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FTR#1240 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lies?, Part 13

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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 [5]

Mr. Emory has launched a new Patre­on site. Vis­it at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory [6]

­­­FTR#1240 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [7].

[8]

Zelen­sky “nor­mal­izes” Stephan Ban­dera

Intro­duc­tion: Main­tain­ing the unten­able PR façade that the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ukraine is a myth, Zelen­sky showed the “True Yel­low and Blue” in a video appear­ance before the Greek par­lia­ment.

Appear­ing with a mem­ber of the Nazi Azov fight­ing for­ma­tions, Zelen­sky man­i­fest­ed the grotesque polit­i­cal real­i­ty of which he is part.

“ . . . . On Thurs­day a major row erupt­ed when Zelen­sky brought along a Ukrain­ian sol­dier of Greek her­itage from the city of Mar­i­upol, who just hap­pened to be a mem­ber of the neo-Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment. Greece was under Nazi occu­pa­tion dur­ing World War II and fought a bit­ter par­ti­san war against Nazism (lat­er to be betrayed by Britain and the Unit­ed States.). . . . For­mer Finance Min­is­ter Yanis Varo­ufakis’  MeRA25 [9] par­ty said [10] the event turned into a ‘Nazi fies­ta.’. . .”

Recall that his polit­i­cal patron is Ihor Kolo­moisky, who financed Zelensky’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, owns the TV net­work that boost­ed him to pub­lic promi­nence, who was a major financier of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and who owned a con­trol­ling inter­est in Buris­ma, fea­tur­ing Hunter Biden on the board of direc­tors.

[11]It was in his posi­tion as a Buris­ma direc­tor that Hunter expe­dit­ed the appar­ent bio­log­i­cal war­fare projects over­lap­ping those involved in the “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.”

That places Hunter Biden in the mix of “The Ban­dera Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy,” if you will.

With alle­ga­tions of Russ­ian war crimes being bandied about and the hyper­bole of Joe Biden and oth­ers reach­ing new depths of dis­tor­tion and dis­hon­esty, we exam­ine a sto­ry that rais­es seri­ous ques­tions about anoth­er of the icon­ic “Russ­ian war crimes” inci­dents, the “bomb­ing” of the Mar­i­upol mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal.

Note that Mar­i­upol, like Bucha, is defend­ed by Azov/Nazi mil­i­tary units.

“ . . . .The per­ish­ing of eye­wit­ness­es to the real events at the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal is con­ve­nient for the Asso­ci­at­ed Press and Azov Bat­tal­ion alike. After all, dead peo­ple tell no tales. Hav­ing any­one able to tes­ti­fy to the on-the-ground real­i­ty of inci­dents such as the dubi­ous the­ater bomb­ing or the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal ‘airstrike’ is inher­ent­ly prob­lem­at­ic to the Ukrain­ian cause. . . .”

“ . . . . And though the AP has had reporters on the ground in Ukraine through­out the con­flict with Rus­sia, the orga­ni­za­tion remains silent about trans­gres­sions unfold­ing right before the eyes of its staff. Case in point: the pres­ence of an AP pho­tog­ra­ph­er at the hos­pi­tal gave it a front row seat for Azov Battalion’s occu­pa­tion of the facil­i­ty and its trans­for­ma­tion of the site into a base of oper­a­tions. . . But the agency avoid­ed any men­tion of this crit­i­cal piece of con­text, show­ing West­ern audi­ences what Azov Bat­tal­ion wants them to see. . . .”

“ . . . . On April 2, with­in hours of the pub­li­ca­tion [12] of pho­tos and videos pur­port­ing to show vic­tims of an alleged Russ­ian mas­sacre, Ukrain­ian media report­ed that [13] spe­cial­ist units had begun ‘clear­ing the area of sabo­teurs and accom­plices of Russ­ian troops.’ Noth­ing was said about dead bod­ies in the streets. . . . The Nation­al Police of Ukraine announced [14] that day that they were ‘clean­ing the territory…from the assis­tants of Russ­ian troops,’ pub­lish­ing video that showed no corpses in the streets of Bucha and Ukrain­ian forces in full con­trol of the city. . . .”

[15]

Lviv, Ukaine, Sum­mer of 2018. Cel­e­bra­tion of the 75th anniver­sary of the 14th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion (Gali­cian). Note the Ukrain­ian hon­or guard in the back­ground.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include: Res­i­dents attempt­ing to flee the city were pre­vent­ed by the author­i­ties from doing so; the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal had been uti­lized by the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; despite the strong prob­a­bil­i­ty that the hos­pi­tal was dam­aged by an artillery shell, AP journalists—apparently embed­ded with Azov combatants—negated the tes­ti­mo­ny of hos­pi­tal patients about the artillery strike; the AP/A­zov-embed­ded jour­nal­ists prop­a­gat­ed the sto­ry that the hos­pi­tal had been hit by a delib­er­ate Russ­ian airstrike; the AP jour­nal­ist who had been the source of the “Russ­ian airstrike” sto­ry had also been at the Maid­an and sym­pa­thet­ic to the Nazi-rich milieu involved in that false-flag oper­a­tion; AP has been dis­trib­ut­ing Azov pho­tographs; the esti­mates of the casu­al­ties in the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal inci­dent are wild­ly incon­sis­tent; there are reports that sur­vivors of the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal attack may have been tak­en to the Mar­i­upol dra­ma the­ater and posi­tioned at the exact place that the “Russ­ian mis­sile” struck in anoth­er dubi­ous “Russ­ian war crime;” West­ern nations have—so far—blocked a Russ­ian request to have the UN inves­ti­gate the Bucha “war crimes;” Both Azov com­bat­ants and Ukrain­ian police were engaged in “clean-up oper­a­tions” in which Russ­ian “col­lab­o­ra­tors” were “dealt with.”

We con­clude with analy­sis of the Geor­gian Legion, an ele­ment of the Ukrain­ian “For­eign Legion” which is impli­cat­ed in the false-flag sniper shoot­ings in the Maid­an coup and has admit­ted com­mit­ting sum­ma­ry exe­cu­tions of Russ­ian POW’s.

The Geor­gian Legion is not an iso­lat­ed, eclipsed enti­ty, but rather, one that is led by Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili, net­worked with ador­ing U.S. polit­i­cal fig­ures.

“ . . . . 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. ‘We will not take Russ­ian sol­diers, as well as Kady­rovites [Chech­nyan fight­ers]; in any case, we will not take pris­on­ers, not a sin­gle per­son will be cap­tured,’ Mamu­lashvili said, imply­ing that his fight­ers exe­cute POWs. . . .

