The one who is outrageously and tendentiously displaying the Odessa massacre is you. As anyone can see on the video evidence.

1. Before any clashes even started Ukrainian nationalists can be seen saying to the head of police “If you don’t clean up the separatists we will”.
2. There is no evidence that those doing the shooting in the beginning were separatists, in fact the evidence suggests they were provocateurs, as can be seen by them discussing and mingling with both police and Ukrainian nationalists.
3. The nationalists didn’t follow anyone to Kulikovo. The shooters disappeared behind police lines, and at least one is seen leaving together with the head of police surrounded by friendly Ukrainian nationalists.
4. Most of the people present at Kulikovo were peaceful protesters who were in no way involved in the earlier clashes.
5. As the nationalists were approaching Kulikovo (not following anyone) they can be heard calling for “burning them”. This clearly establishes intent.
6. Both sides threw molotov cocktails but as can be clearly seen several fires were started by the nationalists throwing them, compare this with the point above.
7. The nationalists can be seen entering the building through a side-entrance under calls for “killing the Russians and communists”. Inside they can be seen forcing entry into rooms and dragging away at least one woman who is pleading for them not to do this.
8. People can be heard screaming inside for their lives, in sections that weren’t on fire, where after the voice was silenced Ukrainian nationalists can be seen waving the Ukrainian flag from the windows. All this under calls of “Glory to Ukraine! Death to the enemies!” from some in the crowd outside.
9. Nationalists can be seen blockading firetrucks from reaching the scene.
10. While it is true that many people in the crowd started helping those caught inside, in other sections of the building a clear massacre was taking.

So to sum up, there was a clear hardline core of Ukrainian nationalists who with established intent were indeed carrying out a massacre and using the actions of provocateurs as an excuse to do it. That many in the crowd tried to help the people inside in no way changes that. Look up “Roses have thorns (Part 6) The Odessa massacre” on youtube for the video evidence of this.

*which then prevented their escape.

Polling data is interesting but it doesn’t matter because the real test of the influence and power of these far-right groups is whether they are elected. And they weren’t.

None of the ultranationalist parties like Right Sector and Svaboda cleared the 5% threshold to get in the parliament. A grand total of 8 seats out of 450 have been taken by Right Sector or Svaboda through single-mandate elections in districts. There is no evidence that they can sway the parliament. The naming of a right-winger to the chief of police job isn’t something that anyone has been able to show has led to abuses or allowing cronies to escape prosecution. Happy to hear the cases when they are actually available.

As for the Odessa fire, this is outrageously and tendentiously portrayed, forgetting the basic facts visible to all on numerous videos:

1. The Russian-backed separatists fired at and killed Ukrainian demonstrators FIRST.
2. Those Ukrainian nationalists chased the separatists to the Trade Union building.
3. The Russian separatists had already planned to occupy and hold the building and brought supplies, first aid kits and fuel into the building.
4. Some of their leaders had already moved to a new location, knowing they would be attacked.
5. Both sides threw Molotov cocktails which started fires.
6. The separatists fired guns from the top of the building, killing some below.
7. The separatists barricaded themselves into the building by piling up office furniture which the
8. For a long period as is visible in multiple videos, anyone in the building could have left. They chose not to because they wanted to occupy and hold it.
9. Nationalists helped separatists out of the building and assisted them once they were out; the occurrences of some beatings by nationalists can’t offset the actual footage seen and testimony of neutral or separatist witnesses that indeed nationalists did help.
10. Those who died tended to be teenagers or elderly who didn’t leave and moved up stairs, which led to their deaths by the gases formed by such conflagrations as well as flames.

To call this a “pogrom” when Russian separatists STARTED this round of violence by shooting DEAD demonstrators, then BARRICADED THEMSELVES into a building is really to STRETCH the meaning of the word “pogrom”. It is a tragedy. Both sides used violence. The fault for this starts first with Putin, then goes on down to the separatists who used violence to take over buildings all over the southeast, hundreds of them.

When the Right Sector people speak of how they repelled the separatists, they mean they did not let them take over YET ANOTHER town as they already had.

As for Mariupol, this is another tendentious story that lots of video analysis done by me and Bellingcat illustrates is false.

Separatists tried to take over the police station as they had in other towns. They were repelled which is the right of Ukrainian forces when dealing with Russian-backed militants trying to occupy their towns. Ukrainians were rightly defending their territory, and if people were killed in this incident it’s a tragedy, but then, separatists shouldn’t have been taking buildings over by force to solve their “language” issues *cough*.

In the second incident by the cafe, it’s clear that provocateurs popped up in the crowd and shot bullets and slingshots at police, who fired back on the ground — some ricochet bullets killed pedestrians.

#RussiainvadedUkraine.

1. USA and Europe support Ukrainian Neo-Fascists. Should had stay away from that garbage.

2. While I agree that a number of Russian ultra-nationalists is fighting on a rebel side, it’s only Ukrainian nazis who openly wear fascist marks and carry flags with fascists symbols. They also talking about pure white race etc.

