<< Russia Conquers Flattened Cities: Cause and Effect
< Who is Really Flattening Mariupol?
March 16, 2022
(rough, incomplete)
Intro...
One of the most distressing scenes of the war so far was a children's and maternity hospital in Mariupol attacked on March 7. It's been written about extensively and used by both sides, each using images of women affected by the attack. Supporters of the Ukrainian government use the incident, to show Putin's cruelty, testified by the an injured and very pregnant woman carried by on a stretcher, almost as if for show. Other images are used by others to repeat and amplify the Kremlin's call of "fake news," when another pregnant woman appeared at the site they insist had been turned into a militant base, they showed her to be a local model, and so a presumed actress, who portrayed both women seen, unfairly tarnishing their apparent airstrike here.
I won't show either of those women here but instead the massive crater the bomb caused, and the damage it caused at the hospital buildings way off in the distance. That alone is kind of interesting (see below: forensic analysis).
Here, we dispense with that lazy route of accepting claims from Rusian OR Ukrainian officials as clear fact ... starting with refuting the Russian denials - never afraid to find out the Russians were right, they've also been wrong - lied, or made bad guesses - and this event winds up mattering (the event has a Wikipedia page is widely-read at the moment)- it's worth far more careful thought and analysis than it's gotten from either side - one side laughs it off as fake, the other just emotes over the horror of it and at the shameless denials, blaming Russia for both, and asks no questions.
The clumsy and tasteless denials from the Russian camp certainly add to that impression, and in fact the evidence seems totally consistent with a criminal Russian strike. But several points also argue against that and show that WHO did this and why is an important and un-asked QUESTION. As to why anyone but Russian forces might even possibly do it ... see Who is Really Flattening Mariupol? and consider how well this worked to the propaganda advantage of Kiev, with the forces in Mariupol surrounded and doomed, and their pleadings for a "no fly zone" to save the innocents from deeply terroristic crimes just like this.
To fill-in: some basics ...
MH loc 47°05'47.8"N 37°31'60.0"E
The attacks is generally blamed on a Russian airstrike, apparently with a single, unidentified but powerful bomb.
Russian Allegations in review - starting out behind on what said what and when, I'll base this partly on a detailed summary and refutation by Ilya Ber, Project "Verified" via Meduza, originally in Russian - I found it a fair analysis at every point, whatever their core bias. https://meduza.io/feature/2022/03/12/neuzheli-ukraina-deystvitelno-sfalsifitsirovala-reportazh-ob-obstrele-roddoma-v-mariupole-spoyler-net
In fact, up front I'd really like to underscore this point: "So far, we do not know exactly who and from where carried out the shelling of the maternity ward of hospital No. 3 in Mariupol."
Fake Victims: One Woman in Makeup?
A fragment of the broadcast of the TV channel "Russia-24" was published on the website "Vesti.ru" under the headline "The Ukrainian model was suspected of shooting a fake about the maternity hospital in Mariupol." "Users of social networks suspected Ukrainian beauty blogger Marianna Podgurskaya of participating in the filming of staged photos against the background of an allegedly destroyed maternity hospital in Mariupol," the material says.
"Rossiyskaya Gazeta" published an article "Another fake of the West: a woman shot in a Mariupol maternity hospital turned out to be a photo model in makeup."
Komsomolskaya Pravda told its readers about "another fake from Ukrainian propaganda: all the photos from the destroyed maternity hospital have the same girl in different clothes, and all the pictures were taken by the same photographer."
She was shown holding regular cosmetics and called a "social media influencer" to underline how she must have used different makeup and publicity to "influence" the public's perception about a Russian attack on Neo-Nazi militants. The basic narrative was repeated widely, and often mindlessly.
In fact there were several photographers who recorded these two women and perhaps others (to check - I think I see at least one more) and many other people young and old you wouldn't expect - may be serving others as well, for some reason, or just sheltering them - both pregnant women seem to have been upstairs where things got bad but most people said to be sheltering in the basement. Some of these seem injured as well.
