This is the longest version I've so far seen of the military action in Mariupol, Ukraine on May 9, Victory Day, during which a number of residents were killed and wounded as troops-behaving-badly fired on outraged crowds -- "terrorists" all.
Other versions keep cropping up. And reports from elsewhere in the restive south and east of Ukraine tell very similar stories of gunfire and bloodshed by the so-called military of the so-called Kiev government. Also, there have been extensive reports of shellings, bombardments and fire-bombings of numerous sites in the region under contention, leading to unconfirmed reports of hundreds dead and wounded.
Ultimately, it doesn't take a lot of killing to enforce control. Not that the so-called military of the so-called Kiev government has so far been able to accomplish that aim...
Note that in the video, there is no telling what the military objective of the so-called troops might be. They are simply rampaging on a holiday, and the crowd -- which is quite large and quite brave -- will have none of it. They taunt and denounce the so-called troops lustily. While I don't understand the language well enough to follow a conversation, I understand some of what they are saying:
Fa-schis-ti!
Nyet-nyet terrorista!
And so on. These people are angry that their celebration has been interrupted by some kind of violent chaos brought on by the so-called military of the so-called Kiev government, and they are remarkably fearless in letting the so-called troops know how they feel.
While they initially keep their distance from the so-called troops, first one woman and then another, arms out and hands up, decide to break ranks from the crowd and approach the "troops" shouting denunciations along the way. Once these brave and indomitable women fearlessly push forward, men in the crowd do likewise and continue taunting and denouncing while the so-called "troops" attempt to establish a perimeter. To what object, who knows.
Eventually, members of the crowd confront the so-called troops from very close range. Military vehicles are dashing about. One of the men who'd been taunting the so-called troops is shot, though the shooting itself isn't shown in this video, just the aftermath as he is crumpling into the street. Another video shows the shooting and the aftermath, as other members of the crowd attempt to tend his wounds. He was shot in the chest.
Other men are arguing with and taunting the so-called troops, and more are shot, first one man in casual clothes on the plaza across the street from the man who was first shot, then a man in a suit who crumples on the plaza while holding on to someone else, then another in front of a kiosk (that shooting isn't seen in this video).
The videographer gets closer and closer to the so-called troops, and as he does he sees a man in the crowd with a gun pointed toward the so-called troops, apparently firing, and he sees someone with what looks like a Molotov cocktail, and I distinctly hear the videographer say, "Provocateurs?" or the Russian equivalent of it.
Kiev-coup supporters have made much of the fact that there was someone with a gun in the crowd and that someone had what looked like a Molotov cocktail in the crowd as justification for calling the crowd "terrorists" and for shooting and killing people in the crowd.
Indeed, the so-called troops continue to fire into the crowd, and one man -- alleged to be the one with the gun, though I don't think it is him -- is seen after he is shot in the head in front of the coffee tent, blood gushing from his wound; another is shot in the leg beside the tent.
The so-called troops retreat while continuing to fire as the crowd advances, taunting and denouncing and tending to the wounded.
The utter fearlessness of the Mariupol residents in the face of gunfire from the so-called military of the Kiev coup-regime is remarkable, something I doubt we'd see under similar conditions in this country.
So far, at any rate, we haven't seen this sort of situation in the United States, where there is an actual military operation in the midst of a civilian population, but it could happen despite posse comitatus and other provisions against it.
If it did happen in this country, the military would win almost instantly. It's not at all clear that will be the upshot of the so-called operations being conducted in the south and east of Ukraine, in part because enough of the people are putting up enough of a largely unarmed resistance, and enough of the alleged military are reluctant or refuse to fire on civilians.
So the coup-regime and its sponsors have brought in militias and mercenaries to do their dirty work, or so they say. Young and bloodthirsty men are -- they say -- being recruited from among the soccer ultras, and most especially the Right Sektor (ie: Nazi) and Svoboda (ie: Fascist) partisans to go to the East and South and make mayhem, death, and destruction happen. Mercenaries are said to be coming from all sort of conflict regions to apply their special wet-work talents to controlling and eliminating resistance to the Kiev coup-regime in Ukraine.
According to reports they are cowards, but that doesn't prevent them from causing chaos and destruction, and that's what any good Fascist would want to see in order for their power to manifest and ultimately to succeed. What they do is make it impossible for stability and a status quo to be established unless it is under the authority and control of the coup-regime and its forces. By this means, a relative handful of killers and destroyers are able to overcome and control large and often resistant populations.
The tactics are right out of the Nazi playbook of yore. By preventing any routine or stability from occurring except as they will it under their own authority and control, resistance eventually dissipates. By committing essentially random acts of violence, killing and wounding more or less randomly, and by destroying property both randomly and using targeted destruction against designated "enemies" they are able to assert their power over a largely unarmed population that by and large is unwilling or unable to use the same tactics against them.
This is how they win despite their unpopularity and widespread resistance to them. These are the tactics that were used in Iraq and Afghanistan by the so-called coalition which attempted to conquer them, and whose legacy is still apparent despite withdrawal.
One thing that keeps being overlooked or forgotten is that much of Europe was ruled by Fascist and quasi-Fascist governments at the outbreak of World War II. It was not, by any means, a contest between "liberty" and its opposite despite how the war in Europe was being marketed. The Axis was Fascist, and so were nearly all the Allies -- with the notable exception of the Soviet Union, which initially was being destroyed and rent asunder by the Nazis.
What we see in Ukraine and elsewhere is a remarkable resurgence in Fascist and even Nazi fortunes as one after another formerly social democratic government succumbs to the power and authority of essentially Fascist interests, and those which resist integration into the System -- even if they are Fascist themselves -- are relentlessly destroyed.
I'd like to think that the Fascists will be defeated by the Resistance, but it really doesn't work that way, never has. Recall, the Fascist Franco won the Spanish Civil War, in part by being the most ruthless bastard and the last man standing. His Fascist regime endured for the rest of his life, as did many (MANY) similar Fascist regimes all over the world, though especially concentrated in Latin America.
Spain is essentially back in Fascist hands, as is much of Europe. Ukraine is following the same pattern.
The USA has its own version thereof.
Resistance does not thwart Fascism.
The question is, what does...?
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