As indi­cat­ed above, Mamu­lashvili is impli­cat­ed in the Maid­an false-flag shoot­ings:

“ . . . . [Pro­fes­sor] Ivan Katchanovs­ki, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa, is among those who believe Mamulashvili’s allies were like­ly among those who fired on pro­test­ers from build­ings over Maid­an Square, gen­er­at­ing blood­shed that was ulti­mate­ly blamed on Ukraine’s then-gov­ern­ment. . . . ‘Tes­ti­monies by sev­er­al Geor­gian self-admit­ted mem­bers of Maid­an sniper groups for the Maid­an mas­sacre tri­al and inves­ti­ga­tion and their inter­views in Amer­i­can, Ital­ian and Israeli TV doc­u­men­taries and Mace­don­ian and Russ­ian media are gen­er­al­ly con­sis­tent with find­ings of my aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies of the Maid­an mas­sacre,’ Katchanovs­ki com­ment­ed to The Gray­zone. . . .”

This dis­cus­sion will be con­tin­ued in the next broad­cast.

1.  Main­tain­ing the unten­able PR façade that the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ukraine is a myth, Zelen­sky showed the “True Yel­low and Blue” in a video appear­ance before the Greek par­lia­ment.

Appear­ing with a mem­ber of the Nazi Azov fight­ing for­ma­tions, Zelen­sky man­i­fest­ed the grotesque polit­i­cal real­i­ty of which he is part.

Recall that his polit­i­cal patron is Ihor Kolo­moisky, who financed Zelensky’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, owns the TV net­work that boost­ed him to pub­lic promi­nence, who was a major financier of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and who owned a con­trol­ling inter­est in Buris­ma, fea­tur­ing Hunter Biden on the board of direc­tors.

It was in his posi­tion as a Buris­ma direc­tor that Hunter expe­dit­ed the appar­ent bio­log­i­cal war­fare projects over­lap­ping those involved in the “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.”

That places Hunter Biden in the mix of “The Ban­dera Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy,” if you will.

 “Out­rage as Azov Nazi Address­es Greek Par­lia­ment” by Joe Lau­ria; Con­sor­tium News; 4/8/2022. [17]

Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky has been mak­ing a vir­tu­al world tour with video hookups to par­lia­ments around the globe, as well as to the Gram­my Awards and the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, some­times with trou­ble­some results.  

On Thurs­day a major row erupt­ed when Zelen­sky brought along a Ukrain­ian sol­dier of Greek her­itage from the city of Mar­i­upol, who just hap­pened to be a mem­ber of the neo-Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment. Greece was under Nazi occu­pa­tion dur­ing World War II and fought a bit­ter par­ti­san war against Nazism (lat­er to be betrayed by Britain and the Unit­ed States.)   

With Zelen­sky in the screen, the man, who gave only his first name, told Par­lia­ment: “I speak to you as a man of Greek descent. My name is Michail. My grand­fa­ther fought against the Nazis in the Sec­ond World War. I am born in Mar­i­upol and I am now also fight­ing to defend my city from the Russ­ian nazis.”   

Alex­is Tsipras [16], leader of the main oppo­si­tion par­ty, SYRIZA-Pro­gres­sive Alliance, blast­ed the appear­ance of the Azov fight­er before par­lia­ment.  

“Sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Ukrain­ian peo­ple is a giv­en. But nazis can­not be allowed to speak in par­lia­ment,” Tsipras said [18] on social media. “The speech was a provo­ca­tion.”  He said Greek Prime Min­is­ter Kyr­i­akos Mit­so­takis “bears full respon­si­bil­i­ty.… He talked about a his­toric day but it is a his­tor­i­cal shame.”  

For­mer Greek Prime Min­is­ter Anto­nis Sama­ras called the video being played in par­lia­ment a “big mis­take”.

For­mer For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Nikos Kotzias said: “The Greek gov­ern­ment irre­spon­si­bly under­mined the strug­gle of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple, by giv­ing the floor to a Nazi. The respon­si­bil­i­ties are heavy. The gov­ern­ment should pub­lish a detailed report of prepa­ra­tion and con­tacts for the event.”

For­mer Finance Min­is­ter Yanis Varo­ufakis’  MeRA25 [9] par­ty said [10] the event turned into a “Nazi fies­ta.”

The Greek Reporter said [19] a gov­ern­ment spokesman admit­ted the mis­take but then used it to smear SYRIZA as Russ­ian apol­o­gists:

“The social­ist KINAL par­ty issued a state­ment ask­ing why Greek law­mak­ers had not been informed about the video inter­ven­tion of an Azov Bat­tal­ion mem­ber and called on the pres­i­dent of the Greek Par­lia­ment to bear respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Gov­ern­ment spokesper­son Gian­nis Oikonomou said the inclu­sion of the Azov Bat­tal­ion mes­sage was ‘incor­rect and inap­pro­pri­ate.’ How­ev­er, he did not say who should be held respon­si­ble for this.

Oikonomou, nev­er­the­less, slammed SYRIZA for alleged­ly ‘using that mis­take… to jus­ti­fy the Russ­ian inva­sion. … It is time for a clear answer: are they on the side of the Ukraini­ans, who are fight­ing for their free­dom, or [on the side of] Putin’s invaders?’ he said.”

Zelensky’s Spot­ty Sense of His­to­ry

In his speech, Zelen­sky said [20]:

“I have been wak­ing up every day for more than a month think­ing about Mar­i­upol, which is being destroyed by Russ­ian troops. There are still 100,000 peo­ple on the bor­der with Mar­i­upol. There is no build­ing left. Mar­i­upol has been destroyed …

Ukraine is one of the Ortho­dox coun­tries that was Chris­tianised by the Greeks. In Ukrain­ian cul­ture and his­to­ry it will be seen that we will lose a big part of his­to­ry if we lose the cul­ture brought by Greek cul­ture.

Free­dom or Death was what your rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies were say­ing. We are shout­ing the same today.” [a ref­er­ence to a slo­gan of the Greek Rev­o­lu­tion of 1821.]

Ignor­ing Greece’s suf­fer­ing under Ger­man Nazism was a slight made worse by bring­ing a Nazi along to address Greek law­mak­ers.

Zelen­sky has got­ten into trou­ble before by refer­ring to a nation’s his­to­ry in his address­es to par­lia­ments. He caused out­rage in Israel for com­par­ing what Ukraine is going through today to the Holo­caust while com­plete­ly ignor­ing the role Ukrain­ian fas­cists played in that Holo­caust.

