Clashes in Odessa on Friday between Ukrainian nationalists and supporters of the Kiev government, and and pro-Moscow Russian separatists tragically led to the deaths of at least 46 people and some 200 were wounded. I call it a "tragedy" rather than a "pogrom" although I believe that there are people responsible for it at various levels. It's not a fire in a psychiatric hospital in Russia, or a subway crush in Minsk, or a terrorist attack in Volgograd -- it's more like the ethnic clashes in Osh in 2010 where Uzbek were overwhelmingly among the victims. Even so, the word "tragedy" implies human error not deliberate malice.
These Doors Led to Those Doors...
First of all, I think many of us can agree who is ultimately to blame for all of this. I firmly believe that these golden doors symbolizing Imperial Russia, opening 18 March before Putin's triumphant speech in the St. George Hall in celebration of his forcible annexation of the Crimea -- and all the subterfuge and sabotage of Kremlin-backed armed action before and after that...
...inevitably led to these burning doors 2 May at the Odessa Trade Unions Building.
The reason is simple: whatever the sentiments of Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine, and specifically in the Crimea and the south and eastern regions before the EuroMaidan protests began in November 2013, they didn't take over buildings, run around with guns in masks, and hold huge rallies that ended in violence.
Whatever the nationalist sentiments of EuroMaidan in Kiev and other cities, they didn't go after ethnic Russians with sticks or drive them into buildings and set them on fire.
Whatever the "legitimate will" of the people in the Crimea before the rigged referendum, they didn't hold mass rallies, and incidents like the abduction of Greek Catholic priests and the kidnapping and killing of a Crimean Tatar did not happen before Putin put the events in motion. There were no burning tires and "People's Republic of Donetsk" - these were designed to simulate Maidan but they were staged by Russian intelligence and armed forces with the help of corrupt local pro-Moscow and pro-Yanukovych governments. They didn't come into being organically -- otherwise, we'd have seen them long before, and seen them without buses with Russian Federation license plates in the area.
Blaming Kiev -- for Sending an Army to do a Police Job...Against an Army
But after this general agreement about Putin's instigatory role, there's been a real debate about "who is to blame" at this point not only for the tragedy of Odessa, but violence against civilians in general which the Ukrainian army or riot police are increasingly having to use if they have any hope of keeping what's left of their country.
There's a kind of International Relations Realist School version of this story that reproaches the new government in Kiev for not controlling either the army or the police in their own country, and for sending the army or security forces to do the job that competent local police should be doing. Curiously, even as the Ukrainians are blamed if force is used at all against anyone who complains about it, despite their own use of force, the Ukrainians are also blamed for not manning up and getting their army and police to get behind their new government in full force against the separatists.
Some slack is cut for Kiev due to the fact that their siloviki (power ministries) are riddled with FSB and GRU informants or collaborators from past eras. But even so, the feeling from this camp is that Kiev should get its act together, instill loyalty and discipline and perform anti-insurgent operations skillfully and subtly to avoid civilian casualties -- or else they will be to blame for violating the Geneva agreements and bringing a Russian invasion on themselves.
Of course, German or Danish or French military advisors from OSCE do no better than Kiev -- they wind up taken hostage by the same forces in the "Donetsk People's Republic" that have kidnapped (and at least released) Western journalists and abducted, tortured and murdered Ukrainian politicians or activists or humiliated the soldiers who came in an armored vehicle to chase them away. Yet the Ukrainians are expected to do better.
Where is that perfect police force that deftly disarms -- without any excessive force such as Human Rights Watch condemns -- armed separatists backed in fact by a foreign army -- without any harm to themselves? These things don't exist anywhere in the world, really, although the yearning for them in NGO circles at the UN or OSCE -- not to mention in war-torn countries ! -- is immense, and the belief in "peace-keepers" (war-stoppers) is unshakeable. Ukraine is reproached by the pundits for using the army to do a policing job (a very old story in these countries) -- yet what is causing the mayhem in Ukraine is in fact another army -- Russia's! Really, our reproach should be more for Moscow using its army for the job of diplomacy and our call should be for real cooperation with OSCE (having Lukin spring captives who shouldn't have been taken in the first place is hardly to be praised, given the Moscow-directed obstruction of all these monitors in the first place, both in the Crimea and in the east.)
