church? If so, that raises even more questions about the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos for the actual church where the mass grave was found.
But the general question looms over this mass grave story: how long does it take a mechanized combat unit to dig a large grave the size of what was discovered in Bucha and fill it with bodies? If the answer is ‘only about a day’, that raises all sorts of obvious questions about when exactly that mass grave was created and who created it. But if the answer is ‘much longer than a day’, then the satellite imagery of that grave should exist, right?
More generally, what about the larger commercial space offering satellite imagery of places around world. Surely Maxar hasn’t been the only satellite company keeping an eye on this area. Do any other satellite imagery companies have anything to share? We’ll see. Or not see, as the case may be.
@Pterrafractyl–
The series I am doing is titled: “How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lies?”
In that regard, a consummately important addendum to your contribution concerns the fundamental question of lying.
The firm Digital Globe (“DigitalGlobe”) is a subsidiary of Maxar!!
And they have a proven history of providing b.s. images concerning Ukraine!
And I have covered the company in numerous previous programs about Ukraine going back years!
Do take note of who is behind the Maxar subsidiary of DigitalGlobe.
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-811-walkin-the-snake-in-ukraine-part‑4/
More about the firm and its founders in this program, from August of 2014.
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-808-walkin-the-snake-in-ukraine-part-3-how-many-lies-can-you-allow-yourself-to-believe-before-you-belong-to-the-lie/
That program was subtitled “How Many Lies etc.”
Discussed at length in that program, the better part of eight years ago, was the prospect of a major war in Europe, stemming from all these lies.
There is no reason to assume that Maxar–parent firm of DigitalGlobe–is being honest.
Also: this the age of the “Deep Fake.” The Maxar satellite image of the “bodies” is not “compelling.” Making that assumption excludes the possibility that Maxar/DigitalGlobe–elements and individuals who are alumni of the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative and networked with Bormann/Underground Reich–would not tell a lie.
No, surely, not them!
Last, but surely not least, concerns a major element of the Ukrainian combatants fighting in Bucha (drum roll, fanfare)–the Azov Battalion.
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/03/testimony-mariupol-hospital-ukrainian-deceptions-media-malpractice/
The “Gray Zone” highlights elements of the Azov units in Bucha as hunting “Russian saboteurs and collaborators.” They are also discussing if they can kill people not wearing blue armbands, identifying them as Ukrainian defenders.
Are the bodies those of Azov victims, subjected to summary justice?
And the Azov would not commit atrocities, nor would they lie about doing so.
No, surely, not them!
Best,
Dave
@Dave: There was a rather remarkable piece just published by NBC News that directly addresses the waves of misinformation and skewed coverage of these events. But the article addresses it in a very unexpected manner. Unexpectedly honest about the levels of official dishonesty being deployed as part of a campaign of consciously weaponizing the news.
The article includes a number of anonymous sources from within the US and Western intelligence community describing how the US has deliberately been publishing warnings and narratives based on ‘less than confident’ intelligence. And it has been doing this quite deliberately for a range of reasons, from ‘messing with Vladimir Putin’s head’ to ‘preempting Russian disinformation’.
Are there concerns about creating a ‘boy who cried wolf’ effect? Yes. But those concerns are apparently being overridden by a deep sense that the US has been ‘winning the propaganda war’ over the last few months in ways that it has never before.
Part of what’s fascinating about this emerging ‘official good lies’ doctrine are the many parallels to the strategy of public attribution and warnings of reprisals in cyberattacks pioneered by Dmitri Alperovitch. As we’ve seen, Alperovitch was frustrated by how the inability to conclusively identify the culprit behind a hack was effectively preventing any sort of retaliation, so he championed the idea of having the US government just come out and declare that it knows for certain that a certain government (Russia or China) was behind a hack and there will be very serious consequences of the hacks continue. Yes, this is a wildly reckless policy that is basically an open invitation for false flag hacking operations, but the US government has nonetheless appeared to adopt this strategy for dealing with hacks. And now we appear to be seeing an expansion of this same policy — a policy of making public high-confidence assertions about thing you aren’t actually highly confident about now — getting applied during a war. A war where one of the primary objects in of the Ukrainians is convincing the world that they are experience one atrocity after another.
How long before we have an incident where the US is basically caught lying about an atrocity in an absolutely undeniable manner? It’s the kind of scenario the US is clearly inviting giving the situation in Ukraine where claims of genocide are becoming routine at the same time we have the Russians engaging Nazi units like the Azov Battalion fighting in urban combat in still-heavily populated cities. We’ll see, but the fact that we already have anonymous intelligence officials effectively telling the public that they’ve been hyping the facts on the ground could suggests this report could, itself, be part of a preemptive move to address exactly that kind of eventuality:
“It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance. Coordinated by the White House National Security Council, the unprecedented intelligence releases have been so frequent and voluminous, officials said, that intelligence agencies had to devote more staff members to work on the declassification process, scrubbing the information so it wouldn’t betray sources and methods.”
It’s the New Normal: publicly acknowledging that the US government is ‘stretching the truth’, but doing so for a good cause. Or to ‘get into Putin’s head’. Or something like that. There are a lot of good causes.
And what about the inevitable consequences of the erosion of US credibility? Well, that’s obviously a risk here. A risk the intelligence community acknowledges. But also a risk that has apparently been deemed acceptable given the sheer volume of disinformation we’re seeing:
But let’s also keep in mind that the primary risks to this strategy of preemptive offensive disinformation and the erosion of credibility are really only applicable when the lies are eventually revealed to the public. At least revealed in a meaningful way were the audiences of the original disinformation eventually learn about that disinformation.
And that brings us to the that piece in The Gray Zone about the many questions raised about what actually happened at the Mariupol hospital where the maternity ward was struck back on March 9th in what has widely been reported as a deliberate Russian airstrike. As we’ll see, while the hospital was indeed hit with two explosions, the evidence against it being an airstrike was basically ignored in the AP reports on the event. This was even the case when one of the witnesses was one of the pregnant women widely photographed and shown to the world. That woman, Mariana Vishegirskaya, was evacuated out of Mariupol to Belarus and has been telling her version of events in a largely ignored interview. According to Vishegirskaya, not only was there no sound of aircraft before the strike — suggesting possible artillery strikes — but the hospital had effectively been taken over by the Ukrainian military days before the attack and turned into a military base of operations. Effectively none of this was conveyed in the AP reports on strike. Instead, the reports appeared to be intent on sending the message that this was a deliberate Russian airstrike on the hospital.
Interestingly, the AP reporters Vishegirskaya spoke with were the same ones who were escorted out of that hospital and Mariupol entirely on March 15, one day before the March 16 drama theater bombing, in what sounds like a rescue operation conducted by Ukrainian soldiers at that hospital for the expressed purposed of getting those AP journalists out of Mariupol before Russian forces captured them. These were reportedly the last two international journalists still in Mariupol at that time. So this survivor of that hospital strike is claiming that the journalists who were exfiltrated out of Mariupol by Ukrainian forces were also distorting the story of that hospital strike. All in all, it’s the kind of information environment that suggests the champions of the new US policy of publicly proclaiming ‘less confident intelligence’ as solid probably don’t have to worry too much about being called out for questionable pronouncements:
“But newly released testimony from one of the incident’s main witnesses punctures the official narrative about a targeted Russian airstrike on the hospital. The witness account indicates the hospital had been turned into a base of operations by Ukrainian military forces and was not targeted in an airstrike, as Western media claimed. Her testimony also raised serious questions about whether at least some elements of the event were staged for propaganda purposes – and with the cooperation of the Associated Press.”
Was the Mariupol hospital hit in that alleged airstrike being effectively used as an Ukrainian military base by that point? We didn’t hear anything about that in the earlier reports. But now that one of the pregnant women famously photoed in the aftermath of the strikes on the hospital are claiming it wasn’t an airstrike, and that the hospital had effectively been taken over and turned into a military hub — there doesn’t appear to be much media interest in her story. Or clarifying earlier reporting or understanding what actually took place.
Now, yes, the fact that this woman, Mariana Vishegirskaya, was eventually evacuated to Belarus will cause many to understandably assume she’s being held prisoner and forced to make these claims. But the fact that she’s a known fashion blogger means this isn’t necessarily a story that’s just going to fade away. This is someone who presumably has an audience of her own. That’s part of what makes her claims so compelling and a story to keep an eye on:
Another part of what makes this story is intriguing is the fact that the AP team that was there at the hospital was effectively the last international journalistic team in Mariupol at the time. It’s these reporters that Vishegirskaya claimed misrepresented her statements in the reports to make it sound like there was an airstrike that caused the explosions. Recall how we learned that these were the last international reporters in Mariupol in a March 22 AP report where these reporters recounted their own harrowing experiences escaping from the city. As they described it in their report, on March 15 the hospital was surrounded by Russian forces. But Ukrainian soldiers bravely fought their way into the hospital, looking for the two AP reporters. The soldiers informed the journalists that they needed to get out of Mariupol before the Russian forces captured them and forced them to give distorted reports. Notably, this all happened one day before the March 16 explosion at the Mariupol drama theater, ensuring that all information about that event was effectively getting filtered through Azov’s public relations units. So by their own accounts, these AP reporters were seen as highly valuable figures. Highly valuable figures who were exfiltrated from the city one day before the drama theater bombing. That’s all part of the context of Vishegirskaya’s claims that her words were being distorted by these AP reporters:
Finally, regarding the video that emerged on April 2 with what appear to be a “clean-up operation” carried out by members of Azov under the command of Sergey Korotkikh where they talk about shooting anyone not wearing a blue armband, note how the National Police of Ukraine announced on April 2 that they were ““cleaning the territory…from the assistants of Russian troops,” which certainly sounds like intentions on killing accused collaborators. It’s the kind of statement by Ukrainian authorities that suggests the killing of civilians by Azov units was still taking place at that time:
Don’t forget that it’s at this moment when Russian forces have withdrawn and Ukrainian forces move in when the atrocities by groups like Azov can be most easily carried out. Especially when all it apparently takes is charges of being a Russian collaborator.
So are Azov units still “cleansing” the area around Bucha of “the assistants of Russian troops” right now? At this point we don’t know, in large part because we have so few reports out of this area. But as this war plays out and more and more evidence builds of civilian atrocities committed by Russian forces and Ukrainian forces, it’s going to be grimly interesting to see how these which of stories of atrocities get reported and which get completely ignored. Just as it’s going to be grimly interesting to see how many claims by the intelligence community that turn out to be hyped bogus end up getting exposed in follow up reporting. It’s hard enough getting an idea of what’s actually happening when you have The Boy Who Cried Wolf running around. Now imagine The Boy Who Cried Wolf has special privileges. This is where we are.
@Pterrafractyl–
Yikes!!! I didn’t realize those were the same reporters who had been evacuated.
Best,
Dave
How long before we have an Azov president of Ukraine? That was one of the questions raised by a chilling display of Azov’s preeminent importance in Ukrainian society as a consequence of Russia’s invasion. During an invited address to Greece’s parliament, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy invited a Greek member of the Azov battalion to also address the parliament. Adding insult to injury, the man even made a reference to how his Greek grandfather fought against the Nazis, telling the audience, “I address you, as a Greek by origin. I am Mikhail, my grandfather fought against the Nazis... I participate in the defence of Ukraine through the Azov Battalion.” It was like transnational historic trolling.
