Russia’s RusNews journalist Maria Ponomarenko has been sentenced to six years in prison yesterday for reporting what she was told by witnesses on a 16 March 2022 attack on a drama theatre in Mariupol, probably with two large gravity bombs says Amnesty international, but that guess is informed speculation. Nobody knows exactly what happened.
“This persecution of a journalist is outrageous malfeasance. Ms. Ponomarenko must be released from prison, all charges and all verdicts quashed. Russia needs to explain its part in this war crime and be prepared for full accountability.” said Feminine-Perspective Magazine’s Editor.
Editorial by Melissa Hemingway in Ukraine
Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theatre. Most persons on 16 March 2022 at 10:00 am had left the building. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. Photo is cropped.
Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective-Magazine
During this time of the explosions at the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theatre, the only sources FPM.news had in the city were Ukrainian medical workers who have been members of a local RINJ Foundation chapter and they were pretty much underground at the time, working in distributed discrete women’s shelters, first aid and birthing clinics, in basements.
“After months of rigorous investigation, analysis of satellite imagery and interviews with dozens of witnesses, we concluded that the strike was a clear war crime committed by Russian forces,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
FPM.news, with the help of local RINJ Woman Alona Adamovich, was aware at the time of March 2022, that theatre employees and their families, as well as former employees, stage hands, writers, actors, singers, academic supporters and their friends had been summoned to the large building that comprised the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theatre at the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine.
Alona Adamovich who is a registered nurse and humanitarian worker in Ukraine is also a regional director of The RINJ Foundation. She has worked in the Donetsk region since it was part of Ukraine and says she understands that most young Russian-Ukrainian families have left the region for other countries, having fled in 2014 and 2015 when the civil war began iun Ukraine.
Official Ukraine Armed Forces Azov Units
At the same time, it was rumoured that in the stores rooms the Azov brigade was storing munitions. At one point the Azov movement had taken control of the shelter according to local accounts which are only verified by similar heresy accounts—no pictures or surveys of the inventory of weapons have been presented although pictures and unverified claims exist.
“Based on the fact that eight Azov brigade members were injured in the explosion, it is safe to suggest that there was something going on there,” notes Alona.
One needs to remember that this war is not about good guys and bad guys. It is a civil war. Greed; corruption; and hatred; are the driving forces. Truth doesn’t fit anywhere.
The theatre explosion was learned about on 16 March just before noon from overflow of women patients who knew where the RINJ clinics were located because of their past experiences or neighbourhood contacts, and they were seeking medical care and shelter.
Each shelter is guarded by a private security company and also, guarded by trusted local senior men who in past wars have received military training.
“These special volunteers, in many cases, are the only males remaining in their family. By word of mouth they volunteered to stand guard over a daughter or granddaughter.
Before long, soldiers stalking women’s shelters looking for women to rape, got themselves killed by a trained security professional or a vigilant grandpa guarding his family and their female friends. That is true in all regions of Ukraine today, says Alona.
The theatre incident was allegedly fatal to 600 civilian attendees who sheltered in the theatre, but that is categorically untrue. The numbers are less than ten percent of that propaganda. This is likely the most exaggerated event of the war thus far.
Video: Mariupol in April 2022. Whole city in ruins.
The Western propaganda also reduced the possibility of getting truthful accounts in the aftermath. All warfare is based on deception. But Russia has made that worse by prosecuting Maria Ponomarenko and not telling its side of the story. Russian forces are party to this human tragedy of war just as are other sides among the 55 nations joning the U.S. in its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine’s civil war.
Another factor concealing truth is that the Azov brigade ran the shelter and rumours abound that the people there were soon to be moved and used as a human shield at the Azov Steel facility.
In March of 2022, that was an incipient Nazi modus in Mariupol that had been exploited all over Donetsk since 2014 by the Azov Nazi fighters.
Human shields exploiting citizenry became the norm for the Azov brigades who actually were seen going door to door rousting civilians and assembling them as human shields in many a firefight. There are plenty of photographs and witness accounts of this happening.
Chechen forces in Mariupol made an effort to catalogue and intervene in such human shield cases.
“It is very difficult because the risk to civilians while engaging the Ukrainian fighters is very high. We need to flank them and pick them off quietly in their urban building positions one by one,” one Chechen soldier told Alona.
“The Chechens had just brought three big families into a residential area looking for us or any shelter. But he was chasing a ghost based on rumours. One of our outside workers, a nurse from the hospital who gave us a few hours a week, spotted the civilians, knew one of them, and asked what was going on. The hospital nurse then proceeded on her bicycle to the house next to us and went by the secret basement tunnel gate to ask what to do,” explained Alona.
“The hospital nurse told us she cannot tell these fighters apart. ‘The Russians wear a white thing and a “Z” and the Ukrainians wear a swastika, but the Chechens have nothing special. The British flags and the American flags mean they could be on either side. It’s crazy,’ the hosptal nurse told us. Yeah. We understand that. It is how women get raped because all the soldiers say ‘You are safe with me. I am here to help you’,” explains Alona.
Chechen fighters did some extraordinary work to expose the exploitation of civilians in Mariupol by the Ukrainian Nazi Brigades.
Video: Many Chechen soldier platoons rescued civilians who were detained by Nazis as human shields. Video shows what the urban warfare was like.
Nobody saw the planes or missiles involved in the theatre incident. Was this a fog-of-war story that failed to recognize a friendly fire incident? That does not seem likely. Was this an Azov militia base? That is what the Russians have said they believed. That also seems unlikely. Two things at the time were well known. There was a war going on and there were many civilians who had left that theatre building to go to work or go about their daily business before 10:am that day when it exploded.
