Maidan versus Militia: war crimes video evidence

2 videos, POV of “death squad” and POV of protesters. Both were shot on Institutska Street near the upper entrance to Khreshchatyk Metro. Cannot confirm they’re both from the exact same time, but they do show: a) how well the Militsia snipers was armed (high-powered rifles, scopes, live rounds), b) unarmed protesters being killed.

The death squad video is 13 minutes, and looks like it was shot by Telekanal Ukraina crew (microphone sock): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4OgynH-7Is#t=0 – the date is not specified, but poster indicates either Feb 20 or 21

The Protesters POV is 41 minutes, from Feb. 20, and the person who posted it (Eldar Nagorniy?) provided a shot list in Russian, translated here (TV journos and editors really like shot lists): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSvj8F_Br4M#t=25

2:55 Kalashnikov fire
12:30 Unarmed people being shot
14:00 People trying to carry dead and injured being fired at
16:48 Protester in green jacket shot
17:08 Mound of corpses
18:00 Dragging body away
19:35 Off-camera Russian TV reporter "Good day colleagues! We are located at the extremists most sharpest attack” – “extremists” are dead or injured
22:00 Unarmed people, clearly not advancing, being shot
29:00 Maidan counterattack. Note: not a single shot is fired by the protesters
31:15 Man clearly retreating from the front line is 30 m away when he is shot
31:50 Protesters with flag on his back. Sign on the flag: “Dnipropetrovsk. Banderite-fascist-Westerner.”
37:00 Medic raises hands “Let us carry the injured!” and goes forward
37:45 Priest with shield and helmet
37:55 Medic lead away, appears to be injured in neck
40:00 Protesters hide behind smoke from burning tyres
40:55 Protesters gain ground. But at what price!

And let’s not forget that all of this was made possible by the Kremlin’s $2 billion bailout of the Yanukovch government and those in West twiddling their fingers about sanctions.

Ukrainian Jewish leader on Svoboda

Far too many Western journalists are getting it wrong when it comes to VO Svoboda (aka Freedom or Liberty Party). I'm not a huge fan (being too "liberal" for some of its members), but the Kremlin-inspired propaganda surrounding Ukrainian anti-Semitism is getting to be too much. 

But don't take my word for it. Consider this excerpt from an interview last month with Joseph Zissels, Jewish community leader in Ukraine, dissident during Soviet times and today a leader of the #EuroMaidan: calling Svoboda and Tiahnybok as "hard-right antisemitic" is inaccurate and is a 

Q: Doesn't it bother you that there are open anti-Semites among your allies? For example, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, lists Svoboda's leaders among the top ten anti-Semites in the world.

A: I am very familiar with the activities of the Wiesenthal Centre and I know the head of the Jerusalem branch of that organization, Efraim Zuroff, who put the names Oleh#Tyahnybok and Ihor Myroshnychenko into “the top ten.” Efraim Zuroff spent a lot of time in Moscow in the past few decades and I don’t consider the portrait he has drawn to be an objective one. I think that, throughout the world, there are plenty of people who are more anti-Semitic than #Tiahnybok and parties that are far more anti-Semitic than Svoboda. I deal with this issue professionally; I was commissioned to conduct a large sociological study of this topic. In reality, there are anti-Semitic elements in Svoboda, and we have been tracking them for more than 20 years, from the time when the party was still called the Social-national Party of Ukraine. There is less and less anti-Semitic rhetoric. For example, of the 37 Svoboda party member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, only six or seven have ever uttered anti-Semitic statement in the last 20 years. There is nothing directly anti-Semitic in Svoboda’s [party] program, neither anything directly xenophobic, although the seeds of xenophobic elements are there. Unlike members of parliament from the Jobbik party in Hungary and Ataka party in Bulgaria, MPs from Svoboda have not uttered anything anti-Semitic from the parliamentary podium. Not a single statement.

In the interview, Zissels calls Svoboda a "radical nationalist party."

Read Russian language original in its entirety here:

http://www.vaadua.org/node/551

Lviv, Donetsk agree: Nazism = Communism

East and West Together!

Two men in Donetsk, reportedly miners, burn the Soviet hammer-and-sickle and Nazi swastika flags on June 22, 2011, the anniversary of Hitler's attack on Stalin (Hitler attacked after a a nearly two year lovefest known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact when Stalin let the Nazis conquer most of Western Europe).

(pravda.com.ua)

Meanwhile, Lviv city council commissioned four billboards to mark the same anniversary. They show Nazi and Soviet atrocities in that western Ukrainian city. "Communism = Nazism" read the bold, red letters. The caption under the image of victims executed by the Soviets (left) reads "Lonsky Street Prison, Lviv, June 30, 1941." Victims of the Nazis (right) with caption: "Square in front of the Opera Theatre, Lviv, March 1942."

Bridging the east-west divide that's been artificially imposed on the people of Ukraine, local governments and individual citizens agree: standards bearing Hitler's swastika and Stalin's sickle were essentially cut from the same cloth.