harlekin.me

You’­ve heard of Bucha? You’­ve heard or see­en not­hing yet!

Situa­ti­on in Boro­dian­ka is “much sca­ri­er” than Bucha, Zelen­sky says

Ukrai­ni­an Pre­si­dent Volo­dym­yr Zelen­sky said work is under­way to clear rub­ble in the town of Boro­dian­ka and the situa­ti­on the­re is “much sca­ri­er” than that in Bucha.

Spea­king at his night­ly address on Thurs­day night, Zelen­sky said, “So far, the Rus­si­an sta­te and the Rus­si­an mili­ta­ry are the grea­test thre­at on the pla­net to free­dom, to human secu­ri­ty, to the con­cept of human rights as such. After Bucha, this is alrea­dy obvious,” he said, adding that work to clear rub­ble in Boro­dian­ka has begun. 

“It’s much sca­ri­er the­re. More vic­tims of Rus­si­an inva­ders,” Zelen­sky said.
The Ukrai­ni­an pre­si­dent said simi­lar atro­ci­ties were seen in Mariu­pol as well.

“What will hap­pen when the world learns the who­le truth about what the Rus­si­an mili­ta­ry did in Mariu­pol? The­re, on almost every street, is what the world saw in Bucha and other towns in the Kyiv regi­on after the with­dra­wal of Rus­si­an tro­ops. The same cru­el­ty. The same ter­ri­ble cri­mes,” he said.

Zelen­sky sug­gested that the atro­ci­ties com­mit­ted by Rus­si­an for­ces would be used as pro­pa­gan­da. CNN can­not inde­pendent­ly veri­fy the­se claims.

“More and more infor­ma­ti­on is com­ing in that Rus­si­an pro­pa­gan­dists are pre­pa­ring, so to speak, a ‘mir­ror respon­se’ to the shock of all nor­mal peop­le from what they saw in Bucha. They are going to show the vic­tims in Mariu­pol as if they were not kil­led by the Rus­si­an mili­ta­ry, but by Ukrai­ni­an defen­ders of the city,” Zelen­sky said, “to do this, the occu­p­iers collect corp­ses on the streets, take them out. And can be used else­whe­re in accordance with the deve­lo­ped pro­pa­gan­da scenarios.”

Zelen­sky said every mur­der in Ukrai­ne will be inves­ti­ga­ted and every loo­ter, rapist and mur­de­rer will be found and that after what the world saw hap­pe­ning in Bucha, it is clear Rus­sia “does not obey” human rights.”

He cal­led the UN Gene­ral Assembly’s decisi­on to sus­pend Rus­sia from the Human Rights Coun­cil “fair and logi­cal” and thank­ed the coun­try that sup­por­ted the UNGA decision.

“Perhaps Rus­sia will chan­ge its atti­tu­de to human rights, but at this point in time it’s not hap­pe­ning,” Zelen­sky said.

src:

Inte­res­ting paragraph:

More and more infor­ma­ti­on is com­ing in that Rus­si­an pro­pa­gan­dists are pre­pa­ring, so to speak, a “mir­ror respon­se” to the shock of all nor­mal peop­le from what they saw in Bucha. They are going to show the vic­tims in Mariu­pol as if they were kil­led not by the Rus­si­an mili­ta­ry, but by the Ukrai­ni­an defen­ders of the city. To do this, the occu­p­iers collect corp­ses on the streets, take them out and can use them else­whe­re in accordance with the ela­bo­ra­ted pro­pa­gan­da scenarios.

We are dealing with inva­ders who have not­hing human left. To jus­ti­fy their own kil­lings, they take the mur­de­red peop­le sim­ply as sce­ne­ry, as pro­pa­gan­da props. And this is a sepa­ra­te war crime, for which each of the pro­pa­gan­dists will be held accountable.

--

Ukrai­ni­an offi­cial: 26 bodies found under rub­ble of two houses in Borodianka
From CNN’s Hira Humayun

In the town of Boro­dian­ka, 26 bodies were found under the rub­ble of two houses accord­ing to Ukraine’s Pro­se­cu­tor Gene­ral Iry­na Vene­dik­to­va in a tele­vi­sed address on Thursday. 

She said the town was hit by Rus­si­an airstrikes lea­ding to a num­ber of civi­li­an casualties.