So no, I don't think a new coalition government under fire for some of its alliance choices and under siege by Russia with tens of thousands of troops at the border and thousands of provocateurs at work inside can really be chastised in the way the Sovietologists want to.
Especially when we think that the way that Yanukovych, and Tymoshenko and others before him, bought the loyalty of the East was through corrupt business deals, bribes, graft, cuts, and political compromises. Indeed, the essential message of Mayor Kernes in Kharkiv -- now in serious condition from a gunshot wound by an unknown assailant -- to Kiev was -- "Let me keep my corrupt empire along with Gov. Dobkin, and I won't sic the Russians on you under my control. Threaten me, and out come the self-defense units and the bats."
But even in spite of this tremendous magnetic field of great-power politics and small- and medium-bore mafia corruption that passes for great politics, there are individual acts of courage, and the nature of social movements, which can be good or bad.
The versions of what happened in Odessa seem to break down to three perspectives:
1. The pro-Russian separatists and their "Colorado Beetle" friends bused in from other cities, with Moscow's backing, barricaded and locked themselves into the Trade Unions Building, shot at people as they'd been doing all day, killed five people right at the scene in front of the building, then lit fires inside the building, and then mainly escaped (about 250), although some of their own were not so lucky (38). Conclusion: the armed professionals knew how to set fires and escape from buildings, but they didn't bother to collect their amateur followers to get them to safety, the cynicism for which these forces are notorious.
2. The pro-Kiev Maidan activists who had suffered several deaths and beatings of their own at the hands of the pro-Russians, were enraged and sought revenge and took a long 30-minute walk or 10-minute drive to the Trade Unions Building to "clean out" the separatists' tent camp in nearby Kolekovo Field Square. They torched the tents, then hounded the pro-Russian separatists into the building, throwing in Molotov cocktails through the door to set fire, then stood back and chanted nationalist slogans and sang the national anthem while the Russians asphyxiated to death inside. To be sure, a few people tried to save them, but mainly the nationalists beat the survivors as they emerged. Conclusion: Ukrainian nationalists staged a successful pogrom, something that they are all too good at historically and this was to be expected.
3. Some cross between the two, where both sides are to blame in differing measure. The Russians shot at people in the crowd below and injured and killed some; Russians on the roof threw Molotov cocktails and other debris; the Ukrainians hounded separatists whom they outnumbered into the building, and threw Molotov cocktails from below and some got in the windows The tent fire and Molotov fires spread to the first few floors of the building. Because the Russians had built a barricade out of furniture right in front of the door, they blocked their own exit. Some Ukrainians took delight in their enemies' misfortune, but others helped rescue the very people who had been shooting at them and throwing dishes at them moments before. Stories of the beatings of survivors are exaggerated.
The fire department did not get there for 20 minutes according to some accounts, or more than 60 minutes according to others, although civilians did set up make-shift ladders and a hose brigade and rescued at least some people (10? 20?). Others blocked ambulances, we are told, slowing rescue of another 120 and leaving the 38 to perish.
It's clear what Moscow thinks of the Trade Unions fire -- it is an outrageous crime. It's clear what Surkov or his facsimile thinks -- it is the sort of crime for which war should be started and equal treatment dished out.
It's clear what the Ukrainian Interior Ministry is doing -- trying to explain away things about this tragedy or at least deny its premeditated features, and pin it on the disobedient or inactive police -- or darker oligarchic mafia forces that "really control" things.
So before falling alongside either of these versions -- or even accepting that Moscow is right about the pogrom part -- I want to do due diligence about the incidents leading up to the numerous deaths. Given that this tragedy will be exploited to launch an invasion or at least escalate the take-over of more eastern towns with Kremlin-backed forces, I think it deserves a really close look at the facts.
