The Grayzone (USA): Was the bombing of the theater in Mariupol staged by extremists from Azov in order to provoke NATO intervention?
The author of The Grayzone tried to figure out how true the Ukrainian statements about the "Russian" attack on the theater in Mariupol are. There are inconsistencies in the version of the Ukrainian side. Moreover, even before the incident, local residents warned that the Azov battalion was preparing a provocation. This is how Ukraine is trying to achieve NATO intervention, the journalist believes.
Western media reported that the Russian military deliberately struck the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol. Journalists claim that the theater was crowded with civilians, and the words "children" were painted on the asphalt.
The alleged strike was carried out just when Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky asked the US Congress to create a no-fly zone. His words sparked a discussion about the possibility of a direct confrontation with Russia and, apparently, inspired US President Joe Biden to call his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a "war criminal."
But upon closer examination, it turns out that a few days before the bombing of the theater on March 16, residents of Mariupol warned about the intention of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion, which controls the building and the territory around it, to attack under a false flag.
Civilians who managed to escape from the city through humanitarian corridors claim that Azov held them as a human shield and that it was its fighters who blew up the theater during the retreat. Despite claims that the theater burned to the ground due to an allegedly massive Russian airstrike, all civilians seem to have managed to escape. They remained alive.
At the time of publication (March 18 - approx. InoSMI) video of the attack was still unavailable, only photos of the destroyed building could be seen. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation denied the accusations of an airstrike on the theater and noted that this place was not of military value and in general, no combat sorties were carried out in this area on March 16.
Although the Russian military operation in Ukraine provoked a humanitarian crisis in Mariupol, it is clear that Russia has not won anything, but only spoiled its image by allegedly striking a building crowded with civilians, including ethnic Russians.
But Azov benefited from the dramatic and monstrous attack, which Russia was blamed for. Facing the threat of mistreatment by the Russian military, the Azov fighters, when retreating from Mariupol, could only hope for a lie that would force NATO to intervene in the conflict.
In the same desperation, Zelensky addressed Congress with a carefully prepared speech in which he quoted Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream" speech and showed a carefully staged video with suffering civilians to justify the creation of a no-fly zone.
Provoking the indignation of the Western public with brutal war crimes, the Ukrainian government is clearly seeking to put pressure on the Biden administration, which has no desire to get involved in an open military confrontation with Russia.
The statements that Russia deliberately bombed innocent children in the theater are the most emotionally powerful accusation of Kiev so far, but it is broken by the testimonies of Mariupol residents and a message published in Telegram, which directly refers to an impending attack under a false flag.
Azov fighters in Mariupol in desperation call on the West for military intervention
The Azov battalion has controlled the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol since 2014. Since that time, the city has served as a political and military base for ultranationalist paramilitary groups that attacked pro-Russian separatists in the breakaway Donetsk Republic.
The Azov battalion was formed from far-right activists who were the striking force of the Euromaidan 2013-2014. Later, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine included "Azov" in the National Guard. The founder of Azov was Andrei Biletsky, a man with openly fascist views who vowed to "lead the crusade of the white race against the Semitic-led subhumans."
The Azov fighters, whose uniform and flag depict Wolfsangel in the Nazi style, do not hide their ideological goals. The FBI and the US Congress described the members of the unit as neo-Nazis, and the fighters themselves identify with them. In addition, the fighters are involved in all kinds of gross violations of human rights, but this did not prevent Azov from openly cooperating with American and Canadian military instructors.
Putin accused Azov of plans to destroy the Russian population in the Donbas and designated the base of this paramilitary formation in Mariupol as a front line in the campaign to "denazify" Ukraine. After Russia launched a special operation in Ukraine on February 24, fierce battles with the participation of Russian special forces and militia of the Donetsk People's Republic unfolded in the city. The forces are combing block by block to take control of the territory, and massive artillery strikes are being inflicted on the positions of Azov.
