Kiev Govt. losing the battle for Hearts and Minds

[Reality Check]

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Most Western Media has focused on the War of words between Western leaders and Russian leaders. Western leaders are winning that war in the Western media.

The war that is important to the Kiev Govt., Russian interests, and Russia's anti-Kiev Govt. allies in Ukraine is the war for the hearts and minds of the Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens of all ethnic groups, the Kiev Government is losing that battle:

[quote="A Kiev Government "anti-Terrorist" commander"]

This is not some kind of a short-lived uprising. It is a war.

[/quote]

The village of Andrievka, on the outskirts of Slovyansk, had been the scene of a confrontation between Ukrainian forces and local people on Friday. It went on for hours, sometimes heated but non-violent. Then, just after 8pm, something went terribly wrong. The shooting that followed claimed between seven and 10 lives, from differing accounts, and left around 20 hurt ( wounded by the Kiev Government's National Guard Soldiers ).

How it started remains unclear. According to some, the soldiers began firing into the ground, people were hit by ricochets, stones were thrown in response, direct shots into the crowd ensued. Others claimed one soldier from the airborne brigade shot someone on his own side, a member of the National Guard, possibly by mistake, and panic ensued. The residents insisted that there had been no action from separatist fighters, but this could not be ruled out.

By Saturday morning, the ( Kiev Govt. National Guard ) troops and their armour had disappeared from the bridge above a stream that they had taken over. Left behind were spent cartridges, some of it heavy calibre; ground stained by pools of blood; some body parts and one body that had yet to be removed, a man with bullet wounds to his stomach, a coarse blanket half draped over him, lying beside a railway track.

It was the afternoon before the body of Andrei Balotski was identified. "He had come up from Kramatorsk to join us here when we were invaded by the soldiers. He has ended up like this," said Aleksei Viktorovich, 35, who lived near by. "We have contacted his family, but they cannot come because there is shooting in Kramatorsk and they are afraid to leave their homes.

"We don't know what to do with him, it is a hot day and we don't want to leave him here. My house is the nearest, but it would be difficult to take a dead body home with children there. My little boy is very scared by all the gunfire. I don't know how to explain these bad things to him."

It has become the practice among protesters to blame the spate of recent killings on the Right Sector, an ultra-nationalist group accused of carrying out dirty work on behalf of the Kiev administration. The separatist leadership has been keen to disseminate this narrative. But, looking at the body, Nicolai Alexanderovitch, 30, exclaimed: "Don't talk to me about the Right Sector. The Right Sector didn't kill this man, it was done by the Ukrainian army."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 21410.html

Ukrainian Govt. Troops open fire on a civilian occupied area, with heavy, direct fire, artillery, without warning to the civilian's going about their lives in the target area. This was a war crime, under the World War II rules of war, due to the fact it was direct fire heavy artillery weapons used ( those doing the shooting could see the civilians in the target area ) and the lack of warning to allow civilians time to exit the target area. There were no mitigating circumstances allowing an attack without warning, the barricades were not escaping nor were the barricades posing an imminent threat to the artillery units.

Under 21st century rules of war the U.N. would also considered this action a war crime for other reasons as well - not using proportional force appropriate to the immediate threat being confronted would be one such criteria.

The most important judges in this circumstance are the civilians in the city being attacked with heavy, direct fire, artillery by Kiev government troops, without warning:

The last separatist barricade at Kramatorsk was an impressive affair; four giant fuel tankers behind a wall of tyres and stone. The armoured personnel carriers of the ( Kiev ) government forces, lined up ahead, opened fire without warning; a salvo from a main gun streaking down the street.

The wall disintegrated and burst into flames, the tankers were sliced open as if with a can opener, the severed parts of each one left lying across the road. One round overshot and hit a car, leaving it a smoking heap, another went whizzing by a petrol station. The number of casualties, considering the scale of the damage, was relatively low. There were two dead, the driver of the car and an elderly man still clutching his plastic bag of shopping; around half a dozen were injured, two seriously.

There was an interlude of near silence as people who had thrown themselves to the ground and to the grass verge on the side of the road slowly picked themselves up, glad to be alive, and began to help bloodied figures into cars to be taken to hospital. Those who had thought that the horrific events in Odessa, with more than 40 dead, many of them trapped in a burning building, would lead to a lull in the strife in eastern Ukraine – a pause for reflection – found themselves mistaken.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 21410.html

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