Mainstream Media
The third version -- both are to blame and the fire isn't a deliberate pogrom but got out of control -- is actually what is in the mainstream media. Here's a report by a Philip Shishkin, who has long worked in this region and covered pogroms in Central Asia:
Odessa is very different from the heavily Russian Crimea and from the industrial Donetsk region with a significant Russian population. Although it is mostly a Russian-speaking city, it is a true melting pot of cultures, where no single national idea predominates. "Separatism here is inspired from the outside," said Boris Khersonsky, a prominent Odessa poet and psychologist, who is Jewish. "Odessa would like to be independent from everyone."
Yet, Friday's violence drew a sharp dividing line through parts of the Odessa society. Pro-Russia activists here are convinced the Ukrainian nationalists brutally burned to death innocent civilians, a narrative promoted by Russian state television, which has played a crucial role in stoking separatist unrest in eastern Ukraine. Pro-Ukraine activists point out that the clashes were started by armed pro-Russia militants, and that the fire was a tragic accident in which both sides threw Molotov cocktails.
The main thrust of Shishkin's article, titled "Pro-Ukraine Group Steps in Clashes in to Defend City: Odessa Prompt Civilians, Leery of Pro-Russia Advances Elsewhere in Country, to Join Grass-Roots Movement," is that this new force will worsen the likelihood of both civil war and the pretext for further Russian military action. It's a real self-defense movement, unlike the one often simulated by the Russian-backed separatists, but from what I can tell, this movement has real Ukrainian armed force backing it, too. The people in the crowd with helmets, flak jackets, and camouflage inspire the same doubts as to their "grass-roots" provenance as do the "little green men" backed by Russia. Maybe the Ukrainians have decided to play the Russians' own game -- except surely they're out-numbered.
Another factor is the oligarchs -- I recall early in the crisis, how an oligarch scrambled his own company's helicopters when Russian airborne troops landed on a sand bar on the outer edge of Ukraine -- they had the fuel and choppers so they helped out. Odessa may have had a similar arrangement.
Other eye-witnesses to the fire don't make definitive judgements about it -- the Guardian's Howard Amos seems to blame both sides for violence and is clear about the pro-Russian forces not being mere hounded victims, but shooters -- he includes a photo:
Medics at the scene said the pro-Russia fighters were also shooting from the roof. At least five bodies with bullet wounds lay on the ground covered by Ukraine flags as fire engines and ambulances arrived at the scene.
Some people fell from the burning building as they hung on to windowsills in an attempt to avoid the fire that had taken hold inside. Pro-Ukraine protesters made desperate efforts to reach people with ropes and improvised scaffolding.
"At first we broke through the side, and then we came through the main entrance," said one pro-Ukrainian fighter, 20, who said he was a member of the extreme nationalist group Right Sector.
"They had guns and they were shooting … Some people jumped from the roof, they died obviously," he said.
So Amos places a young Right Sector fighter there, but doesn't say the rest of the pro-Ukrainian forces were mainly or even partially from Right Sector -- no other reporter claims this either (except the Russian Foreign Ministry).
His report contains an important detail: while there were people shot and killed earlier in the day at the demonstrations in the Afina area, there were also five people killed at the Trade Unions Building whose bodies were lying in front. That must have been a powerful factor to enrage people who came looking for trouble already.
Nicholas Holmov, a Brit blogger in Ukraine, also has some thoughtful blogs on the tragedy here and here and a telling tweet about the march back to the Trade Unions Building today, the re-hoisting of the Russian flag, and the release from jail of pro-Russian activists after their comrades stormed the police station:
Difference between 1st and 4th May in #Odessa now seems to be nothing more than wasted lives. Spectacular #fail or collusion by authorities
— Nikolai Holmov (@OdessaBlogger) May 4, 2014
Holmov chose to feature this video, which shows EuroMaidan activists, he says, taking pro-Russian activists away from the fire.
This version is bolstered by these photos from the scene, and the urging of a Ukrainian activist to the Russian "who howl that we burned them" to look at how people in fact helped saved them:
Ватникам, орущим, что мы сожгли людей в Одессе. Дивіться, щоб вам повилазило! pic.twitter.com/PjKO6Poo0H
— Дочка Украiни (@Vicki712) May 4, 2014
The New York Times was quite vague about all this; the State Department gave a vague statement condemning violence on all sides.