As one might expect, this display didn’t go over well with the members of Greece’s parliament, with Alexis Tsipras tweeting out, “Solidarity with the Ukrainian people is a given. But the Nazis can not have a say in parliament.” Tsipras’s former economics minister, Yanis Varoufakis, similarly tweeted:
So how did Ukraine’s government respond to this outrage over the Greek Azov fighter? By denouncing those who denounce Azov. Of course. And that’s, again, why we really should be asking how long it’s going to be before we have an Azov president of Ukraine. Because as this sad story demonstrates, Azov is attained official hero status, and that status is only going to be elevated higher the longer this war goes on:
“Shortly after the speech, the head of the leftist Syriza party Alexis Tsipras said the incident was a provocation. “Solidarity with the Ukrainian people is a given. But the Nazis can not have a say in parliament,” he tweeted.”
Those were refreshing words of condemnation from Alexis Tsipras. Note how even the Greek conservative government didn’t even defend Azov:
And as expected, the Ukrainian government’s response was to essentially whitewash Azov, in part by claiming the Ukrainian government actually has a great deal of control over Azov following its incorporation into the National Guard:
But what is most amaizing here is why? Why on earth would Zelenskiy invite such a figure to address the Greek government? The optics were about as bad as you could get. And yet, he went ahead with it and then the Ukrainian government forcefully and openly defended Azov following the outcry from across Greece’s political spectrum. It’s the kind of move that suggests Azov’s grip on power is literally growing in real time as this conflict continues.
And as the following article bne Intellinews article from back in August of 2021 describes, that grip on power wasn’t looking so secure back then. Quite the opposite. Following the sudden resignation of Interior Minister Arson Avakov in July 2021, Ukraine appeared to be quickly descending into a kind of far right turf war, with the SBU cracking down on groups like Azov and Azov responding with direct threats against Zelenskiy and even an armed attack on his office. Yep, that was the news about Azov back in August, with none other than Sergey Korotkikh playing a significant role in that news. The same Sergey “Boatsman” Korotkhikh who was allegedly giving orders to shoot “anyone without a blue armband” in Bucha in a released video. Korotkikh, the leader of Azov’s business operations, was close associate with one Azov figure who showed up dead in a Kyiv park the day before a fellow associated with banned from entry into Ukraine by the SBU. And this was all happening amid an SBU crackdown on Azov racketeering operation. A crackdown that observers see as part of a far right turf war between groups associated with the SBU on one side and Azov on the other side.
But as the article points out, there was another key context to all of these events: Zelenskiy waging an anti-oligarch campaign under US pressure. A campaign that ended up arresting a number of senior executives as PrivatBank, the former bank of Ihor Kolomoisky. And that’s all part of the broader context of the alleged Kremlin-backed coup plots Zelenskiy was publicly warning about back in November. A coup plot that, as we’ve seen, looks a lot more like a Ukrainian nationalist oligarchic coup plot given the figures seemingly involved.
And as events have clearly demonstrated, Azov was never really fully cracked down on and instead is being celebrated as national heroes. Similarly, the anti-oligarch initiatives are obviously on hold indefinitely. Instead, Ukraine is in a state of permanent war. Azov heaven.
And that’s all part of the chilling context of story of the Azov fighting being invited to address the Greek parliament. Just months before the conflict it looked like Azov might actually lose its special status. Instead, that status is more special than ever. War is a multi-dimensional hell:
“Police officers and a National Guard serviceman were injured after they tried to halt a group of Azov protesters moving towards Bankova, the presidential offices in Kyiv. They tried to search the members of Azov but were assaulted by the protesters. Several police offices were injured and taken to hospital for treatment.”
A group of Azov ‘protestors’ literally attacked a group of police officer and a National Guard serviceman as they were trying to get into President Zelenskiy’s office. Presumably it was one of the non-Azov members of the National Guard who was attacked.
So what provoked this attack? The police decided to inspect the items they could bring into the office. Yep. So a group a angry Azov ‘protestors’ show up at Zelenskiy’s office, demand that be allowed to see him without any inspections, and attack the police and a National Guardsman when those demands are declined. It sure sounds like a thwarted coup attempt. A thwarted coup attempt by a group that can operate with virtual impunity:
So why would a group that can already operate with impunity stage an attack on the president? Well, based on the circumstantial evidence, it looks like the possible lifting of that impunity that may have been what provoked the conflict. Specifically, the resignation of Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s long-standing and powerful Interior Minister, in July of 2021. Avakov’s replacement with Denys Monastyrskyi, of Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party, was seen as giving Zelenskiy more direct control of the police and SBU.
But beyond Avakov’s replacement is a larger anti-oligarch initiative Zelenskiy started putting in place last year under pressure from the US. This oligarch crackdown includes the arrest of corrupt officials, including several senior managers of PrivatBank. Recall how the FBI raided the Cleveland and Miami office of Ihor Kolomoisky back in August of 2020 in relation to a money laundering investigation into PrivatBank. This FBI raid was preceded by a reported November 2019 meeting between Kolomoisky and Rudy Giuliani where Kolomoisky reportedly offered to push a fabricated narrative about Joe Biden. So Zelenksiy’s crackdown on PrivatBank under pressure from the US government was just the latest in a long-standing US interest in Kolomoisky’s business and influence. as really part of a larger international squeeze on Kolomoisky’s businesses. But Kolomoisky, being one of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in Ukraine and a major sponsor of the far right ‘volunteer battalions’, clearly isn’t someone who is just going allow their grip on power slip away without a fight. It’s hard to see why the resignation of Avakov wasn’t seen as a major threat to Kolomoisky’s power base. The move handed more control of the SBU over to Zelenskiy while potentially lifting the umbrella of impunity that groups like Azov have enjoyed. And it happened into the context of a US-backed anti-oligarch crackdown. Then, a few months later, we get reports about an impending Kremin-blacked coup plot rattling the Zelenskiy administration, and yet that coup plot seemed to revolve around Rinat Akhmetov, a figure who doesn’t fit the Kremline stooge profile. Quite the opposite. And as more information about this coup plot comes out, it appears to have hard-line Ukrainian nationalist figures and oligarchs at its core. That’s all why we have every reason to suspect this thwarted Azov attack against Zelenskiy back in August of 2021 had the backing of more than just Azov:
Then there’s the role Azov member Sergey “Boatsman” Korotkikh plays in all this, and the apparent gang warfare between rival far right groups inside the SBU that appears to have been playing out last fall. First, there’s discovery of Vitaly Shishov’s hanging body in a Kyiv park on August 3. Shishov, the head of a Belarusian opposition group, was known to have close ties to both Korotkikh and fellow Belarus House partner Rodion Batulin, who is also close to Korotkikh. The next day, the SBU banned Batulin from entering Ukraine on the groups that he was a “threat to national security”. And this all happened shortly after the SBU cracked down on Azov’s racketeering business in Kharkiv. Note that Korotkikh is believed to be running the Azov movement’s business operations. So the guy who runs Azov’s business operations is close associates of the guy who showed up hanging in park in Kyiv and their mutual associate who was banned from the country by the SBU the next day. And this all happened days after a crackdown on Azov’s racketeering operations and just weeks after the resignation of Avakov, one of Azov’s biggest boosters in the Ukrainian government. That’s also presumably all part of the context of the August 14 assault by Azov ‘protestors’ outside Zelenskiy’s office:
Also, just five days before the August 14 attack outside Zelenskiy’s office, the Azov leadership claimed the SBU was planning a raid on its main base in Kiev, although those raids never materialized. At the same time, Azov began publicly accusing Zelenskiy of “mopping up patriots and veterans” in preparation for signing a humiliating peace deal with Russia. It was protest over that alleged peace deal that formed the pretext for the August 14 protest outside the presidential office:
As the article puts it, we can’t really understand these events outside of the context of a long-running standoff between rival far groups within the Ukrainian government. And based on the timing of all this, it appears that the resignation of Arsen Avakov in the context of Zelenskiy’s anti-oligarch initiative was the spark that lit this conflict:
So as we’re watching the war play out, with growing reports indicating civilian massacres are being carried out by groups like Azov — like the apparent video of Korotkikh telling soldiers they can shoot anyone without a blue armband — it’s going tobe important to keep in mind that the Ukrainian state had already been fighting a war to remove Azov’s seeming impunity in the months leading up to this conflict. And whether or not the elements in the SBU trying to crack down on Azov were having any success, that success is obviously going to be completely reversed. The Azov movement are the official heroes of Ukraine right now. The Ukrainian government made that clear in Greece, if it wasn’t already obvious. Heroes who are going to be allowed to continue to act with impunity for the foreseeable future. Which is why we shouldn’t just be asking when we’re going to see the next Azov president. An Azov Furher seems a lot more likely at this point.
Following up on the video of the execution of Russian POWs by soldiers who appear to be members of the Georgian Legion, there was a recent piece on the Gray Zone that summarizes the myriad of reasons why the Georgian Legion’s presence in Ukraine really is a giant scandal. Not just a giant scandal over the still unresolved role the Legion played in carrying out false flag sniper attacks on the Maidan square during the 2014 Maidan protests. It’s a giant transnational scandal that includes the US governments warm embrace of a group that is demonstrably full of war criminals. Including US war criminals like neo-Nazi Craig Lang, who is currently facing war crimes charges in the US over allegations of the torture of civilians in Ukraine during his time with Right Sector, before Lang moved over to the Georgian Legion.
Yes, despite the fact that the Georgian Legion is an international hub of violent extremists, including US neo-Nazis wanted for war crimes, the leader of the group has received multiple warm welcomes from the US Congress. So if you’re wondering what the odds are that the video evidence of these war crimes in Bucha by the Georgian Legion will be investigated by the international community, keep in mind that the guy bragging about these war crimes is a very good terms with the US congress:
“In an interview this April, Mamulashvili, was asked about a video showing Russian fighters who had been extrajudicially executed in Dmitrovka, a town just five miles from Bucha. Mamulashvili was candid about his unit’s take-no-prisoners tactics, though he has denied involvement in the specific crimes depicted.”
Yes, Mamuka Mamulashvili didn’t actually deny committing war crimes in that recent interview when shown a video of Russian POWs executed extrajudicially. He just denied committing specific war crimes. But he didn’t mince words: under his orders, the Georgian Legion is definitely going to be executing POWs. Every single POW they come across. Sometimes they’re killed with their hands and feet bound. Sometimes not. But all POWs under their care will be executed. And in case he wasn’t clear, the summary execution of POWs in these videos should make that abundantly clear. They aren’t hiding this stuff:
But the execution of POWs is just one of major forms of crime we can attribute to Mamulashvili and his Georgian Legion. Because as we’ve seen, the forensic analysis by Professor Ivan Katchanovski of the sniper attacks during the Maidan protests that led up to the collapse of Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency in 2014 pointed the finger directly at members of the Georgian Legion carrying out the attack against both protestors and the police. Actually, it was more the members of the Georgian Legion who themselves admitted this and Katchanovski’s analysis that found their admissions where consistent with the rest of the available evidence:
And then there’s Craig Lang’s history with this group. Recall how Ukrainian courts refused to turn Lang over to US investigators after he claimed asylum. Also recall how Lang ended up joining the Georgian National Legion after leaving Right Sector. During his time with Right Sector, Lang was also involved in recruiting another American, Jarret William Smith, to join the group, but warned Smith that “you may also be asked to kill certain people who become on the bad graces of certain groups.” Smith ended up joining the US military in 2017. So to learn that Lang is now being investigated by the US for alleged war crimes during his time in Ukraine with the Georgian Legion is about as unsurprising an update as we could expect:
It’s worth noting that the investigation into Lang’s war crimes against civilians appears to be focused on his time with Right Sector, before he joined the Georgian Legion. But we obviously shouldn’t assume Lang’s war crimes ended after joining the Georgian Legion, as Mamuka Mamulashvili made abundantly clear in that recent POW execution video.