In his address to the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Tues­day Zelen­sky said Rus­sia had com­mit­ted the worst war crimes since World War II, ignor­ing the much big­ger crime of aggres­sion by the Unit­ed States against Iraq built total­ly on lies.

Just as West­ern gov­ern­ments and cor­po­rate media are doing, the Ukrain­ian embassy in Athens denied Azov is a Neo-Nazi reg­i­ment, despite sport­ing the Waf­fen-SS Wolf­san­gel on their uni­forms and their open polit­i­cal align­ment with Nazism. The embassy instead tried to turn the tables. 

“For many years Rus­sia tried to ‘plant’ into Greek minds the myth that ‘Azov’ Reg­i­ment is a para­mil­i­tary inde­pen­dent unit oper­at­ing in Mar­i­upol,” the embassy said [20] in a state­ment. “The video … has noth­ing to do to those Nazi deeds, Rus­sians com­mit on our land and against our peo­ple.” 

Indeed, West­ern media have large­ly ignored the sto­ry. Nei­ther The New York Times nor The Wash­ing­ton Post wrote any­thing about what hap­pened at the Greek par­lia­ment and The Wall Street Jour­nal only ran a pho­to sto­ry that didn’t men­tion the con­tro­ver­sy. 

Here is the full video of Zelensky’s per­for­mance (in Greek):

2. With alle­ga­tions of Russ­ian war crimes being bandied about and the hyper­bole of Joe Biden and oth­ers reach­ing new depths of dis­tor­tion and dis­hon­esty, we exam­ine a sto­ry that rais­es seri­ous ques­tions about anoth­er of the icon­ic “Russ­ian war crimes” inci­dents, the “bomb­ing” of the Mar­i­upol mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal.

Note that Mar­i­upol, like Bucha, is defend­ed by Azov/Nazi mil­i­tary units.

“ . . . .The per­ish­ing of eye­wit­ness­es to the real events at the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal is con­ve­nient for the Asso­ci­at­ed Press and Azov Bat­tal­ion alike. After all, dead peo­ple tell no tales. Hav­ing any­one able to tes­ti­fy to the on-the-ground real­i­ty of inci­dents such as the dubi­ous the­ater bomb­ing or the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal ‘airstrike’ is inher­ent­ly prob­lem­at­ic to the Ukrain­ian cause. . . .”

“ . . . . And though the AP has had reporters on the ground in Ukraine through­out the con­flict with Rus­sia, the orga­ni­za­tion remains silent about trans­gres­sions unfold­ing right before the eyes of its staff. Case in point: the pres­ence of an AP pho­tog­ra­ph­er at the hos­pi­tal gave it a front row seat for Azov Battalion’s occu­pa­tion of the facil­i­ty and its trans­for­ma­tion of the site into a base of oper­a­tions. . . But the agency avoid­ed any men­tion of this crit­i­cal piece of con­text, show­ing West­ern audi­ences what Azov Bat­tal­ion wants them to see. . . .”

“ . . . . On April 2, with­in hours of the pub­li­ca­tion [12] of pho­tos and videos pur­port­ing to show vic­tims of an alleged Russ­ian mas­sacre, Ukrain­ian media report­ed that [13] spe­cial­ist units had begun ‘clear­ing the area of sabo­teurs and accom­plices of Russ­ian troops.’ Noth­ing was said about dead bod­ies in the streets. . . . The Nation­al Police of Ukraine announced [14] that day that they were ‘clean­ing the territory…from the assis­tants of Russ­ian troops,’ pub­lish­ing video that showed no corpses in the streets of Bucha and Ukrain­ian forces in full con­trol of the city. . . .”

 Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include: Res­i­dents attempt­ing to flee the city were pre­vent­ed by the author­i­ties from doing so; the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal had been uti­lized by the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; despite the strong prob­a­bil­i­ty that the hos­pi­tal was dam­aged by an artillery shell, AP journalists—apparently embed­ded with Azov combatants—negated the tes­ti­mo­ny of hos­pi­tal patients about the artillery strike; the AP/A­zov-embed­ded jour­nal­ists prop­a­gat­ed the sto­ry that the hos­pi­tal had been hit by a delib­er­ate Russ­ian airstrike; the AP jour­nal­ist who had been the source of the “Russ­ian airstrike” sto­ry had also been at the Maid­an and sym­pa­thet­ic to the Nazi-rich milieu involved in that false-flag oper­a­tion; AP has been dis­trib­ut­ing Azov pho­tographs; the esti­mates of the casu­al­ties in the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal inci­dent are wild­ly incon­sis­tent; there are reports that sur­vivors of the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal attack may have been tak­en to the Mar­i­upol dra­ma the­ater and posi­tioned at the exact place that the “Russ­ian mis­sile” struck in anoth­er dubi­ous “Russ­ian war crime;” West­ern nations have—so far—blocked a Russ­ian request to have the UN inves­ti­gate the Bucha “war crimes;” Both Azov com­bat­ants and Ukrain­ian police were engaged in “clean-up oper­a­tions” in which Russ­ian “col­lab­o­ra­tors” were “dealt with.”

 “New wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny about Mar­i­upol mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal ‘airstrike’ fol­lows pat­tern of Ukrain­ian decep­tions, media mal­prac­tice” by Kit Klaren­berg; The Gray Zone; 4/3/2022. [21]

. . . . At that moment we heard an explo­sion. Instinc­tive­ly I per­son­al­ly put a duvet on myself. That’s when we heard the sec­ond explo­sion. I got cov­ered by glass par­tial­ly. I had small cuts on my nose, under my lips and at the top of my fore­head but it was noth­ing seri­ous…

Mar­i­ana Vishe­girskaya, a preg­nant res­i­dent of Donet­sk who was present at the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal dur­ing the wide­ly report­ed inci­dent, has evac­u­at­ed from Mar­i­upol and is now speak­ing out. Pho­tos show­ing a blood­ied Vish­nevskaya flee­ing the build­ing with her per­son­al belong­ings became a cen­ter­piece of cov­er­age of the attack, along with a pho­to of anoth­er woman being car­ried away pale and uncon­scious on a stretch­er.

In the wake of the inci­dent, Russ­ian offi­cials false­ly claimed [37] the pair were the same per­son, cit­ing Vishegirskaya’s back­ground as a blog­ger and Insta­gram per­son­al­i­ty as evi­dence she was a cri­sis actor and the inci­dent a false flag. Though that asser­tion was not true, as we shall see, the hos­pi­tal had been almost com­plete­ly tak­en over by the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary.

