TheMalcontent
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Russia-Ukraine Flash Report 29 JUL 2022 10:30 PDT - War Crime Cover Up?
🕑 Added 2022-07-29 17:28:35 +0000 UTCIn June, I received a flood of requests asking us to investigate and validate accusations that some of the prisoners released from the Olenivka Prison Camp in the June swap were castrated and undergoing medical treatment in Lviv.
The requests to investigate an accusation exceeded any other story of a war crime or video confirmation request we have received.
In a TikTok video, I personally addressed these requests saying it would be impossible to validate without first-hand accounts, which would require a trip to Ukraine and a lot of coordination with doctors, the government, the military, and alleged victims. We deal with facts.
Additionally, the accusations in our minds were on the border of outlandish. Systematic castration of prisoners of war in a prison camp where conditions are documented to border concentration camp conditions?
On July 27, a video started to circulate of a possible terrorist with the Imperial Legion working for Private Military Company Wagner Group castrating a bound and restrained Ukrainian prisoner of war at the time of his capture.
On July 29 (at night), the prison camp at Olenivka was "shelled." There are extremely graphic pictures showing the aftermath. Authorities claim up to 50 POWs, all from the Azovstal Metallurgical Plant, were killed. Authorities say the Azov prisoners were segregated from others.
Local authorities have not been able to keep the story straight, claiming the one building housing these prisoners was hit by 6 152mm artillery shells, 12 155mm artillery shells, and 12 HIMARS missiles.
We have analyzed the pictures and videos provided by the leadership of the Donetsk People's Republic, and they are not consistent with a HIMARS strike. We have hundreds of pictures and videos of what HIMARS does to buildings, and this does not align.
There is one picture in particular where a charred body appears to have been moved or staged into an area with little fire damage inside. Further, there are videos, pictures, and satellite images of the camp at Olenivka, which we have written about in detail in Situation Reports. The inside of the building did not look like Olenvika at all. It didn't even look like the inside of a prison camp.
Ukrainian Directorate of Intelligence claims that the attack was done by PMC Wagner Group, independent of direction from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
ASSESSMENT: That's a critical point. Ukrainian officials are explicitly stating that the Russian Ministry of Defense nor the Donetsk People's Republic are involved in this incident.
"The explosions in Olenivka are a deliberate provocation and an undeniable act of terrorism by the occupying forces side. According to the available information, they were carried out by mercenaries from the Wagner Group private military company (PMC) under the personal command of the nominal owner of the specified PMC, Yevheny Prigozhin. The organization and execution of the terrorist attack was not agreed with the leadership of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation."
The Russian Ministry of Defense is accusing Ukraine of shelling the facility in alternating stories. Ukrainian intelligence is reporting that a commission from Russia was to arrive on August 1 to inspect conditions at the camp as part of an ongoing investigation into corruption and misallocation of funds.
OPINION: This is all me - not the team. So I own the rest of the keystrokes. As someone who is neurodivergent and only started to learn the gifts and curses that come with that in the last few years, I have one neurodivergent superpower. I can see patterns where others can't. My brain can glue together disconnected events, analyze that data and draw a conclusion. My predictions with the support of the team that feeds me volumes of data have been solid. I don't claim perfection, but if you've been a reader for a few months now, we haven't had to walk too many assessments or predictions back.
Sidebar: Knowing everything I know now, I should have pursued meteorology as a career. It was my passion, and I'm hardwired for it to my core. On the other hand, I'd be one of the people screaming, "the planet is on fire! Why isn't anyone listening to me!"
The curse is that I can literally see the patterns. Corporate America does not like "because I know." They want reports, charts, graphics, and Excel sheets. Big Excel sheets! Executives want 200-page PowerPoints and will rathole on the 3rd slide and never even look at the rest of the supporting information. For someone with ADHD, this is a problem. it's hard enough to produce a deck to "prove" something my mind just knows, let alone then watch it all go completely unused. Sometimes because an executive already has their mind made up, I then watch corporate America walk off a cliff. Occasionally to be told after the fact, "you were right about..."
I can see a pattern here. I'm putting this under my opinion because I can't prove it. I can give you graphics, testimony, maps, charts, and leaked conversations to prove to you my theory. But I see the pattern.
Let's address the first issue, could Ukrainian forces target the Olenivka Prison Camp with artillery?
It is possible, but it is extremely unlikely. First, the location of the camp is well documented. There isn't other infrastructure around unless something was moved into the area recently (we will wait for a Sentinel-2 pass and hope for no cloud cover).
The closest viable firebase from Olenivka is about 32 kilometers from the camp. That is out of range of any 152mm artillery solution in the Ukrainian inventory and out of range of M777 towed artillery. That would require Excalibur shells. It is very unlikely that Ukraine would move artillery assets to the line of the conflict itself. There is the risk of a limited resource being destroyed, and artillery has a minimum range. The M777 minimum range is 3.7 kilometers - high angle. You're not going to have an M777 piece closer than 3.7 kilometers to the line of conflict. That becomes in range, but in the event of an advance, if Russian forces were to move 500 meters, the artillery would become useless - so artillery sits back.
In June there were accusations some of the prisoners released in June were castrated.
In July, a video appeared showing a member of Wagner PMC castrating a Ukrainian POW. The video is declared authentic not just by us but by other sources.
Less than 36 hours later, a building housing Azovstal prisoners exclusively is "shelled," killing up to 50. Not a single guard was wounded or killed in the attack. Official pictures and videos, in some cases, appear staged. The damage is inconsistent with the story. The story changed multiple times.
Ukrainian intelligence specifically blames the Wagner Group for the attack while insulating the Russian Ministry of Defense and Donetsk People's Republic leadership. Ukraine derives no benefit from this.
I see a pattern. More specifically, I see a cover-up. A cover-up of systematic torture and war crimes.
Comments
There isn't anything that can be geolocated in the torture video (thank God, because to have to watch that over and over again for geographic clues). We know it was recorded before June 27 in the Severodonetsk area. The SBU is alleging that Wagner was contracted to set up additional POW facilities, so the incident where the bombing happened was run by Wagner. Amazingly, no one from the Imperial Legion, Wagner Group, the Russian Military, Donetsk People's Republic separatists, territorial guard, or area police were injured in the bombing.
WthinWthout
Fellow neurodivergent here! I've had the same suspicions today as I connect the dots in my mind. I don't remember if they're were guys from WG actusly working at the Olenivka POW prison. If so, I would assume they were covering up their own war crimes or crimes they participated in. If not, why/ would they cover up russian forces crimes without communicating? Also, is there any information about where that video may have been taken?
To be honest, I'm pretty good at spotting patterns myself. This one doesn't seem like a particularly hard puzzle to piece together, though. Is anyone else pointing out what seems so obvious to us? Oh, and your predictions have been spot on in a statistically significant way.