The commander of the Azov battalion, Denis Prokopenko, made an urgent video message on March 7, which was translated into English and published on the fighters' official YouTube channel. To the sounds of periodic artillery shelling, Prokopenko said that the Russian military was carrying out a "genocide" against the population of Mariupol, among which 40% were Russians.
Prokopenko demanded that Western countries "create a no-fly zone over Ukraine, support it with modern weapons." It is clear from Prokopenko's statement that the situation of "Azov" was getting worse every day.
The Russian military quickly weakened the positions of Azov in the second week of March 2022, and the fighters seem to have sent the elderly, women and children to the dressing room of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol.
In a video shot inside a dimly lit room on March 11, a local resident says that a thousand citizens are in the building and demands to open a humanitarian corridor so that they can get out of the theater. However, only a small group of people can be seen in the video.
"Please stop this whole story. Give the corridor to take out women, children and the wounded," a man with glasses said in the video.
Since the Russian operation began, videos have appeared in which Azov fighters do not allow civilians to leave Mariupol or force men to get out of the car and attack them when they try to break through paramilitary checkpoints. If you believe the testimonies of many residents of Mariupol, "Azov" used them as human shields.
Terrible warnings about "provocations" under a false flag a few days before the attack on the theater in Mariupol
The correspondent of Komsomolskaya Pravda in Mariupol, Dmitry Steshin, published a message on his Telegram channel on March 12, from which the blood runs cold in his veins.
According to Steshin, local residents told him that the shelling of the mosque of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Roksolana, which Russia was accused of, was actually committed under a false flag in order to "draw Turkey" into the conflict, and soon there will be another attack under a false flag on the Mariupol drama Theater.
The message published in Telegram said the following:
"Look what readers have sent from Mariupol. If the message corresponds to the facts, it should be highlighted.
Zelensky is preparing two provocations to Mariupol! There is one provocation against Turkish citizens who hid in the mosque built by Akhmetov, and this provocation is already beginning by firing Ukrainian gunners at the mosque from positions in the Beam on the Lower Kirovka. Zelensky failed to involve the EU, the US and the UK in an armed conflict against the Russian Federation. Now the evil dwarf Zelensky is trying to draw Turkey into the conflict in the hope of eastern explosive emotionality and the love of believers for their shrines.
Zelensky is preparing the second provocation for a picture in the Western media. After an unsuccessful provocation with the maternity hospital, Ukrainian soldiers, together with the administration of the drama theater, gathered Mariupol women, children and the elderly into the drama theater building in order to undermine people at an opportunity and howl to the whole world that this is the aviation of the Russian Federation and urgently need to close the Ukrainian sky."
More than 480 thousand Telegram users saw a message containing warnings from residents of Mariupol.
Western media such as the Associated Press repeated on March 12 the statements of the Ukrainian government that Russia fired at a Turkish mosque in Mariupol, in which there were 80 civilians, including children.
But the Turkish media exposed the Ukrainian government, which decided to mislead Western reporters. The mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent not only survived, no Russian fire hit it at all.
"The mosque was not damaged," the head of the Association of Mosques, Ismail Hacioglu, told the Turkish Anadolu agency on March 12.
The Mariupol Theater, where civilians were sheltering, was the next target on someone's list.
News about the attack on the theater amid Zelensky's appeal to Congress for military intervention
Less than 48 hours after the revelations about the Russian attack on a mosque in Mariupol, humanitarian corridors finally opened in the city. The escape of thousands of civilians to Russian military positions further weakened the Azov battalion, which used civilians to create a no-fly zone.
After his army collapsed under the onslaught of Russia, the Ukrainian president and the famous comedian Zelensky appeared on March 16 in a video with a well-prepared presentation for the amazed members of the American Congress.