In a video (above) reviewed by The Gray­zone which began cir­cu­lat­ing via Telegram April 1st, Vishe­girskaya offers a clear and detailed account of what took place on and in the days lead­ing up to March 9th. The wit­ness begins by not­ing how many res­i­dents of Mar­i­upol attempt­ed to evac­u­ate fol­low­ing Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine on Feb­ru­ary 24th, but says author­i­ties ensured it was “impos­si­ble to leave.” 

On March 6th, with the birth of her child impend­ing, she checked into mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal num­ber three, the city’s ‘most mod­ern’ facil­i­ty. She was not there long before the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary arrived and evict­ed all the hospital’s patients, as they sought access to the building’s solar pan­els, one of the last remain­ing sources of elec­tric­i­ty in the besieged city.

“We were moved to the only small mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal left. It had only one small gen­er­a­tor… Hus­bands of women in labor set­tled in the base­ment and cooked meals for us on the street. Res­i­dents of neigh­bor­ing hous­es also brought us meals,” Vishe­girskaya says. “One day sol­diers came. They didn’t help with any­thing. They were told the food is for women, how could they ask for it? They replied they hadn’t eat­en in five days, took our food and said, ‘you can cook some more.’”

On the night of the 8th, the preg­nant women “slept peace­ful­ly” as there were “no shootouts.” The next day, the soon-to-be moth­ers heard a shell explode out­side. Vishe­girskaya “instinc­tive­ly” cov­ered her­self with her duvet, but still, shat­tered glass from a near­by win­dow cut her lip, nose and fore­head, though she says it was “noth­ing seri­ous.” 

“After the sec­ond explo­sion we got evac­u­at­ed to the base­ment,” Vishe­girskaya recalled. “We pro­ceed­ed to dis­cuss whether it was an airstrike. They said it was no airstrike. So our opin­ion got con­firmed. We didn’t hear the air­plane, they didn’t hear it either. They told us it was a shell. After the first two explo­sions there were no oth­er explo­sions.”

As she wait­ed, she noticed “a sol­dier with a hel­met” tak­ing pic­tures of her, and demand­ed he stop, “because obvi­ous­ly it was not a good time for that,” and she did not want to be pho­tographed in her cur­rent state. The sol­dier com­plied. Back upstairs, the same indi­vid­ual began film­ing her and oth­ers again, refus­ing to stop until his sub­jects had demand­ed sev­er­al times he do so.

Vishegirskaya’s hus­band lat­er told her the man wasn’t a sol­dier, but an Asso­ci­at­ed Press cor­re­spon­dent, one of many on the scene at the time. She believes these jour­nal­ists had been there “from the begin­ning,” as they were ready and wait­ing out­side to snap the woman being led away on a stretch­er, the first to emerge from the build­ing in the wake of the shell attack, “as soon as she came out.”

The next day, after her baby was deliv­ered via cesare­an sec­tion, the same Asso­ci­at­ed Press staffers inter­viewed her, ask­ing her to describe what hap­pened. They enquired point blank if an airstrike had tak­en place, to which she respond­ed, “no, even the peo­ple that were on the streets didn’t hear any­thing, nor did any­one.”

Lat­er, when she was in safer “liv­ing con­di­tions,” Vishe­girskaya began scour­ing the inter­net, attempt­ing to track down the inter­view. She found “every­thing else” the Asso­ci­at­ed Press staffers record­ed – but not her denials that an airstrike had occurred. 

The AP’s nar­ra­tive on the hos­pi­tal inci­dent grows shaky

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press’ ini­tial report [22] by Evgeniy Mal­o­let­ka on the March 9th inci­dent pro­vid­ed the pri­ma­ry foun­da­tion and fram­ing of all main­stream cov­er­age there­after. It cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly assert­ed the hos­pi­tal was tar­get­ed by a delib­er­ate “airstrike,” which “ripped away much of the front of one build­ing” in the hos­pi­tal com­plex and left near­by streets strewn with “burn­ing and man­gled cars and trees shat­tered.” The report sug­gest­ed that the heinous act was a tes­ta­ment to Russia’s inva­sion force “strug­gling more than expect­ed.” 

Count­less West­ern news out­lets recy­cled this con­tent, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the claimed “airstrike.” These out­lets served as eager con­duits six days lat­er when Asso­ci­at­ed Press issued a fol­lowup [23], reveal­ing that the preg­nant moth­er being stretchered out of the hos­pi­tal had died, as had her unborn child. A doc­tor stat­ed her pelvis had been crushed and “hip detached,” which the agency attrib­uted to the hos­pi­tal hav­ing been “bom­bard­ed” by the Russ­ian air force.

How­ev­er, the Asso­ci­at­ed Press made no men­tion in its fol­low-up report of any part of any build­ing being “ripped away.” In fact, the words attrib­uted by the AP to Vishe­girskaya indi­cate she was com­plete­ly unaware of how the dam­age was actu­al­ly caused. 

“We were lying in wards when glass, frames, win­dows and walls flew apart,” she told the AP. “We don’t know how it hap­pened [empha­sis added]. We were in our wards and some had time to cov­er them­selves, some didn’t.”

Did the Asso­ci­at­ed Press insert ambi­gu­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty into Vishegirskaya’s mouth in order to main­tain the bogus nar­ra­tive of an airstrike? Even if quot­ed accu­rate­ly, she could eas­i­ly have been describ­ing an explo­sion near­by which inflict­ed shock­wave dam­age on the build­ing. 

Rein­forc­ing that inter­pre­ta­tion, an Asso­ci­at­ed Press video [38] pur­port­ing to doc­u­ment the after­math of the “airstrike” showed a large hole in the ground with­in the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal com­plex grounds, said to be “a blast crater” from the wider assault. Was this mere­ly the impact zone of a shell that inten­tion­al­ly or not land­ed near the build­ing, rather than one ves­tige of a tar­get­ed aer­i­al onslaught?

What­ev­er the truth of the mat­ter, oth­er aspects of Vishegirskaya’s new­ly released tes­ti­mo­ny relate to major mys­ter­ies sur­round­ing the Mar­i­upol mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal bomb­ing. For exam­ple, she affect­ing­ly attests that the preg­nant woman stretchered out of the build­ing died. Yet for all the super­fi­cial dam­age inflict­ed, no pho­to or video evi­dence yet to emerge from the scene – bar a seem­ing­ly blood-soaked mat­tress – indi­cates how and where the fatal injuries could have been inflict­ed.

Even more curi­ous­ly, the Asso­ci­at­ed Press implau­si­bly claimed that due to “chaos after the airstrike,” no one on the ground learned the dead woman’s name before her hus­band arrived to col­lect her body – her iden­ti­ty remains unknown to this day. Still, doc­tors were “grate­ful” the name­less woman did not end up buried in one of the mass graves dug for Mariupol’s dead.

