Update: et tu, CNN?
“They are just hitting residential buildings in these areas,” said the Ukrainian parliament member, who arrived at the scene shortly after the explosion two weeks ago. “You can walk around, you will not find any military targets, or any military people. This is just terror.”
Yet a few minutes later, the whooshing sound of Ukrainian rockets fired from a multiple rocket launcher startled residents staring blankly at their destroyed homes. Then, another outgoing barrage. The weapons seemed to be nearby, perhaps a few streets away, certainly well inside the capital.
Increasingly, Ukrainians are confronting an uncomfortable truth: The military’s understandable impulse to defend against Russian attacks could be putting civilians in the crosshairs. Virtually every neighborhood in most cities has become militarized, some more than others, making them potential targets for Russian forces trying to take out Ukrainian defenses. […]
But Ukraine’s strategy of placing heavy military equipment and other fortifications in civilian zones could weaken Western and Ukrainian efforts to hold Russia legally culpable for possible war crimes, said human rights activists and international humanitarian law experts. Last week, the Biden administration formally declared that Moscow has committed crimes against humanity.
“If there is military equipment there and [the Russians] are saying we are launching at this military equipment, it undermines an assertion that they are attacking intentionally civilian objects and civilians,” said Richard Weir, a researcher in Human Rights Watch’s crisis and conflict division, who is working in Ukraine.
Over the past month, Washington Post journalists have witnessed Ukrainian antitank rockets, antiaircraft guns and armored personnel carriers placed near apartment buildings. In one vacant lot, Post journalists spotted a truck carrying a Grad multiple rocket launcher. Checkpoints with armed men, barricades of sandbags and tires, and boxes of molotov cocktails are ubiquitous on city highways and residential streets. The sound of outgoing rockets and artillery can be heard constantly in Kyiv, the capital, the squiggly white trails of missiles visible in the sky.
“Every day, it’s like this,” said Lubov Bura, 73, standing outside the apartment building where she lived that was destroyed two weeks ago. Moments later, as the building was still burning, the sound of outgoing Ukrainian rockets was heard again. “Sometimes it sounds closer, sometimes it seems far. We think about it and, of course, we are worried, especially in the night.”
Say it ain’t so!
Here, I’ll give you a clue as to exactly what to expect Colonialidiot and his sockpuppets to post in reply:
https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/aac9e059f220400f5498061b90e9e28e
Stop trolling other readers. This isn’t your sandbox to piss in.
Never seems to bother anti Israel protests about attacking Hamas rocket launchers etc.
What’s “Pallywood” in Ukrainian?
It’s urban warfare. Did you expect all the military equipment to be parked in a wide open area ready to be picked off?
Also it seems Russia is falling back to old habits. Accuse the other side of doing exactly what they’re doing. This time it’s torture.
Have you sen the video from the “milk factory” where the Russian prisoners are shot in the leg and beaten about the head? I’m guessing at least one of the pows died of blood loss. You’re ok with that?
This video?
https://russiavsworld.org/russia-fabricated-fake-video-to-accuse-ukrainian-army-of-war-crimes/
The video is not fake. Or would be very diificult to fake, as in Hollywood level simulation. Actually even Hollywood couldn’t create that level of realism, without actually shooting people. I studied the sniper massacre of February 2014 so I know just how ruthless some elements in Ukraine are like the Right Sector/Svoboda movements.
Ok I am glad you have “studied” something or other. It is most likely a fake, but feel free to remain invested otherwise.
For one thing watch videos of how exit wounds look like then a 7.69×39 round exits human flesh. Most of those allegedly shot would be dying form a massive loos of blood when the aortas were severed by the bullets. But whatever.
The less russians leave Ukraine alive the better.
Yup, that video is 100% fake. There’s even different versions of it. Some added muzzle flashes and changed the audio.
Russia has a long history of accusing the other side of the very things it is doing. This is well documented.
Nazis have well documented acts of brutality as well.
The video is not fake, but if it makes you feel better keep repeating to yourself. There are no muzzle flashes in the version I saw so I have no idea what you’re talking about. There are extremely ruthless people in Ukraine within the Ultra Nationalist groups. As Professor Katchanovski pointed out, they were willing to shoot their own in the Maidan Massacre. He’s followed the trials of Berkut officers accused in this massacre, where the forensic evidence on bullet trajectories was presented. When comparing video evidence of the victims orientation at the time of death, it’s clear they were sniped from the Hotel Ukraina, under the control of the Right Sector at the time. There’s even video the morning after the massacre of men leaving the hotel with long objects wrapped in pillows, or rifle cases.
Allan S is an expert at projection. We should listen to him.
https://www.bbc.com/news/60907259
Generally if you want to defend a city, you need to be in the city. And you will use the cover that is there. This isn’t necessarily using them as “human shields”
They gave civilians guns but no uniforms, that makes them legitimate targets and every civilian a possible threat.
