(Updated with fourth video and commentary).
UPDATE 5/16 A Dutch blogger has come up with a very interesting composite video of these shootings, I will comment soon. See also this tweet re: RT.com stringer.
Yesterday, several dozen citizens of Ukraine — those for Russian-backed separatism and those supporting the new Kiev government — lost their lives. [Note: this statement of "several dozen" was said at the time merely to reflect the estimate of 20 at the time made by Telegraph and other sources, and was meant to signify that the figure was NOT 100 or 150 as Graham Philips of RT.com was reporting incorrectly based on a translation error in a source's testimony. It's not a definitive claim and the number could be less.]
It was yet another tragic day in the unwinding horror of the Kremlin-induced war in Ukraine whose bloody results will be exploited by Putin for further military action. Putin, and no other, bears responsibility for these events.
The immediate focus shifts to the weakened Ukrainian government because critics feel they should not use the army to put down what should be seen as a local insurgency, and they shouldn't shoot civilians. As a Ukrainian officer once explained eloquently in a video about an "anti-terrorist operation" in Slavyansk, the separatists are hiding cleverly, as all guerillas do, among civilians — right outside their garden gates, in their back yards, in their gas stations and stores. That's why it's hard to retaliate because the Ukrainian army indeed is trying to avoid hitting civilians, and feel their hands are thus tied in trying to deal with "the fish in the sea" of an insurgency.
I don't believe it is possible to state definitively what happened in Mariupol because there are not enough details (I haven't seen any published written eye-witness testimonies, which are really important supplements to videos, which can be confusing and distracting for all their "reality TV".) But since a stringer for the Kremlin's RT.com was shot and seriously wounded, and it appears that Ukrainian soldiers shot him and other civilians in response to civilian provocateurs, it's a day that has to be scrutinized carefully. It will unlikely ever get the proper forensic, human rights, or impartial inquiry it should have. Google has already removed one of the videos because it is too graphic.
I spent some time repeatedly reviewing four of the videos uploaded by amateur citizens or local journalists of the events from different angles. And here is a narrative I have put together — I welcome adversarial scrutiny.
Preliminary conclusions:
If we are to accept that the men in camouflage are Ukrainian soldiers (and we can't be sure of that because separatists also dress in camouflage), then they have indeed shot at civilians. But they shot civilians because plain-clothes provocateurs clearly appeared who shot at them first, and they retaliated. Two young men also threw chairs after them, and that may have been a reason why they turned and fired back as well. Then another provocateur shot at them again from behind a wall, and they fired yet again. Each time they wounded others, including the RT.com stringer from Ruptly agency who ran straight into the gunfire.
Here's the sequence of events I have pieced together from six videos below:
1. The first thing to happen in this set of videos (in the last video) is a man with striped track pants (or perhaps there are ribbons on his pants) keeps talking to a camouflaged soldier (so it seems) crouched down at the corner of a building. He seems to wave his arms around a lot and tell either the soldier to get back, or people on the sidewalk to get back, as if he is trying to get people to move away from gunfire.
But then he himself acts strangely and walks right out into traffic, where there are tanks whizzing by with Ukrainian flags on them. People are definitely not happy with these tanks and shout "occupiers" and "pederasts" and such. Then it seems as if the man in the striped pants is hit by gunfire — it's not clear from where — and crouches down. It's odd. We never learn what happens to him.
2. A young man in a hoodie with a white top and blue bottom appears on the left and walks rapidly and deliberately into a little park near a cafe with green awnings and orange chairs and a phone kiosk with an Internet service ad.
3. For some reason, he decides to crouch down, get on his knees and go crawling directly toward an armed soldier in camouflage standing between the kiosk and the cafe. Why? It's not that the soldier has found and confronted him first — the young man himself has decided to deliberately crawl on his knees to the soldier. He then raises his arms up, as if in surrender, but the camouflaged soldier isn't doing any shooting. An RT.com stringer from Ruptly on the scene snaps a few photos of the kneeling young man, then turns to photograph the scene across the street.
The camouflaged soldier at the kiosks with the kneeling man then points off to the side at one point, perhaps to say that shooting is coming from that direction — and we can see later that soldiers come running from that direction. Suddenly, one or even two provocateurs in plain-clothes pop up and shoot from inside the crowd on the sidewalk and are clearly visible in other videos.