Asso­ci­at­ed Press embeds with the Azov Bat­tal­ion

The num­ber of peo­ple who lost their lives in the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal inci­dent, and pre­cise­ly how, are like­wise conun­drums. In a tele­vised address that evening, Zelen­sky claimed three indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing a child, had been slain via “airstrike,” while oth­ers remained trapped under rub­ble. The next day [24], though, Donet­sk region­al gov­ern­ment chief Pavlo Kyrylenko said zero deaths had been con­firmed, and there were no con­firmed injuries among chil­dren.

By con­trast, numer­ous media out­lets have since report­ed [25], or at least heav­i­ly implied, that sev­er­al chil­dren were killed, and their bod­ies deposit­ed in the afore­men­tioned mass graves on the “out­skirts” of Mar­i­upol. Why it would be nec­es­sary or sen­si­ble to trans­port corpses far away from the city cen­ter, and why a child’s par­ents would con­sent to such an undig­ni­fied bur­ial, remains unclear.

We know about these sup­posed mass graves thanks to Asso­ci­at­ed Press cor­re­spon­dent Evge­ny Mal­o­let­ka, who has pub­lished pho­tos [26] and authored arti­cles [27] detail­ing their con­struc­tion. His con­tent has been wide­ly repur­posed by oth­er West­ern out­lets, the grim images trav­el­ing far and wide.

Mal­o­let­ka also hap­pened to be an eye­wit­ness [28] to the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal inci­dent; he took the infa­mous shot of the preg­nant woman being stretchered out of the build­ing. Mal­o­let­ka, in fact, has man­aged to place him­self in the vicin­i­ty of many dra­mat­ic events instant­ly por­trayed as titan­ic Russ­ian war crimes.

A glow­ing March 19th Wash­ing­ton Post pro­file [29] of Mal­o­let­ka praised him for shar­ing “the hor­ror sto­ries of Mar­i­upol with the world.” The arti­cle described the Ukrain­ian as a “long­time free­lancer” for Asso­ci­at­ed Press, pre­vi­ous­ly cov­er­ing the Maid­an “rev­o­lu­tion” and “con­flicts in Crimea” for the agency. There was no men­tion of the fact that Mal­o­let­ka was a fer­vent sup­port­er of the “rev­o­lu­tion,” how­ev­er. 

In a lengthy mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion [39] on the coup and resul­tant war in Don­bas fea­tured on his per­son­al web­site, Mal­o­let­ka claims to be “indif­fer­ent to the sit­u­a­tion in my coun­try.” How­ev­er, his affini­ties are abun­dant­ly clear. He frames the US-backed regime change oper­a­tion as a coura­geous fight against “cor­rup­tion and social injus­tice,” while mak­ing no ref­er­ence to both the Maid­an pro­test­ers and their lead­er­ship being rid­dled [30] with neo-Nazis. 

This may be rel­e­vant to con­sid­er, giv­en Mal­o­let­ka has also been a key source of pho­tos of train­ing [31] pro­vid­ed to Ukrain­ian civil­ians by Azov Bat­tal­ion. Whether he sym­pa­thizes with the paramilitary’s fas­cist pol­i­tics is unclear, but there can be lit­tle doubt he has been in extreme­ly close quar­ters with the neo-Nazi reg­i­ment since the war began. 

Maloletka’s pro­tec­tion, that of his Asso­ci­at­ed Press cowork­ers, and their col­lec­tive abil­i­ty to pro­vide West­ern media an unend­ing del­uge of atroc­i­ty pro­pa­gan­da can only be guar­an­teed through the Azov Bat­tal­ion, the pri­ma­ry defense force [32] in Mar­i­upol. This has obvi­ous ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the objec­tiv­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of all Asso­ci­at­ed Press cov­er­age of the war.

As The Grayzone’s Max Blu­men­thal revealed in his inves­ti­ga­tion [33] of the sus­pi­cious March 16th Mar­i­upol the­ater inci­dent, Asso­ci­at­ed Press pub­lished pho­tos of the site bear­ing Azov Battalion’s water­mark and a link to the neo-Nazi unit’s Telegram chan­nel. 

The dubi­ous nar­ra­tive of the explo­sion at the Mar­i­upol the­ater bears strong sim­i­lar­i­ties to the offi­cial ver­sion of the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal inci­dent, par­tic­u­lar­ly the wild­ly con­flict­ing esti­mates of casu­al­ties [34] and pur­port­ed pres­ence of the same peo­ple at both sites. Sky News alleged [35] March 26th that preg­nant women res­cued from the hos­pi­tal had been moved to the the­ater “for safe­ty,” being coin­ci­den­tal­ly housed at “exact­ly the point” lat­er said to have been bombed by Russ­ian forces, of all places.

The per­ish­ing of eye­wit­ness­es to the real events at the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal is con­ve­nient for the Asso­ci­at­ed Press and Azov Bat­tal­ion alike. After all, dead peo­ple tell no tales. Hav­ing any­one able to tes­ti­fy to the on-the-ground real­i­ty of inci­dents such as the dubi­ous the­ater bomb­ing or the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal “airstrike” is inher­ent­ly prob­lem­at­ic to the Ukrain­ian cause.

And though the AP has had reporters on the ground in Ukraine through­out the con­flict with Rus­sia, the orga­ni­za­tion remains silent about trans­gres­sions unfold­ing right before the eyes of its staff. 

Case in point: the pres­ence of an AP pho­tog­ra­ph­er at the hos­pi­tal gave it a front row seat for Azov Battalion’s occu­pa­tion of the facil­i­ty and its trans­for­ma­tion of the site into a base of oper­a­tions. But the agency avoid­ed any men­tion of this crit­i­cal piece of con­text, show­ing West­ern audi­ences what Azov Bat­tal­ion wants them to see – and what its overt­ly pro-Kiev staff deem fit for pub­lic con­sump­tion.

The infor­ma­tion war esca­lates in Bucha

Hours before the pub­li­ca­tion of this arti­cle, on April 2nd, claims of Russia’s most hideous alleged war crime to date erupt­ed across social media. Footage and pho­tos of scores of dead bod­ies – some with their hands tied – lit­ter­ing the streets of Bucha, a small city near Kiev, tes­ti­fied to an appar­ent mas­sacre of mil­i­tary-aged men by Russ­ian troops, as they retreat­ed from the bat­tered city two days ear­li­er.