Without having watched the video(s) linked, my comment is strictly on Craig’s VERY valid point. You pick up a weapon, you’re a combatant, BUT if you’re not identifiable, ie a uniform, you don’t automatically get the protection afforded by the Geneva Conventions, for whatever they’re worth these days (not much I’m guessing).
In that case, you let them leave, that’s what the laws of war say. Which Ukrainian forces have not done, instead inventing “threats” from Russia against civilians so that they can keep their human shields.
I’m not defending anyone, just pointing out that Craig made a solid argument.
Ukrainians defending cities means using civilians as human shields? Really? Are they supposed to abandon cities? Look how US or Israelis are doing it and then compare their precision methods to russian wholesale barbarity.
Pretty soon we will learn that Ukrainian women were asking for it too. This is pathetic.
Colonial,
And you think the Ukrainians are saints? The corruption of the leadership in Ukraine is what brought this on.
Just nasty all round and the average Ukrainian citizen is the victim.
I have never claimed they are saints. What is being done to them is in no way justified by what they had done. It is not even the same order of magnitude.
It isn’t corruption that caused it. It is Russian imperialism
Russia was a major source of corruption in Ukraine btw.
Which is why the victims greeted their Russian liberators with flowers? Ivan I am glad you have a job even though you are not very good at it.
Oh?
Well duh. It’s been OBVIOUS from the beginning. And what do you expect when the Puppet Presidente’ de Ukraine has ORDERED civilians to take up arms against the invaders? War crimes? Because Russian troops shot back at people wearing down-jackets? Who accessorized with Kalashnikovs? Propagandists Puhleeze!?
Checkpoints with armed men, barricades of sandbags and tires, and boxes of molotov cocktails are ubiquitous on city highways and residential streets.
Warsaw had it coming.
LOL, imagine reaching such a level of depravity that you don’t notice how depraved the Washington Post has become.
“Warsaw had it coming.”
Perfect analogy.
By that logic, Vukovar and Dubrovnik were asking for it too.
Both of you are so dense and thoroughly retarded to not even realize that the Polish army no longer existed and that is why civilians chose to fight back against Germans. Also the knowledge that the Germans would most likely execute them afterwards. Pretty sound motivation. Maybe you have evidence of Russian murdering civilians they encounter? Nope.
That’s not at all the case here and you know it. The war criminal here ia Voldemort Zelensky who paints targets on the backs of civilians while he green-screens his appearances via Zoom from Davos.
Bingo!!
Everyone always forgets that the Russians were secretly allied with Nazi Germany at the start of WWII. The Soviets invaded Poland in 1939 and were the perpetrators of the Katyn Massacre, where they murdered Polish military officers, law enforcement, and intellectuals.
Germany and Soviet Russia had planned to split Poland. After their alliance collapsed, the Soviets took Poland along with much of Eastern Europe, who had to live under Soviet oppression for several decades.
So, yeah. Civilians should always take up arms against unprovoked aggression, especially against Russian and Germans. The Ukrainian government might be corrupt as sin, but that doesn’t justify Russian invasion.
Exactly.
When Germans bombed Warsaw in 39 (like russians are doing now) Polish government existed.
But presuming that you are talking about Warsaw Uprising in 44…
First, units of Home Army were subordinated to the internationally recognized government in exile. A handful of units that crossed from the east were subordinated to the communist government. So you are wrong, this wasn’t just civilians spontaneously reacting. This was a planned military operation.
Second, German plans for Warsaw population was to separate children from parents (like what russians are doing now) and send parents to slave labor (like russians are doing now). The mass rapes (like russians again) came only.during and after fighting as did the indiscriminate targeting of civilians (again like russians) So the only difference we haven’t seen yet is organized mass extermination. That is a big difference, but everything else matches.
Next thing you know, Ukrainians will be using bullets, too, to defend themselves.
The tweet is concern trolling.
How dare they defend themselves!
The issue really isn’t “defending themselves” it’s doing it while being indistinguishable from defenseless unarmed civilians.
Russia must be a net loser from this war. And the US must arm itself to the teeth, and stop kowtowing to German diplomacy, which means German support of Russia must end.
It was a grave mistake to allow Germany to become the regional strongman and bully of smaller European states, via its control of the EU.
The net loser will not be Russia.
There’s a lot of very ignorant people getting fed nothing but propaganda.
People need to turn off the western media. They’re playing you like puppets.
Imagine being so naive as to follow the likes of George Soros and Hillary Clinton into a war against Russia!
I used to think this blog was full of rational people now I realize most of you are stuck in a confirmation bias loop.