“Two big houses have been dis­mant­led. Found 26 bodies. And the­se are only two houses. Atro­ci­ties are in fact a legal term that com­bi­nes three cri­mes: war cri­mes, cri­mes against huma­ni­ty and geno­ci­de. I think we need to get used to this term. This is a legal term in inter­na­tio­nal cri­mi­nal law. So Boro­dian­ka is an illus­tra­ti­ve examp­le,” she said.

src: click

Also, it was sug­gested (cant remem­ber by whom any­mo­re, but I’ve read it befo­re), that the fol­lowing was a diver­si­on attempt of the rus­si­an side - to move the news nar­ra­ti­ve off of the atrocities.

Rus­si­an offi­cial accu­ses Ukrai­ne of chan­ging deman­ds sin­ce the 2 sides met in Istanbul
From CNN’s Ulia­na Pavlo­va and Mar­tin Goillandeau

Rus­si­an For­eign Minis­ter Ser­gey Lav­rov speaks during a news con­fe­rence in Moscow on Thursday.
Rus­si­an For­eign Minis­ter Ser­gey Lav­rov speaks during a news con­fe­rence in Moscow on Thurs­day. (Alex­an­der Zemlianichenko/Pool/AP)
On Thurs­day, Rus­si­an For­eign Minis­ter Ser­gey Lav­rov accu­sed Ukrai­ni­an nego­tia­tors of chan­ging the most important pro­vi­si­ons that both sides had agreed upon during Russia-Ukraine talks in Istan­bul last month.

Lav­rov said that a draft agree­ment pre­sen­ted on Wed­nes­day by Ukrai­ni­an nego­tia­tors “show­ed a depar­tu­re from the most important pro­vi­si­ons fixed at the mee­ting in Istan­bul,” adding that the new Ukrai­ni­an draft agree­ment did not inclu­de an ear­lier pro­po­sal by Kyiv to exclu­de Cri­mea and Sebas­to­pol from the future secu­ri­ty gua­ran­tees Ukrai­ne is demanding.

Lav­rov also said Ukrai­ni­ans sug­gested that “the pro­blems of Cri­mea and Don­bas should be brought to the mee­ting of the pre­si­dents of Rus­sia and Ukrai­ne,” a pro­po­sal deemed “unac­cep­ta­ble” by Rus­sia, as Ukrai­ni­an Pre­si­dent Volo­dym­yr Zelen­sky has repeated­ly sta­ted that such a mee­ting is pos­si­ble only after the ces­sa­ti­on of hostilities.

“At the next sta­ge, the Ukrai­ni­an side will cer­tain­ly ask for the with­dra­wal of tro­ops and will put for­ward new pre­con­di­ti­ons,” Lav­rov said.

Accord­ing to the Rus­si­an For­eign Minis­ter, the Ukrai­ni­an side has also chan­ged its stance on a pro­vi­si­on that Moscow could oppo­se any future mili­ta­ry maneu­vers invol­ving for­eign for­ces in Ukrai­ni­an territory.

Lav­rov said that the ina­bi­li­ty to find a nego­tia­ted agree­ment with Ukrai­ne “demons­tra­tes the true inten­ti­ons of Kyiv, its line to drag on and even make the nego­tia­ti­ons fail, rejec­ting the agree­ments that had been found.”

“We see this as a mani­fes­ta­ti­on of the fact that the Kyiv regime is con­trol­led by Washing­ton and its allies, who are pushing Pre­si­dent Zelen­sky to con­ti­nue hos­ti­li­ties,” he added.
Lav­rov said the Rus­si­an dele­ga­ti­on would “con­ti­nue the nego­tia­ti­on pro­cess,” pro­mo­ting its draft agree­ment, which accord­ing to Lav­rov “clear­ly and in full, sets out all the key posi­ti­ons and demands.”

Lav­rov did not reve­al the details of that draft agreement.

src: click
Regard­less, in its­elf thats worth to be acknowledged.

First they are showing the video­state­ment of the mayor of Bucha from the 31st of March.

Second ‘image pro­of’ (first image actual­ly, first image pro­of was a video) pro­du­ced in the pre­sen­ta­ti­on can not be found via tineye or a goog­le rever­se image search.