And that’s all why the questions about possible war crimes committed by the Georgian Legion in the area around Bucha shouldn’t be limited to questions about this notorious Georgian mercenaries with a track record for false flag operations.
It also includes questions about all the foreign Nazi war criminals like Craig Lang who have subsequently joined the group in recent years. Including questions like whether or not Lang is ever going to be extradited back the US or just live as a war hero in Ukraine indefinitely.
Here’s a pair of articles related to the ongoing investigation into the alleged civilian atrocities and war crimes committed by Russian forces in Bucha. As we’ve seen, one of the questions raised by the war crimes claims is whether or not any satellite evidence exists of the mass grave during the time that Russian forces were occupying the city since the photos we have been shown were from March 31, shortly after Russian soldiers left the area. That withdrawal date from Bucha was March 29 according to the following WSJ article. An article that provides some crucial context to what was actually happening in Bucha. Specifically, intense urban combat that began almost from the very beginning.
Similar to the stories we heard out of Trostyanets — where Russian occupiers were initially quite friendly until they were rotated out and replaced with soldiers from the separatist regions who were far more brutal — it sounds like the Russian forces were also quite friendly at first. But after around a week a intense fighting that friendliness gave way to an announced 4 PM curfew. The curfew was focused on Yablunska Street, the street where all of the bodies were found laying there after Russian forces pulled out. Anyone found on the street after the curfew would be shot. People still attempted to travel down Yablunska, despite the warnings. And they were indeed shot. It’s a pretty remarkable story overall.
The curfew didn’t address the soldiers security concerns and the fighting continues. On March 10, Russian special forces began door-to-door raids in residential areas looking for people collaborating with the insurgency. We’re told men began disappearing around this time, with their bodies reappearing on the street days later with their wrists fastened behind their backs.
So based on that report, the Russian occupation of Bucha doesn’t sound like it was intending on terrorizing the populace and carrying out genocide like we’re being told. Instead, this sounds like the kind of tragically typical urban combat tactics we should expect when there’s an intense insurgency. And as we’re going to see in the second article excerpt below, that’s more or less the assessment of anonymous US and UK military analysts who once again spoke with veteran war report Bill Arkin to share their concerns about how the public narratives about this conflict aren’t grounded in reality.
And, of course, with the recent reports about the Georgian Legion executing Russian POWs — a war crime — we are obligated to ask the obvious question about how many of these dead civilians were killed by the Ukrainian militias fighting in this area.
Ok, first, here’s the WSJ article describing the civilians experience in Bucha. An experience that sounds like an occupation that started off friendly but became very unfriendly as Ukraine’s insurgency effectively beat the Russian soldiers back into a state of panic and extreme paranoia. An extreme paranoia that manifested in the curfew being declared around Yablunska Street and repeatedly being violated with lethal consequences:
“The shootings on Yablunska were part of what residents and Ukrainian officials say was a spree of killing, raping and looting that marked Russia’s monthlong occupation of Bucha, a well-heeled town on the northwestern outskirts of Kyiv. Several hundred civilians were killed there, say Ukrainian officials, who want to make Bucha a prime exhibit for an investigation into potential war crimes in areas occupied by Russian forces.”
Were war crimes committed in Bucha? The Ukrainian authorities are insisting that the case. But with first international forensic investigators only having arrived in Bucha yesterday to help Ukrainian authorities with the investigation, it’s not clear how much that much of evidence is going to be objectively available for a real international investigation. What is clear from all of the eye-witness testimony is that the occupation in Bucha played out much like we’ve heard in other parts of Ukraine: initially, the Russian soldiers were quite friendly, even warning civilians about snipers (Ukrainian snipers?). But that goodwill quickly faded after facing stiff resistance from the Ukrainian military and militias. And it sounds like they were facing stiff resistance in Bucha almost immediately, with major fighting in Irpin taking place nearby:
It was about a week into the occupation (so the first week of March?) when a a PM curfew was imposed, and residents were warned that they could be shot for leaving their homes. It sounds like was specifically around Yablunska where this curfew was enforced with the most aggressively:
Then, on March 10, a kind of counter-assault by the Russian forces against the Ukrainian insurgents was conducted. People were told not to leave their homes, especially around Yablunska. Overall, the picture emerges of intense urban warfare between Russian and Ukrainian forces focused on the area around Yablunska, with counter-insurgency operations and associated civilian casualties that we should expect in this kind of urban warfare combat environment:
Also note that there were apparently quite a few civilians who went ahead and tried to flee down the Yablunska street even after this lethal curfew was imposed. It points towards the levels of potential desperation in that area, weeks into the occupation. But it also provides a grim explanation for why there were so many bodies on that road following the withdrawal of Russian forces:
Finally, just note the specific date we’re given for the withdrawal of Russian forces out of Bucha: March 29, which is the earliest withdrawal date we’ve seen reported, with most of the reports giving a March 30 or 31 date. It’s also two days before the March 31 satellite image provided by Maxar showing what appears to be a filled in mass grave nearby a church. So based on this reporting, the Russian forces had left the area about two days before hta satellite photo was taken, which again raises the question of why we haven’t seen any satellite photos of that same area in the days before the Russian forces left:
And of course we can’t ignore the reality that the Nazi militia units engaged in urban combat in Bucha are themselves prime suspects for civilian killings. Or at least should be considered prime suspects.
But even if ignore the possibility of civilian executions by these militia groups, the tragic reality having two well equipped armies fighting across Bucha — with fighting focused on Yablunska street — is the kind of situation where we should expect quite a few civilian casualties. That’s not because Russian troops are barbarians who are intent on terrorizing the populace. It’s because war is predictable hell. And when you factor in the scale of the civilian deaths in Bucha with the overall population of the city and the intensity of the fighting, the claims of genocide just don’t remotely add up. That’s the message from a group of anonymous US and UK military analysts who have once against spoken with veteran war reporter Bill Arkin to share their concerns about how divorced the narrative about the conflict is getting from reality. Concerns that include the potential inability to arrive at a peace treaty when you’re leveling genocide accusations at every opportunity. As these analysts put it, the big lesson out of Bucha is the lesson we should already know: you can’t avoid civilian deaths in urban combat situation. What happened in Bucha wasn’t an outrageous war crime that transgressed the rules of war. Quite the contrary, it was the largely unavoidable consequence of intense urban fighting and what we should expect in cities across Urkaine as long as the conflict continues. Which is why avoiding war in the first place and ending it as soon as possible should the top priorities:
““It is ugly,” a senior official with the Defense Intelligence Agency tells Newsweek. “But we forget that two peer competitors fought over Bucha for 36 days, and that the town was occupied, that Russian convoys and positions inside the town were attacked by the Ukrainians and vice versa, that ground combat was intense, that the town itself was literally fought over.””
It was indeed easy to forget or not even recognize that there was intense urban combat in Bucha from basically the beginning of that occupation. And as these anonymous US military analysts relayed to Bill Arkin in this report, as heartless as it might sound, the reality is that the level of civilian deaths we’re now seeing in Bucha is more or less exactly what we should have expected under an intense urban combat environment and a far cry from the growing calls of genocide:
And as these analyst warn, there are a very real potential consequences to these loose calls of genocide, with one major consequence being that it instills in the global populace the idea that urban warfare is indeed something that can be done in a manner that avoids civilian casualties, which is a complete fantasy. But more immediately, it make it rather difficult to arrive at a peace agreement when you’re accusing the other side of war crimes, especially if those war crimes didn’t actually happen:
So how many of the civilian deaths were due to the Nazi Ukrainian militia groups like Azov or the Georgian Legion also fighting in Bucha at this time? We’ll probably never know. But it would be a lunatic assumption to conclude that these groups weren’t the source of quite a few of these killings. Don’t forget that the same logic of trying to route out ‘spotters’ potentially applied to the Ukrainian resistance too. And when you combine that logic with the raw brutality of these Nazi units that already have a long track record of terrorizing the Ukrainian civilian population, and add in the fact that these groups know that almost any civilian atrocities they commit will end up being blamed on the Russian occupiers, and you’re looking at the perfect storm for Nazi atrocities.
And don’t forget the other side of this equation: as the Ukrainian forces press into the Donbas area with the potential goal of ‘liberating’ the separatist republics, all of the logic of urban warfare goes in reverse. It’s going to be Ukrainian forces occupying those cities. Don’t forget that if Ukraine intends on recapturing those territories it’s looking at a years of a potential occupation of that area. When Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that the future of Ukraine is going to look like Israel, he wasn’t kidding. But if these military analysts are correct, we should absolutely expect the same kinds of civilian casualties when the ‘liberation’ of Donbas occurs. What kind of international response is there going to be to the inevitable civilian casualties experienced there? Since it will probably be an Israeli-like years-long occupation, we’ll have plenty of opportunities to find out.
Here’s an article from a few weeks ago that fleshes out some of background context of the disturbing reports of open war crimes being committed by the Georgian Legion following the release of videos showing the execution of Russian POWs in the area near Bucha. As we saw, the leader of the Georgian Legion, Mamuka Mamulashvili, was very open in interviews about how his unit was not going to take any live prisoners. Mamulashvili has previously been welcomed by members of congress in the US. Mamulashvili is turning into a rather ‘classic’ figure in terms of US foreign policy: a brutal war criminal who conveniently shares the US’s adversaries.
As we’re going to see in the following Politico article, Mamulashvili is developing stronger ties to the US via this conflict in another way: directly recruiting US military veterans to server in the Georgian Legion. As Mamulashvili describes it, they don’t simply need people willing to fight. They need experienced veterans with battlefield experience. And if you’re recruiting around the globe for people with battlefield experience, it’s hard to find a place with more veterans of fighting age than the US. Sure enough, it sounds like the majority of Mamulashvili’s Georgian Legion in Ukraine is now comprised of recruits from the US, UK, and Georgia.
Beyond that, the newly formed International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine — which is separate from the Georgian Legion — is also recruiting heavily from the US. Canada, with its large Ukrainian-Canadian diaspora, is also turning out to be a major source of recruitment.
So the next time we hear about the open war crimes being committed by the Georgian Legion or any of the other foreign volunteer units operating in Ukraine, it’s going to be worth keeping in mind that there’s a growing number of US, UK, and Canadian war veterans who are going to be embedded in these units:
“Mamulashvili has been weeding out recruits with radical views or with ties to right-wing organizations: “We are avoiding extremists — we don’t want them here.””
Mamulashvili is doing the extremism filtering himself. Isn’t that reassuring. The guy who was just bragging in video about how no Russian prisoners will be taken alive is the person making the ‘extremist’ judgement call.
But as is always the case with these kinds of conflicts, the concerns about extremists getting military training isn’t limited to concerns about how those extremists are going to be behave in the war zone. Those extremists are going to eventually head back home with now military experience and affiliations with a global network of fellow extremists.
But also note the target recruit that Mamulashvili is describing: US war vets with combat experience. Even more disturbing is that it sounds like the Georgian Legion has had quite a bit of success in recruiting vets from both the US and UK:
And it’s not just the Georgian Legion seeking out US veterans with battlefield experience. The International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine also reportedly has a large number of US and UK volunteers. Along with a substantial Ukrainian-Canadian presence:
It’s worth recalling how the Canadian military has already been caught training members of the Nazi Azov battalion on Canadian soil. Given that the Canadians traveling to fight in Ukraine are likely to be combat veterans, you have to wonder how many of them had previously trained with Azov back in Canada.
