Russia firing artillery on Ukraine troops: US

[Igel]

60. This is a meaningless post.

Ukraine is, in Russia's view, responsible for MH17's downing.

*Even if the rebels fired the shot.* And even if it's an accident.

Because if there was no "punitive campaign" by the "fascist junta" then there'd be no artillery in use.

The Ukr soldiers/border guards are often between the rebels and the Russian border. If you fire artillery at the Ukr soldiers, you may overshoot by a bit. Or it's been claimed that the rebels want to provoke a reluctant Russia into sending in "peacekeepers" or troops.

At times there are rebels between the Ukr forces and the Russian border. The same problem holds. It's hard to be completely precise when the "enemy" is 30 feet from the border and your equipment is good to within a couple hundred feet.

Note that Ukr soldiers and border guards are distinct groups. There are at least 4: border guards, soldiers, guardsmen, and a sort of volunteer self-defense force that fortunately does little.

Just as on the rebel side there are a number of groups. Bezler's group in Horlivka coordinates with Strelkov's in Donets'k when it suits Bezler. Mozgovoi just pulled out of Lysychansk--his motives are ambiguous, he says "to protect lives" and the Ukr says "his butt was kicked", but some Chechens and Cossacks stayed. Bolotov of the LPR claims to command Mozgovoi, but Mozg says he takes orders from Strelkov. Bolotov is Ukrainian; Strelkov was FSB until 3/13, by his own report, having served in Chechnya, Transnistria, and late winter in Crimea. Mozg is Russian (Bezler's Ukrainian). There are a couple of Cossack groups still kicking around, along with the Russian Orthodox Army (which is already sort of famous for disbanding a Catholic church in Luhansk yesterday; its peers in Crimea are trying to shut down a Ukrainian Orthodox Church and has gone in a couple of times to stop services and rough up the priest and the lay members ... as police watch). Then there are the "little green men" that resurfaced in the last week or so. Shades (of green) of Crimea.

You need a scorecard to keep them straight.

The Guardian will eventually come up to speed. Part of the problem I've noticed even with US networks is that they have crappy interpreters and translators. Some of them are inevitably sloppy--if I were interpreting into Russian I'd make the same kind of mistakes. Sometimes I have to wonder, though. And in more than a couple of cases the translations are unnecessarily ambiguous. That might be sloppiness, it might be lack of context on the part of the linguist involved, it might be an L2 problem, it might be something else more pernicious.