The grue­some visu­als have trig­gered inten­si­fied calls for direct West­ern mil­i­tary con­fronta­tion [40] with Rus­sia. But as with the inci­dent at the mater­ni­ty ward in Mar­i­upol and numer­ous oth­er high pro­file events ini­tial­ly por­trayed by Ukrain­ian author­i­ties as Russ­ian mas­sacres, a series of details cast doubt on the offi­cial sto­ry out of Bucha. 

With­in hours of Russia’s with­draw­al from the Bucha on March 31st, its may­or announced [36] that his city had been lib­er­at­ed from “Russ­ian orcs,” employ­ing a dehu­man­iz­ing term wide­ly used by Azov Bat­tal­ion. An accom­pa­ny­ing arti­cle not­ed the Rus­sians had “mined civil­ian build­ings and infra­struc­ture,” but no men­tion was made of any mass killing of local cit­i­zens, let alone scores of corpses left in the street, which one might rea­son­ably expect would be top of any news outlet’s agen­da when report­ing on the event.

On April 2, with­in hours of the pub­li­ca­tion [12] of pho­tos and videos pur­port­ing to show vic­tims of an alleged Russ­ian mas­sacre, Ukrain­ian media report­ed that [13] spe­cial­ist units had begun “clear­ing the area of sabo­teurs and accom­plices of Russ­ian troops.” Noth­ing was said about dead bod­ies in the streets.

The Nation­al Police of Ukraine announced [14] that day that they were “clean­ing the territory…from the assis­tants of Russ­ian troops,” pub­lish­ing video that showed no corpses in the streets of Bucha and Ukrain­ian forces in full con­trol of the city.

A clip of the report­ed “clean-up oper­a­tion” pub­lished by Sergey Korotkikh, a noto­ri­ous neo-Nazi Azov mem­ber, shows one mem­ber of his unit ask­ing anoth­er if he can shoot “guys with­out blue arm­bands,” refer­ring to those with­out the mark­ing worn by Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary forces. The mil­i­tant stri­dent­ly responds, “fuck yeah!” Korotkikh has since delet­ed the video, per­haps fear­ing it impli­cat­ed his unit in a war crime.

 Whether real or fake, and who­ev­er the per­pe­tra­tors are, the alleged exter­mi­na­tion of civil­ians comes at a crit­i­cal time for the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. Evi­dence of atroc­i­ties [41] and war crimes com­mit­ted by Ukrain­ian troops against civil­ians and cap­tured Rus­sians – includ­ing the shoot­ing of help­less Russ­ian POWs in their knees, and oth­er heinous forms of tor­ture – has come to light for the first time. 

What’s more [42], Rus­sia has vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nat­ed Ukraine’s fight­ing and logis­tics capa­bil­i­ties in much of the coun­try, includ­ing its entire navy, air force, air defens­es, radar sys­tems, mil­i­tary pro­duc­tion and repairs facil­i­ties, and most fuel and ammu­ni­tion depots, leav­ing Kiev unable to trans­port large num­bers of troops between dif­fer­ent fronts, and con­sign­ing what forces remain in the east to encir­clement and almost inevitable defeat.

As Zelen­sky has made clear, Ukrain­ian forces are des­per­ate for direct West­ern inter­ven­tion – in par­tic­u­lar the so-called “clos­ing of the sky.” With com­pelling but high­ly ques­tion­able atroc­i­ty pro­pa­gan­da fil­ter­ing from media oper­a­tions of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, pub­lic pres­sure for a major esca­la­tion is ris­ing. 

 3.  We con­clude with analy­sis of the Geor­gian Legion, an ele­ment of the Ukrain­ian “For­eign Legion” which is impli­cat­ed in the false-flag sniper shoot­ings in the Maid­an coup and has admit­ted com­mit­ting sum­ma­ry exe­cu­tions of Russ­ian POW’s.

The Geor­gian Legion is not an iso­lat­ed, eclipsed enti­ty, but rather, one that is led by Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili, net­worked with ador­ing U.S. polit­i­cal fig­ures.

“ . . . . 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. ‘We will not take Russ­ian sol­diers, as well as Kady­rovites [Chech­nyan fight­ers]; in any case, we will not take pris­on­ers, not a sin­gle per­son will be cap­tured,’ Mamu­lashvili said, imply­ing that his fight­ers exe­cute POWs. . . .

As indi­cat­ed above, Mamu­lashvili is impli­cat­ed in the Maid­an false-flag shoot­ings:

“ . . . . [Pro­fes­sor] Ivan Katchanovs­ki, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa, is among those who believe Mamulashvili’s allies were like­ly among those who fired on pro­test­ers from build­ings over Maid­an Square, gen­er­at­ing blood­shed that was ulti­mate­ly blamed on Ukraine’s then-gov­ern­ment. . . . ‘Tes­ti­monies by sev­er­al Geor­gian self-admit­ted mem­bers of Maid­an sniper groups for the Maid­an mas­sacre tri­al and inves­ti­ga­tion and their inter­views in Amer­i­can, Ital­ian and Israeli TV doc­u­men­taries and Mace­don­ian and Russ­ian media are gen­er­al­ly con­sis­tent with find­ings of my aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies of the Maid­an mas­sacre,’ Katchanovs­ki com­ment­ed to The Gray­zone. . . .”

This dis­cus­sion will be con­tin­ued in the next broad­cast.

“US law­mak­ers wel­comed noto­ri­ous Geor­gian war­lord now boast­ing of war crimes in Ukraine” by Alexan­der Rubin­stein; The Gray Zone; 04/08/2022 [60]

Top law­mak­ers in US Con­gress host­ed Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili, an infa­mous Geor­gian Legion war­lord who has boast­ed of autho­riz­ing field exe­cu­tions of cap­tive Russ­ian sol­diers in Ukraine.

Hav­ing tak­en up arms against Rus­sia for a fifth time, Geor­gian Legion com­man­der Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili has bragged on video about his unit car­ry­ing out field exe­cu­tions of cap­tured Russ­ian sol­diers in Ukraine.

While West­ern media pun­dits howled about images of dead bod­ies in the city of Bucha, echo­ing Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelenksy’s accu­sa­tion that Rus­sia is guilty of “geno­cide,” they have large­ly over­looked the appar­ent admis­sion of atroc­i­ties by an avowed ally of the Unit­ed States who was wel­comed on Capi­tol Hill by senior law­mak­ers over­see­ing con­gres­sion­al for­eign pol­i­cy com­mit­tees.

Hav­ing fought in four wars against Rus­sia, and despite alle­ga­tions that he played a lead­ing role in the mas­sacre of 49 pro­test­ers in Kiev’s Maid­an Square in 2014, Mamu­lashvili has tak­en mul­ti­ple trips to the Unit­ed States, where he received a warm wel­come from mem­bers of Con­gress, the New York Police Depart­ment, and Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty.

