August 15, 2014

The Mysterious Destroyed "Russian Armored Vehicles"

Yesterday the Guardian's Shaun Walker claimed to have seen Russian military vehicle crossing the Russian border into Ukraine. I wrote elsewhere that I am skeptical of that claim:

I'd be very careful in believing the stuff Shaun Walker writes. He was with the [aid-]convoy yesterday and the convoy is halted some 20-30 kilometer away from the border. How could he have observed the (not really well defined) border from there?

Said differently: The Guardian and Shaun Walker have certainly not be neutral in their reporting and publishing about the Ukraine conflict. There is no reason for the Russian army to invade Ukraine especially not in near an aid-convoy which is covered by dozens of "western" journalists.

But this afternoon the Ukrainian government claimed that its troops overnight had destroyed a some Russian vehicles:

Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko, told David Cameron in a phone call on Friday that a column of Russian armoured vehicles had been destroyed.

Now everyone in the media is jumping from the Shaun Walker report to the destroyed "Russian armored vehicle" to claim that it was a Russian military convoy that was attacked and destroyed within Ukraine.

But all armored vehicles in Ukraine are "Russian armored vehicles" as they all were constructed during the Soviet times. All the 123 tanks and APC destroyed in this conflict, most of them from the Ukrainian army, were "Russian armored vehicles". The insurgents use such vehicles as does the Ukrainian army. So even if Poroshenko's claim is true, and there was no proof presented for it at all, there is actually nothing factual that lets one connect "Russian armored vehicles" to actual Russian army vehicles.

The Russian government asserts that no Russian army vehicles have entered Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has claimed for several month that a Russian invasion is imminent or already occurring and a lot of other nonsense. Unless there is additional evidence that actual Russian army vehicles really entered Ukraine I will rather believe the Russian government.

Posted by b on August 15, 2014 at 18:15 UTC | Permalink

Comments

next page »