[News] Eyewitness Reports Indicate Ukrainian Army Fired First Shots in War with Russia

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*In the interest of reading something besides Western corporate media
accounts*

covertactionmagazine.com
<https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/02/24/eyewitness-reports-indicate-ukrainian-army-fired-first-shots-in-war-with-russia/>
Eyewitness
Reports Indicate Ukrainian Army Fired First Shots in War with Russia
Don Hank and Jeremy Kuzmarov
February 24, 2022
------------------------------
Russian intelligence agency video of what it says is a Ukrainian tank after
being hit on Russian territory Monday. The location would indicate that
Ukraine invaded Russia first and not vice versa. [Source: consortiumnews.com
<https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/21/putin-recognizes-donbass-independence-as-violence-soars/>]
*Western Media did not report that the population in Eastern Ukraine had
been begging Vladimir Putin to send Russian troops to save them from
American-backed invaders and Neo-Nazi militias*

Russian forces launched “special military operations” in Ukraine on
Thursday morning, including cruise and ballistic missile attacks targeting
infrastructure near major cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and
Dnipro, according to media reports.

Russian president Vladimir Putin said that he did not intend to occupy
Ukraine but wanted to “demilitarize and de-nazify Ukraine.”
<https://www.axios.com/putin-delares-war-on-ukraine-5a28dbd5-362f-4e97-91e1-84272f7390fd.html>
A still from a video purporting to show missile strikes in Dnipro, Ukraine
on February 24, 2022. [Source: timesofisrael.com
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/putin-announces-special-military-operation-in-ukraine/>]


U.S. President Joe Biden issued a written statement saying that Russia had
chosen a “premeditated war that will bring catastrophic loss of life and
human suffering,”
<https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/23/politics/biden-russia-ukraine/index.html>
adding that “the prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine
tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian
military forces.”
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/02/23/statement-by-president-biden-on-russias-unprovoked-and-unjustified-attack-on-ukraine/>

Biden’s assessment is wrong-headed if we consider that Russia has been
repeatedly provoked–over the last eight years.

In February 2014, the U.S. supported the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian
leader Viktor Yanulovych after he spurned an International Monetary Fund
(IMF) loan that came with conditions detrimental to Ukraine
<https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/02/21/the-loan-that-launched-a-crisis/>.
Viktor Yanukovych [Source: spiegel.de
<https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/viktor-yanukovych-interview-ukraine-has-become-a-wild-country-a-1135829.html>]
Aerial view of Maidan square protests that resulted in Yanukovych’s ouster.
[Source: nbcnews.com
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/maidan-massacre-anniversary-ukraine-remembers-bloody-day-protests-n973156>]


The U.S. has since provided extensive military aid and training to
Ukrainian armed forces as they brutalized the people of Eastern Ukraine who
voted to secede after the 2014 coup.

The U.S. has also applied extensive sanctions on Russia–tantamount to an
act of war–while relentlessly expanding NATO towards Russia’s borders,
supporting color revolutions against Russian allies and placing missiles in
Poland and Romania
<https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/24/what-putin-says-are-the-causes-aims-of-russias-military-action/>
.

Biden’s claim that the Russian invasion was unprovoked is further undercut
by the fact that Ukraine precipitated the war by attacking the breakaway
eastern provinces in violation of the Minsk peace agreements.

Russia reported on Monday that it had captured a Ukrainian soldier and
killed five others after they crossed into Russian territory in Rostov
<https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/21/putin-recognizes-donbass-independence-as-violence-soars/>,
just over the border with Ukraine. Several hundred American mercenaries
were also reported to have arrived in Ukraine in the last week.
American mercenary in Donbass [Source: wprost.pl
<https://www.wprost.pl/swiat/454385/amerykanscy-najemnicy-oskarzeni-o-naduzycia-sledczemu-grozili.html>]


Photojournalist Patrick Lancaster provided photographic evidence of
Ukrainian army shelling of a school in the Donbass
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-IC-u-yl70> earlier this week.

