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NYT Continues To Report ‘Strikes On Civilians’ That Somehow Happen To Hit Military Targets
Just last week the New York Times reported of a Russian strike ‘on civilians’ in Chasiv Yar even as its own reporter at the location acknowledged in a detailed separate report that the apartment complex that was hit was mostly housing military forces.
Yesterday a Russian missile strike hit the town of Vinnytsia in western Ukraine.
The New York Times is again lamenting about a damage to civilian buildings even as the main target was obviously a military one.
Strikes on Civilians Deep in Ukraine Show Russia’s Lethal Reach
VINNYTSIA, Ukraine — A volley of missiles hit a shopping center, a dance studio and a wedding hall in central Ukraine on Thursday, killing at least 23 people and setting off a frantic search for dozens more missing in the rubble, in the latest strike to hit civilian targets far from the front line.
Seventy-one people, including three children, were hospitalized after three missiles hit the center of Vinnytsia, a typically sleepy provincial capital, leaving behind a harrowing scene of smoking ruins.
The attack used cruise missiles fired by a Russian submarine in the Black Sea, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said. It said three children were among those killed in the strike on Vinnytsia, about 240 miles inland from the coast.
“Every day, Russia destroys the civilian population, kills Ukrainian children, directs rockets at civilian objects,” Mr. Zelensky said. “What is this, if not an open act of terrorism?”
The Times leads its write up with this picture.
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There is a distinctive monument in the picture of a fighter jet flying through some ring and a neoclassic building behind it.
Here is a satellite picture of the area.
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The photographer who took the NYT picture was standing near the top left of the satellite picture and took the photograph towards the mid bottom of the satellite picture. The fighter jet installations that was photographed is marked by Google as ‘Monument in Honor of the Air Force of Ukraine’. The neoclassic building is the U-shaped one on the left marked as the ‘House of Officer’s’.
The NYT even mentions the ‘House of Officers’ but only describes it as a ‘potential target’ and only in the sixth paragraph:
The missiles hit a military officers’ club, a potential target, though one in a densely built-up central neighborhood of the city.
However video taken shortly after the strike shows that The ‘House of Officers’ was completely destroyed and thereby obviously the main target of the attack.
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The video the above picture is clipped from was taken from a car driving on the bottom left road visible in the satellite picture towards the center of it.
While the House of Officers external walls are still standing the roof is gone and one can see through the building.
Here is another picture of it.
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A civilian high rise building that the NYT also pictured is visible on the top of the satellite image labeled ‘Kredo Bank’.
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The building shows no damage from a direct hit by a missile. It had its windows blown out by the shockwave of the explosion at the nearby House of Officers and it is blackened from a fire that had been burning in its lower left part. Here is a video with an overview of the plaza showing the damaged House of Officers and the fire with very dark smoke at the high rise north of it. Here is another one showing the fire. It was reported that 50 cars on a parking lot had also burned there. The shopping center, a dance studio and wedding hall that the NYT laments in its opening paragraph were likely all in the 1st floor of the high rise building. They were not targeted.
Air defense weapons were also fired. They might have caused additional damage:
Ukraine’s national police said three missiles hit an office building and damaged nearby residential buildings in Vinnytsia, which is about 167 miles southwest of the capital, Kyiv.
The missile strike ignited a fire that expanded to engulf 50 cars in an adjacent parking lot. The governor of the Vinnytsia region, Serhiy Borzov, said Ukrainian air defense systems shot down another four missiles over the area.
The ‘office building’ that the Ukraine’s national police claims was hit was in fact the ‘House of Officers’ owned by the Ukrainian military.
There were also an unusual number of people in military clothing helping with the casualties.
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The Times continues to play a shell game when it claims hits ‘on civilians’ even as the targets are clearly military ones:
The strike came amid other recent attacks on populated civilian areas.
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And in the eastern village of Chasiv Yar, in Donetsk, the State Emergency Service said the death toll from a strike on an apartment complex over the weekend had risen to 48, making it one of the deadliest attacks since the war began.
More deadly attacks are happening every day at the front line where Russia artillery takes out any larger grouping of Ukraine’s military.
As for the dead in Chasiv Yar here is again what the Times Carlotta Gall reported from that location:
[A resident of Chasiv Yar village, Oleksandr, 31,] said that about 10 civilians, mostly women on pensions, were living in the building at the time of the strike, but that members of the military had come to lodge there two days earlier.
A Russian strike hit the apartment building. Only 10 civilians were living there, but at least 48 people have died in the strike. 38 of the dead must thus have been ‘members of the military’ who were lodging there. That they did so made the apartment complex a legitimate military target.
