At least twice I used Russian sources to make/pass an argument; one time in the cogitation #7 and another in a Facebook comment about an interview to a retired Portuguese major-general that should be a military expert but (yet again) made completely wrong statements about the military situation in Ukraine. But most of times I point out the flaws of the Russian sources' statements and claims. I don't use the Russian sources when it suits my agenda. I don't have an agenda per se; I have no issues in saying I want Putin to lose and see Russia (because Putin ordered it) as the aggressor. What I really want is try to share my view on the war, including facts that are of course clouded by the "fog of war" (I have to write about this and other concepts that exist during a conflict that are important for us, normal citizens, to know about).
And with this I want to talk about the recent bombing of a shopping centre in Kyiv. Twitter reacted as yet another attack on a civilian area by the Russians but shortly after evidences appeared in the OSINT community that Ukraine military vehicles (trucks or maybe MLRS) were parked in that location (as seen in the image on the left side, on top). So in reality the shopping centre was a valid military target. The people/accounts that started pointing at this were accused of sharing fake photos by anti-Russia people, just like before they were accused of sharing fake evidences by the pro-Putin/Russia people (to some you easily jump from bestie to beast and vice-versa). But then the Russian MoD shared a video with captures by drone(s) showing it were indeed MLRS as the video captures them firing, then traveling into Kyiv and parking in the shopping centre. Hours later the cruise missile hit the centre.
So this is a Russian source information that matches previous info already investigated by the OSINT community, thus I don't consider it pure propaganda, but a fact.
A good point of discussion now is how often are Ukrainians hiding military equipment in civilian buildings and whether those buildings are empty or not, when the military is making use of it. If the shopping centre was not empty and Ukrainian military didn't try to warn people to stay away due to their presence then this is bad as they are placing their people in danger and cannot simply blame Russia for attacking civilian infrastructure that has been turned into a genuine military target (I want to stress that I don't think this practice of hiding/storing weapons or vehicles in civilian buildings constitutes an immediate war crime, according to the Geneva Convention, but I couldn't confirm that for sure).
However to be clear, this specific hit, that is completely justified from the Russia side, does not also mean the other hits on civilian areas were OK as they didn't present evidences of those being proper military targets (their pathetic excuse for the Mariupol maternity failed miserably).
Final note, to remind that in a war, all sides will cause civilian suffering, all sides will commit atrocities. Some do it systematically, some by mistake, and to be clear usually only the losers are convicted for those (it's called "victors justice", another concept worth knowing).
No comments:
Post a Comment