I'm book-marking a few more pages of useful information on the Odessa tragedy.

This blog page filled with photos, videos and an eyewitness narrative is the best one I've seen yet. It's very thorough. It is prepared by a man named Nikita Rumyantsev, a sculptor in Odessa, a Russian-speaker, who just happened to walk by as his studio is in the area, and get caught up in the events. He also helped to rescue people; in all, he estimates that 30 were saved by putting the scaffolding up to the windows and helping people out.

Surprisingly for some, it appears on a Russian Orthodox web site. And to be sure, it may tilt toward support of the Russian separatists. But it's thorough, and has things that still reveal facts outside the expected narrative, i.e. frank admissions that the separatists had automatic rifles and videos of the separatists throwing Molotov cockatils themselves from the roof. When I get through it, I will have more to say. But every account pieced together is what it will take as long as people are free to speak frankly. With 300 or so witnesses from inside the building, we should have a lot more than what we're getting, which means people are afraid or intimidated or don't realize they should speak up.

Two pictures and statements are important re: the issue of when/how the doors were set on fire. I still don't see a direct video or agentry involved yet, but it's part of the puzzle:

"From the roof of the building, Molotov cocktails are flying, and in fact they are flying from all sides. Before the entrance to the barricade, the crowd is chanting, 'white flag.'"

"Watch out they are shooting." To the side lay the bodies of two people who were killed, covered with the Ukrainian flag. It is 8:00 pm. The entrance to the Trade Unions building is burning, the fire does not look that serious but that's not the case."

 

That's an important statement because it fixes a later time for the burning of the doorway, which some other accounts imply is earlier, and the fire is out by sundown. It also establishes — evidently — that *first* came the shooting from the roof and the killing of people below, *then* the fire set in the doorway. That's important. It establishes sequence and motive. People outside in a battle were incensed that their people were killed. It wasn't that they merely drove helpless demonstrators into a building, trapped them, and set them on fire; they were incensed because their people were killed and they fought back. That's how it appears. It may turn out to be something different.

This man also testifies that he heard cries in Ukrainian, "Save the Russians!" Here's his picture of some of them clinging to the building facade — and indeed he himself was involved in their rescue. This bolsters the story told by EuroMaidan that they did help the Russians trapped and didn't merely chase them into the building. That's been hard for some people to believe because it comes from their camp; here's a Russian-speaker not in their camp who testifies to the same point. That's important.

He has a video there where he comments how the stage is dismantled to make a ladder to reach the people, and how one person (possibly from the Russians' camp, but we don't know) objects to the dismantling, and gets a punch in the face for getting in the way of the rescue.

All during this rescue, he reports, he hears automatic rifle gunfire and sees Molotovs coming from the roof.

 

This video of a woman who is an eyewitness is totally from the perspective of the Russian separatists. And while she is totally one-sided, inevitably, she tells us a lot about the events that day that are important truths.

The main point is — as David McDuff put it eloquently — it was a battle, not a pogrom. While the Kremlin and the separatists would like to cast it all in the light of a pogrom of one side driving innocent people into a building to burn them, that is too simplistic — whatever the violent and unustifiable behaviour on the part of the nationalists outside the building.

That's because, as this woman explains, they had advance notice that there would be a fight and they made a conscious decision to stand and fight. These aren't random people driven into a building or even sent there by the deputy (we're still trying to find evidence of that recurring story); these are people who decided to come to that building defend it because they saw it as the site of their protest, i.e. their Maidan, if you will.

The Russians who were in the camp knew several days before the attack on their camp that it would be attacked. Indeed, some of the more savvy of them, or at least some faction of them, moved their camp to another location. They left behind tents that were largely empty, i.e. did not appear to have people living them, but just boxes of stuff, and big propaganda bill-boards and stages for rallies.

The woman says frankly that they prepared for battle by getting medicines and bandages and bringing them in bags to the Trade Unions Building — they literally planned to bind up the wounds of people that they anticipated would be in hand-to-hand combat. They were obviously conceiving of it as a street fight. It was Jets and Sharks style, as it was earlier in the day when by the same token, the Maidan activists got a heads up that the separatists were going to attack them — and did. So obviously both sides were spoiling for a fight and neither opted to avoid it.

The woman describes how the smoke got so thick they couldn't see as they tried to climb up the stairs higher, away from the fire below.

Then there's this hour-long or so film that starts at the street parade fight and then shows how people ran — for blocks — very deliberately to the tent camp, crying "burn!".

 Various blogs have whipped up sentiment around the fact that in one of the scenes toward the end, you can see framed in the window a boy of about 10 or 12 standing at the sill, round-eyed, with a woman, perhaps his mother, and another person. Naturally, it's proper to ask why this woman brought her child to a situation which many seem to know would be a battle, and didn't promptly flee at the first sign of angry crowds — much less fire. And we know that he escaped because there are no children younger than 17 among those who died.

This film also shows a woman and young fellow on the roof, and because the woman seems to lift up the young man, I wondered if it was even that same mother and son. But it wasn't. The woman has her hair upswept in a bun, it's very distinctive. And if you watch on full-screen, you realize what her movements are — the preparation of a Molotov cocktail, which they indeed throw off the roof. And you see it fall on the tents, and you realize quite possibly — though this needs more research! — the very first flames on the tents in fact came from the Molotovs thrown from the building.

To be sure, people below feed the fire — they break up the tents and throw wood and debris into a big bonfire and it roars further.

And to be sure, some of the Molotov cocktails thrown from the street seem to catch rooms on fire — one hits a girl clinging to the windowsill outside.

 I haven't had a chance to study this film, but the earlier parts where people are hurrying to the tent city to tear/burn it down is interesting for this feature: lots of rubber-neckers. The overwhelming number of people in the scene are not part of the marauders, but are just hanging around, watching, and filming on their cell phones if they have them. They are even chattering in a kind of remote way about the whole thing. They're asking each other things like, "wait, who is that? Right Sector? Or separatists?"

There are a lot of by-standers. And they don't behave like people present at a pogrom or a battle for that matter, but like people present at a bonfire. They stand around casually. The only time they spring into motion is when the gunfire comes from the roof and they flinch and run. Why they don't keep going and run all the way home is beyond me.

I'm puzzled why these people hang around at scenes of gunfire. In New York City, you learn to duck and cover at the first sign of gunfire — you get the hell out of the way. You don't ever catch the eye of anybody with a gun — you go in the opposite direction away from people who seem to have guns or from the noise of gunfire. You do not get in the way of a bullet by hanging around. It's getting so that even if a backpack is left in a park, people scatter instantly and leave a HUGE berth without anyone telling them what to do — they do  not stand around to rubber-neck. Why aren't these Ukrainians behaving this way, waiting to get shot?

I've only been able to give this material scant review, so keep in mind that after further study, some aspects could turn out to be different than what I'm saying here.

Meanwhile, the death toll is now at 48; some of died of their wounds. A very sad time for Odessa…

Related articles