Accord­ing to the rus­si­an repre­sen­ta­ti­ve to the United nati­ons, Vas­si­ly Neben­zia, he then is pre­sen­ting a (short) video cap­tu­red by the ukrai­ni­an natio­nal guard, of Bucha, pos­ted on April 2nd, that depicts ukrai­ni­an for­ces ent­e­ring Bucha, not showing any dead bodies in the streets. The video then also would con­tain the ukrai­ni­an mili­ta­ry inter­viewing several peop­le in the town, not one of which would be men­tio­ning a mas­sa­c­re, or mass killings.

[Atten­ti­on, I can’t veri­fy the date of cap­tu­re, or that Bucha is the town depic­ted in the video. Nor can I rule out, that foo­ta­ge was cherrypicked.]

Opi­ni­on: The evi­dence is not very con­clu­si­ve. Nor is it empirical.

Neben­zia is also sta­ting that more ‘infor­ma­ti­on’ would be coming/being released in the Secu­ri­ty coun­cil mee­ting on April 5th. I’ve still not scree­n­ed the full length ver­si­on of that.

edit: Wat­ched the one minu­te video packa­ge that was part of the Zelen­skyys Secu­ri­ty coun­cil speech. And it was effec­ti­ve. Warning: Images are very gra­phic. Which is also, why I will not pro­vi­de a time­code this time.

Groups of peop­le which are depic­ted in Bucha:
- 20 (or so) peop­le dead in the streets.
- Part­ly buried fami­ly of four. (Might have been refe­ren­ced by the eye wit­ness in the polish TV inter­view (unsu­re). Going by descrip­ti­ons, this was one of the loca­ti­ons the ZDF repor­ter visited.)
- Back alley with 8 peop­le kil­led (This was refe­ren­ced in the polish TV inter­view.)
- Group of at least four vic­tims at an unknown loca­ti­on in a later sta­te of decomposition.
- Group of at least four peop­le in what seems like a cel­lar with their hands see­min­gly zip­tied behind their backs, dead.
- Three peop­le lying in a yard, dead.
- Bur­ned remains of a corp­se (might refer to the examp­le of a raped women who was then bur­ned in an attemp­ted cover up, that was refer­red to in two speeches)
- Two other corp­ses, one bur­ned at unknown locations
- Ano­t­her group of at least two, pro­bab­ly more bur­ned corpses
- A mass gra­ve with about a dozen body­bags showing

I now under­stand the remarks of the ZDF repor­ter, that you dont just sta­ge that. That you can’t. Vis­cer­al­ly - I get it.

Also, com­pa­red to that, what RT is cur­r­ent­ly doing (from me watching about 5 seconds of one of their news seg­ments on But­cha - on you­tube, when I was scree­ning Vot-Tak.tv vide­os to see, if I could find the first eye wit­ness account on video (I cant - but the ori­gi­nal wri­te­down of the inter­view is lin­ked in here as well as in the pre­vious pos­ting on the topic)), name­ly to have an ‘expert’ give out a state­ment that two of the corp­ses on the street lying next to each other would have to have been kil­led on dif­fe­rent days, becau­se of dif­fe­rent decom­po­si­ti­on sta­tes, is in its own sepa­ra­te cate­go­ry of not­hing­ness. It just doesnt even compare.

For what its worth, I end with Antó­nio Guterres:

“We are not say­ing that this spe­ci­fic inci­dent is a war crime, we can’t estab­lish that yet, that is why the­re needs to be detail­ed foren­sic examination…Justice and accoun­ta­bi­li­ty take time; what is important is that this work is under­ta­ken and con­ti­nues to ensu­re accoun­ta­bi­li­ty going forward.”

src: click

edit: I reached the part of the video, whe­re Neben­zia gives his coun­ter­points. They were:

- The corp­ses werent the­re right after the with­dra­wal of the rus­si­an mili­ta­ry, which would be con­fir­med by “several vide­os” [This should refer to the two vide­os shown a day ear­lier in the video up top - state­ment is doubt­ful at the least]
- The corp­ses on the streets couldnt have been the­re for three or four days, jud­ging from their decom­po­si­ti­on sta­te, much less sin­ce the 20th of march, like the NYT repor­ted [in some cases].

edit2: Natio­na­le Unter­su­chungs­kom­mis­sio­nen wur­den von Frank­reich, Tsche­chi­en, Deutsch­land, Est­land, Litau­en, der Slo­wa­kei, Schwe­den und Spa­ni­en auf­ge­stellt. src: click

oder einem Gremium.

