There’s No Justification For Kiev’s Attacks Against Civilians In Russia’s Belgorod Region

If a white supremacist bombed a shelter in the West that was housing refugees, then it would be a global news story, but Kiev’s bombing of a shelter in Belgorod Region housing temporarily evacuated Russians hardly elicits any response.

The NATO-Russian proxy war has seen both parties duke it out in Ukraine over the past 15 months, but the latest trend is that this battleground state has begun attacking Russia’s pre-2014 territory with its patrons’ full support. Not only has Kiev committed acts of terrorism such as assassinating journalists and launching drone strikes against residential structures, but it even staged a proxy invasion of Russia’s Belgorod Region last week. Every single one of these crimes has been met with a shrug from the West.

It therefore isn’t surprising that this de facto New Cold War bloc won’t condemn Kiev for carrying out its largest number of artillery strikes in a day by far against purely civilian targets in Belgorod Region on Monday. CNN casually reported on it a day later shortly before Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov informed his followers on Telegram that a shelter temporarily housing his region’s evacuated residents was just shelled. According to him, “Some people were killed and wounded”, though the West could care less.

If a white supremacist bombed a shelter in the West that was housing refugees, then it would be a global news story, but Kiev’s bombing of a shelter in Belgorod Region housing temporarily evacuated Russians hardly elicits any response. These double standards expose the Russophobic agenda behind this proxy war, particularly with respect to the West transforming Ukraine into an “anti-Russia” exactly as Moscow has claimed on multiple occasions, with President Putin most recently doing so on Tuesday.

Belgorod Region is bearing the brunt of Kiev’s attacks against civilians more so than any other region because it abuts Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, which places it in close proximity of those forces that have concentrated there since reconquering the nearly one-third that used to be under Russia’s control. Those people aren’t just being shelled for the sake of it, though the fascist regime does indeed appear to take pleasure in every innocent life that’s lost, but also for what the aggressor regard as strategic purposes.  

There’s no justification for Kiev’s attacks against civilians in Russia’s Belgorod Region, but explaining what these NATO proxies want to achieve isn’t akin to excusing their actions, nor does it imply that they’ll successfully attain their goals. Having clarified that, the massive upswing in shelling on Monday and Tuesday’s targeting of the evacuees’ shelter coincides with senior Ukrainian advisor Mikhail Podolyak’s tweet demanding a so-called “demilitarization zone” 100-200 kilometers deep inside of Russia.

This is a political fantasy that’ll never happen, though that apparently isn’t going to stop Kiev from trying anyhow, ergo why it’s now shelling border villages and even these evacuees’ shelters as part of its plans to expand its eight-year-long ethnic cleansing campaign in Donbass to Russia’s pre-2014 territory. While the US publicly claims that it’s against Ukraine attacking Russia, not to mention officially being opposed to any attacks anywhere that target civilians, it isn’t doing anything to stop its proxy.

The US’ refusal to deter Kiev from continuing with its latest international war crime spree, such as threatening to withhold military aid, can be interpreted as tacit approval that’s being extended in a “plausibly deniable” way. For all intents and purposes, Washington fully supports Podolyak’s political fantasy and will do whatever it can to help his side make progress on bringing it about, such as keeping up arms shipments and intelligence-sharing.

Unless that officials’ tweet and the latest attacks against Belgorod Region’s civilian population are part of a deception operation for diverting Russia’s attention ahead of Kiev’s upcoming NATO-backed counteroffensive, which can’t be ruled out, then a larger cross-border invasion than last week’s is likely. Once again, drawing attention to these plans doesn’t justify them nor imply that they’ll succeed, but is intended solely to raise awareness of what might happen next in the hopes that Russia will be prepared.

Governor Gladkov is already thinking ahead as evidenced by what he told a top TV channel on Monday when asked about what can be done to ensure the safety of his region. He said that incorporating Ukraine’s neighboring Kharkov Region into Russia “is the best way to solve the issue” of his region being shelled. Governor Gladkov’s remark doesn’t mean that Russia might once again go on the offensive there, but it can’t be discounted just like another larger cross-border invasion by Ukraine can’t either.

The latest trend of Ukraine attacking Russia’s pre-2014 territory with NATO’s full support, combined with Podolyak and Governor Gladkov’s respective “demilitarization” proposals for their opponent’s side of the frontier, raise the chances that one or both might be planning a serious cross-border offensive. The Belgorod-Kharkov front therefore deserves to be closely monitored since it could very well turn out to be the scene of the next months-long Artyomovsk-like siege in the very near future.