"I have a dream. These words are now familiar to each of you. I can say that I have a need. We need to protect our sky," Zelensky said. The Ukrainian president recalled the famous words of the most respected anti-war activist in the United States, Martin Luther King Jr., to ask for a no-fly zone, which could lead to an open confrontation between the United States and Russia, which possess nuclear weapons.
Just a few hours after Zelensky's appeal, the press service of the Azov battalion reported on the Russian bombing of the theater in Mariupol.
Having a monopoly on information from the site of the alleged attacks and in the absence of other media at the scene of the tragedy, the press service of "Azov" sent photos of the destroyed building to the media from around the world.
The marking of the Azov battalion is clearly visible in the lower right corner of the image. The photos provided by Azov were published by such world media as SkyNews, but without a mark. The SouthChina Morning Post published the image without a mark, but indicated the authorship: "Azov Battalion via AP".
The first of the English-speaking media personalities who brought the version of the Ukrainian government to the masses was the reporter Ilya Ponomarenko, who studied in the USA and lives in Kiev. Since the beginning of the Russian special operation, the number of his Twitter followers has exceeded one million.
Ponomarenko worked for The Kyiv Independent, which plays the role of the main information weapon of the United States in Ukraine. The newspaper was founded with the assistance of the National Endowment for Democracy, a channel for transmitting American intelligence information, and with the money of an "emergency aid grant" received from the European Foundation for Democracy, sponsored by the EU.
Ponomarenko called the Azov fighters his "brothers in arms" and boasted that he "hung out" with them at the "enemy lines".
The news about Mariupol seems to have aroused such strong emotions in President Joe Biden that he called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a "war criminal," a "bloody dictator" and a "real thug."
Then HumanRights Watch hastily issued a press release under the headline "Hundreds of people were hiding in the Mariupol Theater, which came under Russian attack." A non-governmental organization funded by billionaires admitted that after the attack, it did not interview a single resident of Mariupol, and it has no evidence of Russian involvement. The only source who directly accused Russia was the Ukrainian head of the Donetsk region.
But are the Russian military so inclined to such bloodthirsty and politically self-destructive actions that they specifically aim at a building in which, as is known, there were children? Or maybe the prediction made by the residents of Mariupol four days before the events came true?
Suspicious signs, inconsistencies in the version of the Ukrainian government
Although the press service of "Azov" works well and films the exploits of fighters on the battlefield, and the fighters themselves publish even their most banal videos on social networks, filming the bombing of the theater is nowhere to be found.
All the photos that "Azov" provided to the Ukrainian and world media depict the destroyed theater. There is not a single person in the frame. Neither alive nor dead.
The day before the bombing, on March 15, a group of men of military age was photographed against the background of the theater. There is not a single woman in the photo. You can see how men put pallets against the wall of the building, drag large objects around the theater and cut down a fir tree.
In a report on the incident, in which there is no evidence of local residents after the attack, Human Rights Watch said that the men "cooked food on a campfire and collected water in buckets."
As you can see in the photo, pallets and other objects were unloaded just in the part of the building that will suffer from the explosion the next day.
According to Ponomarenko, "the building burned down to the ground." Despite the severe destruction of the theater, it turned out that there were no fatalities.
"It's a miracle," commented a reporter for The Kyiv Independent.
The ABCnews channel released a 7-minute story on March 17, which is a mixture of news and propaganda. It said that all civilians were rescued, but "hundreds are still missing." According to the Ukrainian Wikipedia, the maximum capacity of the theater is very modest — 680 seats, which raises the question of how "hundreds" could fit in its basement.
Then the channel stated that the theater had suffered from the shelling of Russian artillery, and not from an "airstrike", as Ponomarenko and many others claimed.
The incident confused the Ukrainian media. For example, portal 0629 tried to explain the mysterious disappearance of thousands of civilians who were allegedly in the theater by evacuation to Zaporozhye the day before the so-called attack. "We are waiting for officially confirmed information so as not to jump to conclusions," the journalists said.
