2717545 10/10/2015 Russian Su-25 attack aircraft take off from the Khmeimim airbase in Syria. Dmitriy Vinogradov/RIA Novosti
RT NEWS
Russian warplanes have bombed a training camp in Syria where foreign instructors trained potential suicide bombers, the Russian defense ministry said. It was one of 49 terrorist targets hit by the Russian Air Forces over the day.
“Not far from Salma in Latakia province, a Su-24M bomber delivered a strike at a building, which was used as a terrorist training ground. According to intelligence, there were ISIL foreign instructors, who were training people, including suicide bombers, for guerrilla warfare in areas liberated by the Syrian army,” ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said.
He added that the facility had its own explosives workshop, which was also destroyed by an airstrike.
Точечный удар по командному пункту боевиков в пров. Идлиб корректируемой авиабомбой КАБ-500
Russian warplanes conducted 36 combat sorties on Saturday and attacked 49 militant targets in Syria, including command points, weapons workshops, firing positions, depots and fortified bunkers, Konashenkov added.
The general said that the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL), which suffered serious damage from Russian bombings, is working to rebuild its infrastructure.
“The militants’ new tactics is to spread their supply and command facilities, but it does not work. All their new infrastructure objects are being identified and destroyed,” he said.
READ MORE: Russia offers US ‘broader cooperation’ in Syria, but Washington not ready – Defense Ministry
Konashenkov said the civilian population in the areas under terrorist group’s control are aiding the Russian airstrikes by providing intelligence about IS to the Syrian government.
“This information is double-checked by our aviation group with various technical means of reconnaissance. Following this, a decision is made on which objects we should target,” he said.
Точечный удар по бункеру террористов ИГИЛ в провинции Латакия бетонобойными бомбами БЕТАБ-500
Russia is providing air support to Syrian government troops, which are currently undertaking an offensive to retake villages and cities captured by terrorist groups. Moscow says its goal is to stabilize the situation in the country enough to allow political dialogue between Damascus and moderate opposition to start.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). Unruly Hearts will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article.
4th unmarked grave at Savur-Mohyla, a hill east of the city of Donetsk (Reuters / Maxim Shemetov) / Reuters
One more mass grave has been found in a village in eastern Ukraine, say self-defense forces. The site was located days after OSCE mission confirmed the discovery of three mass burial sites in areas recently abandoned by Kiev forces.
The new site of the suspected murders is near Nyzhnia Krynka village, not far from the town of Makeevka, self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Purgin told ITAR-TASS. The number of bodies and their identities have yet to be determined.
Taped hands, gun wounds’: RT witnesses exhumation of mass graves in E. Ukraine
“Another grave discovered … How many bodies and how these people died will be established during the exhumation,” Purgin said.
In the meantime, a group of international experts have already arrived at the area of mass burials in the village, a source from the DPR told RIA Novosti.
“About 10 international observers are currently working at the site of mass graves near the village of Nyzhnia Krynka,” said the source, adding that the group includes experts from Russia and France.
Several weeks ago, before a ceasefire was agreed, this area of Ukraine was under the control of the Ukrainian army and the National Guard’s nazi Aidar battalion. Earlier this month, an Amnesty International report has confirmed that war crimes including abductions, executions and extortion were committed by this particular Ukrainian battalion.
Crimes of Ukrainian Aidar battalion confirmed in Amnesty Int’l report.
Last week RT crew went to investigate the previously discovered site where four bodies have been found buried in shell craters behind a burnt-out coal mine, days after the OSCE confirmed that three mass graves, allegedly with many bodies, have been found near Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
Posted by Ainhoa Aristizabal
Our sincere thanks to Vice news that let us used their photos
It didn’t take long for Russia’s launch of a genocide investigation into Ukraine’s political and military leadership to draw counter-fire from Kiev. Just hours after Moscow’s announcement, the Ukrainian prosecutor-general’s office opened its own inquiry, this time into alleged Russian support for “terrorist and separatist groups”.
