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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].
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. . . .”
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.
- “ . . . . 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.). . . .”
- “ . . . . Alexis Tsipras [16], leader of the main opposition party, SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance, blasted the appearance of the Azov fighter before parliament. . . .”
- “ . . . . ‘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.’. . . .”
- “ . . . . ‘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. . . .”
- “ . . . . Former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis’ MeRA25 [9]party said [10] the event turned into a ‘Nazi fiesta.’. . .”
- “ . . . . 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. . . .”
- “ . . . . Western media have largely ignored the story. Neither The New York Timesnor 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. . . .”
“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.”
- “ . . . . In a video (above) reviewed by The Grayzone which began circulating via Telegram April 1st, [Maria] 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.’’. . . .”
- “ . . . . 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. . . . 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 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. . . .”
- “ . . . . 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. . . 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. . . .”
- “ . . . . 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. . . 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. . . .”
- “ . . . . 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. . . .”
- “ . . . . 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. . . .”
. . . . 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.
- “. . . . 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. . . .”
- “. . . . 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]. . . .
- . . . . 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. . . .
- . . . . 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. . . .”
- . . . . 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. . . .
- . . . . 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. . . .
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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