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.

“We will not take Russ­ian sol­diers, as well as Kady­rovites [Chech­nyan fight­ers]; in any case, we will not take pris­on­ers, not a sin­gle per­son will be cap­tured,” Mamu­lashvili said, imply­ing that his fight­ers exe­cute POWs.

The warlord’s bat­tle dress shirt was embla­zoned with a patch read­ing, “Mama says I’m spe­cial.”

Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili, com­man­der of the “Geor­gian Nation­al Legion” in Ukraine: “Yes, we tie their hands and feet some­times. I speak for the Geor­gian Legion, we will nev­er take Russ­ian sol­diers pris­on­er. Not a sin­gle one of them will be tak­en pris­on­er.” pic.twitter.com/4GM9nHsOMo [61]— Rus­sians With Atti­tude (@RWApodcast) April 6, 2022 [62]

“Yes, we tie their hands and feet some­times. I speak for the Geor­gian Legion, we will nev­er take Russ­ian sol­diers pris­on­er. Not a sin­gle one of them will be tak­en pris­on­er,” Mamu­lashvili empha­sized

Exe­cu­tions of ene­my com­bat­ants are con­sid­ered war crimes under the Gene­va Con­ven­tion.

War crimes on the front lines

West­ern gov­ern­ments con­tin­ue to block a Russ­ian request for a Unit­ed Nations inves­ti­ga­tion into alleged mas­sacres in Bucha, where scores of corpses were pho­tographed fol­low­ing the Russ­ian with­draw­al from the city, some with hands bound and shot exe­cu­tion style – as Mamu­lashvili described doing to pris­on­ers.

While the events in Bucha have become a source of out­rage and heat­ed con­tention, a clear case of war crimes by Ukrain­ian forces which took place just five miles [43] down the road on March 30 as Russ­ian troops with­drew has received a more mut­ed response despite cov­er­age by the New York Times [44].

The macabre footage [63] shows Russ­ian para­troop­ers dead or bleed­ing out in the road, some with their hands clear­ly bound — report­ed­ly the hand­i­work [64] of the Geor­gian Legion.

Cel­e­brat­ing the ambush’s suc­cess, the video­g­ra­ph­er calls the atten­tion of his fel­low sol­diers: “Geor­gians! Bel­gravia, boys!” Bel­gravia refers to a near­by hous­ing com­plex from which some of the non-Geor­gian fight­ers pre­sum­ably hail.

“Look, he is still alive,” one of the fight­ers says as a Russ­ian writhes in a pool of blood. He was then shot three times at close range.

Oz Kater­ji, a neo­con­ser­v­a­tive British-Lebanese oper­a­tive who has gen­er­at­ed atten­tion by send­ing threat­en­ing What­sapp mes­sages [65] to jour­nal­ists opposed to the US-backed dirty war in Syr­ia, fan­ta­siz­ing about police tor­tur­ing [66] Gray­zone edi­tor Max Blu­men­thal, hys­ter­i­cal­ly heck­ling [67] for­mer UK Labour leader Jere­my Cor­byn at an anti­war meet­ing, and embed­ding [68] with CIA-backed armed gangs in Syr­ia, wound up at the site of the Russ­ian con­voy two days after it was destroyed.

Film­ing him­self against the back­drop of numer­ous burned out Russ­ian tanks, Kater­ji tweet­ed [69] that sol­diers told him “they had removed eight Russ­ian corpses from the bat­tle­field yes­ter­day.”

An equal­ly san­i­tized depic­tion of the scene was pub­lished by the Min­istry of Defense of Ukraine on Twit­ter, which com­piled shots of the destruc­tion and an inter­view with a sol­dier over an inter­mit­tent elec­tron­ic sound­track.

???????????? ?????? ??????????? ?????????? ?? ????????. ???????? ?????????? ?????????? ?????? ???, ??? ??? ????? ?????????? ???????? “???????? ??????” ? ?????????? ??????????? ????????? ????????? ?? pic.twitter.com/uLm4ANgvt5 [70]— Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU) April 2, 2022 [71]

In the orig­i­nal war crimes video, one of the men who gloat­ed at the scene of the killings has been iden­ti­fied as Khizan­ishvili Tey­mu­raz [72] of the Geor­gian Legion. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Tey­mu­raz served as a body guard [73] to for­mer Geor­gian pres­i­dent and Mamu­lashvili ally Mikheil Saakashvili.

A pet project of Wash­ing­ton neo­con­ser­v­a­tives, Saakashvili met dis­grace [74] after lead­ing a dis­as­trous war of choice against Rus­sia over South Osse­tia in 2008. He even­tu­al­ly accept­ed an offer from Ukraine to serve as gov­er­nor in Odessa in 2015.

“It is nec­es­sary to cre­ate chaos on the Maid­an”

The most dead­ly inci­dent dur­ing the 2013–14 riots and protests on Kiev’s Maid­an Square that even­tu­al­ly led to the ouster of Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych was the mas­sacre of 49 demon­stra­tors on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014. The inci­dent gal­va­nized inter­na­tion­al out­rage against Yanukovych and weak­ened his government’s nego­ti­at­ing posi­tion. Yet it remains shroud­ed in intrigue.

Dur­ing the col­or rev­o­lu­tion on the Maid­an, Mamu­lashvili ral­lied his old war bud­dies to take up Ukraine’s cause. Near the cen­tral square, his group was report­ed­ly “told to ensure order so that there were no drunks, to main­tain dis­ci­pline and iden­ti­fy rab­ble-rousers sent in by the author­i­ties.”

Mamulashvili’s for­mer com­rades told Russ­ian media [45] that he even­tu­al­ly told them “it is nec­es­sary to cre­ate chaos on the Maid­an, using weapons against any tar­gets, pro­test­ers and police — no dif­fer­ence.”

Pres­i­dent Vlodymyr Zelen­sky has described [46] the killings on the Maid­an as “the most com­pli­cat­ed case in our coun­try,” not­ing that the crime scene was tam­pered with and doc­u­ments have mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared.

Inter­na­tion­al bod­ies also remain befud­dled. While the NATO-fund­ed Atlantic Coun­cil think tank has described [47] the mat­ter as “unsolved,” the Unit­ed Nations has not­ed that “jus­tice remains elu­sive [48].”

