We begin tonight with Mariupol above the jump. Earlier today reports began to circulate that the Russians had used a drone to deliver a chemical weapon attack on the Azov Regiment in Mariupol, where the regiment is most likely making its last stand. However, there is no independent confirmation yet, largely because there are no independent, verifiable reporters left in Mariupol because the Russian occupiers either killed them or ran them out.
While we are waiting for an official confirmation, here's a reminder that Russian puppets have been advocating for the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainians in Mariupol earlier today https://t.co/x5F0XFUtZM
— Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) April 11, 2022
- While there are no trusted journalists in Mariupol, Russian propagandists are working there. So we can expect them boasting of their new achievement soon… And of course, blaming the Ukrainians. Just saying it for the record – hoping to be wrong
From The Kyiv Independent:
Ukraine’s Azov regiment said on April 11 that Russia had used a poisonous substance against Ukrainian troops in Mariupol, a besieged port on the Sea of Azov.
Azov leader Andriy Biletsky said that three people have clear signs of chemical poisoning. He added that there are no “disastrous consequences” for their health.
The claim followed a call by Russia’s proxies in the Donbas to use chemical weapons against Azov.
If confirmed, this is the first known use of chemical weapons by Russia during its aggression against Ukraine. Western leaders have pledged to step up their response to Russian aggression in case of a chemical attack.
Azov said that the poisonous substance had been distributed by a drone. Its victims have shortness of breath and vestibullocerebellar ataxia, the regiment said.
Earlier on April 11, Eduard Basurin, a spokesman for Russia’s proxies in Donetsk, made a statement on Russia’s attempts to capture Mariupol’s well-fortified Azovstal steel mill, which is held by Azov. Mariupol has been besieged by Russia since late February.
“There are underground floors (at Azovstal), and that’s why it makes no sense to storm this object now,” he said. “We could have a lot of our soldiers killed, and the enemy won’t suffer casualties. That’s why currently we should figure out how to block this mill and find all ways in and out. And after that we should ask our chemical forces to find a way to smoke these moles out of their holes.”
Russia has falsely accused Ukraine of having chemical and biological weapons programs. Western authorities have said this might indicate Russia’s intentions to use weapons of mass destruction and put the blame on Ukraine.
Both U.S. President Joe Biden and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have said that the use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a red line and fundamentally change the nature of the conflict.
More at the link!
The question, of course is, if this can be confirmed, whether or not it actually leads to anything happening from the US and our NATO and non-NATO allies. The Biden administration has avoided taking a stand on the issue.
The Biden administration official is steering clear of defining any use by Russia of chemical weapons in Ukraine as a “red line,” a senior administration official told ABC News.
“We learned our lesson” the official said in describing the Obama administration’s ineffective response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons in 2012.
Instead, the administration is considering a new round of economic sanctions against Russia as a potential response should Russia use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, according to a senior administration official.
A senior administration official told ABC News that the U.S. would most likely respond to Russia’s use of chemical and biological weapons “with dramatically stepped-up” sanctions that could target Russia’s gold reserves or Russian leadership.
However, the official noted that developing additional rounds of sanctions might be difficult to put into play given the wide range of international sanctions against Russia that have been put in place since Russia’s invasion.
Much, much more at the link.
Based on the reporting, we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, which is clearly not deterring Putin from doing whatever it is he wants. All the while patting ourselves on the back for our restraint as we fight Putin to the last Ukrainian.
Just a quick note about the Azov Regiment. From The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (emphasis mine):
(JTA) — Konstantyn Batozsky believes he is on a list of so-called “neo-Nazis” to be rounded up “Gestapo-style” and “exterminated” by Russian forces seeking to enter Kyiv.
Batozsky, a Jew from eastern Ukraine, said he was informed about the “bounty on his head” by Ukrainian intelligence sources. But as a longtime and avowed Ukrainian nationalist who has collaborated with an paramilitary group that has a reputation for including extremists, he knows that it’s people like him that Russian President Vladimir Putin was talking about when he cited a need for “denazification” as a pretext for invading his country.