Marianna's injuries seem totally legit, seen later after washup and healing, but still in the same spots, 2 days later (+/- some hours) = probably enough time for such healing, when the injuries seem pretty superficial to start with (and does pregnancy enhance healing abilities? seems like it might). She's seen 2 days later with her newborn girl - pretty lucky in all regards.
The second woman said to be her clearly isn't her, and reportedly had much worse luck. She had a different, leaner face with wider, fuller eyebrows, a lower hairline, different clothing, and different injuries/makeup. Realizing this second woman died, after feeling her baby die inside her, seeing the dying horror in her eyes in the available photos ... I won't show you the different eyebrows above them - nor any pictures of either woman, while I'm at it. If you don't believe me, go check. Here, I did already tweet a comparison image. And if you still don't agree, oh well.
Is the other woman dead, or was her "character" just "retired"? She was seen with some rather advanced makeup or, I think, real and severe abdominal injuries - the skin of her lower bully looks bruised and wrong. Only when we see the other side, as she's put in the ambulance, can we glimpse how bad it is, and where those bits of blood and tissue came from, like her right hip was halfway torn off the rest of her. As reported: broken pelvis, dislocated hip. The baby being stillborn was no surprise to me - the woman's death is less expected, but credibly reported and plausible enough. As of the latest AP report out of Mariupol, medics never got her name in all the chaos.
Militant Base of Azov Battalion?
...there's no clear sign of a militant basing - current or recent - in the available footage, although it hasn't been ruled out. The worst-hit west building is most likely, and we can see inside a lot of it, but whatever clues were there were blown in far enough we can only see some desks, shelves, a chair, etc. The East building is pretty well unseen, possible. But in the north building, the clinic seems genuine and operational.
Ilya Ber's article traces the full Azov-and-actors argument, as widely spread, back to "the anonymous telegram channel "Signal" (now it has more than 493 thousand subscribers, it supports the Russian "special operation"). :
"On March 8, an interview with one of the employees of the maternity hospital was released. She reported that Azov kicked out all the staff and patients from there and occupied the building. On March 5, it was recorded that Azov militants were firing from the territory of the same maternity hospital.
"Igor said that in the last days of February, people in uniform came to the maternity hospital where his mother works. He does not know whether they were fighters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine [of the Armed Forces of Ukraine] or the nationalist battalion "Azov" (banned in the Russian Federation). The military knocked down all the locks, dispersed the staff of the maternity hospital, and set up firing points in the building in order to, as they explained to the doctors, prepare the "fortress of Mariupol" for defense. "
Ber asks a good question is the stricken hospital is this even the same one the Russians referred to and gave reasons for striking. On the face of it, they do NOT refer to the same place. In a March 7 UN meeting, Russia's Vasily Nebenzia said: "Having expelled all the staff of the maternity hospital No. 1 of the city of Mariupol, the Armed Forces of Ukraine equipped a firing position in it." A few days later, explaining what had happened in Mariupol, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (referring to Nebenzya) said that "this maternity hospital has long been seized by the Azov battalion and other radicals."
https://russiaun.ru/ru/news/070322n - https://tass.ru/politika/14022235
Oddity: The main damage was to the west building, Children's hospital. But we've seen and heard of perhaps no casualties there. Was it shut down? Vacant after a recent occupancy? Perhaps by Azov?
(Meduza links to a mapped list of maternity hospitals in Mariupol - it comes up blank for me - anyone else?)
Somewhere I read that Azov chose the hospital as a base for its central location in Maiupol. That could apply to either location, in a city where the middle is an uninhabited river floodplain linked over by a few bridges. But no. 3 is just central to the west part of the city, and this details fits better with No. 1, especially considering that division plus northern suburbs in a context of a Russian advance likely to come on all fronts, as it did.
Considering all this, it's possible Nebenzia meant hospital no. 3 but said no. 1, and Lavrov got it right following the strike. But it's at least as likely he and all else referred to a different location.
If no. 3 was meant: Azov may have been there, but most likely in the possibly vacant children's hospital, not the maternity ward. It's still not clear Russia bombed it, but it is a reasonable inference.