Was hab ich gelacht.

Am 24. März schreibt der Stan­dard noch in alter Gewohn­heit Pro­ject Syn­di­ca­te Arti­kel ab (click) - und dann gleich noch vom ECFR Direk­tor, in dem der eine neue Phi­lo­so­phie und das Agie­ren poli­ti­scher und gesell­schaft­li­cher Akteu­re for­dert um die Bevöl­ke­rung aber so rich­tig in den Zei­ten­wan­del zu über­füh­ren (da stand vor­her ein ande­res Wort) -- mit Unterpunkt:

Außer­dem steht eine neue Debat­te über Mili­tär­ba­sen und Atom­waf­fen an, die Euro­pas Auf­merk­sam­keit (und ver­mut­lich Res­sour­cen) von ihrem glo­ba­len mul­ti­la­te­ra­len Enga­ge­ment abzie­hen wird.

Geframt als “Und er stellt vier Fra­gen, die die Poli­tik lösen muss.”

Und das hast du nicht gese­hen, weni­ger als zwei Wochen spä­ter zeigt schon das US Mili­tär Inter­es­se - na sag amol - des war wohl schon wie­der die­se freie Demo­kra­ti­sche Grund­ord­nung, von der ich neu­er­dings so viel höre.

US-Militär für dau­er­haf­te Stütz­punk­te an NATO-Ostflanke
Infol­ge des rus­si­schen Angriffs­kriegs in der Ukrai­ne hat sich die Füh­rung des US-Militärs für die Ein­rich­tung per­ma­nen­ter US-Stützpunkte in den ost­eu­ro­päi­schen Nato-Staaten aus­ge­spro­chen. Er wür­de dazu raten, dau­er­haf­te Stütz­punk­te ein­zu­rich­ten, die dann von zeit­wei­se ent­sand­ten US-Soldaten genutzt wer­den könn­ten, sag­te Gene­ral­stabs­chef Mark Mil­ley im US-Kongress.

Damit habe man die Vor­tei­le einer per­ma­nen­ten Mili­tär­prä­senz ohne gewis­se Nach­tei­le wie zum Bei­spiel die Not­wen­dig­keit des Nach­zugs von Fami­li­en, deren Unter­brin­gung und den Bedarf für Schu­len zu haben. Russ­land lehnt eine per­ma­nen­te Sta­tio­nie­rung von Nato-Kampftruppen in den ost­eu­ro­päi­schen Staa­ten unter Beru­fung auf ein Abkom­men aus den 1990er-Jahren strikt ab.

Seit Anfang die­ses Jah­res haben US-Streitkräfte ihre Mili­tär­prä­senz in den öst­li­chen Nato-Staaten wegen des Ukraine-Konflikts aller­dings bereits deut­lich aus­ge­baut - pro for­ma han­delt es sich dabei aber vor allem um zeit­lich begrenz­te Ein­sät­ze, kei­ne per­ma­nen­te Stationierung.

src: click

Aber immer­hin, Biden macht wie­der Welt­po­li­tik. edit: Es sei denn es ist ein Druck­mit­tel um offen­si­ve Waf­fen­lie­fe­run­gen im Nato Ver­bund durchzusetzen.

“Today we’re dra­ma­ti­cal­ly esca­la­ting the finan­cial shock by impo­sing full blo­cking sanc­tions on Russia’s lar­gest finan­cial insti­tu­ti­on, Sber­bank, and its lar­gest pri­va­te bank, Alfa Bank,” a seni­or admi­nis­tra­ti­on offi­cial brie­fing repor­ters said.
Sber­bank holds near­ly one-third of Russia’s total ban­king sec­tor assets, the offi­cial noted, adding that the US has now ful­ly blo­cked “more than two-thirds of the Rus­si­an ban­king sector.” 

Second, the seni­or offi­cial announ­ced, “In align­ment with the G7 and the EU, we’re announ­cing a ban on new invest­ment in Rus­sia.” That will be imple­men­ted with an exe­cu­ti­ve order signed by US Pre­si­dent Joe Biden. 

