Fire in a shopping center in the city of Kremenchuk, Ukraine. File photo.
By Andrew Korybko – Jun 28, 2022
The dispute over who’s to blame for what just happened in Kremenchuk leads to the larger question about what exactly constitutes state terrorism in the Ukrainian Conflict.
Zelensky accused Russia of so-called “state terrorism” after a fire in one of Kremenchuk’s malls that he claimed was caused by his opponent’s missiles reportedly killed 18 people so far. The Russian Ministry of Defense swiftly responded by revealing that their country actually hit an arms stockpile that was located next to that mall, which caused the hidden munitions to explode and create a fire that spread to what it described as that non-operating site. The dispute over who’s to blame for what just happened leads to the larger question about what exactly constitutes state terrorism in the Ukrainian Conflict.
Kiev of course believes that all collateral damage that Russia inadvertently causes to civilian infrastructure qualifies as such, while Moscow’s stance is that their opponent’s militarization of residential areas is what’s truly state terrorism. If Russia was really carrying out so-called “genocide” in Donbass and Ukraine, then it would just carpet bomb their cities instead of risking its troops’ lives by having them fight street-by-street battles against the militants who are hold up in residential areas there. Moreover, if wanted to “terrorize” Ukrainians, then it could just bomb those on Kiev’s beaches.
Building upon that last point, it’s telling that Ukrainians in the capital are so calm amidst Russia’s alleged “genocide” of their own people elsewhere in the country that they’ve been thronging to their cities’ beaches on the Dnieper River all this month. This isn’t the attitude of a people who are experiencing a so-called “Second Holocaust” like the US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) has ridiculously implied, but of folks who genuinely feel safe because they don’t seriously think that Russia’s going to “terrorize” them by bombing a bunch of families on the beach like it would if it was “genociding” them.
Back to the battlefront further east, people are unable to utilize the humanitarian corridors that the Russian Armed Forces (RAF) agreed to create for them precisely because Kiev wants to exploit them as human shields in order to stall their opponents’ advance. President Putin elaborated at length in July 2021 on his belief in the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, which is why he wants to keep civilian casualties in this conflict to an absolute minimum. This explains why he’d rather order his troops into harm’s way fighting street-by-street to liberate those cities than to simply carpet bomb them.
While Kremenchuk isn’t near the front, its secret arms stockpile that was recklessly located right next to a non-operating mall supplies Kiev’s forces and thus keeps the conflict unnaturally dragging on longer than if NATO wasn’t exploiting that former Soviet Republic as part of its proxy war on Russia. This explains why the RAF targeted it, after which the resultant fire spread to the neighboring building that Zelensky hysterically said was housing over 1,000 people in spite of footage showing an almost completely empty parking lot with some uniformed soldiers interspersed with the very thin crowd.
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The real state terrorism therefore wasn’t Russia hitting a secret arms stockpile, but Kiev hiding it literally right next to a non-operating mall as part of its strategy of militarizing residential areas so as to delay its opponents’ advance and deter strikes against its stockpiles far behind the lines. Not only that, but its much more brutal militarization of residential areas at the front is unquestionably an act of state terrorism, albeit one that’s tacitly supported by the US-led West for Machiavellian reasons of “military convenience” related to indefinitely prolonging the conflict as long as possible.
Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
