Nearly all big mainstream media currently provide 'live updates' of the war in Ukraine. These include abbreviated reports about this or that incident. They are convenient for the reader but miss important details which often debunk the claims made in them.
In today's 'live updates' the Washington Post writes twice about a missile strike in the town of Chasiv Yar:
Two dozen people remained trapped under the rubble of two high-rise apartment buildings in Chasiv Yar, a city in the Donetsk region, that local officials said were struck by Russian missiles. The governor of Donetsk called Russian strikes on the region over the weekend “true hell.”
More details are mentioned further down:
Rescue teams continue to comb through a residential complex after a Russian missile strike in Chasiv Yar over the weekend. Photos show bodies being pulled from the rubble and the possessions of residents buried under piles of bricks and dust.
Amid the debris lay shattered photo frames, furniture, blown-out windows and doors. Some residents returned to try to salvage their belongings. At least 18 were killed, and two dozen are missing. The death toll is expected to rise.
Some locals watched in horror as they waited for news of their loved ones.
“It was a missile strike,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday. “And everyone who gives orders for such strikes, everyone who carries them out targeting our ordinary cities, residential areas, kills absolutely deliberately.”
The Saturday missile strike on Chasiv Yar was also mentioned in yesterday's WaPo 'live updates' in similar detail. I find no stand alone report on the strike on the WaPo website.
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The New York Times' 'live updates' also mention the strike. The summary says:
The toll from a strike on the apartment complex in the Donetsk village of Chasiv Yar late Saturday rose to 24, the Ukrainian State Emergency Service said on Monday on Twitter. Eight people had been pulled from the rubble and rescued so far, it said.
Further down the incident is described in more detail:
Rescue workers scrambled on Sunday and into Monday to pull survivors from the wreckage of a five-story residential block in the eastern village of Chasiv Yar, in Donetsk, that was targeted by Russian missiles. Twenty-four people were killed and nine people had been rescued.
But President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in a speech on Saturday that he hopes that an influx of weapons supplied by the West — including $400 million in military aid announced by the Biden administration on Friday — would help redress its disadvantage and “reduce Russian attack capabilities.”
The Times however has a reporter, Carlotta Gall, in Ukraine who visited the town and down in her stand alone report we find important details that the summaries somehow missed:
CHASIV YAR, Ukraine — Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine is intensifying in Donetsk Province, with a string of towns and villages coming under bombardment in the last week as Russian troops turn their firepower farther west after seizing control of the last city under Ukrainian control in Luhansk Province.
For days now, the attacks have mostly seemed random and without purpose, but taken as a whole they make clear that Russia is preparing to capture another slice of Donetsk, the other province in the Donbas region.
…
The deadliest attack came late Saturday, when rockets struck an apartment complex in the village of Chasiv Yar, a dozen miles from the front. At least 15 people were reported dead.All through the day on Sunday, soldiers and emergency crews worked to rescue people from the bombed complex, pulling a sixth survivor from the rubble nearly 24 hours after the Russian rockets hit. Still, officials said late Saturday that a number of people might still lay beneath the debris.
…
On the front in Donetsk Province, a resident of Chasiv Yar village, Oleksandr, 31, stood watching the rescue work at the stricken apartment complex as machines pulled away concrete slabs and emergency workers flung bricks aside. “My grandmother was here,” he said. “That’s her bed,” he added pointing to the pile of rubble. “I hope they will find her and I can give her a funeral.”He 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. He had tried to persuade his grandmother to move to his place, he said, but she had refused.
Two soldiers who had been staying in the building were among the dead, according to another soldier who arrived with colleagues from the front line near Bakhmut to retrieve belongings. He gave only his first name, Dyma, and his age, 28, in accordance with military rules. Military vests and rucksacks and a broken rifle, covered in brick dust, lay on the ground under the trees.
He said a plane had struck the building with rockets. Aerial bombardment was the most punishing, Dyma said. A plane had dropped a parachute bomb on their positions near Bakhmut, causing devastating damage. “They do not announce it but we are taking heavy losses,” he said. “We need to close the skies,” he added, repeating a request that many Ukrainians make for planes and stronger air defense systems from Western allies to combat Russian aerial attacks.
So, according to Oleksandr, the resident of Chasiv Yar, 10 old women were living in the building. But there are a total of 24 who were retrieved dead, according to the latest NYT update, two dozen who are additionally still missing and 8 that were rescued.
That makes for a total of 56 people hit by the strike of which possibly 10 were the resident pensioners. The other 46 then were 'members of the military [who] had come to lodge there two days earlier'.
To call that a 'strike on civilians' is incorrect to say the least. It was a strike on a military target that unfortunately had used a civilian residential structure with the residents becoming human shield and later 'collateral damage'.
The Russian defense ministry is thereby mostly correct when it reports the strike like this:
High-precision ground-based weapons near Chasov Yar in Donetsk People's Republic have destroyed temporary deployment point of 118th Brigade of Territorial Defence of AFU. The attack has resulted in the elimination of more than 300 nationalists.
The number in the Russian report is likely exaggerated (as is typical for such military reports). On the other hand we do not know the real number of casualties as such numbers usually creep up over time as they have already done in this case. The Ukrainian government may also want to hide the real casualty number. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle of both current claims.
UPDATE (17:15 UTC)
I have now found a decent survey view of the house. With 5 stories it is big enough to house the 300 troops the Russia defense ministry claimed. We however do not know how many really were there.
Source – bigger
End Update
Ignoring the detailed report from its own reporter the New York Times today added a stand alone piece that accuses the Russian military of repeated hits on civilians:
Russia has claimed that it aims only at targets of military value — even though some were hundreds of miles from the front lines — and that whenever a civilian facility did get hit, it was one that the Ukrainian military had co-opted for use as a command post, a shelter for foreign fighters or storage for weapons.
…
Yet journalists, independent organizations and Ukrainian officials have documented Russian attacks on thousands of civilian buildings, structures and vehicles. In some cases, Russia used outdated weapons that might have been aimed at an industrial facility but missed, putting civilians at risk. But in many other cases, the Russians’ explanations have not held up under scrutiny.Here are a few of the largest attacks, along with how Russia has explained away responsibility.
July 9: Apartment complex in Chasiv Yar
At least 24 people were killed after Russian rockets slammed into an apartment complex in Chasiv Yar, an eastern village about a dozen miles from the front line, Ukrainian emergency services said. Initial reports said a number of others were trapped beneath the rubble.
Russia’s response: The apartment buildings were being used by Ukrainian troops, the Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing an unnamed Russian law enforcement official. No civilians were killed, it claimed.
The Russian claim that 'no civilians were killed' is likely false, but the New York Times claim that it was an attack on something 'civilian' is proven wrong by the on-the-ground report from its own journalist.
The accusatory piece also mention as 'civilian' target the shopping mall in Kremenchuck which burned down after a missile strike hit the heavy machine factory right behind it.
The writers also list the Kramatorsk train station which was hit by a Ukranian Tocka-U missile fired from the direction held by the Ukrainian military.
Other 'civilian' places mentioned in that smear piece are the Mariupol maternity hospital which had been reported empty before being used as a fighting position, attacks on holiday apartments in Odessa which had previously been reported to house foreign fighters and the alleged Bucha massacre which was caused by Ukrainian artillery and Azov Nazis who killed pro-Russian civilians after the Russian military had departed the town.
The whole accusatory report, headlined 'Russia Repeatedly Strikes Ukraine’s Civilians. There’s Always an Excuse.', falls apart when one looks into the details behind the propaganda claims 'western' media made about the incidents.