The Russian investigation follows a call from Moscow last week for an independent inquiry into alleged mass graves discovered in the area surrounding the village of Nyzhnia Krynka, approximately 20 miles northeast of Donetsk city, from where locals say the pro-Kiev National Guard battalion had recently retreated.
“Died for Putin’s lies” reads the inscription on a makeshift plaque that marks two of the three grave sites at Komunar mine, according to a report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Another sign nearby – written in Russian – lists the date of death as “27/08/2014” alongside the names of four individuals, and in one additional case a simple set of initials.
According to initial statements by rebel leaders, the burial sites discovered on September 23 contained scores of bodies.
Speaking to the Russian News Service, Alexander Zakharchenko, self-declared Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, claimed there were about 40 bodies of civilians, prisoners of war and Ukrainian militia soldiers. Over the weekend, the rebels claimed a fourth grave had been found close by with an unknown number of victims; the report could not be independently identified.
Other pro-Kremlin media outlets have reported as yet unsubstantiated claims by the rebels that amongst the dead were victims with their hands tied behind their back and who had been shot point blank in the head, or beheaded.
Since then, however, the number of confirmed dead has been significantly reduced and there has been no independent verification of the identity of the bodies or the causes of death.
“Around ten bodies have been removed from the site,” a senior official in the rebel defense ministry told VICE News. “There could be many more, but we can’t continue digging until the area has been demined,” he added.
The director of Donetsk morgue, Anatolievich Kalashnikov, told VICE News by telephone that nine bodies had been brought to the morgues in the region from the area of the burial sites.
Four bodies seen at the grave by OSCE representatives on September 24 were in “such an advanced state of decomposition, there was no immediate way to tell how they died or who they were,” Michael Bociurkiw, spokesperson for the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, told VICE News. “There are no forensic experts in our team, and we did not meet with any at the site, but we are happy to facilitate access for any outside experts as we did with MH17,” he added.
Speaking about the claims that some of the bodies were found with their hands bound, the OSCE’s Bociurkiw said he had “nothing further to add on that”.
Announced on Tuesday, Ukraine’s counter-war crime investigation is expected to focus on the detention of Ukrainian military pilot Nadezhda Savchenk – accused by Moscow of killing two Russian journalists in Ukraine.
However, the statement released by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said that other issues will also be examined and accused officials from the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation of “illegal interference” in the work of Ukraine’s law enforcement bodies and armed forces.
“[The interference] is aimed at aiding the terrorist organizations ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ and ‘Luhansk People’s Republic’ in their criminal activities and obstructing the performance of duties by government officials,” it said.
Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have highlighted mounting evidence that both sides in the conflict have violated international laws of war in a host of ways, including indiscriminate use of artillery in populated areas, irregular detention, torture and even executions.
The opening of legal inquiries by both sides in the conflict comes as continued shelling in pockets of the region puts further pressure on a ceasefire agreed in Minsk on September 5.
Despite now being more than three weeks into the supposed peace deal, shelling has not stopped in several flash points across the region including Donetsk airport, Shchastya and Popasna.
On Monday the worst outbreak of fighting in a week left at least 12 dead.
Ukraine Clashes Kill 12 as Donetsk Airport Battles Threaten Fragile Ceasefire. Read more here
Ukrainian army officials said at least nine soldiers were killed and 27 wounded in just one day of clashes, seven of them in a single attack by rebels close to Donetsk airport, which has been the focus of fierce battles as the separatists try to rout Kiev’s forces from their last foothold in the city.
According to city officials, three civilians were also killed and five wounded by shelling overnight Sunday on a residential neighborhood near the aerodrome in the north of Donetsk.
Despite a deal on September 20th to create a buffer zone which saw both sides tentatively agreeing to withdraw heavy artillery from within firing range of one another, the details of the pact were almost immediately contested, with the area around the airport cited as a key bone of contention.
