The other day a mortar shell hit a trolleybus stop in the beleaguered Ukrainian city of Donetsk, sending shards of glass, pieces of metal and body parts flying.
Both sides in the conflict blamed each other for the killing of 13 victims, with the bandits calling themselves the Donetsk People’s Republic screaming ‘Stop thief!’ more loudly.
However, the OSCE ballistic analysis showed that the mortar involved was the type widely used by Putin’s bandits. Moreover, the nearest Ukrainian position was at twice the mortar range, while the ‘separatists’ were well within it.
Not being an expert in ballistics, I can’t have an independent view on the technicalities involved. But I do know something about TV production, and the Russians’ mastery of this art deserves every accolade, including the coveted Golden Globe award.
A TV crew appeared on the scene within minutes, as did a crowd of shocked and indignant bystanders, weeping and wailing to the highest thespian standards.
Unlike me, they were all experts in ballistics. None of them had the slightest doubt that the mortar had been fired by the Judaeo-Nazi Banderites, otherwise known as the Ukraine’s armed forces.
Leading the crowd was a saleswoman from the supermarket next door, who wore an outraged expression and her store’s uniform. Yes, she had seen the explosion, she sobbed, and yes, the shot came from there (a dramatic gesture in the general direction of Kiev).
No RT viewer could have remained indifferent. Millions had to realise how truly beastly the Ukrainian republic was.
No, scratch that. There is no Ukrainian republic in any other than the formal, window-dressing sense. There are only puppets whose wires are being pulled by the US-CIA-EU-Mossad-MI6 Nazis driven by zoological hatred of Russia, as personified by the KGB colonel Putin.
Stills of the scene immediately went viral on the net, and there wasn’t a single newspaper or TV station in Russia that failed to flash them bigger than life.
That turned out to be a mistake. Some readers, presumably those belonging to the 14 per cent of Russians who don’t feel Putin is Christ’s messenger on earth, had a close look at the photos and couldn’t shake the feeling that the irate saleswoman’s face looked familiar.
They then looked at some previous photographs and, lo and behold, the same woman featured as the star model in two of them.
The earlier one was a still from an RT news show last summer. The very same woman was allegedly an eyewitness to another heinous crime perpetrated by the Judaeo-Nazi fascists: the crucifixion of a three-year-old boy, nailed by the Ukies to a notice board in the city of Slavyansk.
Alas, she was the sole witness and no corroborating evidence was ever presented, which angered the marginal, independent part of the Russian press. Comparisons of Putin and Goebbels became common currency, and somehow accounts of the crucified tot faded off TV screens.
So did the eyewitness, but not for long. On 13 January, the bandits fired rockets at a Ukrainian checkpoint in Volnovakha, a suburb of Donetsk. That created a bit of a splash because a full city bus had been blown up in the process, killing 12 passengers.
The bandits’ first reaction was to claim the major military coup of destroying an enemy roadblock.
However, when the news of the blown-up bus spread, they blamed the other side for the crime, as one does. They, the bandits… sorry, the volunteers in the service of the Donetsk People’s republic, had no “technical means to shell the area.”
What about the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission that studied the five craters and concluded that they were caused by “rockets fired from a north-north-eastern direction” (the bandits’ position)?
Well, what do you expect from those hirelings of Wall Street, the CIA and Mossad? Here, talk to the surviving victims. They’ll tell you what’s what.
And there she was, our hard-working woman in a hospital bed, her face emaciated, her head bandaged, her arm in a sling. She explained who the true criminals were, sob, and demanded, sob, that they be brought to account.
Excellent performance, shame about the casting. For laying the photographs of the three incidents side by side, one of the 14-per-centers identified the woman as the Russian TV actress Galina Pyshniak.
Speculations immediately ensued, no doubt fuelled by secret funds provided by the US-CIA-EU-Mossad-MI6 and other hotbeds of global Russophobic fascism.
An RT film crew appeared at the bombed trolleybus stop within minutes of the mortar explosion, armed with cameras, rent-a-crowd and Miss Pyshniak in full flow, already sporting the uniform of the relevant supermarket.
It was as if the Russians had known in advance when and where the mortar shell would go off, which would only have been possible if they… No, we must nip such libellous musings in the bud.
Meanwhile, Donetsk’s Prokofiev Airport, which cultured denizens named after the great composer born nearby, is no more. After holding out for 234 days, longer than the siege of Stalingrad almost 70 years earlier, the Ukrainian army withdrew, leaving behind, well, nothing much.
The airport, now commonly called ‘Ukrainian Stalingrad’, was razed by an artillery barrage ordered by Alexander Zakharchenko, the chieftain of the band… sorry, President of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Or, to be specific, by his employer Col. Putin.
The only way to fly in and out of Donetsk is now by Russian military helicopter… I have to apologise yet again.
Everyone not in the pay of the US-CIA-EU-Mossad-MI6 fascists knows that Russia has nothing to do with the spontaneous uprising of Russophone Ukrainians against the Kiev Nazis elected by a landslide.
Said Russophones went to the local supermarket, possibly the same one that later employed the job-sharing Miss Pyshniak, and bought everything they needed for driving the Ukrainian army out of Donetsk Airport.
Rifles, grenades, machineguns, personnel carriers, tanks, missile launchers, AA systems, mortars, artillery batteries – none of it came from Russia. Nor did any of the wielders of this kit, even though some of them served in the airborne brigade almost totally wiped out by the Ukrainians.
That is, yes, it’s hard to deny that some of the bodies belonged to Russian soldiers. But they were not under Russian command at the time. They were… well, on furlough. The lads could have gone to some resort or else to see their parents. Instead they chose to die in the Ukraine, and who can blame them? Their cause was just.
Meanwhile, Russian state media, so trusted by Peter Hitchens et al, are screaming themselves hoarse, shouting ‘On to Kiev!’, ‘On to Kharkov!’, ‘On to Lvov!’, ‘On to Vilnus!’, ‘On to Warsaw!’
Drums rattle, bugles blow, Putin’s approval ratings hold fast. Let’s just hope that the little man with the Napoleon complex doesn’t decide that the only way to keep his ratings is to act on his henchmen’s slogans.