Now let’s see what the Russian military claims to have hit in Vinnytsia:
On July 13, Kalibr high-precision sea-based missiles were launched at the House of Officers of the garrison in Vinnitsa.
The facility hosted a conference of the Ukrainian Armed Force command with representatives of foreign armament suppliers aimed at discussing the issues on sending another batch of aircraft, destruction means, as well as on organising the reparation of Ukrainian aircraft.
The attack has resulted in the elimination of the conference participants.
On July 14, shortly after news of the strike in Vinnytsia had come out, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine issued a new Security Alert – Missile Threat Awareness for U.S. citizens:
Avoid large gatherings and organized events as they may serve as Russian military targets anywhere in Ukraine, including its western regions.
Well, what gave them the idea to say that?
@Browser | Jul 16 2022 7:07 utc | 267
“Thank you for your report from Portugal. I always wonder what do Portuguese think of Brazil? The Brazil government seems not to buy the propaganda, nor does the opposition.
Surely a government of 200 million fraternal people taking a different decision, ought to sow some doubts in the MSM view.”
Portuguese MSM just can’t handle Bolsonaro nor Lula right now. One because he’s a fascist and recently talked against sanctions, the other because he tried to explain the Europeans that USA/NATO were to blame for the provocation of this proxy ear in Ukraine.
The people are by far leaning towards Lula. We have a terrible opinion about Bolsonaro supporters since day one of his campaign for Presidency.
But as a typical Western MSM, the Portugurse MSM is very self centered in the West and Atlanticist. A hurricane might kill people in Americas and that doesn’t even show up on the news, but if there’s a bit more rain in USA that’s immediately big news.
It’s ridiculous.
There was close to zero coverage of Bolivian coup and of that one year of popular uprising that recovered Democracy.
There’s ZERO coverage of current Turkey invasion/war on Kusdistan, but Ukraine’s conflict is portrayed as the only one.
Actually, some idiots even go as far as criticizing those thay talk about the other wars/conflicst currently taking place.
I’m ashamed of this MSM and this “elite”.
I know a bit more (than the average portuguese) because I follow non-Western and non-mainstream media. Ex: TeleSur, even though it’s very Left leaning, has a “Latitud Brazil” where even pro-Lula comentators explained Bolsonaro’s position (pro-BRICS, so of course good relations with Russia) is the right move for Brazil, because Russia is Brazil’s ally in the fight for sovereignty of the Non-Western world.
@Lbanu | Jul 16 2022 5:44 utc | 262
“What exactly have Finland and Sweden have to do with the Kurdish situation?
What Kurdish situation and where?”
Finland and Sweden basically just traded their NATO membership by the violation of Kurds’ human rights. From now on, Finland and Sweden are effectively supporting the current military operation of Turkey against Syrian Kurds, in invaded territory of Syria, in the are that Kurd YPG/SDF liberated from ISIS.
A Kurd member of Swedish parliament event went as far as saying she is now ashamed of Sweden, the country she thought was also her home. Bit now is just another prison for Kurds that oppose Erdogan…
And all this was justified by the war in Ukraine. As if Turkey (NATO) invading Northern Syria and killing Kurds would solve the Ukrainian proxy war and improve defense/security in the Nordic countries.
This is all ridiculous, and my respect for Sweden/Finland droped to zero. They should have NEVER obeyed to Erdogan, Turkey’s dictator (since many of the oppositors are in prison, and an ethnic minority is being attacked).
And this is already a NATO padron: Ukraine was also motivated to purge ethnical minorities (Donbass people, russian speakers, ethnic russians, roma, etc) in order to fulfill RAND’ plan to over-expand Russia, in exchange for the NATO membership.
A membership that we now know was just bait. USA just wanted the proxy war to start. They never for a single second thought about Ukraine’s security.
We’ve seen this in Syria too. USA used the Kurds, and even Al-Qaeda, just to try to overthrow Assad, by dividing the country in two entities, one with cereals and oil, and the other part (under Assad control) suffering with sanctions.
Then, when Kurds served their purpose, USA (and now also Sweden and Finland) stepped aside and let Turkey invade and kill Kurds.
It’s the Donbass conflict all over again. You see the padron? USA+Europe never tried to seriously solve that civil war. They celebrated +14 thousand dead people in Donbass just to provoke Russia as much as possible.
And now that Ukraibe lost, and keeps losing every day (territory and people), USA/NATO are already preparing to abandon them.
And it will be like Afghanistan: get out of one war to get on the next a few months later.
So by the time USA/NATO abandons Ukraine for good, it will be a matter of months until the next escalation in Middle East, “color revolution” in an SCO or EAEU country, or even the start of the Taiwan proxy war.