Yet among those watching Russia and Ukraine closely and numerous discussion forums and comments at news sites and blogs, there are major disagreements about the nature of this event.
This video is what a lot of people have seen, and it shapes their concept of the event (mine included);
This looks like the fire was started by people throwing Molotov cocktails from below -- indeed you can see them striking and catching fire. It shows people running deliberately toward the tents and burning them; it shows that fire spreading. It also shows people on the roof throwing things; and it shows lots of people standing around.
But in terms of feeding the third narrative, it shows a) people bringing a fire hose within minutes of the fire breaking out (unless the film has time jumps, and it may, as the lighting changes in it), but it also shows lots of people trying to help those inside the burning building to escape on ropes or improvised scaffolding made from the big signs used for the anti-EuroMaidan signs at the pro-Russian camp. There don't seem to be any people at this stage singing the national anthem or chanting nationalist slogans.
The impression from this video is that both sides are to blame, that the fire is tragic, but that those below, while hurling a few Molotov cocktails, switch to helping those caught in the fire later.
Other impressions come from live streams, such as this one in which a group of pro-Kiev people stand around singing the national anthem after the fire has burned out, as if in celebration (so some claim) of the fire. A young man emerges and we hear him calling someone, likely his parents, on his phone, saying he was brought out safely and now he is outside on the street. This livestream segment shows people putting the scaffolding up into the building.
Citizens' Videos Vs. Livestreams
In looking at both sets of videos, both made as citizen's media or livestreams, I can see that people's impressions come from two factors:
o Those who have seen certain direct livestream video from the events are convinced that Ukrainian nationalists -- soccer fans and Maidan activists -- deliberately hounded the Russian separatists who were outnumbered even if armed, set their refuge on fire, and then either did nothing or even took great glee in their suffering as they died in the fire; worse, they even beat them as they came out of the building.
o Those who have seen various citizens' videos and read various blogged eye-witness accounts that explain them are convinced that the situation isn't as stark, that both sides are to blame and that the fire started not due to malice but accident.
The debate I've translated between Svetlana Gannushkina, a human rights activist in Moscow who cited a Ukrainian colleague's report, and several people who challenge her who watched the live-stream, is emblematic of the different impressions that come from different videos and accounts.
This, the account of a Ukrainian colleague of Gannushkina's in Odessa:
“In the [Trade Unions] building were those who had shot and even continued to shoot during the fire. They had attacked a column of demonstrators who had no means of defense or attack. The first four people who died were victims of that attack; moreover, there were many wounded. And then the infuriated crowd broke up stones from the pavement and began throwing them at the attackers, forcing them to run, and then chased them. They set the tent camp on Kulikovo Field [Square] on fire. Several dozen people ran into the Trade Unions Building.
Odessians claim that the building caught on fire due to Molotov cocktails which separatists threw from the top down on the Maidan activists. This appears to be true — it can be seen in the video that the fire near the building jumps to the building itself."
Then this, as Dmitry Lihachev says to Gannushkina:
“This was a pogrom, people went to burn and kill — and they burned and killed. I didn’t see any connection between those ‘Colorado Beetles’ [pro-Russians with orange-and-black striped St. George ribbons] who threw something from behind the police cordon in the center and the tent camp — I can readily believe that these are simply different people. Maybe some Odessians did see that the Colorados set themselves on fire in the Trade Unions Building, but I saw how they set fire from all sides [...] I saw how they did not allow the ambulances through, and how they shouted ‘To Heroes Glory!’ even when they saw several corpses, and young girls with bats, and I heard the commentaries, and this was appalling, Svetlana, this was simply a pogrom — in the best traditions of the early last century.”
This should be a simple matter of reviewing the live-stream footage, but it isn't always clear or persuasive; furthermore, some bloggers haven't been able to link to it and then suspect darkly that it has been deliberately hidden or deleted because it is unfavourable to the Ukrainian cause.
I personally don't accept that videotaped segments or hours of livestream even from multiple angles trump everything or are a substitute for getting interviews with eye-witnesses and studying a variety of accounts.
