Drone Attacks on Sleeping Students, Hero Burials for Nazis – These are the 'Good Guys'?
Zelenskiy and his Government are the good guys in no one's story
On the night of the 21st and the 22nd of May, 16 drones launched a 3-wave attack over a period of four hours on a dormitory and the surrounding buildings in the town of Starobelsk, in Lugansk in the East of Ukraine.
The students who live there are from 14 to 18 years of age. They were sleeping when the drones attacked.
21 were killed in the massacre, 62 were injured, and the first 3 storeys of the five-storey dormitory were blown to bits.
A few days later, on Monday the 25th of May, President Zelenskiy presided over and spoke at a hero’s burial for a famous Ukrainian nationalist and proven Nazi collaborator, Andriy Melnik. Melnik’s faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists was responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews and Poles during World War Two. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry had requested Luxembourg to exhume Melnik and his wife’s body and send them to Ukraine.
Both actions are the work of the ‘good guys’ in the story of Ukraine, Russia and the West. This is the story that’s been rammed down our throats for the past four years; this is the tale we’ve been raised on for the past two decades.
Russia is a bestial monstrosity from the black lagoon that only lives to drag good freedom-loving states down into its infernal pit. Ukrainian is the shining white knight who only seeks peace and tranquility but must slay the Russian dragon to save the world. The Western World stands behind its noble champion, sacrificing its riches and resources to do what is right for the sake of all.
But the Ukrainian white knight kills children and celebrates Nazis.
Let’s look at the first first.
The Starobelsk Massacre
The Starobelsk attack happened on the night of the 21st/22nd of May. The death toll stands at 21, with 63 injured. The assault came in 3 waves with 16 drones involved. The first 3 floors of the 5-storey dormitory were obliterated.
Russia convened an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and accused Ukraine of war crimes, calling it; ‘yet another glaring manifestation of the Nazi and terrorist character of the Kyiv regime, which does not hesitate to kill minors in cold blood.’
Russia also criticised Western countries for their lack of condemnation of the atrocity. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said of this:
‘We note that several Western media outlets decided not to go there under various pretexts. This does not favor the image of these outlets; it does not add credibility to the information they publish.’
The media outlet Meduza – no friend of the Russian Government – confirmed that Ukrainian drones were responsible for the attack.
Ukraine denies responsibility for the attack, claiming that on the night in question it had only targeted Russian military sites and infrastructure, including an elite Rubicon drone command unit in Starobelsk. This is disputed by Meduza, once again, and by Russian opposition activist, Ruslan Leviev, who is listed as a foreign agent in Russia and is no friend of the Russian Government yet again.
The presence of Russian drone headquarters in Starobelsk is also disputed by friends of those killed in the assault.
Overall, all signs point to Ukraine as being behind the Starobelsk atrocity that claimed the lives of 21 people, the majority girls.
Keep in mind too that this was not a case of one isolated drone going off course; it was 16 war drones unleashing 3 volleys of strikes on a student dormitory over a period of 4 hours.
Keep in mind also that western media has been very muted on what took place at Starobelsk. The BBC even refused to visit the site of the atrocity to see for themselves, and the CNN has seemingly followed suit.
Among the debris, in one of the remaining classrooms, ‘I love English’ was written on the wall.
None of this is to diminish or hide Russia’s long list of barbaric war crimes in Ukraine.
The Mariupol theatre bombing was an act of monstrousness by the Russian Armed Forces. The theatre was being used as an air raid shelter for civilians in 2022 during the early stages of the invasion. Locals had even written ‘children’ in large letters on the sides of the building to let Russian pilots know who was inside. Regardless, two 500kg bombs were dropped on the building causing the roof to collapse. At least a dozen but likely more were killed according to Amnesty International.
Ukraine alleges that Russia has committed over 150,000 war crimes, and while this is likely to be highly inflated, Russia has committed a great many heinous, barbaric and unconscionable acts in Ukraine.
But Russian brutality and barbarism does not make Ukrainian brutality and barbarism anything other than exactly what it is. There are no good guys in this story. But there are better and worse, and the worst are the Western actors who did everything in their power to weaponise Kiev against the Kremlin with not a scintilla of care for the people and societies caught up in all the death and destruction.
Andriy Melnik - Hero’s Burial for a Nazi Collaborator
Here is the ceremony to make Andriy Melnik a national hero of Ukraine and to bury him with full state honours. President Zelenskiy speaks in glowing terms of Melnik and the country’s other great heroes.
Andriy Melnik (often written Andriy Melnyk) was the leader of one of the two main factions of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which collaborated with the Nazis and murdered and massacred thousands of their own people, Jews and Poles. The Melnik-faction were less extreme than its alter ego, the Banderite faction, but even more loyal to the Nazi Regime.
Here is what the Lviv Centre for Urban History has to say on the Melnykivtsi:
‘The OUN-M collaboration lasted much longer. The “Melnykivtsi” (the supporters of Andriy Melnyk, the OUN-M leader) agreed to serve the totalitarian regime without any clear promises from the Nazis as to gaining independence. They served mainly within the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police that, among other things, took part in the killings of Jews and in the SS division “Galicia”, which took part in military operations, in particular against the Slovak National Uprising. OUN-M members started to abandon Nazi formations only when Germany began to lose the war.’
I am not an expert on Andriy Melnik and the OUN-M by any stretch of the imagination, but I know someone who is.
Here is what historian and Holocaust scholar Marta Havryshko has to say on the lionisation of Melnik by Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian State:
‘Today, as a Ukrainian-Jewish and a scholar of the Holocaust, I feel deeply ashamed.
I never could have imagined that in my country — the country where the Nazis murdered 1.5 million Jews, the country of Babyn Yar, the very symbol of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, a country that claims to be fighting for “freedom and democracy” — a Nazi collaborator and OUN leader like Andriy Melnyk would be buried with full state honors.
Men under Melnyk’s leadership served in the Auxiliary police under Nazi. They hunted Jews hiding in attics, basements, forests, and barns, desperate to survive the Holocaust. They guarded ghettos and camps. They marched Jews to execution sites. And they took part in the shootings alongside the Germans.
By the spring of 1943, the Holocaust in Ukraine was nearly complete. The Jewish neighbors were gone — murdered before the eyes, and often with the assistance, of Melnyk’s followers. And it was precisely then that Melnyk supported the creation of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, whose members swore an oath to Adolf Hitler.
And today, the president of my country — a man whose own relatives were murdered by the Nazis — kneels before the coffin of this Nazi collaborator.
One could hardly imagine a greater humiliation for Jews. It is a humiliation for everyone who once believed that “Never Again” meant something in contemporary Ukraine — a country where militant ethnic nationalism increasingly dictates the politics of memory, and national identity.’
Zelenskiy has been heavily criticised and widely condemned for celebrating a documented Nazi collaborator and leader of an organisation that committed mass murder. Whether he did so because of his real beliefs or simply to propitiate the ultra-nationalists is unclear.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his Government are no one’s good guys in anyone’s story. They are dark in a whole manner of ways. It is the even darker forces across the Collective West that have beatified them and showered them in light to try to blind us from the truth.
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It's easy to tell the west and its allies since it has a thing for bombing girls, like it has recently in Iran and Russia. Not the good guys.
This story will be a difficult swallow especially as it’s so open. The implications of Nazi activity in the Dombas( if I have that right?) was dismissed too quickly as a reason for Russia to intervene. The darkness seems to be everywhere if you just look hard enough.