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Did Putin Plan the Odessa Massacre?
National Review Online ^ | May 13, 2014 | Robert Zubrin

Posted on 05/13/2014 11:02:27 AM PDT by AU72

In 1943, having murdered most of the Jewish population of the occupied portions of the Soviet Union, the Nazis launched a campaign to exterminate the Slavs as well. As part of this effort, Nazi SS units under the command of Himmler protégé Jochem Peiper (who later achieved infamy in the West as well for his massacre of captured GIs at Malmedy during the Battle of the Bulge) systematically rounded up Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarussian villagers, herded them into their churches, blocked the doors, and set them ablaze. Over a thousand such massacres were perpetrated, and the memory of these horrific crimes is deeply seared into the Russian psyche.

So it was easily predictable, when a similar scene was enacted in Odessa on May 2, with 42 pro-Russian activists burned to death or killed by smoke inhalation while trapped in the city’s Trade Union building, that ferocious rage and demands for revenge should break out in every part of Russia and every ethnic-Russian community in Ukraine. Indeed, in eliminating dissent and unifying Putin’s subjects into a mad herd behind his plans for war and fascism, the massacre could hardly have better served his aims and objectives if the former spymaster had planned it himself.

So the question is, did he?

To a person whose knowledge is limited to the Western political universe, the idea that Putin, or his FSB, might have knowingly arranged for the massacre of 42 Russians to gain political advantage might seem fantastical, like the conspiracy theories that blame FDR for setting up the Pacific Fleet to be sunk at Pearl Harbor or George Bush for plotting with the FBI to ensure the success of the 9/11 attack. But the FSB is nothing like a Western military-intelligence or police agency. The FSB does not exist to protect Russians. It exists to oppress them. Within the past century, the FSB and its prior incarnations under other initials (KGB, MVD, NKVD, GPU, OGPU) have murdered millions of Russians and other Soviet citizens, including many of the country’s most talented people, and particularly those most critically necessary for its actual national defense. Far from being unknown, exceptional, or even occasional, terror (along with lies, disinformation, hate campaigns, frame-ups, murder, mass murder, and genocide) has been the standard operating procedure of the FSB and its predecessors since 1917.

Furthermore, as far as Putin himself is concerned, the dictator’s willingness to employ FSB operatives in covert operations involving the murder of not dozens but hundreds of Russians to achieve political manipulation has already been demonstrated. Specifically, in 1999, when he had just stepped down as the head of the FSB and become prime minister, Putin murdered over 300 Russians by having the FSB explode a series of bombs in apartment buildings in Moscow in order to justify a new war in Chechnya and seize dictatorial powers. All known evidence indicates that the FSB was responsible for those bombings, because they stopped only when local Russian cops on the beat caught FSB agents red-handed in the act of planting explosives for the next “terrorist” attack.

Those who exposed these crimes internationally, including former FSB operative Aleksandr Litvinenko, Putin had murdered, using polonium — a radioactive element that is not commercially available except in minute quantities for scientific uses — as the poison, so that everyone would know who did it, and accordingly fear his FSB for its unlimited capacity to commit evil.

So there is no question that Putin had the motive, capability, and character to arrange for the Odessa massacre. Furthermore, he is the only one of the potential suspects to have, in addition to those characteristics, a history of prior comparable acts. The method and timing of the slaughter — coming a week before Victory Day, thereby maximizing its resonance with World War II memories — fit his needs with unique perfection, and, since then, he has been openly exploiting it for all it is worth. In combination, these facts would be enough to make Putin the prime suspect in any police investigation of the mass murder. But the evidence of premeditated culpability goes further.

Specifically, on March 9 — that is, before the March 15 Crimea referendum and subsequent annexation, and well before the early-April initiation of attacks on government buildings in Donetsk and other parts of eastern Ukraine — top Kremlin fascist ideologue and geopolitical strategist Aleksandr Dugin published the entire plan for the currently unfolding “Scenario Russian Spring” on his Russian-language Facebook page. This scenario, whose name “Russian Spring” has become a slogan carried on banners in many of the demonstrations by the Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, lays out a plan for creating havoc resulting in a civil war in Ukraine and consolidation of totalitarian dictatorship in Russia. In Dugin’s scenario, this would be followed by a Russian invasion of Ukraine, with further operations leading to complete Russian domination of Europe and the subsequent creation of a Moscow-centered Eurasian Union stretching “from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”

A key section reads as follows:

3. . . . In Russia itself, the regime evolves, and starts to clean out the fifth column.

