What is happening with Russia and Ukraine now?

A bomb exploded during a seemingly peaceful march in Харків (Kharkiv) commemorating the anniversary of Maidan, killing at least 2 people and injuring 10.

 

Seems like an evident false flag to me. Of course, i cannot prove it.

 

Let me help you.

UA media has reported that the terrorists were captured at 15:20 local time. They reference a facebook post by the chief SBU advisor Markian Lybkovsky. This post has images with terrorists on them and their weapons.

Spoiler

A video was posted later as well:

[YOUTUBE]RT8a0o9JscE[/YOUTUBE]

My opinion:

Spoiler

If they were captured yesterday, why wasn't the terrorist act prevented? Weren't they interrogated? If they were captured today, were they captured in another hemisphere or something? Because it's not this dark at 15:00 in Kharkiv.

The terrorist acts were blamed on Russia instantly by Turchinov. They can't finish the investigation of the sniper kills on Maidan after a year, but here he shows incredible ability and speed in finding a culprit. In addition Turchinov enacted the ATO operation in Kharkiv.

Kharkiv partisans have released a statement that they are not responsible for the attack, for what it's worth:

[YOUTUBE]edlusC1ULu4[/YOUTUBE]

Here is the video of the bombing caught on tape:

[YOUTUBE]pOldvHIklCQ[/YOUTUBE]

My interpretation:

Spoiler

The person filming it walks around with his wife and child. He names the current date right before the explosion, then keeps casually filming after the attack, telling his wife to "fuck off this way". He talks with some people, then points towards the explosion and says "It wasn't hidden in a trash can, there was no trashcan in this place, it was probably dug into the ground, I'm a local, I would know" and then blames the separatists on camera:

 

For as long as I can remember, everything you have posted in this thread thus far screams "I hate Ukraine", so it's not surprising that you would also jump to conclusions blaming the Kiev government without having any proof whatsoever to support your claims. Funnily enough, you are like Kiev government officials, as they too always assume separatist or Russian involvement in everything that does not go well without having any evidence. This is the difference between lazy overt prejudice against one side (which you seem to show) and actual desire to get the facts like Komo keeps showing in this thread. Whether you think he too is prejudiced or not, he is at least collecting videos and information and only then forming a reasonable theory from the materials gathered.

---

As for your theory Komo, as I said I always respect your want for facts and that you try your best to get them, but I think you overestimate the usefulness of some of your evidence.

Of course, they must have been captured yesterday. However, you are forgetting that these people may not be connected to the explosion at all. After Maidan and now that Ukraine is practically in a state of civil war, a lot of weaponry "goes missing" and various groups with differing agendas have managed to get a hold of firearms and explosives - this we know already. This could have been anyone. Indeed, the facebook post itself is referring to a completely different plot than the bombing. Moreover, even if they were connected, an interrogation can still be a failure and I think we both know that the success of crime prevention varies greatly.

Nothing suspicious at all. Ukraine is at war and the government in office is convinced that they have been invaded by Russia. They don't have much evidence to prove this, but - as we have all seen - they are using craploads of propaganda to make their people believe that Russia does have troops and tanks in Eastern Ukraine. The same is being shown to Western powers.

And, as you can tell, it's not worth very much at all. Leadership of neither side would gain anything from admitting responsibility for this attack, as they are trying to win the hearts of the Ukrainian people and get them to join their respective cause. Furthermore, DNR/LNR need good propaganda too and they will lie just as much as Poroshenko; in Debaltseve, before it was taken over by the separatists, heavy shelling was coming from both sides of the city. Many civilians died in these explosions, but neither Kiev's troops nor the rebels took responsibility for the bad artillery.

It's a pretty stressful situation and he doesn't want to see them hurt; if I was walking along with my partner next to me only to suddenly hear an explosion and see people running our way, I'd be telling her to get the fuck out of there as well. As for saying the date on camera, that's absolutely normal - especially when filming an event like is the case here.

