"Russian forces dropped a powerful bomb on a theatre in the encircled Ukrainian port city of Mariupol where hundreds of civilians were sheltering on Wednesday, Ukraine's foreign ministry said."
"Russia denies targeting civilians. In Moscow, the defence ministry said its forces had not struck the building and instead accused the Azov Battalion, a far-right Ukrainian militia, of blowing it up, RIA news agency said."
if you go on twitter, the story is being completely framed as 100% accurate and a Russian atrocity/war crime despite there being no real proof of anything yet. So I'm really skeptical. This seems extremely convenient "terrible, clearly wrong thing" to occur the same day as further peace talks.
Obviously, if it is real, it's terrible and either was committed by Russia out of stupidity/confusion, or pure malice. But I'll hold my breath before believing anything like this coming from Ukraine at this point.
Because they're integrated into the Ukrainian military as an official unit.
That speaks to the extent of the fascist rot in the Ukrainian government that they would even consider such a thing.
Or think about it this way: the KKK has only a few thousand members in the US out of a population of 300 million. Why do we bring up the KKK? Because they're an open manifestation of white supremacy that is otherwise hidden. Just as there's probably at least dozens of racists in the US for each actual Klansman, there's likely dozens of Nazi sympathizers in the Ukrainian government for each open Azovite.
If anything, Azov is way worse than the KKK. For all our jokes the US military doesn't openly have a "KKK battalion" that is arms and trains.