The United Sta­tes won’t par­ti­ci­pa­te in G20 mee­tings that Rus­sia is par­ti­ci­pa­ting in, US Tre­a­su­ry Secreta­ry Janet Yel­len said Wednesday.

Spea­king at the House Finan­cial Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, Yel­len said she’d made that posi­ti­on clear to other finan­ce minis­ters in the group.

src: click

Pre­vent USD from ent­e­ring the rus­si­an eco­no­my, then (as the US) refrain from par­ti­ci­pa­ting in G20 mee­tings for als long as the ent­i­re world (G20) doesnt shun russia.

Oh, and its not true any­mo­re, that no one thinks that the Ukrai­ne can win - the Pen­ta­gon now insists, that thats pos­si­ble - in a war on which it is impos­si­ble to gage how long it will take:

Pen­ta­gon: “impos­si­ble” to know how long the war will go on, but Ukrai­ne can win

[…]

The US Defen­se Depart­ment says it’s “impos­si­ble” to know how long the war in Ukrai­ne will go on if not ended through diplo­ma­cy, but that Ukrai­ne “of cour­se” can win the war.

[…]

“Mariu­pol is still not taken. He’s moved his for­ces out of Kyiv. He’s moved his for­ces out of Cher­ni­hiv. They haven’t taken Khar­kiv. They haven’t taken Myko­la­iv in the south,” Kir­by said. “So I think the pro­of is liter­al­ly in the out­co­mes that you’re see­ing every day.

src: click

Good news on Mariu­pol still not being taken, by the way - the city is now offi­cial­ly unre­co­ver­a­ble as an infra­st­ruc­tu­re: click

You can gage the unity of wes­tern posi­ti­ons by the fact, that the Atlan­tic coun­cil thinks, the Ukrai­ne needs more hea­vy weo­pon­ry, or the war will be over soon, the High Repre­sen­ta­ti­ve of the Uni­on for For­eign Affairs and Secu­ri­ty Poli­cy Josep Bor­rell is still in favor of ending the war soon but not at all cos­ts, and the Ukrai­ni­an government was liter­al­ly tel­ling the world for the first five weeks of the war, that for it to enter into high level peace talks all rus­si­an tro­ops have to vanish from the Ukrai­ne ter­ri­to­ry in the bor­ders of 1991, and then refrai­ned to “at least in the bor­ders befo­re Febru­a­ry 22nd on US TV (CBS afair)” which then nobo­dy cared to cla­ri­fy what that would mean, while then sta­ting they would need hea­vy wea­pons to dri­ve the rus­si­ans out ent­i­re­ly - or at least push them back signi­fi­cant­ly in the east, always while sta­ting, that peace talks are under way of cour­se. Oh, and that the chair­man of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff thinks that the con­flict will at least last several more years.

You see, with a unity of wes­tern posi­ti­ons as pro­noun­ced as this, one would think that an infor­med obser­ver should be able to gage what the goals for ent­e­ring mea­ning­ful peace talks would be in this sce­n­a­rio, befo­re ship­ping in more tanks into Ukrai­ne, as they would of cour­se only be used in a defen­si­ve capa­ci­ty, or that they at least would help to shor­ten the war in any mea­ning­ful sen­se but now that “win­ning” is on the table again, the Ukrai­ne government can sta­te more often, that it is inte­res­ted in peace­talks again. While the Pen­ta­gon “doesnt know” how long the war will last. In front of con­gress state­ments like “at least three years” are utte­red, and Bor­rell men­ti­ons, that we should end the war as soon as pos­si­ble, but not at all cos­ts. While a limi­ted esca­la­ti­on will redu­ce the long term cos­ts of war of course.

Mea­su­red in bloo­dy gum­my bears I think. Or world hunger.

One of the sin­gle grea­test aspects about utte­ring that your oppo­nent only under­stands dis­plays of mili­ta­ry power? It tilts any game theo­ry con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on so far into the “self inte­res­ted enti­ty” ran­ge, that all respon­ses beco­me pos­si­ble - while all of a sud­den, you are play­ing a zero sum game. But Ukrai­ni­ans could be win­ning though!

edit: Exclu­si­on from the UN Human Rights Coun­cil. src: click