Lancaster’s report is corroborated by Organization For Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) maps, which show that shelings that violate
ceasefire arrangements have indeed been carried out mostly by the Ukrainian
government
<https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/21/putin-recognizes-donbass-independence-as-violence-soars/>
.
[Source: consortiumnews.com
<https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/21/putin-recognizes-donbass-independence-as-violence-soars/>]


A resident of the Kyivsky district of the city of Donetsk whom Lancaster
interviewed, Zoya Tumanova, said that the Ukrainians had shelled her
village often since 2015 and burned half of it down. She asked Lancaster: “when
will it end, when will Putin come? When will he come to save us?”
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-IC-u-yl70>

Tumanova’s viewpoint is completely absent from the U.S. media. It
contradicts the official narrative of Vladimir Putin as a maniacal
aggressor, leaving the impression that the people of Eastern Ukraine *want*
Putin to send Russian troops to save them from the real aggressors.
[image: a view of a kindergarten building after alleged shelling by
separatists forces in Stanytsia Luhanska, eastern Ukraine]Kindergarden
building that was shelled earlier this week in Stanitsia, Luhasnka, Eastern
Ukraine. [Source: nypost.com
<https://nypost.com/2022/02/17/ukraine-separatists-trade-blame-after-kindergarten-shelling/>]


A second-grade teacher at the school in Donetsk that was shelled, Marusina
Ludmila, told Lancaster that she knew it was the Ukrainian army behind it
because “they don’t let us live for eight years already; they have been
shelling us constantly.”

Asked if Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky was telling the truth when he
said that Ukraine did not shoot at civilians, she said: “they always lie.
We know it is them shelling because no one can but them—though I don’t know
how they can do that to their own Ukrainian people, we used to live
together and communicate.”
[image: President Zelensky pays first working visit to Donbas (Photos) |
UNIAN]Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky at the front. [Source:
unian.info
<https://www.unian.info/war/10565103-president-zelensky-pays-first-working-visit-to-donbas-photos.html>]


Below is a commentary by Don Hank, a professional translator and Russian
speaker who studied Russian language and literature at Kutztown University
of Pennsylvania and studied at Leningrad University in the early 1970s.
*Ukraine shells schools in Donbass *

As I have shown before, based on numerous reports and videos on the
seemingly senseless attacks on Donbass civilians and civilian
infrastructure, there is more than one explanation for this phenomenon.

1—For one thing, since the U.S.-led West and U.S.-puppet regime in Kyiv
have de facto very effectively censored most news reports about the
atrocities of the Kyiv army and Neo-Nazi militias, there was never any
chance that the average news consumer in the U.S.-controlled West could
possibly have any knowledge about these atrocities. (Let me point out,
however, that Putin, in his speech relating to the recognition of the
Donbass republics, does point out that Kyiv has been constantly attacking
innocent civilians in that region since 2014.)
[image: Azov demonstration with flag]Members of the Azov battalion in Kiev.
[Source: vox.com
<https://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8114367/ukraine-war-warlords>]

This censorship served the insidious purpose of making the Western public
think Russia is the source of all ills in Ukraine (and elsewhere) and that
the U.S. was “supporting” Ukraine.

This despite the fact that the year after the U.S. invasion of the Maidan
Square in Kyiv in 2014, Kyiv fell to the very last rank in GDP—becoming the
poorest country in Europe! Only a skilled—though diabolical—news
manipulation on a 24/7 basis could have portrayed good as evil and evil as
good to such a complete degree.
[image: Ukraine is Europe’s poorest nation with $220 average monthly wage]Scene
from Post-Maidan Kiev. [Source: rt.com
<https://www.rt.com/business/412692-ukraine-poorest-country-europe/>]

The U.S. pressured the successive Kyiv regimes to cut all of the old
lucrative business contracts with Russia and gradually shut down the
Soviet-built factories, making Ukraine a debt slave of the IMF—now a
permanent status.

See the link below to details on the Ukraine since 2014 that you are being
denied by a U.S.-controlled Western press that systematically pushes an
anti-Russia narrative with the ultimate aim of weakening Russia
economically and politically in hopes of seeing it disintegrate to the
level of the 1990s.

