Steve, if you are right and pro-Russians set the House in fire by their own molotov coctails (very interesting idea), you think it was normal to shot from guns on those who were trying to escape from burning building not to let them save theirselves and even to beat the victims by rods?
Or it was normal not to let the state fire truck to do their work and try to save people?
Or it was normal to make videos with dead bodies and take it out on youtube?
you prefer not to jump to conclusions? Or you just justify killers? And why you trust to Kiev authorities?
sdom, I really don’t have the time to get into this debate. I have said my piece.
The mentality of those who fire guns into unarmed crowds as I saw some pro-Russian activists do, is as incomprehensible to me as the mentality of those who throw Molotov cocktails at people and into buildings. I saw Ukrainian activists building a scaffold ladder to help their opponents escape the building, while another Ukrainian “patriot” threw a Molotov cocktail at the building. He was chased away by his buddies.
Why do people do these things? I don’t know. Why do soccer hooligans do what they do?
At the end of the day, I suspect we all tend to follow our gut instinct (even though we may also try to build fact-based arguments to support our instincts.)
Steve’s instinct seems to be to feel some scepticism and fear towards Putin and the Russian government.
By contrast, my instinct is to reject the EU-backed band who have seized control in Kiev. I am convinced they would right now be killing even more civilians if the eyes of the world (and the Russian Army) were not fixed on them.
Maybe Steve is right? Maybe I am right? I guess we can’t both be right! But I sense these West-backed people are bad news - that’s my feeling.
(Of course, I accept that there are always going to be thugs on both sides of a dispute like this - but one looks at the wider picture.)
I have heard a number of ministers and members of the ruling coalition in Kiev, explaining on TV what they are doing, and arguing with members of the opposition, from the party of Regions and Communist party and others. I can assure you that there is a degree of debate, freedom of expression, diversity of opinion and democracy, in the present interim Ukrainian government, that is absent in Russia. To call the Kiev government fascist would be laughable if it was not so damaging to civil peace in Ukraine.
As far as I can see, there isn’t really any doubt that there is a minority thuggish far-right element among the pro-Westerners.
However the issue isn’t whether they are, as a whole, “fascists” - any more than one would call the Serbs in the 1990s “fascists”. We need to look rather at what they are doing. The more people they kill, the harder it becomes to maintain their image as nice cuddly freedom fighters.