The truth behind this incident has yet to be determined, but observers should be extremely cautious in taking anything that the Mainstream Media says as fact. Rather, they should apply a copious amount of skepticism to everything that the US-led West and their Ukrainian proxies claim because the military-strategic dynamics have always decisively been against Kiev so there’s reason to believe that the fascists became desperate enough to do the seemingly unthinkable.

The US-led West and their proxies in Kiev have loudly condemned what they claim was Russia’s attack against the Mariupol maternity and children’s hospital, exploiting this latest event as the pretext for putting even more pressure on the Eurasian Great Power. This includes renewed calls by some for a so-called “no-fly zone” that dangerously risks provoking the Third World War that President Putin narrowly averted through the timely commencement of his special military operation in Ukraine. Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky, meanwhile, tweeted “That’s how Fakenews is born. We warned in our statement back on 7 March that this hospital has been turned into a military object by radicals. Very disturbing that UN spreads this information without verification.”

It remains unclear exactly what happened and who’s to blame, but several possibilities appear to be the most likely. First, it’s unrealistic to believe that Russia would have deliberately attacked the hospital. President Putin was clear in his article last summer “On The Historical Unity Of Russians And Ukrainians” that these are two fraternal people. Russia’s officially reported casualty figures of last week are largely attributable to its principled waging of a clean war whereby all efforts are undertaken to limit civilian casualties and collateral damage. The Russian Armed Forces (RAF) have been put in harm’s way while directly neutralizing those heavy weapons that Kiev’s fascist-nationalist forces irresponsibly deployed in residential areas instead of striking them from afar and risking civilian casualties.

The denazification of Ukrainian society cannot be sustainably accomplished by deliberately attacking civilians and their infrastructure lest the desperate population becomes even more susceptible to fascist narrative suggestions in response. It would therefore be counterproductive for Russia to kill mothers, children, and unborn babies so nobody should pay any credence to the false claims being propagated by the US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) alleging that the RAF just committed such a war crime. The special operation is intended to liberate the country from the fascist yoke that was externally imposed upon it after the US-backed 2014 “EuroMaidan” Color Revolution coup that followed weeks of urban terrorism in that country.

Building upon this insight, it can’t be ruled out at this stage that one of Russia’s precision-guided munitions might have accidentally veered off course since it’s impossible to expect every strike to always perfectly hit its military target. It’s still too early to determine whether that happened, ergo why Polyansky requested verification of the incident, but that possible scenario in any case wouldn’t constitute the so-called “deliberate attack” that the MSM is claiming. Observers should remember that the waging of modern warfare by responsible states like Russia is intended to be as humane as possible, hence the use of precision-guided munitions, but accidents sometimes still happen. Once again, it’s not clear whether that’s what occurred with this incident, but it should still be kept in mind.

The next possibility to consider is that Kiev’s fascist-nationalist forces in Mariupol militarized the facility exactly as Polyansky claimed irrespective of whether or not they first evacuated those who were within it. Skeptics might scoff at this claim but there’s actually some factual substance to back it up. President Putin revealed on 25 February that Kiev was deploying heavy weapons in residential areas for the purpose of “caus[ing] Russian attacks systems to return the fire by firing on residential quarters. Essentially, they act in the same way as terrorists everywhere in the world: they use people as a shield, hoping to later blame Russia for civilian casualties.” According to him, “All these things are happening at the recommendation of foreign consultants, primarily U.S. advisers.”

This immoral strategy of exploiting civilians as human shields continues into the present and is actively being employed in Mariupol according to Russia’s National Defense Management Center on Sunday. They announced that “Ukraine’s authorities used internet resources and television to misinform Mariupol residents about the postponement of the evacuation due to the Russian side’s alleged failure to observe the ceasefire. It is a total lie and betrayal of own people. Notably, Ukrainian troops opened fire at the positions of Russian forces at the time that was agreed for a humanitarian corridor. These provocations make it clear that Kiev authorities are deliberately evading implementation of the agreements and continue their criminal actions using civilians as a human shield.”

The Management Center added that “In Mariupol, neo-Nazis of the territorial defense battalions are again using terrorists’ tactics of combat operations. They use civilians as a human shield and deploy heavy weapons in residential compounds and keep residents inside by force.” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov later confirmed that on that same day, “at about 17:00 Moscow time, forces of the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic] were confronted with a unit of Ukrainian armed nationalists in Victory Avenue in Mariupol. The militants were pushing more than 150 civilians ahead of them, using them as a human shield.” Russia’s Inter-Agency Humanitarian Response Coordination Center also reported that Kiev prevented civilians from accessing the Mariupol humanitarian corridor.