“I have been staying underground away from my apartment where the Russians will try to find me,” Batozsky said from a makeshift bunker preparing for what appears to be an imminent invasion as bombs rained down outside the city center.
“I am happy that I’m alive,” he reflected, as he coordinated efforts to get much needed supplies to the Ukrainian army. “It now feels like every day could be the last.”
Initially cheerful in the early days of the war as the Ukrainians were surprisingly resilient against the much bigger Russian army, Batozsky now sounded more worried. And angry.
“The Russians are advancing and the West is not helping. Just words are not enough,” he lamented. Batozky pleaded for Western countries to intervene militarily.
Among those taking up arms for the first time as volunteers for the civilian army include Jews like Batozsky, who was passionately devoted to the Ukrainian national cause in his native Donetsk years before Russia decided to wage war on the entire country. He was a former advisor to the governor of Donetsk, Serhiy Taruta, now a member of the Ukrainian parliament.
It might seem perplexing to observers in the United States and beyond that Jews would embrace Ukrainian nationalism, which some of its opponents — including Putin — say is tinged with antisemitism.
“There was definitely a Jewish memory of anti-Jewish pogroms conducted by Ukrainians,” said Sergiy Petukhov, Ukraine’s former deputy minister of European Integration whose mother and grandfather live in Israel. Also a native of Donetsk, Petukhov describes himself as a Ukrainian with Jewish ancestry, “like our current president,” he said, referring to Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ukraine’s history of antisemitism go far beyond pogroms. In their efforts to exterminate Jews, the Nazis were significantly aided by Ukrainians during World War II, according to several historians.
More recently, some of the initial paramilitary fighters against the Russian-backed takeover in Ukraine’s east, such as the Azov Battalion, were extremists and ultranationalists who displayed Nazi symbols.
“I know it’s hard for Jews abroad to understand, but these actions were intended as anti-Russian, not anti-Jewish,” Petukov said. “And when it comes to those supporting Ukrainian sovereignty and culture, this is really a tiny element.”
Now part of the national guard, the battalion of 900 to 1,500 members publicly claims to eschew all Nazi ideology.
Batozsky said he worked closely with the Azov Battalion during the 2014-15 conflict behind the scenes as a political consultant in Donetsk. It is this work, and his outspoken defense of Ukrainian efforts to defeat the separatists, that he says put him on the Russian hit list — and also that makes him confident that Russian charges of neo-Nazis in Ukraine are inaccurate.
“They were soccer hooligans and wanted attention, so yeah, I was shocked when I saw guys with swastika tattoos,” he said about the Azov members he got to know. “But I talked with them all the time about being Jewish and they had nothing negative to say. They had no anti-Jewish ideology.”
He insists that the image of Ukraine as a hotbed of antisemitism is absurd.
“I don’t practice, but still everyone knows I am Jewish — I have such a Jewish face! And I never experienced antisemitism from Ukrainians,” he insisted. “The military guys I am working with now really don’t care that I am a Jew.”
He does not have similar feelings towards his Russian neighbors. “I did have a Jew-hating Russian first-grade teacher who mockingly called my long hair payos,” recalled Batozky, using the Hebrew term for the long sidecurls kept by many Hasidic men. And he said he heard more slurs against Jews from Russians Moscow State University, which he attended in the 1990s, then he ever heard back home.
Daniel Kovzhun, a Jew from Kyiv who ran logistics during the war in Donetsk for paramilitary units, described a similar experience.
“There were Orthodox Jews in Azov,” he said. “I know because I was there on the battle lines. No one cared who was Jewish, we cared about keeping our country together.”
Like Batozsky, Kovzhun, who lived and studied in Israel before returning to Kyiv, has joined the newly formed civilian army in Kyiv, the Territorial Defense Forces — an overnight volunteer force that has attracted Jewish fighters across the country, and even from abroad.
Much, much more at the link!
Much more after the jump.