For one, we're faced with this lack of data in a sea of media: people opting for the "pogrom" version can only say "I saw hours of live feed but I can't show it to you now and what's in the archive doesn't do it justice" and people opting for the "both sides are to blame and it was an accident" are saying "I was there, and here's my written report, or here's my citizen's video."
But even when you are directly watching the live-stream live, you can't always understand what is going on -- the context. Were the people singing the national anthem aware that people were dying inside or did they think everyone had fled? After all, some 200 people fled the building, and 120 were rescued; 38 died. If a person stands right next to them calling his parents who has escaped, do they feel as if the situation is not serious?
Watching a segment of video without comparing it to printed eye-witness accounts can also be misleading. I thought the first time I saw the first video above that the crowd flinched and ran due to fire -- although if you look closer, you see that they were standing next to burning tents before that, and fire isn't the issue. The issue is gunfire from the roof -- which eye-witnesses in the crowd and the Guardian journalist reported later -- and then matched with the video scene makes sense.
So Was it a Pogrom?
I really don't have a problem with the facts of a massive human rights incident leading me to some place that seems to put me alongside Surkov or Lavrov. Surely "adjusting" the facts to fit a narrative supportive to Kiev, however needful, is never justified because the facts are the basis for the ultimate justice and peace of this country. I'm supportive but not uncritical of the Kiev government and the EuroMaidan movement, whatever its merit and courage, isn't my shared cause because of its tolerance for violence and extremism.
If there were people inside the tents and the EuroMaidan burned them alive, I'd call it a pogrom. But there weren't people inside the tents. They ran into a sturdy, Soviet-era granite building -- the Trade Unions building was an important symbol to them of Soviet socialism which is why their camp was there and not someplace else in the first place -- because they hoped to take it over (they built a barricade blocking the door!). And because a deputy told them to -- and they went in the back door, fanned out, went up to the roof, and began defending the building and repelling their attackers.
So it seems to me, it's quite a step to say Odessa was like Osh -- a conscious pogrom, or mafia or gang warfare that escalated to a pogrom because of pre-existing hatreds and plans, with a hounded enemy sent into a trap to be annihilated.
I don't think either the Ukrainian Maidan activists or the Russian separatists went into this street battle and building battle thinking "40 people are going to die tonight".
Events can be very hard to report on. I'm familiar from witnessing not only mass demonstrations and beatings in Russia or Azerbaijan, but from my own country (where I have witnessed the police attacks on radical demonstrators against the Republican Party Congress in NYC, for example, and attacks on police by Occupy demonstrators ). I know, from having once found myself lining up alongside others in Occupy (about which I was very critical) -- to protect a "people's library" in Zucotti Park as a crowd nearly crushed us, surrounded by police -- that you can get caught up in events not of your own choosing or liking and find yourself on the wrong side of a police kettling.
So I am very much predisposed to seeing the Odessa tragedy as something of a "blind men and the elephant" phenomenon and I really want to look at as many accounts as I can on this story before saying "the Odessa Trade Union fire was like Jedwabne.
I've translated a lot of the Russian media and blogosphere coverage of this (and it's not even the tip of the iceberg) and this debate sums up some of the critical issues; those who think Odessa was a brutal and cynical pogrom feel that human rights liberals supportive if not uncritical of the Kiev government are debasing themselves and selling out their principles if they don't admit this, and those liberals who think the story might be more complicated and the Russian nationalists and their backers more to blame think the "pogrom" perception is unsupportable and unfair to the Kiev authorities, and will play into Russian hands. Putin wins, of course.
Part of what is driving the narrative for any side is the perception of how things have gone thus far in other towns -- Russian separatists were the aggressors, Ukrainians those actually beaten and killed at a time when the Kremlin propaganda mills were making false claims about Russian speakers, and the corruption or connivance of local police in siding with "the little green men" fairly evident.
In Odessa, it was different, in ways I don't think we've all completely appreciated. Certain Michael Weiss' insight about this highly-important port town for the Russian government's highly lucrative arms trade around the world is a huge factor in events there.
