How the Odessa massacre was orchestrated by the CIA-controlled Interior Ministry

[Paul Rigby]

This is the Odessa massacre section from a overview of the US-manufactured crisis in Ukraine by Johanna Granville, as summarised by Dr. James Coffin, an anthropplogist who was a Balkan Scholar at the American University in Bulgaria in 2013-2014, as well as Director Emeritus of the Center for International Programs at Ball State University in Indiana. The Coffin piece, well worth a read, is from the Saker's new site: http://thesaker.is/johanna-granvilles-pr...n-ukraine/

Coffin describes Glanville thusly:

Granville is the author of numerous scholarly articles, a book (The First Domino: International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956), and is the winner of two Fulbright lectureships in Russia and Hungary (see her website here: http://www.johannagranville.com/). She was conducting research in Ukraine for her second book when the Maidan revolts began. After delighting the audience on November 19 with a three-minute introduction in Bulgarian, paying tribute to AUBG founding father John Dimitri Panitza, Dr. Granville noted the decline in press freedom around the world today. According to the Reporters Without Borders' press freedom index for 2014, the United States ranks 46th, Ukraine 127th, and the Russian Federation 148th. (She cautioned that the Reporters Without Borders organization is itself supported by the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy). All too often "freedom of information is sacrificed in the name of national security," she stated. "If you get nothing else out of my presentation, remember this: we must not swallow uncritically anything we read in any one country's newspapers," she said. "To get the truth these days, a thinking person must dig for real facts and evidence." Dr. Granville, who was AUBG's first Panitza Memorial Professor of Communist Studies, selected three events in 2014 by which to illustrate the Ukrainian media's biased coverage: the snipers' killings at Kiev's Maidan (February 20), the Odessa massacre (May 2), and the shootdown of the Malaysian airline (July 17).

Hired to teach "East European History in the Twentieth Century," which covered the period of Soviet communist domination over the "satellite" countries, Granville cannot be described as a Russophile. She is simply a diligent, impartial researcher. She prefaced her remarks by stating that her essay was exploratory and intended to encourage debate. Her sources included independently funded blogs by investigative journalists and analysts not subject to government or corporate censorship (like Vineyard of the Saker). When citing from the Russian press, she corroborated her findings with other independent sources.

She made two multi-media presentations, on November 10 ("Ukraine: Another Yugoslavia?") and November 19 ("Beyond Maidan: The Media Blackout in Ukraine"), respectively, at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG). The Coffin summary below is of this second presentation:

Odessa Massacre

Three months after Maidan, on May 2, another tragic loss of life occurred, this time in Odessa, a key port city all the more valued after Russia's annexation of Crimea in March. "Citizens in Odessa call it the Odessa Massacre' or the Odessa Genocide,' but the Ukrainian media typically refers to it as the Odessa arson case,'" Granville said. The official version of this event in the Ukrainian media goes something like this. On May 2 several thousand young Ukrainians gathered to watch a soccer game, Chornomorets Odessa vs. Metalist Kharkiv. A traditional march for a "United Ukraine" was planned, with the opposing teams marching together. Before the march, "some 400 pro-Russian protesters" were "armed with guns, bats and sticks and wore bulletproof vests and helmets", while most of the "Ukrainian patriots" were unarmed. These "armed pro-Russian separatists" shot into the crowd of ultranationalist football fans, killing at least one. The crowd of young, pro-Kiev football fans and Right Sector members then rushed over to Kulikovo Field. There they set fire to the tents in front of the Trade Unions building, where allegedly "radical" "heavily armed" pro-Russian "separatists" were camping out. Warned that these pro-Kiev radicals were coming to attack them, these protesters barricaded themselves in the large Trade Unions Building. "Russian citizens" disguised themselves as separatists and provoked the crowd. Official reports state that about forty-six died of asphyxiation. In differing later accounts, six died of falls from windows and as many as thirty-two from chloroform gas. The building, they state, was set on fire by the pro-Russian rebels themselves. In an unfortunate case of "accidental self-immolation," these rebels hurled a Molotov cocktail at a closed window, which then ricocheted back into the room and ignited.