Actually, where I've placed the red dashes he says "they don't stand there" (referring to the bins). So he is saying that he knows that there wasn't a bin there where they could have hidden it because he is a local and knows that no bins stand in that place. Again, nothing out of the ordinary to me.

Once again, I don't see how this is at all relevant. If I was there and out of nowhere a bomb blew up in the middle of a Ukrainian nationalist march, I would probably assume straight away that it was someone who doesn't share their views and that it was an attack against them. Only quite some time later, once the shock wore off, would I even think of alternatives that perhaps the people those right-wingers support actually arranged for the bomb to be placed there. If I was a Ukrainian nationalist as well and sympathised with their cause, I would most certainly say that it was the separatists and it would be fairly logical to do so as Kharkiv is in Eastern Ukraine and not that far from the fighting in comparison to Kiev.

---

I honestly have no idea who is responsible. It definitely seems like something planned by a smaller group rather than a plot by the Kiev officials or that of Donetsk and Luhansk. Logic tells me it must have been someone who didn't like the fact that the march was taking place, so I'd assume that it was probably someone who is more likely to sympathise with the separatist cause than with the ruling government, but if it wasn't then... well, stranger things have happened. I personally have zero evidence to prove either way.

 

It just seems to me too convenient that a bomb should explode in that way and under those circumstances (war not going well) and in a zone were separatist have limited influence.

I don't "hate Ukraine". I don't have much sympathy for either side, to be honest.

 

The influence is limited only in the military sense. Pretty much every area in Ukraine where there is a large Russian-speaking population has some separatist influence over it... it would be very hard not to be influenced by those elements, when not that long ago your government tried to homogenise the whole country and put restrictions on the use of your first language. With that said, Kharkiv oblast is one of those were the majority speaks Russian at home and in 2006 Kharkiv was the first city to declare Russian as a regional language.

 

Hey, thanks. I've put my opinion under spoiler tags just in case.

This looks like a provocation to me. The partisans sabotaged the volunteer offices and mobilization efforts before, why would they blow up a demonstration all of a sudden? What do the sides of conflict get from this?

Rebels:
- Hatred and fear of the civilian population that already supports them.
- They can potentially get branded international terrorists and be "legally" bombed.

UA government:
- ATO status for Kharkiv within two hours after the explosion, allowing tighter control of the media and civilians.
- Potentially get weapons they've been asking for and a green light to wipe out Donbass.

 

Well, like I've said, stranger things have happened in the past. It's not ridiculous to say that Kiev is behind the bombing, but I just feel that with the info we have available it is unlikely. And even if it was the Kiev government, I wouldn't be surprised if they just anonymously manipulated an already planned attack to occur specifically during this event.

 

Either way, keep an eye out for more of these. After Debaltsevo Ukraine needs a distraction and a surge of patriotism.

 

As far as I know, this went on as planned. Images from the event show famous Polish clowns Komorowski and Tusk marching in front with Poroshenko and the president of Lithuania, among others.

 

Prisoner exchange on the 22nd:

[YOUTUBE]BIKrmViBpHQ[/YOUTUBE]

 

"March of Dignity": Poroshenko, Grybauskaite, Komorowski and co.

"Death to the enemies! Ukraine uber alles!"

[YOUTUBE]g8SAKkQgCK0[/YOUTUBE]

 

Mariupol media reports that terrorists are bombing themselves to frame UA armed forces.