The question is whether the local potentates have decided to throw in their weight with the Kiev government, which might let them keep their corrupt dealings if they don't challenge Kiev, or whether they are going to hold out and wait for Putin to rescue them directly from any effort by Kiev to remove them for corruption or connivance. Is any armed force they create the same as, or parallel, to the "little black men" that elements of Right Sector seems to have created?
If this wasn't an open question in Slavyansk, I think it is in Odessa. After all, if Moscow really ran things directly in Odessa in ways that they could only indirectly or informally before, might they not get rid of various layers of people they no longer have to tolerate when the gloves are off?
Soccer Fan Violence Makes Its First Appearance
For the first time in any of this unrest, I see the role of the soccer clubs -- which we've seen behind ethnic riots in Russia. Sports clubs are controlled by the old KGB networks of intelligence and more importantly today, the mafias because of betting and lucrative contracts and endorsements. They also have lots of government support as they are seen as a way of controlling youth, especially aggressive young men and also burnishing the national brand at home and abroad.
So maybe that's a warning sign that some powerful forces did pay for and cause trouble with soccer clubs, but on the other hand, they have an alibi: there was a big game, and they really did have a tradition of an after-game march for Ukrainian unity, and the extra crowd-pleasing attraction of a planned performance of one of their mass marching-tunes, "Putin Khuylo" (Putin is a Dick), a phrase people love to scrawl on buildings or sing at the top of their lungs because it shocks elders as much as it expresses their dislike of Moscow.
So ultimately, here are the questions I have about all these versions, before I can settle on a variant:
o Who died in the building? If they were young men with Russian Federation passports and automatic rifles by their side that's one thing; if they are old ladies with St. George ribbons and jars of pickles they had brought to what they thought was a peaceful protest camp, that's another.
"Sofiya," the eye-witness published by Ekho Moskvy, says she saw a lot of ordinary people, older people and women inside the building, and she believes they are among the victims. Meanwhile, others say they saw gunmen in the building and on the roof and think they are among the victims. A story made the rounds the first day that "15 Russian Federation citizens" and "5 Transdniestria citizens" -- almost half -- were among those who died from asphyxiation. The Ukrainain Foreign Ministry seems to back that up, yet as the Russian Foreign Ministry has demanded, they haven't come up with names or citizenship.
While people even with guns in their hands don't deserve to die in pogroms in mass numbers, if it turns out the outside instigators were over-represented among the victims, that will likely change how the tragedy is viewed.
Given that we already know that some of the victims include people like a 17-year-old boy native to Odessa who had already told his parents he had stopped hanging out at the separatists' camp but who jumped in panic from the fourth floor during the fire -- I won't be surprised if we find there is a mixture of ordinary people, from Odessa, who just had different views about what was the better future.
o Why did the Odessa deputy tell people to run to the Trade Unions Building? He could have told them to go home, given all the shooting deaths, beatings and mayhem, not to mention fires in the tent camp. Was it really worth risking life and limb for a barricade with a sign, "No to EuroSodom Values"?
o What and who was driving the Ukrainian Maidan supporters? Why did they have such animus to this pathetic camp of mainly Soviet nostalgics, pensioners and kids? If they did hound them with glee, why? Was this Right Sector (and no, I'm not going to suspect a Russian false flag on this one).
o The answer to this last question might be "Because they were shot at by Russian separatists, had suffered deaths, and were still shot at from the roof." Who was shooting from the roof (they killed 5 people). The reason for the arrest of the Russian nationalists who were victims of the fire -- a factor angering their camp, of course -- is because they were believed to have weapons; they had shot and killed people at the Trade Unions Building.
o Did the police really help either side or do nothing? Many seem to think so, yet this video shows police in riot gear first linking arms and holding people back, then letting through the pro-Russian activists with St. George ribbons and bats in their hands. Were they overwhelmed?
There's at least one tweet from Holmov saying his cap is doffed to riot police who at least held back some of the fighting crowds earlier in the day, and given that police were injured, some severely, we have to assume they did get in harm's way. Their absence -- and then very belated arrival -- at the Trade Unions building is a puzzle, of course but maybe they were still busy back in the center fighting crowds there?