Speaking to journalists on Saturday, Ihor Kolomoysky, the oligarch governor of Dnipropetrovsk who has bankrolled several of the pro-Kiev battalions fighting on the frontline of Ukraine’s anti-terror operation, said that an agreement had been reached with the rebels to abandon the airport in return for a large swathe of territory to the south of Donetsk.
However, military spokesperson Andriy Lysenko later denied the claim saying the airport “was, is and will be under the control of the Ukrainian military.”
Meanwhile, in a move that could spark a backlash in the divided Ukrainian held city of Kharkiv, pro-Kiev demonstrators felled a 66-feet tall statue of Vladimir Lenin late on Sunday evening.
Several monuments to the Soviet era dictator were desecrated and pulled down by protesters during the Maidan revolution in early 2014, but the latest toppling is amongst the first in the country’s east where pro-Russian sentiment is stronger.
Back in April thousands took to the streets for pro-Russian demonstrations in Kharkiv, some of which descended into violent clashes. Now, in a bid to keep the peace the city’s mayor Gennady Kernes, who has managed to straddle the divide between the two warring factions, called the destruction “barbaric” and pledged to rebuild the monument.
In Kiev, however, Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, expressed little sympathy for those who might object to the statue’s toppling. “Lenin? Let him fall down. As long as nobody suffers under his weight,” the minister wrote on his Facebook page. “I ordered the police to protect the people and not the idol.”
Residents of Donetsk, a restive city in eastern Ukraine, have learnt to expect the worst, so the first place they go to look for their loved ones if they disappear is the morgue. After recent shellings, the grim trips are the new reality for the city.
Lyuba, 70, has come to look for her husband, who went to the shop and never returned home. The shop is in the Kievsky district, where the fatal shelling of a school and bus stop took place on Wednesday. The area is just south of the airport which has been seeing an increasing standoff between militias and Kiev troops.
“I told you not to go! Killed… By a bomb…,” Lyuba found her husband, though cannot quite believe he is dead.
“Natasha?” the old woman phones her daughter in tears. “He’s dead. I’m at the morgue.”
Her husband, 76-year-old Nikolay, was among 13 civilians killed in the latest shelling, bringing the total death toll in the region to over 1,400 people.
The number is set to rise, the head of Donetsk’s main morgue Dmitry Kalashnikov told RT.
“Twenty bodies have arrived at the morgue over the past 24 hours. Among them are 11 civilians, who were killed by shell explosions. I find it hard to call this a ceasefire,” he said.
“Last week there were many civilian deaths, and I’m not even counting the soldiers,” Kalashnikov added.
It comes as the self-defense forces fight with the Ukrainian army over the city’s airport, with black smoke coming from the site and the sounds of heavy artillery heard.
As the standoff continues, a Red Cross employee was killed in artillery shelling near the Donetsk office of the organization on Thursday. Russia is calling for a thorough and objective investigation into the matter.
It comes on the backdrop of the ceasefire brokered on September 5 in Minsk. On Friday, the EU said it is concerned that the truce may get breached and called to respect it.
“We are worried that the truce has been breached. We count on the truce to be respected because it is a necessary condition allowing the peace process to move forward, the OSCE and the Red Cross employees to work there,” Soren Liborius, the head of EU information department, said.
As fighting rages around eastern Ukraine despite a tenuous ceasefire agreement between anti-Kiev self-defense forces and the fascist Ukrainian government, bodies continue to pile up in the morgues of Donetsk, with officials reporting at least 20 deaths over the last two days, according to Russian media.
At least 11 civilians were among those killed in the latest round of fighting, Dmitry Kalashnikov, the head of Donetsk’s main morgue, told Russia Today, a news outlet that reports on the
civil war in Ukraine and Russian foreign policy.
“Twenty bodies have arrived at the morgue over the past 24 hours. Among them are 11 civilians, who were killed by shell explosions. I find it hard to call this a ceasefire,” Kalashnikov said. “Last week there were many civilian deaths, and I’m not even counting the soldiers.”