Other versions state that it is not known how the building caught on fire. "The Ukrainian Interior Ministry stated that 172 people were arrested after the tragedy, and that the majority of detainees were identified as Russian nationals and residents of Transnistria," Granville said. "Never before has such a gruesome event been so amply videotaped."

Testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses, plus unedited videos by local Odessa citizens paint an entirely different picture of this event. The individuals trapped in the burning building were in fact all local Odessa citizens, Granville noted. Videos actually show Right Sector radicals removing passports and wallets from corpses after the fire. (See here at 46:06). This enabled authorities to claim later that the deceased were Russian citizens. Survivors state that perhaps as many as one hundred and sixteen people were trapped in the building's basement, and that they died not exclusively from asphyxiation, falls, or burns, but also from gunshots and dismemberment by axes. One woman had been raped, and another pregnant woman strangled. The victims were unarmed (see here at 46:17), and included women, children, elderly men, and World War Two veterans. Several videos clearly depict Right Sector girls preparing Molotov cocktails and pro-Kiev radicals hurling the cocktails from without the building.

They show young men on the roof, throwing the first cocktails at the tents well before the football fans had even arrived at Kulikovo field. Still other videos show the radicals entering the building even before the pro-Russian protesters took refuge there, which would explain Molotov cocktails igniting from within the building. Even more mysterious is the footage of allegedly pro-Russian radicals and Odessa policemen wearing red armbands. (See here at 3:07). Granville showed photos of the Odessa deputy police chief, colonel Dmitry Fucheji, conferring with one red armbanded protester. The first Molotov cocktail hurlers atop the Trade Unions building were also wearing the red armbands, as was a young radical filmed shooting into the crowd of football fans in the center of town before the fire was set at Kulikovo field. (See here at 2:51 and here at 1:41:18-1:42:08).

Live videos place Andriy Parubiy in Odessa on April 30 and May 1, two days before the massacre. (Recall that Parubiy is reportedly the man who barred Yakimenko's armed men from entering Maidan to eliminate the snipers and who was later appointed Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council). He is seen distributing bullet-proof vests to the pro-Kiev militants, including the 33-year-old Maidan Self-Defense activist and later captain of the Interior Ministry's "Storm Battalion", Mykola Volkov. Granville showed video stills of the porcine Volkov shooting into the Trade Unions Building and mentioned that Ukrainian police since 2012 have sought to arrest Volkov for fraud. (See here at 1:15-1:28.)

As with the snipers' massacre, Granville identified in the Odessa case classic signs of a cover-up. First, authorities were quick to blame Russia before any investigation was conducted. Prime Minister Yatseniuk visited Odessa the following day, May 3, and told reporters, "We are at war with Russia," and that this was "a well-planned Russian terrorist plot." Second, although a parliamentary investigatory commission was appointed, key public figures refused to testify, including Parubyi, chief of Ukraine's Security Council Valentin Nalivaichenko, and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. Third, the commission's report cut out, among other things, the roles of the Odessa region's governor Vladimir Nemirovsky and Andrei Yusov, head of the Odessa branch of the heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko's "Udar" party. Witnesses had testified that Nemirovsky had bussed in about 500 Right Sector members from Lviv in western Ukraine, and that Yusov instigated the pro-Kiev nationalists to burn the tents in front of the Trade Union building. The published version of the commission's report was so doctored that parliament member Svetlana Fabrikant, the secretary of the commission, later withdrew her signature. Granville points out that if the Odessa Massacre which resulted in the deaths of at least 48 pro-Russian protesters really was a "Russian terrorist plot," presumably the Ukrainian officials would want to cooperate in the investigation. She concluded that, "rather than being a well-planned Russian terrorist plot,' the Odessa Massacre was probably a deliberate provocation: pro-Kiev militants posing as pro-Russians and deliberately shooting at their own, to incite the mob and turn them on the real pro-Russian demonstrators at Kulikovo Field."