4. An older man in a black suit comes into the scene in the little park with his hands raised in surrender and shows his ID to the young man kneeling and they converse, with the soldier standing nearby. This soldier never shoots as can be seen from watching full-screen versions of the videos.
5. Instead, what happens is that shooting from across the park comes in and hits the pavement, making a little cloud of white smoke. It appears that the kneeling man and the standing men — who themselves do not appear to be armed — are hit by fragments of pavement or shrapnel.
6. The kneeling blonde man in the white-and-blue hoodie falls over, then gets up again. He then reaches for something — his phone? a rock? a gun? — and picks it up and in one smooth motion flings it aside (that suggests it's a piece of pavement that hit him or a shattered phone ). There seems to be no question he quickly got up, found the object, and flung it away if you view in large format.
7. The man in the black suit shows his korochka again (cardboard ID folder) — perhaps he is some kind of official? Then he staggers slightly away from the scene — and then does a strange pratfall right into the legs of one of two policemen coming on to the scene, knocking the policeman over. It is an odd fall, but it might be simply explained by the fact that he is injured and weakened and just fell strangely.
8. Meanwhile, in another video of the same scene at the same time, which was tweeted about, we see two civilians to the right of the kiosk, one unmistakeably shooting from a pistol in his hand, the other, in a white-and-blue jacket, also seeming to have his hand up to shoot. Remember this second fellow, as he will be back. The camouflaged soldiers return fire — in one video, we can clearly see how they turn back and shoot. In the final video, we can see the second civilian shooter more clearly whip his hand up with something silver glinting in it — he seems to shoot, then pull back nonchalantly. (Later in that video, he seems to be the same man who shoots from the alley.)
8. People who had first run up to a man who seemed to be hit after he crouched down in the middle of the road amidst tanks now run further to the next awful scene. First we see the civilian shooters familiar from other videos with one of them clearly lifting up something glinting silver (see last video) — then we see the RT.com stringer who has been hit by gunfire. Then the scene of the hoodie guy kneeling by the other gunshot victim.
From another video of this scene, we see how suddenly, from around the corner, the RT.com stringer in a light blue hoodie and backpack comes running straight into the gunfire. Why would he run so quickly into gunfire, after in previous scenes, in fact, stopping, pulling back after taking photos of the soldiers, even leaning against the wall? One possible answer is that he believed the first group of soldiers were long past and would not be shooting — they were running away. It has been some seconds or even minutes since they ran by. And when he went chasing the next soldier to run by, he thought he was running away, and didn't see him as a shooting danger. He also couldn't see the civilians shooters that popped up out of the crowd and shot at the soldiers — they are only briefly in his view if at all.
Possibly more to the point, he has first taken pictures of running soldiers across the street running perpendicular to him down a side street who did not appear to shoot at the crowd; then he has witnessed and taken pictures of the scene with the kneeling blonde man in the courtyard, and saw that the soldier there didn't shoot — he's not the one doing the shooting, the gunfire comes from elsewhere. That may have bolstered his impression that the camouflaged fighters wouldn't shoot because he hadn't seen them shoot at that point. But the ones who ran down the side street did shoot back because a civilian — or maybe two civilians — shot at them, and another threw a chair at them.
9. Meanwhile, the blonde man in the white-and-blue hoodie in fact gets up — he isn't badly hurt — and runs across the park, picks up a chair, and flings it after the soldiers — he is the second person in rapid succession to throw the chair — the first man who flung a chair is already hit and down. There is no question that it is the formerly-kneeling blonde man who flings the chair, because there are two very clear frames — one showing him crouching in the park, where his blonde head, white-and-blue hoodie, and bright green t-shirt seen peeking out — and another, minutes later, quite a few feet away in the street, where he is now crouching by the man in the sleeveless blue t-shirt with a gunshot wound and trying to get his clothes loosened and help staunch his wounds. It's definitely the same man because in the second scene we can also see his bright green t-shirt poking out. In another video, he can also be very definitely seen running out of the park, throwing the chair, slipping and falling. All films have to be watched together to match these sequences of events, but they are clear.
