Odesa. The bottom line. That is, without emotions:

214 people sought medical assistance–213 adults and 1 child.
88 have been hospitalized. 27 of these are in grave condition.
2 people died in hospital of bullet wounds and burns.

42 people died.

130 were detained. 10 criminal cases were initiated–Article 294 (mass riots), Article 115 (willful homicide), Article 345 (threats or violence against law enforcement officer), Article 296 (hooliganism), Article 341 (seizing administrative buildings), Article 194 (willful destruction or damage of property).

Odesa Oblast [regional] Police Chief Pyotr Lyutsuk was fired.

Vice-Prime Minister Yarema, presidential candidates Tymoshenko and Poroshenko and Kyiv mayoral candidate Klitschko are in the city.

The wounded are in several different hospitals. They have all they need, they’ll enjoy attention for several days. It’s vital to understand what will happen to them afterwards.

Kulikovo Pole is surrounded by police. Investigative teams are working there. People gather there as well. There are many elderly and aggressive women. Ukraine’s flag was ripped down and burned.

Many people willing to donate blood came to blood transfusion stations.

Thanks everyone for your compassion and support! Thanks everyone who arrived here at night from different parts of Ukraine. Thanks everyone for writing and offering help.

It wasn’t us who started this war here.

Vladimir Golyshev
03/05/2014 at 07:19
Translated and edited by Voices of Ukraine.
Source: Vladimir Golyshev FB

ODESA TRAGEDY (memory knots)

It could be seen live.
In full. Without cuts and edits.
And post factum–watch a giant array of footage from different video angles.
Seemingly, what could be obscure there, if one has eyes and a wish to sort it out?
But no! Not bloody likely!

The tale was more interesting.
Mythmaking and necrophiliac improvisations are more interesting than rough facts.

What ravings have I not read in FB within the last hours!..
Well, here I will say those things which were documented and confirmed by ALL the eyewitnesses a hundred thousand times, so you do not have to waste time.
You may want to take them into consideration, or you may not…

1. Ultras of “Chornomorets” are from Odesa.
The Odesa EuroMaidan Self-Defense–as well.

The rest of the people who were at Grecheskaya [Street] at that moment were townspeople gathered to listen to a live fan-made, Ultras hit, whose name we all know perfectly well.

[see link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApNCSQpYxAc]

By the way, such Odessite music fans out there, there were many more singers than volunteer bodyguards with plywood shields.

The only non-residents were Eastern Ultras from Kharkiv.
The only people who were in any way ready to clash were a handful of Self-Defence guys. (Of course! Because they had plywood shields! A lethal weapon)!

That the opponents from Kulikovo Pole [Field] were planning something bad has long been known. But residents of Odesa, accustomed to the fact that Odesa is not Kharkiv, or especially not Donetsk, did not attach any significance to this threat. Anyway, they hadn’t prepared anything but for the handful of Self-Defense guys accustomed to clashes with “Kulikovo people.”

The conclusion is that they planned a passage to the stadium singing the song. Nothing more.

2. Everything was simple at the beginning.
Having seen the opponents, the handful of Self-Defense guys moved forward to cover an impressive crowd of well-dressed citizens and guests from Kharkiv. And then all hell broke loose, for which no one was prepared. This hell was opened by a compact group of saboteurs acting under cover of the cops.

This is reflected well in this video, for example.

Both assailants and cops have similar identification marks on their hands–strips of red adhesive tape. The cops’ chain parts upon command. Cops are giving their shields to assailants… All in all, you can watch by yourselves.

Or rather: find and read the evidences of eye-witnesses stunned by the events. They have all told about the stones, about the shooting, etc. Many, many times. In every detail.

Here’s another good video (people are trying to get the cops to pay attention to the first killed).

Here, in general, no comments are necessary at all…
The conclusion is that there is an obviously mutual, joint performance between mysterious subversives (there is a photo on the net with a minivan with Donetsk plate numbers, on which a part of them came) and local cops–a blueprint of the events in Kharkiv and Donetsk. Nothing new.

The new thing was the behaviour of the well-dressed crowd which came to listen to the Ultras hit.

3. Just look at the photos where near-teenage girls together with pensioners are carrying stones. Look at those infernal “radicals” (in glasses and with iPhones) ripped from the hands of cops dumbfounded by the audacity, from a well-read “polite individual” in full gear, pushed against the wall. And snatched away! And they tore off his balaclava…

Aimed shooting from firearms was intended to disperse the crowd. I remember my own feelings in October 1993 very well. When you hear the whistle of bullets, the last thing you want is to go in the direction from which they came (I don’t even take stun grenades, firecrackers and batons into consideration).
Who do you have to be to shove forward into the place where the death is distributed–as in the February Kyiv or May in Odesa? How can such a madness ever be planned beforehand?

The conclusion is that people didn’t run away, but instead drove the shooters into the Athena–it was a program crash. This was written on the fat mugs of cops in huge letters.