Here’s some info related to the still unresolved question surrounding when exactly the mass grave in Bucha was actually created. As we’ve seen, an outlines of a timeline for the mass grave near a Bucha church was apparently generated by satellite operator Maxar, which released to the public a photo it claims were from March 10 showing what is possibly the start of some sort of excavation near the site where the grave was eventually found, and a later photo taken from March 31 showing what appears to be the filled up mass grave. And this 21 day before/after gap raised a number of obvious questions. For starters, does Maxar possess any other photos of that site during the period from March 10–31? Because with the Russians having reportedly left Bucha as early as March 29 in the face of intense urban warfare from stiff Ukrainian resistance along with video evidence that the Ukrainian resistance in that area include extremist ‘volunteer’ battalions that were filmed executing Russian POWs, it’s pretty important to confirm that this large ditch was dug and filled before the Russian forces left.
Now, as we’ve also seen, the mass grave near a church is one of two sites of large civilian casualties that have been cited as acts of genocide by Ukrainian authorities, the other being the large number of bodies found on Yablunska Street. According to reports, as the urban combat with the Ukrainian resistance was heating up the Russian forces warned civilians that anyone found on Yablunska would be shot, which is a reminder that these civilian deaths were taking place amidst heavy fighting raising questions about how many of these deaths were a result of that crossfire.
And when it comes to the bodies found on Yablunksa Street, Maxar has also been providing images that appear to support the assertion that these bodies were laying in the streets for weeks. As we’re going to see in the follow NY Times article from April 4, right when the Maxar photos were first released, we were shown satellite images of Yablunska allegedly from March 11 showing objects in the same location where the bodies were eventually found by Ukrainian authorities sever weeks later. So that March 11 satellite image was apparently one day after the March 10 photo of the church Maxar also released.
But then Maxar released some additional satellite photos of Yablunska street from around a week later. These photos were from March 20 and 21, showing additional objects on Yablunska that aligned with where the bodies were eventually found.
And that release of those March 20/21 satellite photos raises a bit of a mystery: where are the satellite photos of the church from March 20/21? Because Yablunska street is only blocks from the church were the mass grave was found. That’s almost nothing from perspective of a satellite. Shouldn’t those photos be readily available? Why not release them?
And of course it gets weirder. Because it turns out ANYONE can easily browse the satellite archives Maxar has available. It’s actually a very neat web tool. Just go to https://discover.digitalglobe.com/, and type in “Kyiv” into the search bar and jump to the Kyiv area. You’ll see “Irpin” show up on the map and if you zoom in a little bit (using the “+” and “-” buttons) you’ll see “Bucha” right above it.
You can than click the “Area of Interest” option below the search bar and select either a rectangle or polygon of your choice to create an area of interest. The tool then shows you ALL of the available satellite shots that cover your area of interest. The search results show the name of the satellite, the date of the image, and other image metadata. If you select a particular satellite/date, that image will show up on the map.
And while you can’t zoom in ALL the way with this free online tool, you actually can zoom in enough to make out the church! It’s right there in the satellite images, along with the surrounding structures. It’s not a clear picture, but it’s clearly the same object in the high resolution before/after March 10/31 photos Maxar released to the public.
So if you draw an “Area of Interest” around that church, you can find a record of the March 31 photo. But then there are also records from March 21 AND March 18, but no records from March 10. The earliest prior record is Feb 28. But that’s just what you get when you use the default filter settings. If you click on the “Filter” tab and move the “Area Cloud Cover” and “Area Off Nadir” filteres all the way to the right (so you are allowing for higher cloud coverage and more-angled photos), you’ll find that Maxar has coverage of this area for almost every single day in March. The clouds completely obscure the coverage in the first week of March but after that it’s pretty clear.
And the same mystery applies to the photos released of Yablunska Street. You can draw an area of interest around the entire street and find images for basically every day of March.
But as we’re going to see, perhaps the biggest mystery here is why anyone is relying on Maxar to assess the situation in Ukraine at all. Maxar isn’t the only player in the satellite imaging market. Nor is it the only player that offers free trial use of its tools. It turns out Planet Lab has a very impressive satellite imaging suite and ANYONE can sign up for a free 90 day trial. Now, you won’t be able to access to the full high-resolution images. But you will be able to see what images Planet Lab has available. And it’s basically the entire planet. Every day. Someone just needs to pay for that access.
That’s the frustrating mystery here: we can actually answer a lot of these questions with a pretty high degree of precision. Daily satellite updates of Bucha — and effectively the rest of Ukraine — are readily available to anyone with the money to pay for it. So why is the entire word still relying on Maxar’s publicly released photos when daily image updates are available from multiple sources?
And it’s not as of journalistic organizations don’t have access to these satellite companies. The BBC explicitly states that it compared Maxar’s images to images from two other satellite companies (PlanetLab and Apollo Mapping) when confirming the validity of Maxar’s satellite images of the Yablunska Street bodies. So PlanetLab’s and Maxar’s incredible daily archive is available to journalists, but the only apparent use of that archive has been to validate Maxar’s photos. What is going on here? It’s not just a question about Maxar — which purchased DigitalGlobe in 2017 — and the highly ‘spooky’ DigitalGlobe. These are questions that include the rest of the satellite imaging industry and all of the journalistic organizations covering this story. Why hasn’t Planet Lab come forward with a daily photo timeline of that church or Yablunska street? And why haven’t any entities on the planet with the resources to do so just paid the damn fees to get those images to release to the world? Heck, even the Kremlin could do it in theory. Why are none of the sides of this conflict utilizing the commercially available data?
Ok, first, here’s a NY Times article from April 4 about Maxar’s release of satellite photos that appear to show civilians laying in the streets as far back as March 11, with additional photos we are told were from March 20 and 21:
“One video filmed by a local council member on April 1 shows multiple bodies scattered along Yablonska Street in Bucha. Satellite images provided to The Times by Maxar Technologies show that at least 11 of those had been on the street since March 11, when Russia, by its own account, occupied the town.”
Maxar does indeed possess satellite images from March 11 showing objects that appear to be civilian bodies. As well as images from March 20 and 21. But based on its own publicly available image archives, Maxar possess a lot more pictures than that. Images from almost every day of the month of March are available:
Why has this much large image catalog been largely ignored? Not just ignored by Maxar, but the rest of the world. We don’t know, but it’s clear from the following BBC report — which purports to debunk Russian claims that these image catalogs are being manipulated — that the BBC is at least working with Maxar and two other satellite imaging companies in its reporting on what happened in Bucha:
“A pro-Russian social media account, Rybar, says the Maxar satellite images shown in this article were not taken on 19 March — but on 1 April, the day after Russian forces departed.”
Is “Rybar” just promoting disinfo? It’s very possible, but it’s worth noting that Maxar’s rebuttal of Rybar’s analysis doesn’t really make sense. Rybar was claiming a March 19 photo of Yablunksa street was actually from April 1 based on the shadows. Maxar responded that Rybar has used the company’s image search tools wrongly and the images can clearly be shown to be from 19 March when those search tools are used correctly. Think about that. Rybar claims an analysis of the shadows reveals the true date and Maxar replies with a response that doesn’t even address the shadow analysis at all but instead seems to assume Rybar just messed up an image search. It’s like a non-answer answer:
But then the BBC appears to conduct a shadow analysis of its own by cross referencing Maxar’s March 19 image with images from PlanetLab and Apollo Mapping:
Now, who knows about the rigor deployed in the BBC’s shadow analysis. Maybe it was real or maybe it was just someone eyeballing two different photos and making a judgement call. But the fact that the BBC did this analysis at all using images from PlanetLab and Apollo Mapping just underscores the fact that there is no reason the world should be rely on public releases by Maxar about what may have happened in Bucha. The entire world has multiple satellite firms offering effectively daily coverage of these areas. It’s all commercially available to anyone with the cash to pay. And yet, to this day, the whole world is still relying the images Maxar decided to highlight to the public. You’d think this would be a great opportunity for these companies that are ostensibly in competition with each other to showcase their respective capabilities. Nope. Instead, we have Maxar releasing just a handful of its available photos while seemingly playing dumb about the rest of all of the images they clearly possess. And the rest of the world plays dumber. It’s a mystery. A frustratingly dumb mystery.
@Pterrafractyl–
Remember two key things: “Deep Fakes” are now part of our media and cognitive political landscape.
Reports of atrocities are coming exclusively through Ukrainian authorities, mostly the police, i.e. the proteges of former Azov deputy commander Vadim Troyan and the Azov Druzhyna militia and the C14 Svoboda militia.
And of course, they would NEVER lie, would they?
Best,
Dave
Wars rarely have just one front. That’s been clear from the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where Russian forces have been bogged down on multiple fronts in the northern and eastern parts of the country. But as the following Grayzone piece reminds us, wars often have another front in the battle: a domestic war of political ‘cleansing’, ostensibly as part of the war effort. And as we’re going to see, the Ukrainian government has been winning one decisive victory on that front after another. Victories in the form of not just the banning of opposition parties — generally left-leaning parties — but also the open political assassination campaigns against politicians declared to be ‘pro-Russian’.
And, of course, while much of this open repression appears to be carried out directly by the Ukraine’s security services (SBU), groups like Azov are doing this dirty work themselves. Even worse, we have examples of the SBU and Azov working together in kidnapping and torturing some of these figures.
And this all appears to be carried up with the blessing of President Zelenskiy’s office. And that brings us to what might be the most disturbing aspect of this story. Because if there’s been one consistent theme with Zelenskiy’s term in office, it’s that it’s never been entirely clear how much freedom he really had to operate under the threat of violence from groups like Azov and their backers in the national security state like Geraschenko. As we saw in that fascinating bne Intellinews article from back in August of 2021, Azov literally staged a violent attack outside Zelenskiy’s office in response to security services attempting to simply inspect a group of Azov protesters who were demanding to be allowed to see Zelenskiy. And that attack appears to be tied to a larger anti-corruption/anti-oligarch effort Zelenskiy was waging under pressure from the US. In other words, Zelenskiy’s own grip on power was being openly challenged with threats of violence from groups like Azov in the lead up to this conflict. And now that the conflict is underway, Zelenskiy’s office has basically given its blessing to seeing a new broader form of ‘lustration’ and political repression.
And the political groups targeted aren’t just those deemed to be ‘pro-Russian’. It’s Ukraine’s leftists too. This is turning into an ideological purge under the guise of a gross ‘anti-Russian’ pretense. Not just party members but random citizens who ended up on the radar of one of these far right groups.
So as the world listens to the deluge of reports about civilian atrocities being committed in Ukraine, it’s going to be increasingly important to keep in mind that Ukraine’s SBU has now officially teamed up with groups like Azov to purge Ukraine of those deemed to be a danger to the state. And that’s the kind of definition that, when defined by groups like Azov, is going to include a large portion of the Ukrainian populace:
“The Ukrainian SBU security services has served as the enforcement arm of the officially authorized campaign of repression. With training from the CIA and close coordination with Ukraine’s state-backed neo-Nazi paramilitaries, the SBU has spent the past weeks filling its vast archipelago of torture dungeons with political dissidents.”