10. The man in the sleeveless blue shirt who threw the chair after the soldiers is badly wounded and people attend to him. Attention naturally falls on him, but in one of the videos, we can see another scene unfolding: the man in the white-and-blue jacket who had been positioned next to the obvious shooter in the previous scenes has come through the crowd and gone into a white building. He now emerges from the alley between the green-canape cafe and the white building and takes a position behind the corner watching, then appears to take a stance to shoot — and the sound of gunfire in the video seems to come from him or at least that direction. In the next second he is struck by gunfire, falls to the ground, tries to get up, and sprawls. A bald man comes out from the alley and quickly pulls him out of the street by his upper arms. Later, he appears to be the second victim brought to waiting cars after the man in the sleeveless-blue shirt.
There are a number of points of confusion:
o It's not clear how the RT. stringer, who was wounded, tried to get up, and fell again, was removed from the kiosk area. He is *not* the man in the short-sleeved light blue shirt who threw the chair, was hit by gunfire, and lay injured in the street — and who is moved to a private car in one scene, followed by the second man in the white-and-blue jacket who appears to have been a shooter himself. How did he get out of the scene? We are told by social media accounts that people told RT.com that they picked up their journalist in a private car and took him to the hospital. If so, it's a different private car than the one filmed, which is clearly taking away other victims.
o It's not clear how the most graphic shooting victim, a large man with short hair and a blue jacket who fell by the kiosk with a bleeding head wound, was shot or by whom. In the final film we see a man who might match his description just crossing the street with the rest of the crowd, walking along. But in other videos we see him lying by the green cafe, not far from the map in the sleeveless blue t-shirt who flung the chair. How/by whom was he shot? The treating camouflaged soldiers who shot back at the civilian shooters?
So obviously there are a lot of open questions here. Again, who are the camouflaged fighters? They might be Ukrainian soldiers because people seem to be screaming "occupiers!" and "pederasts!" at them as they are in most of the films from these areas in recent days. Some people have commented on how suddenly profane a lot of the videos have gotten in recent days, in a way that feels contrived. I agree it feels staged, and might be, but we will never know. It's also very likely that at least some of the townspeople are really mad at the Ukrainian anti-terrorist operations in which civilians have been killed and really don't want them there.
Who are the plainclothes shooters? Are these Russian-backed local separatists or even Russian Federation GRU agents? Again, we may never know, but one of them was hit, and maybe as the stories of the shooting victims come out we might learn more.
Why did the blonde man in the hoodie stage this scene with the kneeling crawl and dramatic interaction with the armed camouflage soldier, then seem to get hit, then get up so quickly and run? In the final scene we can see he does have a slight injury to his forehead but he does not appear to be a gunshot victim.
If that scene did involve him being shot by the soldier or gunfire (and it seems clear that soldier didn't do any shooting), why does the RT.com journalist take only a few snaps then casually lean against the fence, as if that scene is no longer interesting? That suggests that he has concluded a) no gunfire and b) the young man is just being dramatic. He turns to focus on the real source of the shooting to his right.
o Why did the man in the black suit show his ID to the young man, and not the soldier? Was he trying to convince him that he was a person of authority in order to get him to leave the area?
o Why did the man in the striped track pants wave his arms around and shout so much and then run into traffic and crouch down — and even appear to be hit (but the camera never returns to him anywhere). Was he a decoy, staging a distraction? Or just crazy out of panic?
One hypothesis is that the striped track pants man, the blonde hoodie man, and the man in the black suit were deliberately staging a distraction so that the civilian shooters could get in to place to shoot and provoke the camouflaged soldiers' retaliatory fire. It's odd that both the man in the striped track pants and then later the hoodie guy both deliberately confront the soldiers instead of just staying away from them which would be prudent.
But the simplest explanation for some things rather than contrived hypotheses are that the striped track pants man was simply panicked which is why he counterintuitively ran into traffic — although he seemed to very deliberately crouch down and remain in the middle of the road even after the tanks were past. It's odd.