No one is going to war with Russia unless Russia attacks as they did the Ukraine
Excellent point. Most of German leadership has been bankrolled by Kremlin for decades and are doing their master’s bidding.
In spite of all the verbiage being spewn about this “war” there is only one truth. Nothing is ever as it seems.
This+++++
It’s amazing how quickly war fever overrules the Geneva Conventions. And how effective it is to rally support for a government that just a month ago was falsely accusing its own citizens of being Nazis in Canada, and which, in the US is holding demonstrators in prison for over a year now without prospect of trial.
This is why Joe Biden made no effort to avert this needless war.
Support for Ukraine is not support for Potato and his virtue signaling. It overtly disingenuous to argue they are the same thing.
Support for Ukraine is in spite of Biden/Turdeau/Soros. Even stopped clocks are right twice a day.
Yes, exactly that.
I would argue there is no Geneva Convention during a war, unless you’re talking chocolate bars.
Well, I’m off to attack my neighbor because I don’t like how he’s taking care of his yard. I’m going to spray the whole house with bullets because the bastard is keeping his guns in the nursery near his 7 month old baby. Gonna get him somehow…..
In other news the Wapo reported that bears do s#$&* in the woods. Of course the tools of war will be fired from places near where people live when the invader wants to occupy where those people live.
Do we accuse the bear of indecency?
When an issue comes up where it divides by IQ, Kate most often ends up on the other side from her readers.
Ya know, there’s a reason Hitler’s version of the Nazis considered Slavs subhuman… And we’re seeing it played out in Ukraine and in this thread.
Not Slavs. Communism exaggerated the worst leftovers of Mongol and Czarist autocracy.
Fully agree, Soviet Union was russian empire under new management. Same whore, different lipstick.
When western media reports without evidence (on the say-so of the Ukraine) that the Russians are deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure without any military value (war crimes) they’re not trying to inform, but to enrage the public and build support for the sanctions and NATO intervention. That’s not the job of media, that’s the job of politicians.
Media’s foundational role is to hold our own politicians and their proxies to account to protect us from dangerous lies and undisclosed agendas. They’re not — and haven’t been for a very long time. Instead, they want skeptics censored and defamed.
It’s bad enough that they do it with cases like George Floyd and Kyle Rittenhouse. But now they’re doing it to enrage public opinion against another nuclear power, as though they can simply pivot the news cycle to a new outrage when this one wears down. Perhaps that will happen, or perhaps a few hundred thousand people will lose their lives because of their dishonesty and incompetence.
I don’t know, I hope not.
I don’t know, Kate. That missile strike video on a city bus was awfully persuasive.
Media’s foundational role is to hold our own politicians and their proxies to account to protect us from dangerous lies and undisclosed agendas.
If you believe this it’s only because the media told you. The foundation of media, from town cryers through pamphlets nailed to trees and on to the first newspapers, was rabid, lying, cheating propaganda. It has always been like it, even through the phase where some of it presented itself, for entirely marketing reasons, as objective and disinterested. It would be far better if nobody expected or desired objective media, because then everyone would know they’re being lied to.
Grown ups have to look at multiple sources, read between the lines and make a judgement based on their wider experience. Right now, this grown up is not convinced that this particular media outlet’s stance is entirely concerned with media critique.
All three of the posters on here are wrong
Post of the day!
Got our own problems to deal with. We’ve got a dictator right here to deal with. I say get our own house in order before we meddle in others business. Not that we can do anything besides posturing anyways.
Fighting over and in cities has always been hell from 7,000 years ago to today. The concentration of more and more people into cities just exacerbates the point: now more than ever cities are focal points of power and people and that is going to mean lots of casualties in war.
Pull out of this ethnic conflict.
It was just a sideshow to distract people from the failed pandemic and Justin’s hatred of little, old ladies, anyway.
Remind me again why previous invasions of Georgia and Ukraine didn’t warrant the hatred of the random Russian national?
This is not a war with Russians but Russia’s government.
Disagree, russians, ordinary on the streets russians, are complicit. They love it, they have always been in love with russian imperialism. This is one constant that never changes. Pootin is a product, a manifestation of everything russia.
Russians love Russian Imperialism; the Ukraine war is Russia (people and leadership) being imperialistic. Does it not follow logically that the noble, non imperialistic West, should be preparing for conflict? Total War.
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
This ain’t an “evil versus good” fight, folks. But y’all are taking sides like you expect it to be one. That’s just naive.
There’s evil on both sides, with a bunch of civilians caught, as always, in the middle.
What evil caused Russia to invade Ukraine?
Gosh. The truth will come out as the refugees from this terrible war are settled in Toronto. I am so proud of my country, Canada, that takes in refugees even though the economy is in distress. Another pavilion at folk fest! Diversity is our strength!