дети mариуполя

Hey, I know that word. "Deti," painted in Cyrillic outside the theater. Like a plea for mercy. There are children here. Please. Being the orcs that they are, they instead saw it as an invitation, target practice for their bombs.

That is what one side would have you believe ..the other has some evidence to the contrary, but it's hard to believe, either way.

This was tweeted three days before the incident.

"Information allegedly came from Mariupol locals (reminder - they are mostly ethnic Russian) that neo-Nazi from Azov gathered Mariupol women, children & elderly into the building of Mariupol drama theatre and are going to blow it up, blaming the victims on "Russian shelling"

Three days before the incident. There are also clips and other stories about locals corroborating the story. None of it exactly reliable of course, but awfully prescient.

This is Russia's statement, "During daylight on March 16, Russian aviation carried out no missions involving strikes on ground targets within Mariupol limits."

What's being alleged is horrific. Children rounded up and locked into a building to be blown up? Whichever side you're on, who would want to believe such a thing? In this case, there is no third explanation. Either way, one side did something that is painfully difficult to believe.

They're doing missile tests over in Belarus for some reason. It seems like a bad time. When news of it first hit Twitter, there was no explanation. Just something about explosions going off near multiple cities in Belarus.

I kinda flipped out. A coup seemed like a very real possibility for the advantage it would give the US against Russia. If this is something that had been planned out for a long time, maybe overthrowing Russia's closest ally while they're busy with Ukraine would make for a powerful broadside.

Anyhow, turns out it wasn't that. Dammit though, I'm on edge over this. All the different ways it could escalate feel all too likely. If Ukraine holds out, everything just keeps getting worse. Russia can't really stop, due to the existential threat posed by letting the US military set up outside Moscow. Russia isn't going to lose, but they might not be able to win, either.

A peace deal is the only way this ends at all well, but Ukraine is refusing the condition of neutrality, let alone everything else. Independence for Donbass republics, recognition of Crimea as Russian, things that may be negotiable, but they need the neutrality. 

Ukraine is treating it as an existential threat, because the US is insisting on it. Getting tens of thousands of Ukrainians killed, and for what? No one is demanding full surrender. No regime change, no occupation. Just, don't let NATO / US set up shop there -but this isn't about Ukraine. They're just being used as a tool by the US to get Russia, and they're getting wrecked in the process. Only an abject puppet regime would behave this way.

Meanwhile, they've got a radicalized Nazi problem that the west has been giving billions in weapons to. It wasn't a justification for the invasion, but they're going to be a problem for that entire region for a long time to come. From what I've seen, yeah, they would do that to children.

Update: Now that everyone's outraged on both sides, it turns out, there was a third possibility. They let the people leave, before blowing the place up. AP reports zero casualties.