And the young man was simply trying to plead with the camouflaged soldier to go away, and got down on his knees to do so. His entrance to the scene is so rapid, his flailing so dramatic, and his getting up and throwing the chair so deft, that it really does seem…strange, however. If he had already run into the soldier and then gotten on to his knees to plea with him, it might make sense, but since he rapidly walks right into a scene with him with his hood up, then dramatically takes his hood off and lifts his arms up, then gets up and runs away to throw a chair, it seems odd. The behaviour of the man in the black suit also seems odd, especially what looks like a pratfall — yet also explained simply by being hit and falling.
I'm definitely not one of those people who spots Oathkeepers in the crowd at the Boston bombing and think the victims are all actors faking it like the conspiracy Internet nuts. I also tend not to think that Putin coldly ordered the apartment explosions in Moscow either. The likeliest explanation for this set of videos and tragic shootings is that Ukrainian soldiers were provoked by provocateurs from among the separatists and shot back, killing or wounding some civilians. That's why I call it a tragedy.
But since this is involving Russia and the GRU is infamous for staging provocations, I have to ask whether part of the provocation was to have three people serve as decoys or distractions to get the other shooters in place so the cameras would be trained on the distractions. Maybe this is how they compensate with the challenge of citizens' journalism these days with ubiquitous cell phones even in a poor town like Slavyansk. One then has to push and ask if the RT.com stringer — it being RT.com, a Kremlin propaganda mill — knew about the decoys or the provocateurs. And my guess is that he didn't, or he wouldn't have run smack into gunfire but would have kept leaning nonchalantly on the fence. Fortunately, he is stabilized and is expected to recover from his wounds.
A big question for all these films is why all the townspeople in the scenes don't flee at the first sound of gunfire. Why do they remain taunting and screaming at soldiers who are shooting? Why do they so obviously stay in harm's way Once they see civilians in their midst shooting back at soldiers, why don't they scatter instantly? Wouldn't that be expected behaviour?
Either they think the soldiers are very far away and can no longer reach them with gunfire, or they really don't believe their own Ukrainian army — if that's how they perceive them — will actually shoot at them — or something else. Either they still believe soldiers won't fire at them, civilians, and they can afford to yell at them, or they are desperate.
Here are some notes on the incidents at each time stamp:
Twitter:
The guy in the center of the photo in this tweet (a screenshot from one of the videos), who appears to be a shooter is the same guy who seems to shoot — and get shot at — in the fourth video. He seems to be the 2nd victim carried to the car.
[Copy ]
1:37 Soldier points his hand up
1:53 RT.com stringer in light blue hoodie is seen to the right to fall by the kiosk
1:54 Bullet seems to land near blonde man in white-and-blue hoodie wounding him with pavement fragments or shrapnel, and he falls but he starts getting up again
1:58 Man in black suit show his ID to him
2:01 Man in black suit makes a strange pratfall-like fall directly into two men (is one a policeman?), knocking one of them over.
2:04 Kneeling blonde man gets up partially, reaches for something, and in a sweeping motion, flings it away
2:07 Man in a backpack runs up to blonde man in hoodie.
Action in the park is obscured now as the camera shifts to other parts of the scene.
2:39 Now we seem the same blonde hoodie guy crouching down by the gunshot victim in blue short-sleeve shirt
3:25 He is still working on the victim
4:27 The formerly kneeling blonde guy — close-up with hoodie visible with white top, blue bottom, and bright green shirt underneath
4:28 Forehead wound visible on left side
1:06 Guy in hoodie with hood up, white top, blue bottom first appears, all the way to the left
1:07 Guy in hoodie ducks and starts his crawl on his knees
2:08 Guy in hoodie throws up his arms — he already has his hoodie off now and his blonde head is visible.