When residents of Mariupol began to leave the city through humanitarian corridors organized by the Russian military, evidence surfaced of ruthless attacks by Azov on civilians fleeing the city and deception related to the local theater.
"They destroyed the drama theater when they left"
On the seventeenth of March, a young woman told the Abkhaz news agency ANNA shocking details of what was happening in Mariupol.
"The Azov fighters were just hiding behind us—" she told a reporter. — We were the living wall of theirs and that's it. Everything was smashed behind us, what was around us, they were not allowed to go outside. We sat in the basement for 15 days, with the children… They didn't give us any water, nothing."
Speaking about how "Azov" placed tanks at bomb shelters, she revealed an interesting detail: "While retreating, they smashed the bomb shelter of the drama theater. People were brought to us with fragments."
Many evacuated citizens confirmed the woman's words that Azov is holding civilians hostage. They also stated that the fighters opened fire on those who tried to escape along the humanitarian corridor.
"Everyone got hit,— an elderly woman told one Russian media outlet. "They bombed the whole apartment... they fell in there and beat Molotov cocktails. I wanted to go in and take things: "No, there's nothing for you to do there.""
When a reporter asked her who had attacked her and invaded her home, she replied, "Well, Ukrainians."
The man, who was intercepted by the ANNA reporter, pointed towards the positions of the Ukrainian army, barely holding back tears: "Azov ... people were leaving, they shot them...".
"The Ukrainian army shot at us—" said another man who fled from Mariupol. "Straight into the house."
"Ukraine did not let us out of the city, everything was blocked—" said another evacuee. - The military came and said: "in no case do not leave the city if the Russian Federation provides a corridor." They wanted to continue to hide behind us and that's it."
Red Line: Syrian lessons
Was the bombing of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol an attack by extremists from Azov under a false flag to force NATO to intervene, as some locals claim? If so, then this is far from the first and, most likely, not the last cynical deception on the part of the Ukrainian government trying to draw the West into the conflict.
On the day of what happened in the theater, March 16, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said: "We have real concerns that Russia may use chemical weapons, weapons of mass destruction." And then Blinken started talking about Syria, where, according to him, "they were seen using or agreeing to use (chemical weapons)."
It was in Syria that the administration of President Barack Obama introduced a "red line", stating that any chemical attack would automatically be followed by a US military response. This policy made it possible to stage a series of incidents, which, apparently, were backed by foreign-backed Syrian opposition forces, in order to force the United States to intervene in the conflict against Damascus.
The victims of the deadliest incident were hundreds of civilians. Rockets filled with sarin were apparently fired from rebel-controlled territories in the Ghouta area, near Damascus, on August 21, 2013. After Obama blamed the Syrian government for the attack and prepared for a strike, officials who disagree with the administration told the media that the intelligence accusations against Damascus were not such a simple matter, referring to the fabricated evidence of the CIA before the Iraq war. Journalist Seymour Hersh then reported that US intelligence had gathered enough evidence of the rebels' guilt in what happened in Ghouta. According to Hersh, this information convinced Obama to abandon the so-called "red line".
During the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States tried to revive the "red line" by bombing Syria due to unfounded accusations of the use of chemical weapons in 2017 and 2018. But in both cases, the evidence points to attacks staged by the rebels. When the incident occurred in Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017, Trump ignored intelligence data and struck at the Syrian military. The following year, already in Douma, in the suburbs of Damascus, the investigators of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found no evidence of a chemical attack, but their conclusions were falsified and censored, as American officials put pressure on the organization.
As the former US ambassador to the Middle East told journalist Charles Glass, "the red line was an open invitation to an operation under a false flag."
Dubious unfounded accusations against Russia in the attack on the theater in Mariupol did not prompt the Biden administration to cross the red line. The question now is how far the Ukrainian government is willing to go to establish a no-fly zone necessary to prevent the imminent defeat of its military forces.
Max Blumenthal