The rising number of civilian fatalities came over the weekend amid reports of heavy fighting between separatists and Ukrainian forces for control over the Donetsk airport. The Ukrainian military confirmed that rebels had launched a fresh offensive to seize Ukraine’s second-largest airport, which is located on the outskirts of the restive city.
It didn’t take long for Russia’s launch of a genocide investigation into Ukraine’s political and military leadership to draw counter-fire from Kiev. Just hours after Moscow’s announcement, the Ukrainian prosecutor-general’s office opened its own inquiry, this time into alleged Russian support for “terrorist and separatist groups”.
The Russian investigation follows a call from Moscow last week for an independent inquiry into alleged mass graves discovered in the area surrounding the village of Nyzhnia Krynka, approximately 20 miles northeast of Donetsk city, from where locals say the pro-Kiev National Guard battalion had recently retreated.
“Died for Putin’s lies” reads the inscription on a makeshift plaque that marks two of the three grave sites at Komunar mine, according to a report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Another sign nearby – written in Russian – lists the date of death as “27/08/2014” alongside the names of four individuals, and in one additional case a simple set of initials.
According to initial statements by rebel leaders, the burial sites discovered on September 23 contained scores of bodies.
Speaking to the Russian News Service, Alexander Zakharchenko, self-declared Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, claimed there were about 40 bodies of civilians, prisoners of war and Ukrainian militia soldiers. Over the weekend, the rebels claimed a fourth grave had been found close by with an unknown number of victims; the report could not be independently identified.
Other pro-Kremlin media outlets have reported as yet unsubstantiated claims by the rebels that amongst the dead were victims with their hands tied behind their back and who had been shot point blank in the head, or beheaded.
Since then, however, the number of confirmed dead has been significantly reduced and there has been no independent verification of the identity of the bodies or the causes of death.
“Around ten bodies have been removed from the site,” a senior official in the rebel defense ministry told VICE News. “There could be many more, but we can’t continue digging until the area has been demined,” he added.
The director of Donetsk morgue, Anatolievich Kalashnikov, told VICE News by telephone that nine bodies had been brought to the morgues in the region from the area of the burial sites.
Four bodies seen at the grave by OSCE representatives on September 24 were in “such an advanced state of decomposition, there was no immediate way to tell how they died or who they were,” Michael Bociurkiw, spokesperson for the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, told VICE News. “There are no forensic experts in our team, and we did not meet with any at the site, but we are happy to facilitate access for any outside experts as we did with MH17,” he added.
Speaking about the claims that some of the bodies were found with their hands bound, the OSCE’s Bociurkiw said he had “nothing further to add on that”.
Announced on Tuesday, Ukraine’s counter-war crime investigation is expected to focus on the detention of Ukrainian military pilot Nadezhda Savchenk – accused by Moscow of killing two Russian journalists in Ukraine.
However, the statement released by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said that other issues will also be examined and accused officials from the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation of “illegal interference” in the work of Ukraine’s law enforcement bodies and armed forces.
“[The interference] is aimed at aiding the terrorist organizations ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ and ‘Luhansk People’s Republic’ in their criminal activities and obstructing the performance of duties by government officials,” it said.
Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have highlighted mounting evidence that both sides in the conflict have violated international laws of war in a host of ways, including indiscriminate use of artillery in populated areas, irregular detention, torture and even executions.
The opening of legal inquiries by both sides in the conflict comes as continued shelling in pockets of the region puts further pressure on a ceasefire agreed in Minsk on September 5.
Despite now being more than three weeks into the supposed peace deal, shelling has not stopped in several flash points across the region including Donetsk airport, Shchastya and Popasna.
On Monday the worst outbreak of fighting in a week left at least 12 dead.
Ukraine Clashes Kill 12 as Donetsk Airport Battles Threaten Fragile Ceasefire. Read more here
Ukrainian army officials said at least nine soldiers were killed and 27 wounded in just one day of clashes, seven of them in a single attack by rebels close to Donetsk airport, which has been the focus of fierce battles as the separatists try to rout Kiev’s forces from their last foothold in the city.
