Saturday, August 16, 2014

So, Did Ukraine Actually Destroy A Large Part of a Russian Convoy?

After yesterday's "Ukraine BLOWS UP Russian Military Convoy as It Enters Ukraine" and:

The Russians insinuated that the Ukraine claims were analogues tho the Gleiwitz affair that the Nazis used as their excuse to attack Poland:
"...The best scenario would be, the official said, if it was a “phantom” that the Ukrainian military destroyed “rather than refugees or their own servicemen.”...
-RT
Pretty smart.
Today we read at the ever-cool-headed ZeroHedge:

Did Ukraine Attack Its Own Tanks? White House "Can't Confirm Russian Convoy Was Destroyed By Kiev"
While today's trading session was marked by news which at first blush correlated with what may be the 2014 equivalent of the Archduke Ferdinand shooting, in retrospect the newsflow made painfully little sense. Let's recap:
  1. Yesterday afternoon, two UK reporters working for the Guardian and Telegraph, supposedly located by the border in east Ukraine, reported that they were "eyewitnesses" as a convoy of military trucks crossed the Russian border into the breakaway Donetsk republic, aka Ukraine. While there have been photos of the military trucks that have accompanied the Russian humantiarian convoy on Russian territory, there has so far been no proof, aside from said eyewitness reports, confirming Russian military vehicles entered or were in Ukraine.
  2. This morning Ukraine military’s spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, shocked the world when newswires reported that Ukraine forces had attacked an armed convoy from Russia, and "destroyed" a part of it. This was subsequently reiterated by the president of Ukraine himself who said that "the given information was trustworthy and confirmed because the majority of that machines had been eliminated by the Ukrainian artillery at night", and by the secretary-general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who said that the alliance had detected an “incursion” of vehicles from Russia last night, adding that “what we have seen last night is the continuation of what we have seen for some time." Alas, as in the case above, just more verbal reports, with zero actual evidence.
  3. Shortly thereafter, Russia responded when the Russian defense ministry said that there was no Russian military column that crossed into Eastern Ukraine, and that the above reports are based on "some fantasies."
This is where the breakdown of logic occurs, because for Russia to make such a formal statement it clearly implies that Russia believes there is no evidence of destruction of a Russian convoy in Ukraine territory, something which obviously would exist if indeed as Ukraine's president had claimed, the "majority of the machines had been eliminated."

If true, it also implies that either Ukraine had fabricated the entire story, and certainly the part about the destruction of the convoy and by extension that Russians had ever entered into East Ukraine. Furthermore, that would also suggest that the reports of the British reporters were also a fabrication....MORE 
As to the rest of the weekend, Deutsche Welle is reporting:
Foreign ministers to hold urgent meeting on Ukraine crisis
The foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany are to hold an urgent meeting to address tensions in eastern Ukraine. The situation worsened after claims Russia tried to send a military convoy into Ukraine. 
...MORE