Of course it would be great if the Ukrainian government, even the Odessa government, the OSCE, or the UN held "a full, credible and impartial investigation." But that hasn't even happened yet for the 100 or so sniper deaths said to be at the hands of the SBU loyal to Yanukovych at Maidan in Kiev. It won't happen for this either.
That's why it's really important for all those who were eye-witnesses to publish their accounts and for the videos to be archived safely. Perhaps at least local journalists and human rights group can try to assemble the data to be examined and reported on in more depth.
Additions:
o This is a good report from a Svoboda journalist, Yelena Rykovtseva who describes the new type of Ukrainian "self-defense" forces in first street fighting, then the attack on the tent camp. One man killed was a judge's assistant and joined the self-defense ranks who seemed to have had advance word in the form of a threat to them from anti-Maidan groups, who were bolstered by people from Nikolayev and Donetsk.
She doesn't have anything much to say on the fire, except to say that both sides had Molotov cocktails. She also reports that single men or pairs of men from out of town are renting up all the SROs and B&B's in Odessa and "awaiting their hour."
o This is a YoutTube video that purports to show the beating and deliberate suffocation death of a Trade Unions Building worker. It is very hard to understand what is going on, and the "proof" comes in the form of a still at the end.
o This is one of those ridiculous Anonymous conspiracy stories in Russian which I think is pretty ridiculous. They claim that the same gases used to subdue terrorists in Nordost -- which killed the theater-goers taken hostage in large numbers -- was used in the Trade Unions Building. This seems crazy. The claim is based on the fact that the bodies are found lying "peacefully" on the floor. There's a name for the gas that killed people, though -- it's carbon dioxide. It doesn't take much to make people fall down in a faint and then die.
This conspiracy page has the names and passport photos of people they claim are agents from Russia who came in to pull off this massacre to justify the Russian invasion.
Now that several dozen decent videos exist & there are also a few eye witness accounts INCLUDING one of the chiefs from the fire brigade/emergency services, it is so obvious your conjectures were mainly incorrect.
I wonder why you bothered writing such a long laborious & obviously biased piece?
Better yet - who is paying you?
Posted by: Lana D | May 17, 2014 at 05:34 PM
Nothing of the sort. I've been watching all kinds of films and I don't see anything that supports the Kremlin narrative or the separatist narrative wholly at all.
As I've indicated in subsequent posts here after this one, there is a mixture of blame. The Russian separatists decided to stand and fight. They knew an attack on their tent camp was coming. They deliberately gathered arms, food and medicine to have a fight -- their own supporters tell us this on videos.
The Ukrainians retaliated for the shootings at the soccer fan match, but they were also planning to destroy the tent camp. They didn't have a deliberate plan to chase people into a building and kill them with a fire. In fact, they helped them out of the building.
The most important thing these videos show is what a long period of time there was before the building caught on fire from the tent fire. Some people left. Others didn't. To their tragic fate.
Nobody is "paying me". That's ridiculous. This is an independent blog I do on my own for free in my spare time. Who pays you, that you think in these terms?
Ukrainian authorities have announced that they found guns in the building. When were you going to tell us that? There's the medical examiners' report -- I've reported on it. And so on. You're a provocateur.
Posted by: Catherine Fitzpatrick | May 19, 2014 at 01:50 AM
The author of this article forgot to mention that pro-ukraines were finishing those who jumped out the windows but still were alive. What? conviniently forgot to mention that.Accidental fire? They were yelling burn them all inside befor fire spread.Are u ignorant or plain stupid?
Posted by: us sitizen | July 06, 2014 at 08:26 PM
You don't sound very literate or very intelligence, "US Sitizen".
I've written extensively about the Odessa fire here, and I don't share your views at all. Perhaps people shouted "burn them," but Ukrainians also *saved them*. They did not force anyone to run into a building; they decided to occupy the building in advance, and brought in food and equipment.
There was a gunman on the roof who shot and injured and evidently killed some people below. People also threw Molotov cocktails from the roof, some of which caught the tents fire.
http://3dblogger.typepad.com/minding_russia/2014/05/odessatragedy.html
Posted by: Catherine Fitzpatrick | July 06, 2014 at 09:28 PM