It says it right here:
*“demonstrators, who fought back with crude weapons, firearms, and improvised explosives.” * Peaceful demonstrators don’t bring wespons and advance toward police killing nine of them to start a hopefully peaceful day. You cited this. Thank you.
There.
Nope. You claimed that non-peaceful protestors advanced on the government buildings. There is no indication that they were “non-peaceful” as they advanced on the buildings, only that they fought back after police started firing on them. With live ammunition.
The question is who started the violence. We don’t know. Both sides claim the other side started it, and objective observers aren’t able to tell us who did.
Vostok Battalion, a pro-Russian group, seize control of Donetsk Peoples’ Republic’s headquarters, plunging rebel movement in east into crisis
Interesting development.
Note: the Vostok battalion is not a “pro-Russian group”. It is a Russian military unit, from Spetznaz forces, staffed mostly by Chechens, with Russian and Chechen officers. The coy pretense by Russians that the “rebellion” was all indigenous has been dropped. These are Russian troops on Ukrainian soil.
How do you know that?
… by the way, if you look at photos published of “Vostok Battalion” fighters that show faces, anyone familiar with the ethnicities in Russia will tell you those are Chechens (or Ingush - somewhere from that area).
But I thought the original Vostok battalion was disbanded (looking at the wiki link, yes they were). Could they not have just adopted the name (likely because they have a bunch of Chechen members)? eta: I have serious doubts this is a battalion under direct Russian control.
There are certainly lots of reports about it - I have no idea how reliable. Here is one.
There is no longer any doubt that Russians are doing the fighting. Rebel leaders openly admit as much.
[emphasis added]
My take: the “indigenous Ukrainian rebels” were, in large part, made up of opportunists and looters. Their behaviour - essentially, as opportunistic thugs - was very quickly draining away support, even from the minority that legitimately supported them. Moscow, to retrieve the situation, or at least to impose some law and order, ordered their fighters - those they had infiltrated in fropm Russia, such as this mysterious “Vostok battalion”, which appears to be made up at least in part of Chechens - to stage a coup, clear out the looters and thugs (or at least, force them into obedience), and assert central, Moscow control.
From now on, it is pretty clear to everyone, even the most blind partisan, that this isn’t an “indigenous uprising” or a “civil war” (assuming it ever was), but a Moscow-controlled invasion - which is now fighting against a Ukraine with an elected government.
They were not “disbanded” per se. They were fully absorbed into Russian military.
In that case one must wonder why news reports talk of “a pro-Russian group” instead of “the bloody Russian Army”. It all seems quite weird
Just like news reports spoke of the “self-defense groups” in Crimea, and afterwards Russia “admitted” (like it really was a surprise) that those were Russian troops.
The news talked pretty openly about Russian trucks, Russian license plates and Russian uniforms without insignia in Crimea. That is not being reported here.
In this case, it appears that Russia is importing Chechens to do the fighting. There are multiple reports of this - including, most recently, that these groups have in effect taken over, clearing the indigenous “pro Russian” militia out of their HQ.
No-one can pretend that these Chechens are local, or that they just spontaneously appeared. Can they?
Are you saying that there is no popular support at all for the rebels in the regions concerned? That doesn’t jibe with all the reports I’ve read since this thing blew up.
[QUOTE=Malthus]
No-one can pretend that these Chechens are local, or that they just spontaneously appeared. Can they?
[/QUOTE]
Seriously? At this point in the thread, nothing would surprise me, and I’d be militantly non-shocked if NFBW could somehow expand his narrative to suggest that the Chechens were simply there vacationing or, perhaps, that they were grasped by the husks and carried there by African swallows, migrating through the area, or something along those lines.
[QUOTE=CarnalK]
The news talked pretty openly about Russian trucks, Russian license plates and Russian uniforms without insignia in Crimea. That is not being reported here.
[/QUOTE]
Probably one of the worst kept secrets evah. But then, they really only need plausible deniablity to stand up to the rigor of folks such as NFBW and that crowd, who are disposed to grasping any straw available to keep their narrative rolling smoothly in their own minds.
With Chechen soldiers taking power over there, any pretense at “popular uprising” is gone.
Which isn’t the same thing as saying there is no popular support, to be fair. I’m sure there is support for the ‘rebels in the regions concerned’, though it’s debatable as to just how popular it really is.
No - rather, it appears that popular support in the region (always a minority position - see Pew Poll) has been falling away yet further, because of lawlessness, thuggery, and looting on the part of the indigenous “self-defence forces”.
The current fracas - namely, the take-over of the HQ by the obvioulsy-Russian imported fighters, who appear to be, in part, Chechen and so quite obviously not “locals” - was at least in part intended to halt that slide in support (and increase in resentment), to restore (Moscow-imposed) military discipline, law and order.
As it turned out, the HQ was allegedly stuffed with, well, stuff looted from the locals. Generally speaking, one does not increase one’s popularity by stealing from people, so the current move by Moscow-imported forces makes perfect sense - even as it undermines and renders quite laughable the notion that this is any longer an “indigenous popular uprising”.