According to city officials, three civilians were also killed and five wounded by shelling overnight Sunday on a residential neighborhood near the aerodrome in the north of Donetsk.
Despite a deal on September 20th to create a buffer zone which saw both sides tentatively agreeing to withdraw heavy artillery from within firing range of one another, the details of the pact were almost immediately contested, with the area around the airport cited as a key bone of contention.
Speaking to journalists on Saturday, Ihor Kolomoysky, the oligarch governor of Dnipropetrovsk who has bankrolled several of the pro-Kiev battalions fighting on the frontline of Ukraine’s anti-terror operation, said that an agreement had been reached with the rebels to abandon the airport in return for a large swathe of territory to the south of Donetsk.
However, military spokesperson Andriy Lysenko later denied the claim saying the airport “was, is and will be under the control of the Ukrainian military.”
Meanwhile, in a move that could spark a backlash in the divided Ukrainian held city of Kharkiv, pro-Kiev demonstrators felled a 66-feet tall statue of Vladimir Lenin late on Sunday evening.
Several monuments to the Soviet era were desecrated and pulled down by protesters during the Maidan revolution in early 2014, but the latest toppling is amongst the first in the country’s east where anti-Kiev ethnic Russians have a pro-Russian sentiment.
Back in April thousands took to the streets for pro-Russian demonstrations in Kharkiv, some of which descended into violent clashes. Now, in a bid to keep the peace the city’s mayor Gennady Kernes, who has managed to straddle the divide between the two warring factions, called the destruction “barbaric” and pledged to rebuild the monument.
In Kiev, however, Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, expressed little sympathy for those who might object to the statue’s toppling. “Lenin? Let him fall down. As long as nobody suffers under his weight,” the minister wrote on his Facebook page. “I ordered the police to protect the people and not the idol.”
About that tragedy on May 2 in Odessa, there has been a lot written, with hundreds of photos and videos posted on the web. I have a few more to add to the overall picture, in the hope that they will help to bring some further understanding to those events.
And I still very much hope that those responsible for the brutal murder of dozens of residents of Odessa will be brought to account and be punished.
As I recall, the march was announced as purely peaceful. But looking at these people I see that the definition of “peace” in the Ukrainian reality has been perverted to quite the opposite meaning. Clubs, weapons, bulletproof vests, shields, Molotov cocktails. . . Is there still an idiot who can believe these people wanted to quietly walk through the streets of Odessa?
Next five pictures: I was surprised how quickly the “peaceful demonstrators” began the work of tearing up paving stones. They worked in teams, steadily, quickly, smoothly. Some with special hooks (Peaceful demonstrators always show up with steel hooks, right?) While some hooked and dragged paving stones, others broke them into pieces, others stacked them on Ukrainian flags, and some brought them up closer for the throwers.
Accidentally happening on the event, a policeman tried to stop the vandalism, but with shouts and foul language they got through to him that he mustn’t stop the “good Samaritans.”
Even some famous faces. An ally of Hurwitz, Yuri Borshchenko, and the younger generation of “patriots” of the SS, Pravy Sektor activist Nikolai Dotsenko.
Here they are separately: Dotsenko
And here Dotsenko. Certainly his pony tail on the head…
Borshenko
Above, and next two pictures: Box full Molotov cocktails already prepared and ready for use. Above, the boxful is escorted by guys wielding pipes and clubs of rebar, with plastic wrap for a handle. It’s only been 20 minutes since the beginning of the demo. All assembled from scratch in so short a time? No of course not. I have seen the box in in someone else’s post, in a photo that accidentally included it, carefully covered with cellophane, and peacefully lying near the wall of the house of Transfiguration, before the riots. Peaceful march, eh?
Here’s the box of Molotovs, close up. Note the rebar club, this one with a cord-wrap for handle.
Young toughs with club, or mallet, or pavingstone. . .
GENOCIDE IN DONBASS 