Amnesty international says, “The evidence strongly suggests that the drama theatre was the intended target of the attack. The theatre was a large distinctive building and a cultural landmark. It was also the lone large building in the center of a big park, surrounded by approximately 100m of green space that is encircled by a wide road. The strike took place on a clear morning, and it landed inside the main structure of the theatre.”
The fog of war in Mariupol was exacerbated with Nazi troops rounding up civilians and using them as human shields while both Russians and the Ukrainian Nazis were intercepted kidnapping and raping the local girls. The truth is that both sides are guilty of heinous war crimes. Having the corpses of both Nazis and Russian rapists after a firefight at a birthing clinic is telling—a firefight at a birthing clinic requires both ill-intent and sick minds among the attackers.
We do not know who struck the theatre and why, but it is clear to those on the ground who have no side, that all sides in this civil war are responsible for killing and maiming.
American main battle tanks being shipped to Ukraine. US Army Photograph.
Corrupt Kiev is so steeped in lies and authoritarianism (fascism?) that Volodymir Zelensky is completely untrusted by his military forces he claims he commands, but does not, say many this writer has met.
Russians still carry out orders many of them are willing to desert over say men on that side.
The Nazis of Ukraine are sick heads who rape and pillage their own families. One young teen told medical care givers that her stepfather had come home briefly with friends to rape her all night long then left. One of them infected her with HIV we later learned. They are all at risk of contracting this potentially deadly disease.
The people of Luhansk and Donetsk are senior citizens and a few members of their families who believe they are right for separating from Ukraine and they are sticking to their guns. That’s what we know because that is what they say.
Feminine-Perspective Magazine map of USA/Russia conflict in Ukraine.
The Mariupol theatre mass murder of civilians was caused by all sides. This civil war was caused by a corrupt U.S. Government, specifically by Joe Biden.
The persecution of Maria Ponomarenko makes it clear that Russia with malice and forethought attacked between 60 and 100 civilians in the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theatre.
There were at least 18 deaths and 82 injuries, that we now know about, at the theatre. Most injuries were serious including head injuries due to falling debris on people outside attending an open kitchen for breakfast that Wednesday, and limb amputations due to crush injuries inside the building, according to a straw poll of medical workers across the city. This presents a different story than the one the American side’s media tells and the EU allied media echoes. Not one Western journalist was ever seen in Mariupol during the 84-day siege of the city and the ousting and imprisoning of 2,000 plus members of the Azov Nazi fighters.
Nevertheless, this war crime happened—somebody did this. The truth of the details is easier to believe than the gross propaganda.
Maria Ponomarenko told a brief account of the story on a Telegram Channel based on what she believed was true, relying perhaps mistakenly on what the partisans in Mariupol had told her.
Russia did not like her Telegram post and threw Maria Ponomarenko in jail. The most profound response of Ponomarenko was her comment, “No totalitarian regime has ever been as strong as before its collapse.”
The guilty parties of the war crime have not been charged or proven guilty. That is true of everything in this war which is fed and driven by the West’s disingenuous, unprofessional media coverage of two warring nations, Russia and the USA telling only one side of the story untruthfully.
From Ukraine it is clear America is losing this sprawling war badly as it does all wars it started, but America’s unscrupulous elements are getting filthy rich and the black market for American and NATO weapons is booming, many weapons being redirected to groups America wants to receive the arms—like the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and its child soldiers in Syria. As always, the civilians shoulder the burden of American politicians’ many wars.
The Kremlin does not even accept the existence of Ukraine as a nation. The Kremlin only sees NATO and Washington DC in this war. Meanwhile, the men of a family of two nations and the former Soviet Union are killing each other in the thousands on the cold landscape of Ukraine. Every weapon shipped to Ukraine destroys more of Ukraine. The government of Ukraine is treasonous to its people letting America fight a war against Russia using Ukrainians as cannon fodder. Pay heed to this warning. Putin’s decsion to go to war to stop NATO expansionism may play out to be a catastrophe for the Russian people.
According to an Amnesty International investigation, “The attack on the theatre occurred on 16 March, shortly after 10am.
“At the time of the attack, hundreds of civilians were still in and around the theatre. It is unclear precisely how many people were killed, but it is likely that the count is much smaller than previously reported. In the immediate wake of the attack, the Mariupol City Council claimed that about 300 people were killed. A subsequent investigation by the Associated Press concluded that as many as 600 may have died. Interviewees provided Amnesty International with the full names of four people who were killed by the air strike. Interviewees also provided Amnesty with the first names of three other people whom they knew and believed were killed by the explosion. Several survivors and other witnesses also reported seeing dead bodies of people whom they could not identify. Amnesty also did a comprehensive review of traditional and social media (in English, Ukrainian, and Russian) to see if any other fatalities had been publicly reported.
“Amnesty International found that traditional media outlets had reported three other fatalities and three additional fatalities had been reported by social media. Based on our review of witness accounts and these other sources, Amnesty International believes that at least a dozen people died in the attack, but also that it is likely that many additional fatalities remain unreported. Fewer lives may have been lost because people were less inclined than usual to venture outside as a result of recent nearby attacks and the encroaching violence, and, perhaps most importantly, because with fewer people at the theatre, most of the remaining population could reposition themselves to parts of the theatre that were considered more secure.” Citing: “The attack on…” Amnesty International
Despite its blatant propaganda lies, and its 55 allies with weapons and mercenary troops fighting Russia, America is losing this war badly. Russia has taken early in the war, and still controls a year later, a quarter of former Ukrainian territory including the two breakaway nations of Luhansk PR and Donetsk PR which are allied to Russia.