Repression of anything deemed ‘pro-Russian’ has been a feature of Ukraine’s political and legal landscape ever since the 2014 Maidan regime change and the passage of the “lustration” laws following that effectively purged Ukraine of figures associated with the ousted Yanukovych governent. But that trend has been kicked into high gear with the outbreak of this war. The SBU’s torture dungeons are filling up. It’s not something we need to speculate about. The SBU and Ukrainian authorities have been quite open about it. For years now. Along with the Nazi groups like C14 empowered by authorities to help wage these purge. That’s why international observers like the United Nations Office of the High Commission have issue reports explicitly accusing the SBU of political disappearances. Reports that are now going to be relatively tame compared to what’s going on in Ukraine right now:
Notably, one of the Ukrainian figures who has been openly celebrating the SBU’s dissident assassination campaign is advisor to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs Anton Geraschenko. As we’ve seen, Geraschenko has been one of the strongest defenders of groups like Azov against charges of Nazism. So we shouldn’t be surprised when we find Geraschenko celebrating how there’s “one less traitor” killed by a “court of the people’s tribunal” following reports that the SBU had hunted down, tortured, and killed the anti-war mayor of the Ukrainian-controlled town of Lugansk:
But it’s not like all the targets of these extrajudicial assassinations are easily explainable. Recall the bizarre murder Ukrainian peace negotiation Denis Kireev. We still have no idea why exactly he was killed by the SBU. But we we do know is that the SBU was clearly trying to send a message by leaving his dead body to be found on the streets. It was like an act of terrorism directed at Ukraine’s dissident within the government:
But this political repression isn’t just coming in the form of assassinations and targeted brutality. 11 opposition parties were just banned outright on March 19 via an invocation of martial law. It’s like a turbo-charged lustration 2.0:
And note how it’s note just the SBU carrying out this campaign of terror. Sometimes it’s the SBU working with Azov to kidnap, torture, and kill dissidents:
Along those lines, also note how the “Myrotvorets” group — dedicated to blacklisting and doxxing thousands of local and international journalists deemed “enemies of Ukraine” and promoted by Anton Geraschenko — is playing a role in this campaign of political repression. Which is more or less what we should have expected:
Finally, we have to keep in mind that all of these dead bodies have to be explained. And while the SBU is clearly not shy about touting its assassination campaign in some cases, it’s a safe bet that a lot of these executions are not something the SBU and its Azov allies want the world to know about. And that’s why we can be pretty confident that this story of Azov torturing and killing a woman, and then having the incident passed off by the Ukrainian government as perpetrated by the Russians, is the kind of thing we can be confident is happening far more than is being reported:
How many more videos of people tortured and killed by Azov are we eventually going to see percolating through the internet with claims of Russian civilian atrocities? We’ll never really know. It’s part of what’s so awful about this conflict. In the end, there’s going to be a mind-numbing number of atrocities committed where we can’t ever really know who committed it. War is hell and part of that hell is the unavailability of any meaningful justice in so many cases. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be enormous efforts to spin what happened. Especially by the groups doing the killing. And right now it appears to be ‘open season’ on leftists and anyone deemed to be ‘pro-Russian’ in Ukraine. That’s going to require a lot of spin.
And that’s why it’s important to keep in mind that one of the biggest things the international community can do to disincentivize this kind of rampant kidnapping and torture of civilians by groups like Azov is to stop taking groups like Azov at their word whenever they deny atrocities and start taking them at their word when they celebrate these atrocities. As long as groups like Azov and their SBU sponsors know they can kill civilians basically with impunity — with the added bonus of being able to generate international outrage by videoing the tortured bodies and blaming it on Russia — they’re going to keep doing it with greater enthusiasm. In other words, yes, this is a story about the Ukrainian government’s collusion with Ukraine’s Nazis to opportunistically purge the country of its leftists and ethnic Russian population. But it’s also a much large story about how Ukraine’s allies in the West and the international media have largely condoned this ongoing ‘cleansing’ of Ukraine.
@Pterrafractyl–
Pictures of Ukraine’s present and Ukraine’s past present a horrifying and dramatic continuity:
A twitter video of a partially stripped woman from the article above: https://twitter.com/TheUN_voice/status/1510670788499685377?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1510671456698396674%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthegrayzone.com%2F2022%2F04%2F17%2Ftraitor-zelensky-assassination-kidnapping-arrest-political-opposition%2F
We present a photo essay of the 6/30/1941 pogrom in Lviv.
That pogrom has been–in effect–celebrated with Shukhevychfest.
Stripping female victims would appear to be a popular recreational exercise in Ukraine.
https://www.vintag.es/2016/10/30-shocking-historical-photos-of-lviv.html
No protest from American feminists, apparently.
Keep up the great work!
Dave
Here’s a WaPo article from last week related to ongoing questions about civilian massacres in Bucha. In particular, questions about the extent of the Azov Battalion operations in the area during that Russian occupation and what role Azov may have played in those civilian deaths.
As we’ve seen, it sounds like the Russian forces started the occupation of Bucha off in a relatively polite and friendly manner in the early days. https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr1237-how-many-lies-before-you-belong-to-the-lie-part-10/comment-page‑1/#comment-370768 Russian forces declared Yablunska Street to be a no-go zone and warned that anyone traveling on the street will be shot. Civilians nonetheless traveled on the street, resulting in the gory images of bodies lining that road following the Russian pull out. So while a narrative about the indiscriminate terroristic killing of civilians by Russian forces in Bucha soon took hold, these reports instead point towards Bucha being the site of intense urban combat between opposing forces. Exactly the kind of situation where you would expect a lot of civilian deaths.
But then there’s the questions about which Ukrainian forces were fighting in Bucha. Was the Azov Battalion one of those units? If so, that should raise an array of questions about the source of these civilian deaths. As we’ve seen, groups like Azov have been openly brutalizing civilians accusing of ‘pro-Russian’ sympathies, or for just being leftists, since the start of the war.
And all those questions about whether or not Azov was operating in Bucha were piqued with the video released on April 3, several days after the Russian forces withdrew from Bucha, that appears to show Sergey “Boatsman” Korotkikh in Bucha giving troops permission to shoot anyone not wearing a blue armband. Yes, this notorious Azov leader just happened to show up in Bucha right after the Russians left in a video that appears to show Korotkikh giving orders to kill people indiscriminately.
Also recall the fascinating story from August of 2021 involving Korotkikh’s role as the leader of Azov’s business operations. The report was about an August 14 attack on the presidential office of Vlolodymyr Zelenskiy in Kiev by a group of Azov protestors demanding to be allowed to see Zelenskiy. When the police forced the protestors to submit to an inspection before being allowed to see Zelenskiy, the protestors were issued an order to attack the police, wounding several officers an a member of the National Guard who had to be taken to the hospital.
And while we don’t know exactly what these protestors were planning on addressing with Zelenskiy, the surrounding circumstances give a big clue. This incident happened amid an SBU crackdown on Azov’s racketeering practices as part of a larger US-backed anti-oligarch crackdown. And one of the oligrachs apparently targeted in this crackdown includes Igor Kolomoisky, a major political patron of both Zelenskiy and the Azov Battalion. In addition, Arsen Avakov — Azov’s long-standing sponsor in the Interior Ministry — resigned in July.
But then there’s the angle Korotkikh played in this story if an apparent foiled Azov attack on Zelenskiy: Vitaly Shishov, the head of Belarusian House, an opposition group that offers aid to Belarusians that flee to Ukraine, was found hanged in a tree in a Kyiv park on August 3. Shishov also had close ties to Azov via his fellow Belarus House partner Rodion Batulin and Sergey Korotkikh. Korotkikh is believed to be running Azov’s business operations.
So a week and a half after Korotkikh’s Belarus House associate was found hanging in a park in Kiev amidst a SBU crackdown on both oligrachs and Azov’s racketeering business, we have an Azov assault on Zelenskiy’s presidential office.
Then, a few months later, we get reports about an impending Kremin-backed coup plot rattling the Zelenskiy administration, and yet that coup plot seemed to revolve around Rinat Akhmetov, a figure who doesn’t fit the Kremline stooge profile. Quite the opposite. The figures who appear to be involved with this plot were staunch Ukrainian nationalists.
That’s all part of the context of what was happening inside Ukraine in the months leading up to the Russian invasion. A kind of civil war had already broken out, with Zelenskiy and a newly Avakov-free SBU seemingly engaged in a rigorous enough crackdown to not only trigger that Azov attack on Zelenskiy’s office in August but may have also played a role in the coup plot warnings we were getting from Zelenskiy just a few months later.
And it’s a context where Sergey “Boatsman” Korotkikh is playing a key leadership role inside the Azov movement. So when that video of Korotkikh giving the indiscriminate kill orders in Bucha surfaced, the questions about Azov’s role in the killing of civilians only grew more urgent.
And that brings us the following WaPo article last week about the events in Bucha. It turns out Korotkikh decided to get involved with the international debate over what exactly happened in Bucha and when. Recall how satellite images released by the commercial satellite operator Maxar were being used to show when bodies were showing up on Yablunska Street. Also recall how Maxar puzzlingly only released a few days of satellite images despite seemingly having new high resolution images of Bucha from each day in March. Even more puzzling is that another commercial satellite operator, PlanetLab, also has daily satellite images of Bucha and those appear to be entirely ignored by the world. Who knows why exactly all of this rich satellite data is being systematically ignored by the global community, but as a result, any additional evidence about the fighting in Bucha is still useful for understanding what happened when.
So it turns out Korotkikh is the source of six new drone videos, apparently taken around March 19–21, that shows Russian armored vehicles on the streets near where blown up cars and bodies were found. Or at least it’s assumed that these are Russian armored vehicles based on the fact that the vehicles have “V” painted on them are are of model that is almost exclusively used by Russian airborne units. The timing of the videos has reportedly been confirmed by the WaPo, based in part on comparing the videos to the satellite images released by Maxar and PlanetLabs.
Interestingly, the other military that is known to use these same types of vehicles is Ukraine, but the experts cited in the article speculate that Ukraine has already lost most of those vehicles in the fighting. So actually, technically, Ukraine could have just painted some “V“s on its own stock of these vehicle and sent them to Yablunska Street. And let’s also not forget the growing volume of captures Russian vehicles. It’s a reminder that, as video evidence is increasingly used to establish what happened in this conflict, it’s not actually going to be that difficult to create videos using the side’s vehicles. They’re basically the same vehicles, but sometimes with a “V” painted on them.
Now, given that the Russian forces presumably had Yablunska Street fairly well covered at this point and they were in the middle of intense urban combat with the Ukrainian forces, it’s not at all hard to believe that those really were Russian armored vehicles. Don’t forget that Yablunksa Street connects Bucha to Irpin, where intense fighting was also going on at this time. It’s part of why the bodies found on Yablunska Street shouldn’t really be put in the same category as the mass grave found at the nearby church. The mass grave was a very deliberate act. Yablunska Street, on the other hand, was an active war zone for most of the occupation. It’s hardly shocking if Russian troops were videoed in armored vehicles on that street. They probably would have been shot by Ukrainian snipers if they hadn’t been.
So while the release of these videos by Korotkikh was treated by the press as seemingly further confirmation of Russian atrocities in Bucha, it’s important to keep in mind that the videos don’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know about what the Russian forces were doing in Bucha. But they do tell us something quite important that we hadn’t had confirmed before: Sergey “Boatsman” Korotkikh and his forces were operating in or new Bucha during the weeks leading up to the Russian withdraw:
“The six videos, recorded by a person known to be affiliated with neo-Nazis, were obtained by The Washington Post and first reported on by Meduza, a Russian news outlet banned by the Kremlin from operating in the country.