4. A trip to Kulikovo Pole [Field] was in fact a natural reaction. Same as spoiling the visual campaign of [Presidential candidate] Dobkin on the way.
This video shows how they appeared at Kulikovo Pole.

Guys, girls, sedate punchy men, some kids on bikes. Scattered all over the square like cockroaches. Later, when the first tents were set on fire, they suddenly recoiled from the House of Trade Unions. Why? The shooting began – out of windows and from the roof. The “opponents” appeared to consolidate a position there.

Reasoning from the crowd’s behavior, they believed that people who had left the camp just fled. Nobody thought they would settle down into the House of Trade Unions and, all the more so, that they would start shooting.

(A few hours later another camp was destroyed–in the territory of the 411th  memorial battery. There was no one hurt. Because the pro-Russian activists from that camp didn’t barricade anything and didn’t shoot anybody–they just left.)
How many people locked themselves into the House of Trade Unions?

There are official statistics:
210 people left the building on their own afterwards.
120 were evacuated during the fire (with the active participation of the people gathered at the field!).
50 were left on the roof.
The day ended tragically only for those who committed mistakes typical of all fire victims: in a panic began to jump from a height and thoughtlessly ran anywhere far from the flame.

As a result, 8 people died after jumping from the building while trying to escape the fire, 30 were poisoned by combustible products.

5. Who set the House of Trade Unions on fire?

If you carefully watch the recording, it is obvious that both sides have tried here. There are at least two cases (on high floors), when the ignition source was obviously inside the building. At the same time it is clearly seen how Molotov cocktails are flying from outside. (Judging by the power of the flames at the entrance–they were mainly tossed there).

Two circumstances have played a fateful role: obviously, “hermits” were obviously poorly oriented in the building, while they blocked up the entrance with furniture and couldn’t dismantle the barricade quickly.

Plus two more factors: they were afraid to panic the people outside (which they fired at–so taking justice into their own hands was very likely) and they were afraid of the flame, as are all fire victims.
Those who kept cool survived.
But the percentage of those who panic is more or less the same. And here there were some additional stress circumstances…

6. The fire, as we see it, arose spontaneously.
At least, for the outside, this is certain.
Imagine: you are being fired at. You have already had the dubious pleasure of seeing the dead and wounded. A Molotov cocktail is in your hands.

What will you do?

Will you spend half an hour analyzing the consequences thoroughly (“what if they have a barricade inside the doors?,” “what if they do something with themsleves out of fear?,” etc.)?

Or you will just toss it?

Rethorical question, isn’t it?
And whose fault is it that the “cocktail” flew into the building:
the one who threw it or the one who fired at the thrower?

And this is not even counting that there were at least two hotbeds of fire inside the building! One can be doubtful towards them.

I don’t know about you, but I see two options:
–Negligence Nervosa: owing to a nervious condition (dropped a bottle, set a curtain on fire, lit a fuse but didn’t manage to open a window, etc.);
–Malice of those who prudently climbed the roof (50 such people).

As for the outside–everything is clear.
Outside there was a sea of cameras and a motley crowd of every kind of person.
But we can only guess what was going on inside behind the walls.
Another thing–the behavior of the people below, when the fire flared up.
This is not a joke and not an overstatement–indeed, they have been saving people (climbing ladders to them instead of firemen, administered first medical aid, etc.). All this is on video.

And all this despite the fact that firing from the roof being continued!..
If I pay attention to this fact it’s not on lyrical-romantic grounds.
I just want to warn you against a mortal sin–to slander the innocent.
People who were poisoned by combustion products or jumped from the higher floors are the victims of fatal coincidence (I have listed these circumstances above), but not of the evil intention of those who were outside.
And those “hermits” who were shooting are full co-authors of this “coincidence.”
And to my mind, here we have grounds for some reasonable doubts. At least, I have them.

7. They don’t match well: traditional inhabitants of Kulikovo Pole (with their verbose “credo,” they are ready to yell about it with or without megaphones hourly) and sharp as “pop up” and technological like sewing machine vampires with firearms, who made all this bloody-fiery mess.
There is an impression that pro-Russian Odesa people were cynically used, not even as “a live shield,” but as “cannon fodder” by some absolutely non-Odesa ruthless power.
Guest performers.

It’s them who arranged the shooting at Grecheskaya Street, turning it into “Odesa’s version of Instytutska Street.”
It was they who, to all appearances, technically climbed to the roof (maybe by setting a couple of rooms on fire–to be on the safe side).
Anyhow, the main people in this story are those 50 “Carlsons.”
Unfortunately, there is a very high possibility that cop-betrayers (with red tape on paws) have already attached propellers to those “Carlsons”.
And they have happily flown away.
But promised to be back.

P.S. A correspondent of “Radio Svoboda” finishes his Odesa reportage this way:
“…By the way, today city residents have told me that Odessa brokers earnestly ask: «Who are you renting an apartment for? For spies?» I’ve been assured that all the rented apartments, all the sanatoriums of Odesa are flooded with men from Russia who live quietly in the rooms, one or two of them in each. Biding their time. Who knows–if their hour struck today, or was it only the beginning.”