 

Poroshenko and co laughing during the memorial service commemorating the deaths of the Euromaidan held during a March of Dignity in Kiev:

[YOUTUBE]xk0-I459MI8[/YOUTUBE]

Higher quality from RT:

[YOUTUBE]Zq3uA2NpI-0[/YOUTUBE]

 

German ARD channel released a documentary about Bandera cult in Ukraine and his connection to the Third Reich and the Holocaust:

[YOUTUBE]KrWbHlJvLiM[/YOUTUBE]

 

It's a shame there are no English subtitles. Ukrainian is so similar to Polish that I can sometimes understand the gist of what is being said without ever having studied the language before - the tiny bits of Russian I've learned also allow me to understand parts of what is said, but with German I'm absolutely clueless. :lol:

---

As many of you are aware, both the Ukrainian army and the separatist troops have gotten some support from international volunteers and mercenaries. Poles, Poland being one of Ukraine's close neighbours, have also contributed to the fight on both sides despite of the fact their government punishes serving in a foreign military with prison time.

Dariusz Lemański is a middle-aged Polish man who was living in England until he decided to back the rebel cause in Eastern Ukraine. He is said to be the first official Polish fighter on the DNR/LNR side of the conflict, but I have read in other places that at least several more have been confirmed and there may be others we don't know about. His motivation seems to be that Novorossiya deserves the right to self-govern as an independent state (or join Russia if they want to) and he views himself as an "anti-fascist" in opposition to the Bandera lovers. Below is the only English video material I could find about him (he seems a bit clueless, but in defence of him I can say that his English isn't very good at all so he can't really represent his views properly):

[YOUTUBE]?v=VsTrQEvglo8[/YOUTUBE]

Lemański's delusions about anti-fascism are funny, but here is where the real irony kicks in: Bartosz Bekier, although I don't think he took part in fighting, he did visit Eastern Ukraine with his "alternative" news portal and expressed direct support for the separatist cause. Moreover, he seems to admire Putin. But Bekier, you see, is a young Polish fascist. And not one of the grass roots bulls, but judging by the video below (in which he seems to have a very good idea of what is going on in Ukraine) he is a thinker and most probably quite familiar with fascist ideology. He has close ties with Falanga, a contemporary fascist organisation in Poland that is inspired by the old one. I am quite positive he is a key member of the group, if you type his name in Google you will see plenty of results.

[YOUTUBE]?v=5STW_EnTw_k[/YOUTUBE]

In fact, this video removes any minor doubts I had about him being a fascist. In it Bekier talks in detail about combining elements of the extreme left and the extreme right to combat the elements they both oppose ("globalism", American "colonialisation" of Poland, liberalism, Atlanticism, etc.). He finishes by saying that the red banner is certainly closer to Falanga than the rainbow flag that represents "democratic liberalism".

Of course, elements of the Polish far right also fight on the Kiev government's side. Tomasz Maciejczuk is the only one that I know of and he has been pretty open about his experiences on the front lines. He posted a number of videos on YouTube from back when he was fighting alongside the Ukrainian nationalists.

[YOUTUBE]?v=XR6ghtc-lsE[/YOUTUBE]

My point with posting these is to show that there are fascist and far right elements on both sides and any left-wing terminology being used on the separatist side is an illusion. They have support from Russian, Serbian and Polish fascists (among others)... as for Ukraine's Right Sector, Azov Battalion and co., I don't think I need to repeat myself.

 

A ministry of internal affairs advisor Anton Gerashchenko reports that a police officer in the rank of captain in Kharkiv was fired on the spot for congratulating her male coworkers with a Defender of the Fatherland Day, that Poroshenko earlier called an anti-ukrainian holiday, and handing out a "moronic" ribbon of Saint George. She wasn't patriotic enough.

 

A comprehensive database that details destroyed and captured armored vehicles, including tanks, IFVs, SPGs, artillery and rocket artillery as well as aviation and fleet in the Ukrainian conflict since last August that is being updated exclusively with photo and video evidence:

 

British soldiers will be sent to Ukraine as military advisers who will train the Ukrainian armed forces.

 

I believe this is nothing new, other than sending them officially. On top sightings of soldiers in british uniforms last year and english-speaking soldiers in Mariupol in the bombing areas, there was one recent article talking about this in the western media, but unfortunately it's behind a paywall.