Six drone videos “recorded by a person known to be affiliated with neo-Nazis”. That person is, of course, himself an outspoken neo-Nazi too: Sergey Korotkikh. And it sounds like Korotkikh himself recorded them. In other words, that drone was likely collecting information Korotkikh was using for real-time operations in that area. Interestingly, note now there were newly destroyed cars in the video from March 21 that weren’t there on March 19. While it’s certainly plausible desperate civilians tried to flee down that street and were killed by Russian forces, given the timing we have to ask if those freshly destroyed cars being used military operations being carried out by Korotkikh during this time. Korotkikh’s forces obviously had an interest in the area at that time:
Also note how the primary ‘aha’ moment in these videos is the fact that there are BMD‑2 and BTR‑D vehicles with “V” in the videos. Only Russia’s airborne units use these vehicles...with the one exception of Ukraine which also has a small supply. Now, it’s very plausible that those are indeed Russian vehicles in the video, but it’s just worth keeping in mind that these vehicles aren’t apparently being used as evidence of Russian activity despite the fact that Ukraine does indeed own their own:
Finally, it’s also worth noting the interesting comment Korotkikh made last week about his whereabouts when these videos were released: he had been at Ukraine’s border with Belarus:
Keep in mind that the Russian-Ukraine peace talks are being held in the town of Homel on the border of Ukraine and Belarus. Given Korotkikh’s prominent role in Azov, and the fact that he’s a Belurussian with an alleged history with Russia’s FSB before joining Azov, you have to wonder if he’s playing any sort of role in those peace negotiations. Let’s hope not. Especially since that role would presumably be threatening the lives of Ukraine’s negotiators should they arrive at an agreement.
So why exactly did Ukraine’s powerful long-time Interior Minister Arsen Avakov suddenly resign back in July of 2021? It’s a question that continues to linger over Ukraine’s future as the Russian invasion plays out. It’s an especially relevant question given the ascendance of the Nazi movements like Azov as a result of this invasion. Nazi movements that Avakov was notoriously close to and elevated from the 2014–2021 while in office. And as we saw the fascinating bne Intellinews report from back in August about an attack on Zelenskiy’s presidential offices the month after Avakov’s resignation, the tensions between Zelenskiy and Ukraine’s Nazis were only heating up following Avakov’s departure from the Zelenskiy administration. Tensions that were, at least temporarily, redirected towards Russia following the invasion.
But those tensions between Ukraine’s president and Ukraine’s Nazis are presumably going to come roaring back assuming Ukraine isn’t turned into a pile in a permanent state of war, which is part of the reason the lingering questions about why exactly Avakov suddenly resigned remain quite relevant. As we’ll see, the man was considered effectively untouchable, manifesting in the fact that he was the only member of Petro Poroshenko’s government Zelenskiy kept after taking office in 2019. Zelenskiy was apparently impressed with the fact the Avakov was directing his resources against Poroshenko during that election. ‘Resources’ like Azov’s political wing — National Corps — waging public anti-corruption protests against Poroshenko in the days before the election. Or Azov’s role as election monitors. Those ‘resources’ are reportedly why Zelenskiy decided Avakov was the only member of Poroshenko’s cabinet to keep.
So, again, why did Avakov suddenly resign? Well, it sounds like the unresolved investigation into the assassination of Ukrainian journalist Pavel Sheremet could be a major factor. Shortly after getting elected, Zelenskiy ordered Avakov to complete the investigation that had been languishing for years. The following month, three people were arrested in what appeared to many to be a sham investigation. Zelenskiy later publicly stated that if there turns out to be problems with the investigation Avakov would be in trouble. Questions about the veracity
Recall how Sheremet’s assassination appears to have been the work of the SBU. So when Zelenskiy demanded Avakov come up with a meaningful resolution to that investigation, he was basically asking for an investigation into the SBU. Which obviously wasn’t going to really happen.
Interestingly, in additional to be close associates with Azov figures Andriy Biletsky and Vadym Troyan, Avakov is also reportedly quite close to Sergey “boatsman” Korotkikh according to the following Meduza report. As we saw in the bne Intellinews report, Korotkikh is reportedly the head of Azov’s business operations and a close associate was found hanging from a tree in Kyiv in early August. Zelenskiy’s government was running an anti-racketeering operation against Azov at this time. Again, this was all less than a month after Avakov’s resignation. It hints at the kind of protective role Avakov was playing for Azov this whole time.
Oh, and it sounds like the person who replaced Avakov, Denys Monastyrsk, has been described as “Avakov’s man”. Even when he’s gone, he’s still there. That’s power. Which is all part of what we still need to ask why exactly Arsen Avakov resigned. But more importantly, we still have to ask what he’s planning on doing next with all that lingering power:
“Unsurprisingly, Monastyrsky is being called “Avakov’s man.” By all appearances, the outgoing interior minister will retain his influence in the security apparatus even after his resignation. And this means that Avakov won’t disappear from high-level Ukrainian politics in the years to come.”
Yikes. The way this article describes it, Avakov was poised to be a kind Ukrainian Allen Dulles, a former all powerful spy chief who never really goes away. The fact that he was fired and replaced with someone from Zelenskiy’s own party who is still seen as “Avakov’s man” is an indication that Avakov has no intention of going away.
But it’s not just Avakov’s influence over the SBU that makes him such an intimidating figure. It’s also the fact that Avakov effectively turned the Nation Guard into his “personal army”. Then he incorporated the “volunteer battalions” like the Azov Battalion in the National Guard while maintaining close personal contacts with leading Azov figures like Andriy Biletsky and Sergey Korotikh. Avakov even had Azov’s former deputy commander, Vadym Troyan, serve has his deputy. That’s, of course, in addition to Troyan’s appointment in 2014 as the head of the Kiev region Chief of police. Avakov has been surrounding himself with the Ukraine’s extremists from basically the entirety of his term as Interior Minister:
Another sign of Avakov’s deeply felt influence in Ukraine’s political establish is the fact that only 31 deputies voted to dismiss him in 2017 following reports that his son was embezzling government funds and those charges were eventually dropped. Almost no one in power wanted to cross Avakov:
And when Zelenskiy was elected in 2019, only Avakov was kept from the Poroshenko administration. The apparent reason for this was that Avakov “provided Zelensky with fair elections” and even utilized his own resources against Poroshenko. And the example of those resources being used against Poroshenko include Azov’s protests against Poroshenko and the fact that Azov was granted election monitoring powers:
But despite Zelenskiy’s decision to keep Avakov, there was a condition imposed: Avakov needed to finally investigate the death of Ukrainian investigative journalist Pavel Sheremet. Recall how evidence already exists pointing strongly towards Sheremet’s death an assassination by the SBU. So Zelenskiy was basically demanding that Avakov investigate the Ukrainian government. And when Avakov presented a group of highly questionable culprits less than a month later, that appeared to be the beginning of the end for Avakov:
So was the enduring cover up of Pavel Sheremet’s murder, like by the SBU, the real reason for Avakov’s sudden resignation back in July? Who knows, but it will be interesting to see what happens to not just this investigation but all the other lingering investigations from the past eight years now that this war has broken out. After all, it’s not like the assassination of Pavel Sheremet is the only unresolved major investigation that could rock Ukraine’s government to its core should it ever be allowed to happen. In other words, Arsen Avakov’s work clearly isn’t done, which is why really need to keep asking how he’s wielding in power. It may be unofficial power at this point, but unofficial power is very real. Just ask the ghost of Allen Dulles. Or the ghost of JFK. There’s unfortunately an abundance of ghosts one could ask about that topic.
The first round of formal war crime accusations were just filed over the Russian invasion of Ukraine: 10 Russian soldiers are charge with holding civilians hostage and mistreating them in Bucha.
So with international investigations into what actually happened in Bucha already underway, here’s a set of article that point to a rather intriguing mystery regarding the mass grave of ~300 bodies seemingly discovered by Ukrainian authorities only after the Russian withdrawal from the Kyiv suburb. As we’re going to see, it appears that the earliest reporting on the mass grave in Bucha has a very different spin on what happened. According to the AFP, the mayor of Bucha, Anatoly Fedoruk, told an AFP reporter on April 2 that “we have already buried 280 people in mass graves,” adding that the heavily destroyed town’s streets are littered with corpses.
Yes, according to Bucha’s mayor, “we have already buried 280 people in mass graves.” That’s what the AFP report on April 2. By April 3, all of the other reports we find referencing this mass grave refer to it as something that was just kind of discovered.
Recall how one of the strange mysteries looming over the story of the Bucha mass grave is the fact that early ‘evidence’ of Russian culpability for this mass grave was provided by satellite image providers Maxar, which released images from March 11 and March 31 of the area where the mass grave was ultimately found. And yet, as we’ve seen, commercial satellite imagery of that area is readily available for not just Maxar but other commercial satellite image providers for every single day in March. So why aren’t we seeing more photos of that area that could elucidate who did what when? That’s part of the context of this seemingly forgotten admission by the mayor of Bucha that “we” filled that grave.
Adding to the intrigue is the fact that the AFP actually links back to this same report in its own ‘AFP Factcheck’ that was attempting to debunk the claims about staged atrocities in Bucha. In that AFP Fact Check, it adds context to Fedoruk’s quote by pointing out that the bodies were dumped in a mass grave because they could not be buried in the cemeteries of Bucha:
Keep in mind that, based on the available accounts of the intensity of the fighting in Bucha, it’s not at all outlandish to imagine that the number of bodies in that city — including the bodies of Russian soldiers — vastly exceeded the available capacity of both the morgue and the local cemeteries. Plus, there may have been logistical hurdle to even access the cemeteries. Hundreds of bodies had to be buries, whether they were killed by Russian soldiers, Ukrainian resistance, or were victims of Ukrainian Nazi battalions operating in the area.
Also recall how the notorious Azov leader, Sergey ‘Boatsman’ Korotkikh, released drone footage of Bucha that he apparently captured himself around March 19, demonstrating that Azov was operating in that area in the weeks leading up to the Russian withdrawal. How many civilians were liquidated by Azov during this period and what did they end up doing with those bodies? It’s been a major question looming over the events of Bucha all along. But when we take into account that initial characterization by the mayor of the Bucha mass grave as something “we” did in order to deal with all the bodies, the question of who actually killed those victims looms ever larger.
Another interesting twist in this story is that when we use the internet archive to go back and look at the earlier iterations of that April 2 AFP piece with the mayor’s remarkable claims that “we” had filled those grave, the earliest archived version of the article is literally just two sentences relaying the mayor’s comments and the subtitle of the piece is the mayor’s quote about “In Bucha, we have already buried 280 people in mass graves”:
That’s it. That’s the entire report. So when it comes to questions of whether or not this AFP report maybe had a translation issue or perhaps misheard the mayor, this very concise report makes it clear that the mayor of Bucha spoke directly to an AFP reporter on April 2 about how Bucha was forced to created a mass grave to deal with the excess of bodies.
Also note that, while this AFP report goes through a number of updates if you look at its internet archives, that quote by Fedoruk never changes or gets updated. At the same time, it appears to be the only report in existence where Fedoruk makes this admission. All other reports from other news outlets convey the message that this mass grave was just suddenly found. And yet, again, the AFP’s own “Fact Check” page links back to this same report and adds the context that the mass grave was created because there wasn’t enough space in the city cemeteries.
But there’s another major twist in this story: it turns out there’s a March 14 BBC report that describes mass graves being dug in Ukraine. By Ukrainians. The cities were mass graves were already being reported included Mariupol, Bucha and neighboring Irpin. The mass grave being dug in Bucha is described as being next to a church! And it doesn’t sound like the mass grave was dug by Russian soldiers but instead by doctors who were overwhelmed with bodies. 60 bodies were in the Bucha mass grave at time according to the report.