Furthermore, TASS cited Konashenkov’s statement from Monday where he said that “People are hiding in basements. Since there is no electricity and gas in their homes, they have to cook their meals on fire in the street. Militants disperse them. Nationalists open fire on all civilians trying to leave their houses”, including those on which are painted warnings such as “Don’t shoot – children are here!” On Tuesday, Russian National Defense Control Center head Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev revealed that “Official representatives of the Kiev authorities and city mayors received strict orders not to allow even a single attempt to evacuate to the Russian Federation”, including from Mariupol. He also said that “All main decisions (in the country right now) are effectively being made by nationalists and their accomplices.”

These official reports extend credence to Polyansky’s claim that the fascists turned the hospital into a military object, which would be consistent with their exploitative employment of civilians as human shields and the wanton violations of their own citizens’ human rights as was earlier explained. This in turn suggests that Russia might have struck what was genuinely a military facility at the time out of self-defense, though that interpretation of events hasn’t been confirmed. There’s another possibility as well, one that’s admittedly very speculative but also can’t be discounted, and it’s that everything isn’t as it seems, to put it mildly. Before proceeding to that final scenario, it’s important to remind the reader of the US government’s official accusations against Russia in early February.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby claimed at the time that Russia would stage a false flag attack against its own people in order to serve as the pretext for launching a conventional intervention into Ukraine. According to him, “As part of this fake attack, we believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners and images of destroyed locations, as well as military equipment at the hands of Ukraine or the West, even to the point where some of this equipment would be made to look like it was Western supplied … to Ukraine equipment.” Up until that point, it was taboo to publicly talk about false flag attacks, yet none other than the Pentagon normalized such discourse and thus made it acceptable to speculate about.

Considering the newfound legitimacy of false flag discourse in the context of the current conflict, nobody can rule out that Kiev’s fascist forces might have attacked Mariupol’s hospital (whether or not they evacuated it first) in a desperate attempt to implicate Russia for war crimes and also push their dangerous “no-fly zone” proposal. False flags are tactics that no side has an exclusive monopoly on, meaning that any party can potentially stage them if they have the political will and resources. Seeing as how desperate Kiev has become as evidenced by its Foreign Minister’s urgent plea for thousands of foreign mercenaries the other week, there’s a certain logic to speculating that it staged this attack in a similar manner as the Pentagon falsely speculated that Russia would and might even have used actors.

After all, the footage that’s circulating throughout the MSM and purports to be of that incident is indeed “very graphic”, just like Kirby predicted that Russia’s own false flag video would be. The depiction of “mourners” might also be “actors” just like he claimed Russia would solicit for its own ends, albeit this time solicited by Kiev in pursuit of its early explained strategic interests. Whatever might be presented as supposed proof of a “Russian attack” might only “be made to look like it was” even if it wasn’t, once again, exactly like Kirby claimed Russia was plotting albeit this time with Kiev being the one who staged this possible false flag instead. Of course, it’s everyone’s right to regard this speculation as pure nonsense, but they should also condemn Kirby’s similar such speculation in the interests of consistency.

To be absolutely clear, the author isn’t outright alleging that the Mariupol hospital incident was a false flag attack orchestrated by Kiev and its US-led Western patrons, but just that this theory deserves to be countenanced in all fairness since the same folks claiming that Russia was behind it also likely expected that country to stage its own false flag attack early last month according to the Pentagon’s spokesman. One cannot imagine that only a particular party is capable of considering this possibility since it’s nothing more than a tactic that can be employed by anyone with the political will and resources, both of which Kiev has in abundance, especially global media support for propagating its false narrative that it can rely on its Western patrons for.

The truth behind this incident has yet to be determined, but observers should be extremely cautious in taking anything that the MSM says as fact. Rather, they should apply a copious amount of skepticism to everything that the US-led West and their Ukrainian proxies claim because the military-strategic dynamics have always decisively been against Kiev so there’s reason to believe that the fascists became desperate enough to do the seemingly unthinkable. Since it’s unrealistic that Russia would deliberately target civilian infrastructure housing the same people who President Putin considers to be historically united with his own, it’s also possible that it was an accident like earlier explained or that the target was a genuinely military one following the fascists’ occupation of the facility.

Whatever the case may be, and the world might never know for sure since the US-led West has an interest in propagating its unsubstantiated and premature claims that Russia was responsible for a so-called “atrocity”, there’s no doubt that this incident represents a milestone in the infowar against the RAF’s special operation in Ukraine. It’s practically a copy-and-paste of what they claimed Russia was doing in Syria for the past six and a half years, all of which was never backed up with any uncontestable evidence and remained in the realm of provocative speculation propagated for self-interested narrative-strategic ends. The very same is happening right now with the Mariupol hospital incident so everyone should remain alert and not allow themselves to be misled by the MSM’s fake news.By Andrew KorybkoAmerican political analyst

By FOS-SA