4. In Novorossia [the Kremlin’s revived tsarist term for a large region of eastern and southern Ukraine], resistance increases and gradually moves to the phase of direct rebellion against the Kiev henchmen. There is a bloody civil war. Russia deploys massive effective support structure; symmetrically, the West supports Kiev. At a certain moment, in response to the sabotage in Russia and bloody actions of the nationalists and the repressive apparatus of Kiev against civilians and the east of Ukraine, Russia sends its troops into the east.

In short, all the violence currently occurring in Ukraine, including but by no means limited to the Odessa massacre, as well as the concurrent crackdown on dissent in Russia (opposition and independent media outlets are being shut down, the Voice of America has been shut down, new laws requiring citizens to spy on each other are being set forth, social media is being restricted, etc.), is clearly part of a preplanned script.

So, that being the case, how could Putin’s stage managers have put the script into effect in Odessa? It’s really rather straightforward.

It was known well in advance that there would be a pro-Ukraine march of football fans in Odessa on May 2. Accordingly, Moscow agents in Odessa put out the call for ethnic Russians to gather and confront the demonstration with one of their own. But they also sent in Russian military operatives from Crimea and Transnistria to take control of the pro-Russia crowd. When the day came, the Ukrainian marchers were about a thousand strong, while the Russians had a group of only about 200. Across Europe, football fans are notorious brawlers, and the Ukrainian marchers included a preponderance of burly young men who could be expected to fight back hard if their demonstration was assaulted. Nevertheless, despite the fact that they were outnumbered five to one, the special-forces officers controlling the pro-Russian mob chose to lead it to attack the Ukrainian parade.

As recent events have shown, the Russian special military operatives are superbly competent. Why would they launch a street fight with such inferior forces? Surely they must have known that they would be beaten into retreat? They surely did.

The street battles between opposing mobs that have been taking place in Ukraine recently bear a close resemblance to pre-modern warfare, in that the fighting is predominantly through direct physical contact and the forces involved are undisciplined. In this kind of combat, when one side retreats, the other virtually inevitably is drawn to follow. It is thus a classic stratagem in such battles for a clever commander to launch an attack with an inferior force in order to have it thrown back, thereby luring the enemy into hot-blooded pursuit, and thus into ambush. This tactic was used, for example, with great success by Hannibal at the battles of the Trebia and Lake Trasimene, and by William the Conqueror at Hastings.

The Kremlin operatives controlling the pro-Russian crowd followed these examples to the point of inciting the Ukrainians into pursuit, but instead of leading the Ukrainians into an ambush, they led their own followers into a trap. And once they had them there, in the Trade Union building surrounded by an angry Ukrainian mob, and someone started to throw Molotov cocktails down from the roof, the horrific outcome was predictable.

Who set off the fire bomb that ignited the fatal blaze? The Ukrainians say it was the Russian partisans on the roof, or on the third floor. The Russians claim the bomb was thrown into the building by someone in the mob outside. At this point it is impossible to sort these claims out, but it doesn’t matter. If the fire bomb came from inside the building, then case closed. If it came from outside, it could have easily have been tossed by an FSB provocateur planted in the crowd, as the employment of bomb-throwing agents for the purpose of discrediting opposition forces has been a standard tactic of Russian secret police since the days of the tsarist Okhrana.

This supposition is strongly supported by the fact that on April 25, seven days before the fire, the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, caught a group of Putinite terrorists led by an operative from Crimea attempting to set fire to an Odessa bank using Molotov cocktails. According to the SBU, the group had actually been commissioned by one of the Russian TV channels to create “footage,” and received financial rewards for each organized incident.

But even if the fatal gasoline bottle was thrown by an actual Ukrainian hooligan not on the FSB payroll, the primary blame must still lie with the Kremlin stage managers. For they are the ones who planned and set up the whole bloody show — and who are exploiting it to the hilt for hate promotion and public manipulation, including by editing out inconvenient photographs that show the Ukrainians trying to rescue those trapped in the burning building.

The Russian people are fighting mad about Odessa. Across the nation, they are displaying slogans that say things like “Odessa: We will not forget. We will not forgive.”

They have a point. Those who invented, planned, and engineered the fractricidal slaughter in Ukraine should be held accountable. Let us hope that the Russians catch on in time, and bring the real fascist conspirators to justice.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events; Russia
KEYWORDS: cabal; globalists; odessa; putin; reichstagfire; soros; ukraine; ukrainecrisis
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To: GeronL

The fact is, nobody has been Stalinist there for a long time. But lets just say they are for the sake of Argument. Would Nazis seem like an improvement to you?