If no. 1 was meant, then no explanation has been offered why no. 3 should be hit - it could be they hit no. 3 for another reason, or didn't hit it at all - Azov did it themselves, in Russia's name - it could be Russians meant to hit Azov at no. 1 but went by name and mixed up their hospitals because they don't know and don't care - or that Azov wants us to believe that, made this "mistake" themselves to add some insult to injury.
Forensic Analysis
There's some more image analysis to do and some to re-do, maybe in another post, as the scene is not clear to me at the moment. I'm still not a forensics/ballistics expert, but I have a natural knack for it and a good track record. One way you keep that is adapting yourself to the evidence, not the other way around, admitting when you were wrong, and changing course when required, or stepping back when it's not clear.
In my initial Twitter thread, I looked at the building damage, which seemed to result from an angled impact near the west building (Children's hospital no. 3), from a reasonably clear pattern of damage and fragmentation marks, it seemed a shallow incoming angle (possible airdrop, or missile at short range) - even with the crater not placed, that damage suggested a munition trajectory of ~280°, or fired from ~100° ESE - meaning the jet that dropped the bomb was flying that way (perhaps), or it was a missile launched that way. That pointed to an industrial area held by Ukraine forces, some turf just taken by Russia or contested, a bit of coastal waters, and the air.
But that pattern too wide to see fully, and there is a huge crater, which I finally correlated in the scene very far from where it "should" be to fit that scenario. It's many meters to the south - if these line up, it seems strange - traj = 325-330° or fired from ~145-150° - but the damage would be hard to correlate - maybe impossible. That pointed to a smallspan of Mariupol city held by Ukraine forces, a bit of coastal waters, and the air. Noting air deliver almost surely means Russian blame, while a naval attack is less clear; Azov had some kind of naval forces.
The details as I was seeing them, to be checked again more carefully, seem to favor a close impact for the building damage and/or argue against the far crater connecting. These points include:
- symmetrical area of worst damage the Children's hospital building, very far from the crater, and closely-spaced fragmentation marks on either side of that and across the north building - this should be from a close blast - from the far crater, they would angle probably above all these buildings, or at least spread out wider and hit higher than seen.
- lack of frag marks on the south end of the children's hospital building may argue against the south crater connecting (if I have it place right)
- ground-level frag marks and basement-level damage to west building unlikely from a blast so far away - forward force would angle up from the soil at impact or a bit below (not from the bottom of the crater). but at this distance, the angle would surely add up to more than the few inches we see.
All this remains a better fit with a ground impact here or, seeing no crater for that, a tree impact, as Michael Kobs first suggested. One nearby was left unusually damage, just a splintered trunk with an unusual degree of scorching I notice now - not likely from a fireball at that far crater, nor any hot, hurled object that smashed the tree apart and also wrapped itself around and singed the bark like this - in this case, a warhead detonated with there, with a detonation fireball and blast wave forward, fragments hurled in all directions - some blast force would actually angle down, better explaining the basement-level damage. Quickly for now:
I just achieved 98% certainty on this point before even doing the review, but I'll do some anyway and improve on my first graphics. If these points mean what I think, it means two bomb or missiles were used here; one strike made the crate and little to marks on the buildings, while a second strike is what caused the building damage and most or all of the injuries and fatalities. In that case, one of the two has a suggested trajectory noted above (~280°), and the other impact should be from the same direction. The huge forward trajectory suggested from the south crater would be no more, and the clues would support a shallow impact from fairly short range.
Etc. (to reorganize)
"Aviation worked on the maternity hospital. That's the Russians." Heard on the radio, as seen in a video. Now if you were Azov and had just launched a missile or two there, why would you go out and say the Russians did it? Oh ...
A photo has emerged online of the engine part of a Ukrainian Tochka-U missile on the streets of Mariupol. This may be one of the two missiles that may have hit the hospital.
ReplyDeleteThe photo has not been geolocated. Note, that warhead separates from the engine before impact.