MOSCOW, May 5 (RIA Novosti) – The Western response to Friday's massacre in Ukraine’s southern port city Odessa has ignored or distorted the events that killed more than 40 people, according to Rick Rozoff, the owner and manager of the "Stop NATO" website.
“All efforts have been made by the violently-installed regime in Kiev and its sponsors in the United States and Europe to, by turns or simultaneously, ignore, downplay, obfuscate and distort the horrific events in Odessa,” Rozoff told the Voice of Russia radio station.
On Friday, an estimated 46 people, including women and the elderly, were torched alive, suffocated or jumped to death after being blocked inside a blazing building where they tried to hide from a gang of Molotov-cocktail-carrying football fans and Right Sector militia. Police did nothing to prevent the unrest and murder, according to eye witnesses.
“Western leaders will, after consulting with their public relations specialists, shed a couple of crocodile tears, lament the violence on both sides and continue to support, morally and materially, the massive military campaign by their client regime in Kiev against what the latter invariably refers to as terrorists,” said Rozoff.
Reports on the Odessa massacre circulated in Western media have been vague at best, with many implying that the victims of what pro-Kiev supporters described as their “May barbeque” were to blame for the attack as much as their assailants, who set fire to the building and finished off the survivors with baseball bats.
Rozoff cited Chechnya’s President Ramzan Karyrov as saying that not even the Nazis – known to be particularly fond of burning people alive – had ever tried to persuade the world afterwards that it was the people inside the building who hurled bottles with flammable substance at each other.
Ukraine’s self-proclaimed Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyiuk was later reported as criticizing police in Odessa for failing to prevent the slaughter, without assigning any blame whatsoever to those who celebrated as the blaze spread throughout the building.
Videos that appeared on YouTube almost immediately after the carnage showed young men preparing petrol bombs and firing a handgun in the direction of the beleaguered pro-federalization protesters.
One mobile phone video showed a police unit walking past a group of youngsters as they poured gasoline into bottles, and nodding in apparent approval. More videos show the raving mob shout in exaltation as fires engulfed the building.
Rozoff also noted that after the late response of officials, several of the victims who had survived the onslaught were arrested and held for investigation. There were no reports of any detained perpetrators.
Last Friday saw the bloodiest Ukrainian violence since the February overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, with dozens killed in clashes across the country. The highest casualty toll was reported in Odessa where 46 people died and over 200 were injured.