41 posted on 05/13/2014 12:15:49 PM PDT by DesertRhino (I was standing with a rifle, waiting for soviet paratroopers, but communists just ran for office.)
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To: dangus
But let’s talk recent history? Putin disavows the communists far more sternly and aggressively than Obama or even BUSH for that matter.

Putin disavows a immediate return to communism in his budding USSR. He does not disavow Stalin or Lenin, and has actively honored their memory. Nor does he fight communists, but has them in his government, on his TV, and as the recipients of his aid.

42 posted on 05/13/2014 12:18:00 PM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
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To: DesertRhino
Nope, not possible. Because you taught us that thinking that the Kiev Nazis were illegitimate putschsters meant we were only Putin butt kissers.

The problem is that you presuppose that the Ukrainians are Nazis, which is the position of the Kremlin, and therefore make you a Putin butt kisser for taking it uncritically. Opposing Putin and opposing Obama is still a safe bet, even despite what the Putinista trolls bark about.

43 posted on 05/13/2014 12:20:45 PM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
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To: TigersEye

I think the author is referring to the Odessa Massacre from this year on May 2


44 posted on 05/13/2014 12:21:21 PM PDT by surroundedbyblue (Bitter clinger & creepy-ass cracker)
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To: DesertRhino
The Galican SS division disagrees with you. So does Bandera.

Disagree with what? What fact are you disputing? The fact that Ukrainians fought in the red army? There were veterans of the red army in the Maidan, and IDF veterans too.

45 posted on 05/13/2014 12:22:56 PM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
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To: surroundedbyblue

If he is then it’s the most poorly written article I’ve seen in some time.


46 posted on 05/13/2014 12:26:24 PM PDT by TigersEye ("No man left behind" is more than an Army Ranger credo it's the character of America.)
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To: DesertRhino
Then Nuland and Obama dumped 5 billion onto the heads of Ukrainian opposition groups.

Who knew that Nuland and Obama were in the Administration/Congress and spending that money since 1992 until Russia Today reported it?

47 posted on 05/13/2014 12:28:39 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: TigersEye

Really? Here’s paragraph two:

“So it was easily predictable, when a similar scene was enacted in Odessa on May 2, with 42 pro-Russian activists burned to death or killed by smoke inhalation while trapped in the city’s Trade Union building, that ferocious rage and demands for revenge should break out in every part of Russia and every ethnic-Russian community in Ukraine. Indeed, in eliminating dissent and unifying Putin’s subjects into a mad herd behind his plans for war and fascism, the massacre could hardly have better served his aims and objectives if the former spymaster had planned it himself”

Makes sense to me


48 posted on 05/13/2014 12:29:25 PM PDT by surroundedbyblue (Bitter clinger & creepy-ass cracker)
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To: DesertRhino

Nazis and commies are just two sides of the same coin, both are evil


49 posted on 05/13/2014 12:29:33 PM PDT by GeronL (Vote for Conservatives not for Republicans!)
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To: DesertRhino; GeronL

No Stalinists? What about people who think Stalin really wasn’t so bad?

“What’s the real difference between Cromwell and Stalin? None whatsoever,” Putin said at a press conference Thursday.
Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor as much as the late British lord protector, a “cunning fellow” who “played a very ambiguous role in Britain’s history.”
But unlike Cromwell, Stalin has a lack of state-endorsed monuments in his honor, Putin said.
Putin made the comments in response to a question about a Stalin monument possibly being erected in Moscow.
Authorities in the Russian capital recently announced plans to commemorate all Soviet leaders who lived in the city.”
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131219/185734707/Putin-Says-Stalin-No-Worse-Than-Cunning-Oliver-Cromwell.html


50 posted on 05/13/2014 12:30:18 PM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
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To: Greetings_Puny_Humans

Communists are NOT in Putin’s government. Nice try: they’re the main opposition party.

A United Russia (ruling coalition): 238 Duma members
Communists: 92
A Just Russia: 64 (Neo-socialists and state pensioners)
LDPR: 56 (Zhirinovsky)


51 posted on 05/13/2014 12:31:12 PM PDT by dangus
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To: Greetings_Puny_Humans

wow


52 posted on 05/13/2014 12:35:28 PM PDT by GeronL (Vote for Conservatives not for Republicans!)
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To: Ivan Mazepa

Stay well.


53 posted on 05/13/2014 12:40:01 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (Islam offers us three choices: Defeat them utterly, die, or surrender to a life of slavery.)
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To: surroundedbyblue

He begins the article citing the date of 1943 (a year after the well known Odessa Massacre) and makes no mention of the year when he shifts to the present. FYI every year has a May 2nd in it. That’s crappy journalism.


