Multiple missile strikes have hit multiple targets across Ukraine, this morning.
It’s horrific. I hope the death toll and the suffering is minimal; if I could choose… minimal would equate to zero. I’ve never lived in an active warzone but I have an active and empathic imagination and have seen sufficient images and videos of such places and the horror, pain and fear is perfectly clear. I heard and saw distant artillery firing and striking within Serbia from a restaurant roof in Szeged many years ago. That was close enough.
So I see nothing joyous, or victorious, or gleeful, in the explosive force of military munitions in the midst of a human settlement.
It all needs to stop. As soon as possible.
Outrage, of course, has swiftly followed… from Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian government ‘spox,’ to various EU/UK/NATO/US official and media outlets.
Russians are ‘inhuman,’ ‘terrorists,’ ‘barbarians’ who must be shunned, sanctioned, and massacred by all democratic, freedom-loving, peaceful and law-abiding, virtuous, countries and people.
Russia’s military action is an ‘unprovoked invasion’ and Russia’s incorporation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia into the Russian Federation is an ‘illegal annexation.’
No-one is interested in a decade’s-worth of provocation and no-one is interested in the will or the desires of the civilian populations of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Two days earlier, what appears to have been a truck bomb attack (or an unmanned seaborne drone… by Ukraine, according to US reports) on the Kerch Strait Bridge was undertaken in which six people were killed, including the truck driver (who does not seem to have been involved, even if it is concluded his truck exploded).
Much like any Russian death (Moskva, anyone?) the gloating responses to the Kerch Bridge attack (from Zelenskyy, other Ukrainian government and EU/UK/NATO/US official and media outlets) were marked with glee and ‘humour.’ As it was similarly in regard to the ‘sabotage’ of the Nordstream pipelines on September 28th.
The double-standards and hypocrisy from ‘the collective west’ (AKA the ‘Rules-based World Order’ or ‘Free and Democratic International Community’) must be obvious to any rational observer. Surely. If not… wake up.
Here’s ex-comedian Zelenskyy making a weather joke about the Kerch Bridge attack…
… good comedic value for $60 billion’s worth of western support. As Zelenskyy do, others follow…
While Ukrainians in Kiev were gloatingly posing for selfies… and happily evidencing our ‘shared European values’ it should be pointed out (for context) that US-supplied M777 artillery shells were exploding in the centre of Donetsk.
Over 50 civilians in Donetsk (alone) have been killed by such Ukrainian shelling in the past month (through a variety of US/EU/NATO-supplied ammunition). Donetsk has suffered sketchy water and power access for months, due to continual Ukrainian shelling… with nary a mention in the western media.
The Donbas has been shelled and bombed continuously for eight years with over 14,000 killed.
Does anyone care? Or are we too outraged by a continuous stream of horrific Russian atrocities perpetrated against peaceful Ukrainian victims?
It would seem so.
However, since February 2022, every ‘story’ of Russian atrocity has so-far proven to be false.
From Chernobyl, through Mariupol, Bucha and Kramatorsk, to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and Izyum… including claims of torture chambers, child-rape by Russian soldiers, death camps, mass graves and bowls of gold teeth extracted from civilians killed by Russian executioners (that turned out to belong to a Ukrainian dentist)… convoys of civilians intending to journey from Ukraine to Russian-held territory in Zaporizhzhia following the ‘sham’ referendum massacred by ‘the Russians…’ all false.
It’s telling that the western narrative falls silent on such ‘stories’ within a few days, never to be revisited or updated as the truth becomes known. The truth, as to any Russian involvement, is the exact opposite of that claimed.
And yet… there is abundant and incontrovertible evidence of atrocious and horrendous actions by Ukrainian civilians, militias and armed forces. These range from the throat-slitting and headshot-executions of captured Russian soldiers, the beating, rape and murder of Russian-speaking Ukrainians and Romany, to the assassination by car-bombing of an innocent Russian civilian in Moscow… and the ongoing Ukrainian state-sanctioned murder of Ukrainian ‘Russian collaborators.’
According to one gloating and supportive western report…
“Kiev has already opened investigations into 1,309 suspected traitors and launched 450 prosecutions of collaborators accused of betraying their own nation and neighbours.
Others are being tracked down and slaughtered by resistance fighters. A list passed to this newspaper by a Kiev government source identifies 29 such retribution killings, with 13 more assassination attempts that left some targets wounded.
‘A hunt has been declared on collaborators and their life is not protected by law,’ said Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior ministry. ‘Our intelligence services are eliminating them, shooting them like pigs.’”
DailyMail
Even today, while we are being milked for our virtuous outrage at the missile-actions of the Evil Ruskies, a video has emerged – taken and uploaded by Maxim Zhorin, a Ukrainian Azov commander – showing the disposal of ‘traitors and collaborators’ in Kupyansk. Following some backlash, Zhorin claimed that the video was taken on ‘an occupiers’ phone, though the metadata refutes this.
In keeping with officially-mandated Ukrainian policy in regards to ‘traitors, collaborators and informants,’ Zhorin claimed…
I can assure you that now is not the best time for cooperation with the Russians. Ukrainian forces liberate the cities and the Russians flee, leaving their informants without protection.
It’s horrific to notice that one of the victims appears to still show signs of life. Anyone with knowledge of the actions of the Einsatzgruppen (and associated Ukrainian Auxiliary Police) during WW2 will surely see some resemblance.
Ukraine has been nurturing a Nazi heart for almost a decade. They have been – and remain – open about it. Western media outlets had been reporting on it and documenting it continually since 2014… right up until February 2022, when the Nazi fetish of many central and western Ukrainians became an inconvenience to the new anti-Russian narrative.
From the C-14 and Right Sector/Svoboda thugs that brought blood and death to Maidan in 2014… to yesterday, when Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi was photographed wearing a bracelet replete with a gilt swastika… many Ukrainians are not harmless, virtuous ‘nationalist patriots defending their homeland from an unprovoked aggressor’ but openly Nazi and fascistic.
And they are dragging us towards an abyss. Here’s Zelenskyy calling for economic sanctions (as he now argues was the meaning of his words… make up your own mind as to what he’s saying)…
There is something sick in the hearts and minds of those Ukrainians we are supporting.
While I have sincere compassion for those Ukrainian civilians that must surely have been killed in today’s missile strikes… we in the west must wake up.
And seek a just peace for ALL Ukrainians… including those that (with good reason) do not want to join NATO or the European Union, or remain under the rule of a regime that has mistreated and killed them for eight years.
As for the missile attacks… I wonder if we’ll see Putin making ‘weather report’ jokes.