Because the MIC’s oligarchy needs a steady flow of profits. As Assange well explained about Afghanistan. Ukraine is in fact the continuation of that strategy, but now in even better conditions: zero USA boots on the ground.
And this is why Russia has to win in Ukraine. There’s a lot at stake. And USA, historically, only slows down a bit in its aggression, after military defeats.
Posted by: Carlos Marques | Jul 16 2022 11:48 utc | 305
Re the repeated statements, claims and sneering hostility from the likes of Norwegian, Opport Knocks, c1ue and others towards anyone who takes either or both the science concerning and threats from climate change seriously, I would ask, as politely as possible, that you refrain from further embarrassing yourselves, as you clearly are either being disingenuous or (wince) woefully ignorant.
Climate Change as it plays out in the real world is in fact accelerating much faster than the heavily politicized and thus watered-down ‘consensus’ reports from the IPCC and similar bodies have predicted. The Arctic, and all that thawing permafrost full of methane, is already doomed, as are most Arctic species that have effectively zero time to adapt. It is now routine to have vast areas on summer days well above the Arctic Circle with highs (and lows) one would expect a thousand miles south. Anyone living in the northern temperate zone and paying any attention at all knows the summers are longer, hotter, the winters shorter and milder, much drier for some and much wetter for others, and that violent billion$-plus storms are far more frequent.
These changes in climate are going to massively dislocate entire regions long before 2050. Glaciers world-wide are retreating. Drought is already endemic in the US southwest, much of Northern Africa all the way to Afghanistan, China and elsewhere. The combination of shrinking rivers (less and eventually no melt water and less rain), increasing heat and drought, and the immense economic devastation/virtual de-industrialization resulting from US-led wars and/or economic dictat, in Libya, Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan etc., spells catastrophe for the peoples of this vast, vast area. Agriculture of all types is under severe threat, emphatically so in the case of US-originated and globally imposed agriculture consisting of corporately owned seed for increasingly global GMO mono-cultures + name your poisons + ever-increasing quantities of fertilizer to compensate for the terrifying rapidity of soil depletion/exhaustion and/or toxic degradation.
Anyone paying attention already knows how serious the water issues are as we speak in all of these places. The point is that we’ve already guaranteed a profoundly dangerous period involving major, successive crop failures, livestock losses, water shortages, sanitation failures etc that will affect a billion people who, because their real economies have been so decimated by the US they simply won’t have the capacity to respond. All of the means hundreds of millions of desperate people on the move in all directions.
But according to our fossil fuel lobbyists here at MOA Climate Change is nothing, so let’s broaden this a tad:
We have, mostly since 1970, managed, in addition, to fuck up just about everything we touch. Industrial logging completely destroys far more forest than is ever successfully replanted. Logging and agricultural expansion have obliterated more than two thirds of the world’s timber in a mere 50 years. The current pace will see our forests in complete ruin in another 20 years, not to recover until we pass. The same is true for fish, which supply 2 billion people with the mainstay of their diet. Well, we’ve already destroyed 90% of the larger fish, and our methods for catching almost literally everything else are so intense the entire system will go down in, again, another 20 years – if we’re lucky.
The simple fact is if you look at the total impacts of what we’re doing, as have innumerable serious non-corporate scientists, specialists, thinkers etc., people who know what they’re talking about, it is simply as obvious as it is terrifying to watch the titanic train wreck both hurtle towards us and unfold before us at the same time. The Limits of Growth gave the ‘conduct business-as-normal’ approach the world has in fact followed every year since it was first published until the year 2040 for systemic collapse. That study was repeated with enormously more data just several years ago and the outcome was the same: keep going as is, and it all comes apart. And anyone who has done enough serious, relevant reading and has any kind of imagination at all can understand perfectly well both the enormity and proximity of the threat and the criminally insanity of the people ensconced first, at the top of the US power structure, then gone global – the people responsible for bringing the world and everything living on it to this greatest of humanity’s crises, preventing to this day any serious effort at all to dodge the iceberg. From all appearances, what the US has decided to do is force the rest of the world to reduce emissions (among other things) by actively preventing industrialization/development across most of the globe, strangling any malcontents with sanctions to constant warring to effectively total destruction of a country’s capacity to absorb what’s coming. Some of you very, very badly need to open your eyes so you can see the wall before we hit it.
And I hold the US 100% responsible for this horrific war in Ukraine. Every senior individual with a major role in the decision-making regarding Ukraine/Russia in the US, Canada, UK, rest of NATO ought to be put on trial in a special tribunal court convened by the UN General Assembly. Off to prison every one.
Posted by: tom E | Jul 17 2022 8:31 utc | 355
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