54 posted on 05/13/2014 12:43:44 PM PDT by TigersEye ("No man left behind" is more than an Army Ranger credo it's the character of America.)
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To: dangus
Communists are NOT in Putin’s government. Nice try: they’re the main opposition party.

Notice that you do not dispute the other aspects of my post, which, obviously, make a question as to pubic political affiliation irrelevant. The government is largely run by "former" communist party members and KGB officers, including Putin.

As for the communist party being an "opposition party":

“In the first stages of Zyuganov’s creation of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (not without some participation on my part, as well as Prokhanov…), efforts were made to interpret and conceptually appraise the presence of the national component in the Soviet worldview (National Bolshevism), but this initiative was abandoned by the leadership of the [Communist Party], which had occupied itself with some other matters…. However, on the level of rhetoric and first reactions, Russian Communists in all senses present themselves as confirmed national conservatives – sometimes even as ‘Orthodox Monarchists.’” - Alexander Dugin, The Fourth Political Theory The Russian Orthodox church itself has a patriarch who is a known KGB agent.

What things look like, and what they actually are, is a distinction to learn if you wish to understand Russia.

55 posted on 05/13/2014 12:46:23 PM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
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To: DesertRhino

_Then Nuland and Obama dumped 5 billion onto the heads of Ukrainian opposition groups._

Why are you repeating crude Russian propaganda? Nuland said in her speech that USA had given Ukraine 5 billion aid since 1991. That includes big things like helping to build sarcophagus for Chernobyl nuclear disaster site and happened during the time of Bush H.W, Clinton, Bush W and Obama.


56 posted on 05/13/2014 12:47:34 PM PDT by Krosan
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To: Greetings_Puny_Humans

Putin’s geopolitical allies undeniable include some unsavory folks: Venezuela, Iran, etc. Ours include Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and so forth.

But the far more interesting comparison is that Russia is training Muslims. We’re doing that too, but we’re training Islamofascist extremists bent on destroying Western civilization. We handed Bosnia and Kosovo to the fore-runners of Al Qaeda. We toppled Egypt and Syria. And we’re trying to topple Syria.

Russia borders a BUNCH of Muslim countries, and as already discussed on this thread, has been very severe dealing with Islamic extremists. And they’re very close to Orthodox belivers living in Muslim-majority lands. So what is Russia doing training Muslims? Simple: they’re trying to displace Islamofascism with Christian-tolerant Muslims. Largely. You are correct that they are cozy with Iran, so they certainly have made some ugly bedfellows. But they’re defending Christians in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and elsewhere, while we’re paying people who are trying to exterminate them. And not just Obama: Ryan, Romney, McCain, the whole GOP establishment sides with Obama on this... pretty much everyone who hates Putin. Hmm... isn’t that odd..?

Hats off to Putin for that one!


57 posted on 05/13/2014 12:48:40 PM PDT by dangus
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To: Greetings_Puny_Humans

LOL! This is too funny! Your theory was that the National Bolshevist Dugin was a close buddy of Putin, yet you’re now citing his conspiracy theory that his fellow Bolshevists abandoned him because they’re trying to suck up to the Russian Orthodox Church?

I didn’t attack the subjective portions of your post because they are subjective. I attacked your objective assertion because it was plainly, objectively, ridiculously false, thus impeaching your subjective interpretations.


58 posted on 05/13/2014 12:55:00 PM PDT by dangus
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To: dangus
But the far more interesting comparison is that Russia is training Muslims. We’re doing that too, but we’re training Islamofascist extremists bent on destroying Western civilization.

Keep in mind that you utter this fully cognizant of the fact that Iran is becoming a nuclear power with the help if Russia, which threatens us all. But by definition, there are no pro-western Islamist forces. One of the accusations made by the late Alexander Litvinenko, by the way, was that he was aware of Al-Qaeda's number two being trained at a Russian FSB-military camp. Middle Eastern terrorism itself, by the way, is largely a KGB trained and funded entity, and Putin is part of that same KGB structure.

59 posted on 05/13/2014 12:58:13 PM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
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To: Greetings_Puny_Humans; DesertRhino; GeronL

Putin isn’t exactly praising Cromwell; he’s concurring with Churchill’s assessment that Cromwell was a genocidal, regicidal tyrant but as insanely evil as Cromwell was, he is historically included in the founding of British society.

Spare me any Protestant apologetics about Cromwell; I’m discussing Churchill’s and Putin’s assessment of him.


60 posted on 05/13/2014 12:59:00 PM PDT by dangus
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