Editor’s Note…

According to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry,at least 38 people died in fire at Odessa’s Trade Unions House after suffocating with smoke or jumping out of windows of the burning building. The building was set ablaze by “pro-Kiev radicals” (according to Russian media) or by some unknown men (according to the Ukrainian media). At this point it’s still not clear who were the victims and who where the arsonists.

This could be a local skirmish between pro-NATO and pro-Russia militias gone out of control or it could be a Russian false flag on the Reichstag fire model. Putin’s FSB agency was,after all,responsible for the Moscow apartment bombing false flag in 1999. Either way, since Russia has already announced that it will respond harshly to anti-Russian operations by the CIA\Blackwater backed and funded Svoboda\Right sector Nazi mercenaries, and since Russia has already amassed considerable forces on Ukraine’s border and activated its proxy militias in Eastern Ukraine, it seems like Russian “Responsibility to protect” intervention could be imminent.

The Russian state media party line (excerpted below) is clearly trying to set the stage for this. Odessa is accessible from the sea, on a short trip from Crimea for Russian “peace-keepers” and thus could be a convenient stepping stone for creating a full scale Russian bridgehead in South Eastern Ukraine.

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Russia Today

Some 50 people, including 10 police officers, were also injured in the incident, the official statement said. It was not immediately clear whether those injured in Friday street clashes in Odessa were included in those numbers.

According to the ministry, the Friday standoff on Odessa included “anti-Maidan” activists on one side and “football fans” from Odessa and Kharkov, as well as “euro-Maidan” activists, on the other. A criminal case on the charges of mass unrest has been opened.

The Trade Unions House was set on fire by pro-Kiev radicals after they surrounded and destroyed the tent camp of anti-government activists that stood in front of the building on Odessa’s Kulikovo Field Square. It was torched in a storming attempt after some of the anti-Maidan activists rallying in the square barricaded themselves inside the building.

Thirty of the victims were found on the floors of the building having apparently suffocated to death with smoke. Eight more died after jumping out of the burning Trade Union House’s windows, according to police.

Earlier reports of the clashes in Odessa said that both sides used Molotov cocktails and, allegedly, gunfire. Part of the pro-Maidan activists reportedly bore insignia of the radical Right Sector group.