Censored details of Ukraine history since Feb 2014:

Now, should you be surprised that the U.S. Establishment would deceive you
to this degree?

Yes and no.

A person with the skill and ambition to fight their way out of the
government-imposed ignorance to which the West is subjected could, with a
herculean effort of will, dig up all the information necessary to gain an
objective overview of the numerous ways the U.S. Establishment has deceived
its citizens time and time again since the 1800s for the purpose of
wresting illicit gain from foreign countries and even from citizens of the
U.S., and for the purpose of excusing inexcusable wars and sanctions on
people who are absolutely not the enemies of the American people.

But if you don’t feel up to a Herculean effort of will, here is a rather
complete catalog of deceptions in the msm that led to war or other
disasters.
<https://21stcenturywire.com/2017/02/14/fake-news-week-a-guide-to-mainstream-media-fake-news-war-propaganda/>

2—I have a sneaking suspicion that the Kyiv puppet regime has literally no
control over the radical nationalists and Neo-Nazi militias that Kyiv has
now foolishly integrated into its military.
Nazi symbol on Ukrainian soldier’s helmet [Source: nbcnews.com
<https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/german-tv-shows-nazi-symbols-helmets-ukraine-soldiers-n198961>]


While it is clear that Biden wants war in Ukraine so bad he can taste it,
though it is not in the interests of Kyiv to escalate the Ukrainian attacks
on civilians.
[Source: nypost.com
<https://nypost.com/2022/02/19/biden-calling-out-russias-plans-for-war-with-ukraine/>]


Yet there is no let up. The attacks are escalating, even in the face of a
potential major retaliatory offensive by Russia.

I had read at one time that the Ukrainian central government, if it can be
called that, has no control over the radical elements and that the war has
a mind of its own.

If that is the case, then of course we are going to witness this kind of
insanity and at some point, Putin will give the order and put an end to it.
Putin signing decree recognizing Luhansk and Donetsk on Monday [Source:
consortiumnews.com]
<https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/21/putin-recognizes-donbass-independence-as-violence-soars/>

Of course, at the same time, this escalation is to the Biden regime’s
benefit, so we have two possibilities:

1—The puppeteers in Washington are behind this escalation, which provides a
distraction from the abysmal performance of this White House and all the
irremediable problems with the economy and the rampant fuel prices, and

2—the crazy Neo-Nazis are acting on their own.

Or both.

**

So what will be the consequences of the sanctions that the U.S. is
imposing?

Well, we can safely predict that gas prices will go through the roof now
that brain dead Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced he was suspending the
certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
[image: A person in a suit speaking into a microphone Description
automatically generated with low confidence]German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
ordering cancellation of Nord Stream 2 pipeline. [Source: euractiv.com
<https://www.euractiv.com/section/europe-s-east/news/germany-halts-nord-stream-2/>]


Dmitry Mdvedev, Deputy Chair of the Russian Security Council, tweeted
<https://tass.com/economy/1408445>:

“German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ordered to halt the certification of the
Nord Stream 2. Well, welcome to the new world where Europeans will soon pay
2,000 euros per thousand cubic meters of gas.”

And for those who are awaiting the glorious day when “green” and “clean”
energy makes Russian gas superfluous, here is a little cold water for you:

It turns out that green energy without nuclear (which Germany renounced
years ago) simply cannot replace fossil fuel. It’s too expensive. And so
what do the incompetents in Europe do about that?

They set themselves up for economic Armageddon.
------------------------------
About the Author
------------------------------

*Don Hank* is a professional translator and Russian speaker living now in
Panama who studied Russian language and literature at Kutztown University
of Pennsylvania and studied at Leningrad University in the early 1970s.

Don can be reached at zollandon at msn.com.

*Jeremy Kuzmarov* is Managing Editor of *CovertAction Magazine.*

He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including *Obama’s
Unending Wars *(Clarity Press, 2019) and *The Russians Are Coming, Again*,
with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018).

Jeremy can be reached at jkuzmarov2 at gmail.com.
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