3. Comparison of active ukrainian fascists with Pavel Gubarev, the “People’s Governor” of Donetsk, is completely unfair. Ones upon a time, at the age of 19, he indeed joined a russian ultra-nationalist group “Russian National Unity” and received a military training. He left them soon after and returned to Donbass, where he was a member of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine.

4. Neo-fascist parties “Right Sector” and “Svoboda” indeed don’t have a popular support among ukraine’s population, but they grabbed 5 out of 20 cabinet seats after they seized the power. This is why what happened in Kiev was a coup, and their government is a junta.

Update: A new poll came out about parliamentary elections. Poroshenko and Klitschko’s UDAR are now in one group. We see that Lyashko continues to slip downward:

Of those planning to vote and who know whom they will vote for:

39.5% for Poroshenko’s Party
10.4% Lyashko
7.8% Fatherland (Tymoshenko)
6.9% Civic Platform (moderate pro-NATO, led by former defense minister)
5.8% National Front (Yatseniuk)
5.2% Strong Ukraine (Tyhypko) – the sole “pro-Russian” party that will clear the 5% hurdle to make it into parliament

These parties poll below 5% and thus wouldn’t make it into parliament:

Svoboda (4.7%)
Communists (4.5%)
UDAR (even though it’s not officially running – confused fans?) 4.3%

So it looks as if it will be a moderate west-oriented parliament dominated by Poroshenko’s Party, with a relatively weak far right opposition and a marginal pro-Russian “second” opposition.

An important note: 40% of Kharkiv voters would refuse to take part and another 5% would vote but would cross out all the parties. One can safely say that these are disenfranchised pro-Russian voters. (the percentage of people voting for pro-Western parties in Kharkiv is projected at 27% – actually a modest improvement over their typical low-20s% performance there).

In southern Ukraine (Dniprotetrovsk, Odessa) these figures are only 24% and 2%, respectively. Given the strong lead of pro-Western parties in this region, it seems clear that even when taking into account those who will refuse to vote, this part of the once-Blue Ukraine has flipped.

The author is correct to condemn the ugly neo-fascist element within the post-revolutionary Ukrainian government and forces (although he fails to acknowledge that the opposing side is even more compromised with neo-Nazi elements – Pavel Gubarev, the “People’s Governor” of Donetsk, is himself a former leader of the swastika-sporting neo-Nazi Russian National Unity organization and has more stature within the rebel movement than any of the neo-Nazis has within the pro-Kiev forces). Without at least briefly mentioning this context, an unwitting reader would get the false impression that from the perspective of neo-fascists this is a one-sided conflict, pro-Kiev fascists vs. clean resistance.

He correctly notes that far-right fighters spearheaded the violent street fights that led to Yanukovich’s fall. These young hotheads were most likely to brave police batons and bullets, although they were not the only ones battling police. However, he does not mention that nationwide polls showed a plurality of support for the revolution (40.1%, in comparison to only 23.3% supporting the Yanukovich government – with 31.9% supporting neither side).

He also does not mention that the parties that came to power as a result of the revolution were exactly the same ones who had won the popular vote in the previous two parliamentary elections, but were denied control of parliament due to “reforms” created by and for Yanukovich and his party. The leaders of these parties were each polling well ahead of Yanukovoch also. Fear of Yanukovich subverting the next presidential elections as he had the parliamentary ones was a driving force behind this revolution; indeed his parliament had already passed a law preventing the frontrunner at the time from running. When asked why people were protesting, the top reason given by people form western and central Ukraine, the pro-protest regions, was to oust Yanukovich’s corrupt government.

The author correctly notes that the radical rightwing Svoboda Party received 5 ministerial posts. But he didn’t mention that at the time of this article’s publication this was down to three posts (out of 20) – a number lower than Svoboda’a percentage of the parliament and that Svoboda’s popularity was declining.

The author provides poll data from June giving the Radical Party 23.1% of the vote. However another poll September 3rd by the same polling agency shows rather different results (perhaps the author wrote this prior to the new results being made available). In that poll, 28.5% of decided voters would choose Poroshenko’s Party, 16.5% Lyashko’s Radical Party, 10% would vote for Batkivshchnya, 9.2% Civil Position (a moderate but pro-NATO party led by a former defense minister), 7.2% UDAR (allied to Poroshenko), and 6.9% Svoboda. 4.7% would vote for Tyhypko’s Strong Ukraine, 3.9% for the Communists, 2.2% for Party of Regions, and 1.8% for Right Sector. The latter parties would not clear the 5% hurdle to get into Parliament. Excluding those parties, the Far Right would have 23.4% of the Parliamentary vote and would be quite easily outnumbered by the moderates. So there would be a moderate President, a moderate Parliament, and a far right opposition.

For comparative purposes, the far right in Ukraine would be about as popular as Zhirnovsky had been in Russia in the early 1990s, and less popular than the National Front in the latest European parliamentary elections in France.