So there were reports of Ukrainian-built mass graves two weeks before Antoly Fedoruk told an AFP reporter that “we have already buried 280 people in mass graves” in Bucha. And then, all of a sudden, Fedoruk’s admission falls down the memory hole and a narrative about Russian mass graves takes root.
Ok, first, here’s that March 14 BBC report describing mass graves already being dug in Ukraine. By Ukrainians. Including one in Bucha next to a church and apparently used by the hospital in neighboring Irpin to deal with all the dead:
“Four-hundred miles to the north west, on the edge of the capital Kyiv, a mass grave was dug near a church in the town of Bucha, local MP Mykhailyna Skoryk-Shkarivska said. It contains more than 60 bodies.”
A mass grave dug near a church in Bucha and apparently filled with bodies overflowing from Irpin’s hospital and buried by the Irpin doctors themselves. Ritual services were conducted at the hospital and victims. That was the BBC’s reporting on March 14:
Ok, now flash forward to April 6, and we find this AFP ‘Fact Check’ piece purported debunking the claims of staged atrocities in Bucha. And in this piece we find the AFP directly referencing its reporting from April 2 where the mayor of Bucha tells the AFP “we have already buried 280 people in mass graves.” The AFP Fact Check doesn’t include that exact quote, but it does link back to the AFP reporting that included the quote, and also adds the context that the mass graves were used because they couldn’t be buried in local cemeteries during the conflict. So this AFP ‘Fact Check’ that was trying to debunk questions about the alleged Russian atrocities in Bucha actually contains some of the most important expulatory evidence available to us:
“On April 2, Fedorouk said that “280 people” had been buried “in mass graves” because they could not be buried in the cemeteries of Bucha.”
It’s certainly a reasonable explanation for why Bucha may have needed a mass grave during the month of March. Cemetery access was presumably highly limited. But that’s still VERY different from the ‘Russians slaughtered civilians and dumped them in a mass grave’ narrative we started getting shortly after Fedoruk made this admission. And then this AFP ‘Fact Check’ links to its own piece, first reported on April 2, where Fedoruk acknowledges that, yes, it was Ukrainians who filled this mass grave out of necessity:
As we can see, the AFP didn’t rescind this report. Instead, it referenced it in its own ‘Fact Check’ a few days later. The mayor Bucha really did tell this AFP reporter that “we have already buried 280 people in mass graves” and it wasn’t just a reporting mishap. It’s also quite consistent with that March 14 BBC report about Ukrainians digging mass graves out of pure necessity. Including, perhaps, the necessity of doing something with all the bodies created by the the Azov Battalion’s own civilian atrocities. They had to go somewhere. And that’s why the investigation into these mass graves really should include a very thorough investigation about not just who resides in those graves but who exactly killed them.
The issue of war crimes in Ukraine had a potentially significant update: the UK is reportedly open to some sort of international criminal tribunal trying Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders over war crimes in Ukraine. Who knows how realistic that scenario is, but it underscores the growing importance of actually getting real independent investigations that can stand up to international scrutiny, as opposed to just uncritically accepting allegations as has been the case with the allegations of mass graves in Bucha, which Ukrainian authorities previously admitted digging themselves in mid-March before that detail fell down the memory hole.
So it’s with noting a rather curious war crime claim that’s emerged over the past month: Russian use of anti-personnel flechette artillery munitions. While the rounds aren’t banned entirely in war, their use in civilian areas is considered a war crime. But we are now told that Russian forces used them against civilians in places like Bucha and Irpin.
The initial claims of flechette usage first pop up in a Washington Post article back on April 18. In that report, a resident of Bucha, Svitlana Chmut, asserts that she witnessed their usage by Russian forces on either March 25 or 26. This was days before the Russian withdrawal from the area in the face of a Ukrainian counter-offensive.
So how do we know that it was the Russian shell, and not Ukrainian? Well, that’s never explained. We’re just told it was the Russian who fired it. But it gets much more bizarre. Because it also turns out that it was Russian troops and artillery that were stationed in the yards near Chmut’s house. Yep. Chmut even speculates in the article that maybe the Russians accidentally shelled their own troops.
No Russian troops were ultimately killed in the attack which is attributed to the fact that they were taking up residences in local homes at night and flechettes are really only useful against soldiers in an open area. Still, that’s what we’re being asked to believe: the Russians shelled their own troops with these flechette weapons.
We didn’t really get many updates on the use of flechettes until a few days ago when we got a new report. In this report, a civilian in the town of Irpin claims he first witnessed their usage on March 5, about a week into the fighting over Irpin. So it’s possible these types of munitions were used rather extensively throughout the roughly month-long occupation of that region. And as we’re going to see in the third article excerpt below, forensic doctors have already determined that dozens of civilians in Bucha were killed by these flechettes. So whichever side ended up using these things in civilian areas was definitely committing a war crime. And we’re told it was the Russians who did it. But we’re also told that the Russians did it to themselves:
“Flechette shells are not banned, but their use in civilian areas is prohibited under humanitarian law, because of their indiscriminate nature. They cause severe damage as they rip through the body, twisting and bending — and can be lethal.”
Flechettes aren’t banned entirely from war, but they are banned in civilian areas. So whichever side used theses things did indeed commit a war crime. The big question is which side actually used them. In one case we have evidence of flechettes being used the village of Andriivka, and according to Liudmila Denisova, Ukraine’s ombudsman for human rights, these were delivered from Russian fired artillery. But we’re talking about towns that were initially shelled by Russian forces but later shelled by the Ukrainian forces trying to dislodge the Russian occupiers. For example, according to this REFL video report out of Andriivka, the Ukrainian forces were hitting the Russians occupying forces in the town with artillery (~1:20 in the video). So while forensics experts can certainly determine whether or not these flechettes were used, it’s unclear how they know which site it was used against. Except, of course, if there’s dead soldiers near the impact area. The nationalities of those soldiers will more or less tell us which side launched the attack:
Similarly, note how the account we got from a resident of Irpin indicated that first time he experienced a Flechette shell was on March 5. This would have been a week into the Battle of Irpin. So it sounds like the flechettes started being used as the Battle of Irpin was really getting underway, after the Russian forces had already occupied the area. Oddly, he also claims the attack came when a shell hit the neighbor’s house but failed to explode. Do these darts erupt out of non-exploded shells? It’s a confusing account:
Part of the significance of this civilian’s claim that he first experience these flechettes in use on March 5 is that it’s three weeks before the previously reported earliest use, which was reported in an April 18 Washing Post article that appears to be the first news report on the use of flechettes. In that article, a resident of Bucha, Svitlana Chmut, claims she witnessed the use of flechettes on March 25–26, days before Russian forces withdrew from the area. So for the past month, Chmut’s recounting was more or less our best guess in terms of when these munitions were used. A best guess that suggested the flechettes were only being used in the final days before the Russian forces were driven out of the region. But then we just got the above account from a few days ago that puts the first use of these weapons at March 5, suggesting they may have been used far more extensively during this fighting.
As the following article notes, part of the reason flechettes are rarely used these days is because they’re really only useful for special circumstances, like troops gathered over an open area. They aren’t actually very useful against people in buildings. So when we’re told that Russian troops were using flechettes against civilians in urban areas, it doesn’t really make sense even of Russian solders intended to kill civilians. It’s the wrong kind of weapon. But it’s the right kind of weapon against occupying Russian troops stationed in fixed positions outside.
And that brings us to the other rather amazing claim made by Svitlana Chmut in this initial report on the use of flechettes: she claimed the attack struck an area populated by Russian troops and artillery. Yes, we are told the Russians attacked their own troops with flechettes. The only reason there weren’t a bunch of dead or injured Russian soldiers after the attack was that they were taking up residences in local homes for the evening:
“It is already illegal to target civilians, and the irregular fragmentation of a typical artillery shell probably causes more damage to a body than fléchettes, which produce wounds closer to gunshots, Gibson said. They are also generally less useful, he said, because they are mostly appropriate for specific circumstances, like striking troops in the open gathered across a large area.”
You don’t use flechettes for regular artillery strikes. They’re only really useful for specific situations: like striking troops gathered in the open in large areas. But they aren’t really effective against people in buildings. So when we hear claims that the Russians were shelling civilian urban areas with these attacks, it doesn’t really make sense unless the intent was killing large groups of civilians gathered outside. Attacking Russian troops stationed at fixed positions outside, on the other hand, seems like a very plausible use for flechettes. That’s part of what makes the account by Svitlana Chmut in Bucha so notable: According to Chmut, the flechette attack that took place outside her home took place before the Russians withdrew from the area. Those troops had artillery positions set up in yards near her home. So we’re being asked to believe that the Russians shelled their own troops with these flechette rounds days before their retreat. It’s not exactly a compelling narrative:
So did the Russians just happen to shell their own troops on March 25–26, days before they pulled out of Bucha under fire from a Ukrainian counter-offensive? That’s what we’re being asked to believe.
It raises the question of how many of the dead Russian soldiers’ bodies left in Kyiv suburbs had flechette wounds. We haven’t had any reports of that yet. But as the following article describes, forensic doctors have indeed determined that “dozens” of civilians were killed by flechettes in Bucha alone. So whichever side was using these flechettes ended up killing quite a few civilians:
“Dozens of civilians who died during the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian city of Bucha were killed by tiny metal arrows from shells of a type fired by Russian artillery, forensic doctors have said.”
Dozens of civilians killed in Bucha alone by these flechettes. That was the estimates from these forensic doctors who keep finding these metal objects in bodies. And note how, as of this April 24 report, the first eye-witness account of these flechettes being used was from Svitlana Chmut in Bucha who witnessed their use on March 25–26, right as Russian soldiers were being driven out of the area. But in that above report from a few days ago, a civilian in Irpin, Volodymyr Klimashevskyi, claims he first witnessed the flechettes being used on March 5, around a week after the initial occupation of the area. So the timeline for when and where these flechettes were used was pushed forward by three weeks with the latest report. It will be interesting to see how many bodies of soldiers, on either the Russian or Ukrainian side, end up being found to be casualties of flechette munitions. Along those lines, it will be interesting to see if those statistics are ever made publicly available:
As is so often the case in these kinds of investigations clouded by the fog of war, the devil is in the details. And those details do indeed point towards the use of flachette munitions in civilians areas. Those details are undeniable. Just as there’s also no denying that the very first eye witness account included the detail that these munitions were used against Russian soldiers. Not that there’s anything stopping undeniable details from falling down the memory hole.
One of the grimmest questions looming over the conflict in Ukraine has been the question what’s going to actually happen to the civilians in the separatist areas should they end up being recaptured by Ukrainian forces. Like, what’s going to happen to the people deemed to be Russian sympathizers? Is there any reason to assume they won’t be massacred in the expected waves of reprisal killings that happen in wars?
While while the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have yet to be reconquered, the recapture of territory around the Kharkiv region should also raise these kinds of questions. And that brings us to a the following truly disturbing piece in Covert Action Magazine by Russel Bentley, an American who has been living in Donetsk as an independent journalist since 2014. Bentley’s piece publishes in anonymous letter purported authored by a member of a forensic team that investigated the allegations of Russian massacres in Bucha. According to the letter, a NATO-member intelligence agency obtained videos of incidents in Bucha. Videos showing the Ukrainian military killing unarmed civilians in Bucha and then positioning their bodies on the ground. The videos are apparently now classified. The anonymous author ends with a plea to journalists to make requests to governments and the UN for these documents so the story can get out, while insisting that they have to remain anonymous for their own safety.