Today, some researchers point to Mamu­lashvili and his Geor­gian Legion­naires as key sus­pects behind the mys­te­ri­ous killings. Ivan Katchanovs­ki, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa, is among those who believe Mamulashvili’s allies were like­ly among those who fired on pro­test­ers from build­ings over Maid­an Square, gen­er­at­ing blood­shed that was ulti­mate­ly blamed on Ukraine’s then-gov­ern­ment.

“Tes­ti­monies by sev­er­al Geor­gian self-admit­ted mem­bers of Maid­an sniper groups for the Maid­an mas­sacre tri­al and inves­ti­ga­tion and their inter­views in Amer­i­can, Ital­ian and Israeli TV doc­u­men­taries and Mace­don­ian and Russ­ian media are gen­er­al­ly con­sis­tent with find­ings of my aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies of the Maid­an mas­sacre,” Katchanovs­ki com­ment­ed to The Gray­zone.

While Katchanovs­ki said his aca­d­e­m­ic research did not focus on the involve­ment of spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als in the mas­sacre, he stat­ed that most of the Geor­gians who tes­ti­fied in the tri­al revealed their names, pass­port num­bers and bor­der stamps, copies of plane tick­ets, videos and pho­tos in Ukraine or Geor­gian mil­i­tary, and oth­er evi­dence to affirm their cred­i­bil­i­ty. He added that some of their iden­ti­ties were ver­i­fied by the Ukrain­ian bor­der guard ser­vice and the Armen­ian and Belaru­sian author­i­ties for the Maid­an mas­sacre tri­al in Ukraine.

“The Maid­an mas­sacre tri­al in Novem­ber 2021 admit­ted and showed as evi­dence a tes­ti­mo­ny of one of these Geor­gians who con­fessed of being a mem­ber of a group of Maid­an snipers,” Katchanovs­ki stat­ed.

Tes­ti­monies of 7 Geor­gians cor­rob­o­rate find­ings of my aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies that both Maid­an pro­test­ers & police were mas­sa­cred by snipers in Maid­an-con­trolled Music Con­ser­va­to­ry & Hotel Ukraina in false flag mas­sacre with Maid­an lead­ers & far right involve­ment https://t.co/4HVM9TK7an [75]— Ivan Katchanovs­ki (@I_Katchanovski) Decem­ber 21, 2021 [76]

The US mem­bers of Con­gress that host­ed Mamu­lashvili were either unaware of these alle­ga­tions or believed the Geor­gian war­lord was sim­ply inno­cent.

A war­lord goes to Wash­ing­ton

As this reporter recent­ly doc­u­ment­ed [58] for The Gray­zone, pho­tos post­ed by Mamu­lashvili on his Face­book page show the Geor­gian hard-man inside the US Capi­tol rub­bing elbows with some of the top fig­ures on the House For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee.

His hosts includ­ed then-Rep. Eliot Engel [77]Rep. Car­olyn Mal­oney [78], for­mer Rep. Sander Levin [79]Rep. Andre Car­son [80], Rep. Doug Lam­born, and for­mer Rep. Dana Rohrabach­er.

Addi­tion­al pho­tos show him vis­it­ing Sen­ate offices, includ­ing that of Sen. Dianne Fein­stein, the for­mer chair of the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, and Kris­ten Gili­brand, who sits on the Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee as well as the Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee.

Mamulashvili’s mul­ti­ple trips to the Unit­ed States have offered him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to attend events [49] at the Ukrain­ian embassy in Wash­ing­ton, give talks [50] at Saint George Acad­e­my, a Ukrain­ian Catholic School in the Low­er East Side of Man­hat­tan, and hold forth in an inter­view [51] with the Wash­ing­ton office of US government’s Voice of Amer­i­ca in 2015. He has even posed for pho­to ops [52] with offi­cers of the New York City Police Depart­ment.

Addi­tion­al pho­tos show [53] Mamu­lashvili hold­ing the flag of the Geor­gian Legion with Nadiya Sha­poryn­s­ka, the founder and pres­i­dent of US Ukrain­ian Activists, a DC-based non-prof­it that has lob­bied [54] mem­bers Con­gress to take mea­sures against Rus­sia, held dai­ly [55] ral­lies out­side of the White House, and fundraised [56] tens of thou­sands of dol­lars to pro­cure sup­plies for the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary and refugees.

In between these trips, Mamu­lashvili con­struct­ed three train­ing bases and recruit­ed hun­dreds of fight­ers. Some pho­tos he post­ed [57] to Face­book show the warlord’s sub­or­di­nates train­ing chil­dren (below) for bat­tle against Rus­sia. The prac­tice of cul­ti­vat­ing chil­dren for war­fare is shared [81] by Ukraine’s more noto­ri­ous Azov Bat­tal­ion.

US vol­un­teer with the Geor­gian Legion details exe­cu­tions, flees after threats

In March, this reporter inter­viewed Hen­ry Hoeft, a US army vet­er­an who accept­ed Zelensky’s appeal for for­eign fight­ers and vol­un­teered for the Geor­gian Legion.

Hoeft told The Gray­zone that [58] mem­bers of the legion threat­ened to kill him when he refused to go to the front lines with­out a weapon. Heft also recalled how Geor­gian fight­ers put bags over the heads of two men who blew through a check­point and exe­cut­ed them on the spot, accus­ing them of being spies for Rus­sia.

While West­ern reporters have pre­sent­ed [59] Mamu­lashvili as a brave and tac­ti­cal­ly deft bat­tle­field com­man­der since he entered the fight against Rus­sia in Ukraine, his unit has also received men­tion in arti­cles over the years on the unsa­vory fig­ures it has wel­comed into its ranks: neo-Nazis, bank rob­bers and fugi­tives like Craig Lang, who is want­ed in the Unit­ed States on sus­pi­cion of mur­der­ing a mar­ried cou­ple in Flori­da.

In the east of Ukraine, where Lang spoke to the media on behalf of the Geor­gian Legion (then some­times called the “For­eign Legion”) from the front lines, the Depart­ment of Jus­tice and FBI have inves­ti­gat­ed [82] Lang and sev­en oth­er Amer­i­cans for war crimes. The group alleged­ly took “non-com­bat­ants” as pris­on­ers and tor­tured them, some­times to death before bur­ial in an unmarked grave.

Mamulashvili’s Face­book page con­tains an un-cap­tioned pho­to­graph [83] of the Amer­i­can fugi­tive.

As the war in Ukraine inten­si­fies and the US deep­ens its com­mit­ment to esca­lat­ing it, top for­eign pol­i­cy fig­ures in Wash­ing­ton are wag­ging a fin­ger at Rus­sia with one hand and lit­er­al­ly shak­ing the hand of Mamu­lashvili, an avowed war crim­i­nal, with the oth­er.

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