Two days after the attack on the maternity ward, new warnings appear on Russian social media channels. The focus this time: Mariupol’s Drama Theatre.
Hundreds of Ukrainians are sheltering there from Russian airstrikes.
At 10 a.m. on March 16, 2022, the theatre is hit by Russian airstrikes. Initial estimates suggest hundreds of people are killed.
It’s the same pattern as the airstrike on Mariupol’s Maternity Ward: Russian media outlets and officials lay the groundwork for a potential attack. The attack happens.
Media outlets and officials deny that Russia is to blame, and instead blame Ukraine.
“Whenever you’re looking at war crimes, crimes against humanity, there’s always the excuse that this is a one-off, there’s a bad apple, one person did something. When you see it as a pattern, when you see the actors repeating, then you can go, okay, this is part of a consistent behavior, part of a plan, and it becomes like a character trait for a criminal in a court case.“
Peter Pomerantsev
The Reckoning Project Co-Founder
The Syrian civil war morphed out of the pro-democracy Arab Spring protests of 2011, when demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian government were met with violent repression.
The country fractured into a complex conflict involving government forces, armed opposition groups, and jihadist factions including Al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Russia entered the Syrian civil war at the request of President Assad in late 2015.
Syrian forces had already used chemical weapons against civilians by the time Russia entered the war. By 2016, their use was ‘ widespread and systematic ,’ according to Human Rights Watch.
By 2018, as Syrian government forces continue to carry out chemical attacks against civilians, a pattern emerges in Russia’s behavior.
THE PATTERN: Russian officials say Syrian rebels are planning to fake a chemical weapons attack and blame it on the Syrian army.
Several weeks later an attack takes place. Dozens of civilians are killed.
Syrian rebels and Western governments blame Syrian government forces.
Russia denies the accusations And then blames others.
Investigation by the OPCW later confirmed that Syrian government forces carried out the attack. But it took five years.
By then the same pattern was being repeated in Ukraine.
For months, Russia warned that Ukraine planned to destroy the dam and flood communities downstream. On June 6 2023, the dam was destroyed.
More than 30 people were killed.
A joint assessment by the UN and the Government of Ukraine finds that the flooding damaged more than 37,000 residential properties, 37 educational institutions and 11 health facilities.
Total losses were more than $13 billion.
Russia denies involvement. It blames Ukraine.
In May 2022, Russian blogs and Telegram channels start discussing captured Ukrainian soldiers, held at Olenivka prison. They say the Ukrainian POWs are “confessing” to “war crimes committed by the Ukrainian Army,” and Ukrainian authorities are planning to silence them. On July 29, an explosion kills at least 53 Ukrainian POW and injures hundreds.
Russia denies involvement. It says Ukraine killed its own soldiers to keep them quiet.
A week before the attack, Russian channels warn Ukraine will use civilians as ‘human shields’ in Kramatorsk. On April 8, at 10.28 A.M., a ballistic Tochka-U missile hits Kramatorsk railway station. It’s equipped with a cluster-munition warhead which disperses 50 small bombs across the station.
At least 58 civilians are killed.
Russia denies involvement. It says Ukraine bombed its own citizens.
There’s something curious about the Kramatorsk attack though.
According to The Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communications, Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti posts about the attack at 10:25 A.M. That’s three minutes BEFORE the attack takes place.
The tweet is now deleted, but screenshots were taken before it was removed.
“One of the possible mistakes the Russian info alibi machine could have made was to publish information about a strike on the Kramatorsk railway station before it actually took place.
It’s a sort of sloppy mistake that you always want the criminal to make. Without all the other evidence, I don’t think we’d be seeing the important patterns that we’re looking into, but it’s always good for a lawyer if the criminal ends up leaving a shoe at the crime scene.”
Peter Pomerantsev
The Reckoning Project Co-Founder
Photo Credits: 1.Mohammed Khair/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images. 2.Stringer/AFP via Getty Images. 3. White helmets/Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images. 4. Louai Beshara/AFP via Getty Images. 5. Hamza Al-AjwehAFP via Getty Images. 6. Satellite image (c) 2023 Maxar Technologies. 7. Andriy Zhyhaylo/Obozrevatel/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images. 8. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images. 9. Grzedzinski for The Washington Post via Getty Images.
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