Bentley’s piece characterized the letter as having been widely distributed via email to the main international journalists working in the areas of Donbas not under Ukrainian/NATO control. Interestingly, Bentley claims to have seen videos himself showing Ukrainian soldiers positioning freshly killed bodies on the main streets of Bucha. It’s not clear which particular video Bentley saw or whether or not he has access to that video or who possess it.
Bentley’s piece also included a screen shot of dead civilians with their arms bound behind their backs with white cloth, which is consistent with what we’ve already seen. Recall how one of the curious aspects of the Bucha massacre crime scenes was how bodies of civilians were found with their arms bound behind their backs with white cloth. White cloth/arm bands were used by both Russian troops and their civilian supporters. And then there was the video that appear on Youtube in the early days of Ukraine’s recapture of Bucha where Azov leader Sergey “Boatsman” Korotkikh appeared to give his troops permission to shoot anyone not wearing a blue arm band.
But the coverup of civilian massacres by Azov forces is just one aspect of the disinformation surrounding the covering of events in Bucha. There were also the claims of a mass grave that was being blamed in Russian forces. And yet, as we saw, the BBC reported on the creation of a mass grave dug by civilian authorities to deal with overflowing morgues back in mid-March, describing a mass grave being dug near a church that sounds exactly like the location where the mass grave was eventually ‘discovered’ in early March following the Russian withdrawal. The was also a report by by the mayor of Bucha in early April, right when Ukraine retook control of the area, where the mayor tells reporters that “In Bucha, we have already buried 280 people in mass graves,” because they could not be buried in the cemeteries of Bucha.
So the publicly available evidence suggests the mass graves of Bucha were dug by the civilian authorities to deal with an abundance of bodies and then filled up much more after the Russian forces evacuated. And at least one of the reasons they had an abundance of bodies was all the civilians killed by Azov forces operating in the area. But now we have these allegations about videos showing Ukrainian forces actually killing unarmed civilians and positions their bodies. And if it sounds absurd that such acts would be videoed, don’t forget that one of the key pieces of evidence of Azov massacres — a video where you can clearly hear the Azov commander say it’s OK to shoot anyone not wearing a blue armband — showed up on YouTube. That’s how the world learned about it. Imagine how many more videos like that are floating around.
And that’s basically what this anonymous forensics expert and Bentley are asking the world’s journalists to do: obtain these videos and make them public before the civilian massacres in Bucha get repeated in Kharkiv:
“So why is this letter relevant now, months after the Nazi massacre in Bucha? Because the same thing is already starting to happen in the Kharkiv areas recently evacuated by Russian and Republican armed forces.”
It’s happening again. That’s the context of the anonymous letter purportedly written by someone embedded in an international expert group as a forensic specialist studying the Bucha massacres. Allegations further confirmed by Russ Bentley from his on-the-ground position in Donetsk. As we should have expected, with the recapture of the Kharkiv region by Ukrainian forces comes reprisal killings of civilians:
But it’s not just that the conditions on the ground in Kharkiv are poised for a repeat of the civilian massacres experienced in Bucha. It’s the fact that the international community doesn’t appear to be capable of honestly covering what happened in Bucha that is also fueling this situation. In other words, the other major factor fueling the risk of civilian massacres in the Kharkiv region is the simple fact that Ukrainian forces already effectively got away with both staging civilian massacres in Bucha while also carrying out reprisal killings despite the publicly available evidence. The precedent was set. Now it’s time for a repeat:
So we have an anonymous whistleblower basically asking for international media attention. Media attention that obviously isn’t going to be willingly provided in the mainstream Western press. Will any Western mainstream journalists end up filing the official requests for the relevant documents and actually investigate this lead? Of course not. The truth behind the Bucha massacres is an untouchable story, despite all the readily available evidence. As Russ Bentley reminds us, one of the curious aspects of the Bucha massacre crime scenes was how bodies of civilians were found with their arms bound behind their backs with white cloth. White cloth/arm bands were used by both Russian troops and their civilian supporters. And then there was the video that appear on Youtube in the early days of Ukraine’s recapture of Bucha where Azov leader Sergey “Boatsman” Korotkikh appeared to give his troops permission to shoot anyone not wearing a blue arm band. Also recall how the BBC reported on the creation of a mass grave to deal with overflowing morgues back in mid-March, describing a mass grave being dug near a church that sounds exactly like the location where the mass grave was eventually ‘discovered’ in early March following the Russian withdrawal. This is all publicly available evidence that has been systematically ignored. Evidence of Azov massacres of civilians and evidence that the Ukrainian authorities themselves created those mass graves. All systematically ignored:
And then there’s the allegations of new mass graves around Izyum. Mass graves that actually involved separate burial sites with wooden crosses, which really just makes is a hastily-made cemetery and not a mass grave. And as Bentley points out, the dates on those crosses appear to be from during the period when Ukraine still had control over the town. The ‘mass grave’ was really just a war time cemetery and likely made by Ukraine. It’s basically a non-story. But a non-story that’s been blown up into another mass grave allegation. It underscores how the disinformation involved with this conflict includes both covering up real crimes while simultaneously making unfounded allegations:
Will the alleged now-classified videos showing Ukrainian massacres of civilians ever get released? It’s hard to imagine that happening. But, again, it’s not like we have to rely on alleged videos. The publicly available evidence about what happened in Bucha is damning enough. Damning and yet utterly ignored. Which is what will presumably happen when allegations of Ukrainian reprisal massacres in Kharkiv start leaking out.
The fusion of cutesy internet memes with fascist politics is nothing new and hardly a surprise. Still, for the thousands of mainstream journalists and Twitter users who have been exposed to the amusing pro-Ukrainian content pumped out by the “North Atlantic Fellas Organization” (NAFO), they might be surprised to learn who is is behind the group and, more important, who else NAFO is supporting. Because as we’re going to see in the following Grayzone article, the NAFO troll army appears to have one primary goal: raising funds for the fascist Georgian Legion operating in Ukraine.
As we’ve seen, the Georgian Legion has already been living up to its reputation in Ukraine. A reputation for war crimes. Recall how video out of Bucha appeared to show the Georgian Legion committing the war crime of shooting not just Russian POWs but also civilians. And as we’re going to see, it’s that reputation for war crimes that was part of the motive for setting up this NAFO fund-raising stream for the Legion. The idea being that a group with the Georgian Legion’s reputation for brutality won’t be a recipient of foreign government funding. So NAFO decided to take that fundraising role into its own hands. The group claims to have already raised close to $1 million for the Legion.
New members to NAFO are asked to donate to one of three groups:
1. The paypal account of a Georgian Legion commander.
2. A group called Saint Javelin which, in turn, donates almost all of its proceeds to the Georgian Legion.
3. An entity called Protect Ukraine Defenders, set up by Brussels-based Ievgen Vorobiov. Vorobiov spent nearly four years at the European Union Advisory Mission in Ukraine.
That’s the group behind a network of now thousands of online trolls with the mission of not just promoting pro-Ukrainian propaganda but also intimidating any journalist or public figure who questions that propaganda. A group with the primary mission of raising funds for one of the most notorious fascist brigades operating in Ukraine today:
“Whether they know it or not, anyone who has checked Twitter for recent coverage of the Ukraine proxy war has likely encountered at least one of the thousands of trolls that comprise NAFO, or the “North Atlantic Fellas Organization.” Thanks to the efforts of NAFO and its “fellas,” any journalist or prominent figure critical of Ukraine or NATO on Twitter is likely to receive hundreds of replies accusing them of being paid by Russian President Vladimir Putin (or even performing fellatio on him) from accounts with Shiba Inu dog avatars.”
It’s a mysterious troll farm. On the one hand, the “North Atlantic Fellas Organization” (NAFO) appears to just be an organic collection of anti-Russian twitter trolls. But the closer you look, the more it appears to be a organized hierarchical organization operated by people with ties to national security think tanks. Along with ties to far right groups like the Georgian Legion and Azov:
And while the primary activity of NAFO’s members is to pump out anti-Russian online propaganda and intimidate journalists, there’s a primary goal for the group: raising funds for the Georgian Legion. That was in fact the origin of the group: retired Marine Matt Moores reached out to the Twitter account of “Kama Kamilia” back in May, inquiring about the how Moores could obtain the custom made Shiba Inu Twitter avatars. Kama Kamilia is Polish national Kamil Dyszewski, who appears to have a habit of posting far right content. Kamilia replied to Moore that a $20 dollar donation to the Georgian Legion was the price. That’s how it all got started:
And as Dyszewski puts it, he chose the Georgian Legion as the recipient of these donations precisely because the Legion has a reputation for committing war crimes and therefore would be seen as an undesirable recipient of foreign government donations. In other words, Dyszewski chose the Georgian Legion because he knew they were going to have fundraising troubles due to their fascist character:
It’s also important to recall the other grim context of this story: we’ve already seen video evidence of the Georgian Legion committing brutal war crimes in areas like Bucha. Evidence that suggests the execution of not just Russian POWs but also Ukrainian civilians. This is a group with a blank check to terrorize any elements of the Ukrainian populace they don’t like:
But then there’s the other grim context of this: the evidence presented by Professor Katchanovski’s forensic analysis of the 2014 Maidan sniper attacks covered the five Georgians who testified that they received weapons, payments, and orders to massacre both police and protesters. Those orders came from specific Maidan and Georgian politicians and instructions from a far-right linked ex-US Army sniper. They also testified that they saw Georgian, Baltic States, and Right Sector-linked Ukrainian snipers shooting from Maidan-controlled buildings. You can’t make sense of the current situation Ukraine is in without accounting for the apparent role Georgian mercenaries played triggering the and fueling the violence at the Maidan back in 2014. And now this same group is being elevated to national hero status for Ukraine alongside groups like the Azov battalion. In other words, this is all a further symptom of the very real Nazification of Ukraine:
That NAFO focus on funding the Georgian Legion is further underscored when we look at the different methods of joining NAFO: you can either make a direct donation to the PayPal account of a Georgian Legion field commander. Or you can make a donation to Saint Javelin, a group that has been giving almost all its money to the Georgian Legion.
Interestingly, there’s another recipient of NAFO-raised funds: the Ukrainian World Congress, one of the primary origanizing vehicles for the post-War Ukrainian OUN‑B fascist diaspora. This isn’t just a Georgian Legion support operation:
And as we probably should expect at this point, it turns out Saint Javelin was founded by a former journalist, Christian Borys, who appears to have a history of whitewashing Ukrainian fascism in his reporting:
But there’s one more recipient of NAFO funds: the Protect Ukraine Defenders group, launched by Brussels-based Ievgen Vorobiov, who spent nearly four years at the EU Advisory Mission in Ukraine. So have an an ostensibly ‘independent grass roots’ initiative that’s raising funds for both Georgian war criminals and a Brussels-based organization founded by an EU bureaucrat:
What is Vorobiov’s relationship to the Georgian Legion? That’s unclear. But he’s clearly an affiliate. And given how Saint Javelin appears to be a front allowing people to make donations to the Georgian Legion indirectly, it seems reasonable to suspect that Protect Ukraine Defenders is playing a similar front-group role. Which, in turn, raises the question about who else might be funneling funds to front-groups like Saint Javelin or Protect Ukraine Defenders. Is this troll army their only source of funds? We don’t know, but as this article makes clear, funny memes remain a fascist’s best friend in the modern era. The joke’s on the future.