De Oekraïne 65

General News 5/11/2014 at 19:04:27 Ukraine Crime Against Humanity Gets Ignored By William Boardman (about the author) [...]

Given what looks like mob murder, how would western media play it?

At this point, a reasonable interpretation of fragmentary evidence suggests that there were distinct but related events in Odessa on May 2.

The first event began with the afternoon march of some 1,500 pro-Ukainian unity supporters, including hardcore fans of two Ukrainian soccer teams (Odessa vs. Kharkiv) as well as veterans of the Maidan Self Defense Force and members of Right Sector, the right wing political party that supplied much of the muscle in the Maidan's resistance to the then-government. They then clashed with about 500 pro-Russian separatists, in a street fight with little close combat, although as many as four people died and others were injured. According to one report, that clash lasted about 15 minutes before the outnumbered pro-Russians retreated to the square in front of the Trade Unions House, where they had been camping out since February in a peaceful protest against the Kiev-coup government. (Odessa has a Russian ethnic minority of about 30%, or 300,000 people.)

The second event, the attack on the Trade Unions House (a mile or more away from the first clash), began some time later (likely flowing out of the first event, whether by desugn or opportunity). It formed for reasons that remain unclear -- except for the ethnic/political hostility represented by the participants. The soccer/Maidan/Right Sector forces outnumbered the pro-Russians by 3 to 1, and appear to have been better armed as well. They had little difficulty driving the pro-Russians out of their encampment, then tearing it apart and setting it on fire. The pro-Kiev forces seem to have had little resistance from the pro-Russians, first forcing them back inside the Trade Unions Hall, then setting it on fire at multiple points, demonstrating what appears, at best, a willful disregard for life and safety.

For the most part western media seem to have underplayed or ignored the reality of Odessa (or distorted it) for the sake of a propagandistic linkage to the Kiev government's military offensive against Slovyansk, half a country away. As the New York Times headlined it on May 3 (inside story on page 7): "Ukrainian Troops Strike Rebel-Held City as Fighting Spreads to Black Sea Port" -- an incoherent headline on its face that gets only less coherent in the context of reality. The story below that headline includes exactly two, self-contradictory paragraphs about Odessa, one of which appears to be fiction:

"The deaths [on May 2] expand the increasingly violent struggle for control over Ukraine's Black Sea port, which had been quiet until last week, when seven people were wounded in a roadside bombing."

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