2:23 RT guy leaning against the fence after camouflaged soldiers have run by and he has already photographed them
2:28 RT guy starts chasing after the camouflaged soldier who is running down the side street away from him
2:30 RT guy appears shot at this moment as white debris comes from him
2:30 Blonde man in hoodie falls down
2:46 Man in sleevless blue t-shirt appears running toward his fate – he moves off to the left behind the kiosk
2:57 Man in sleeveless blue t-shirt reappears with a cafe chair in his hand and throws it at retreating soldiers
3:04 Then the blonde hoodie man appears who had formerly been kneeling and flings a second chair
3:01 He is shot, apparently by the camouflaged soldier standing in the back of the scene in the middle
3:04 Blonde guy in the hoodie, formerly kneeling/crawling comes running out and hurdles a chair at the soldiers too — that means he is not badly hurt
3:08 Blonde guy in hoodie slips and falls
3:57 Another gunman appears out of the doorway to the far right in a white-and-blue jacket
4:01 That gunman in white-and-blue jacket is hit
4:03 That gunman in white-and-blue jacket falls
4:05 Now visible how hoodie guy with blonde hair, white top jacket, blue bottom, by other downed man near cafe
4:09 Man in white-and-blue jacket who was shooting by the doorway and fell is now dragged out of the street into ally
This second scene takes place sequentially after the RT man has been hit by camouflaged soldiers, and after the man has thrown the chair at the soldiers and been hit.
3:57 Man comes out of a building entrance and peers around the corner — at the far right above the downed shooting victims
4:00 He takes a stance as if shooting, and gunshot sound could match his shot
4:01 He ducks because he's been hit himself
4:04 He runs, ducks down, falls, and a bald guy reaches for him
4:09 The bald guy pulls him off the street by his arms into the alley back toward the store
0:28 RT stringer in light blue hoodie starts running from the left from behind the kiosk
0:29 Is camouflaged soldier crouched by kiosk shooting?
0:30 RT guy hit by gunfire
0:31 Camouflaged soldier turns back and appear to shoot in direction of RT guy in blue hoodie
0:33 RT guy falls
0:36 Camouflaged shooters visible by store who may have hit him
0:40 RT guy tries to sit up by kiosk
0:43 Blonde white-and-blue hoodie guy formerly kneeling and struck by something gets to his feet
0:44 People came over to help him
0:59 The camouflaged soldiers fire some more shots back toward the kiosk
1:00 First guy in sleeveless light blue shirt who threw a chair at the soldiers is down
1:05 Second chair is flung by the blonde man in white-and-blue hoodie who formerly was kneeling in the courtyard – he slips and falls
1:07 Blonde hoodie guy gets up
[Copy]
3:19 RT guy running toward the camouflaged gunmen
3:21 RT guy hit and falls
3:37 Heavyset man in the leather jacket comes on the scene
3:43 Guy in white-and-blue jacket enters scene
3:44 Guy in white-and-blue jacket lifts something up that appears to be a gun that fires
4:10 The blonde in the white-and-blue hoodie is kneeling by the gunshot victim in light-blue sleeveless shirt.
4:20 Shot of short-haired heavy set gunshot victim in dark jacket.
RT.com stringer to the left; further in the background beyond the tree is the kneeling man with his hoodie off, blonde head revealed.
Kneeling man, glimpse of his bright green t-shirt. Man in black suit showing his ID to soldier. Soldier's gun is pointing downward.
Kneeling man gets up after being struck by pavement or shrapnel, green t-shirt clearly visible.
Kneeling man picks up something and flings it away.
Man in sleeveless blue t-shirt runs towards his fate to the left; he picks up a cafe chair, flings it.
Then, formerly kneeling blonde in hoodie now races out, picks up chair and throws it. Man in sleeveless t-shirt is down.
Kneeling hoodie man formerly in the courtyard now yards away by the gunshot victim.
Hoodie man now at the side of the gunshot victim.
His bright green t-shirt is clearly visible.
RT guy leaning against the fence, after he has photographed soldiers running by.
RT guy chases another soldier running by — he is struck a second later by gunfire coming from the left.
Close-up of first civilian shooter who shot at soldiers moments before retaliatory fire came that hit RT guy.
Second civilian with his arm up seeming to shoot — the position does not seem like for a camera, but a gun, although he doesn't seem to be using both hands.
In this next video, the second civilian seems to abruptly put up his arm and something metal glints, underneath the silver-colored car in the depth of the scene. What is it? Remember him, he'll be back.
Here he is — the same guy in the white-topped and blue jacket, the second civilian shooter behind the wall.
Second civilian shooter makes a stance.
Second civilian shooter hit.
Civilian shooter being dragged out of street into alley.
Wounded civilian shooter second man to be carried into private car.
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