Wed, August 10, 2022
The post Steven Seagal, as Russian Spokesman, Pushes Conspiracy That Ukrainians Massacred Themselves appeared first on Consequence.
In his new role as a spokesman for Vladimir Putin and Russia, Steven Seagal visited the site of a notorious massacre of more than 50 Ukrainians to push the conspiracy that Ukraine committed war crimes against its own citizens.
On July 29th, in Russian-controlled territories of eastern Ukraine, an explosion ripped through the Olenivka detention center, killing 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war died and injuring 70 others. No Russian deaths were reported.
Via Military Times, Seagal’s tour of the wreckage of the Olenivka prison was covered by the Russian outlet TVZVEZDA. In the video, the action star surveyed the damage and held up shrapnel to the cameras. The volume was turned down on his actual words, replaced with a Russian dub.
“It definitely looks like a rocket,” Seagal reportedly said, echoing the Kremlin talking point that a Ukraine-launched, US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, had caused the blast. “If you look at the burning and other details, of course it’s not a bomb… This is where HIMARS hit, 50 people were killed, another 70 were injured.”
Russia has released varying, perhaps even contradictory, reports on Ukraine’s purported reason for the alleged launch. But Kremlin-backed news outlets have often pushed the story that Ukraine was either trying to deter defectors, or killing a high-ranking Ukrainian Nazi who was set to collaborate with Russian investigators.
For its part, Ukraine has cited satellite imagery to accuse Russia of moving the POWs to the site of the blast just days before it happened. Spokespersons for Ukraine have said that Russia set off “a thermobaric explosion” — also called an aerosol bomb or vacuum bomb– “from the inside.” To back up its claim, Ukraine shared satellite photos that show only one building in the complex damaged, and even that was hardly affected on the outside.
Seagal has been a Putin ally for years, receiving a Russian passport in 2016. The next year, he was banned from entering Ukraine as the country labelled him a national security threat. Earlier this year, misinformation on social media suggested the 70-year-old had actually taken up arms against Ukraine, and the rumors were enough to fool Joe Rogan. But he can probably do more damage in front of a camera than holding a gun. Check out video of his visit
Sarah Sicad
Tue, August 9, 2022
Early reports from the Russian invasion of Ukraine suggested that President Vladimir Putin’s military had deployed, of all people, actor Steven Seagal alongside its troops. And while the outlandish information released at the time turned out to be false, a Russian outlet did publish a video Tuesday that showed the former action star standing among the wreckage of eastern Ukraine’s Olenivka prison, where a recent attack left dozens of Ukrainian POWs dead.
Russia and Ukraine are each casting blame for the prison’s destruction, meanwhile, with Moscow alleging that Ukrainian forces used U.S.-made ordnance—a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS—to bring the building down, according to the Washington Post.
In a video posted to Russian news site TVZVEZDA, Seagal, who is identified as a special representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Relations between Russia and the U.S., appears to serve as a spokesperson against Ukraine’s use of HIMARS.
“It definitely looks like a rocket,” Seagal is reported to have said. “If you look at the burning and other details, of course it’s not a bomb. Not to mention the fact that Russia really has a lot of artifacts from HIMARS. This is where HIMARS hit, 50 people were killed, another 70 were injured.”
According to the Russian site, Seagal added a conspiracy angle by suggesting that HIMARS was used by Ukrainian troops because the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wanted to silence a “Nazi” being held at the prison.
“The interesting thing is that one of the killed Nazis is a Nazi who just started talking a lot about Zelensky,” Seagal added, “and that Zelensky is responsible for the orders about torture and other atrocities that violate not only the Geneva War Convention, but are also crimes against humanity.”
The Post, however, indicated that the images from the attack on Olenivka prison are not consistent with HIMARS.
“The experts could not definitively say what caused the damage, but they pointed to a lack of shrapnel marks and craters and only minimal damage to internal walls in the available visuals of the aftermath,” the Post reported. “Instead, there were visible signs of an intense fire, which is at odds with damage caused by the most common HIMARS warhead.”
TVZVEZDA reported that Seagal was among a number of representatives to visit the prison.
“Media representatives from France, Italy, Germany, Serbia, Nicaragua, North Korea got acquainted with the evidence that the strike was carried out by Ukrainian militants and from HIMARS, and also saw with their own eyes all the destruction at the site of this barbaric shelling,” the news site reported.
Open-source intelligence analyst Oliver Alexander weighed in on the veracity of the Seagal footage and indicated its authenticity.
Imagery of the prison from BBC appears to match elements of Seagal’s surroundings as he gave his statement. The same imagery was also matched with a scene in which the action star is positioned on a bench with blast artifacts, footage taken two weeks after the area was originally photographed, Alexander suggested on Twitter.
“[That’s] not how I would expect this ‘smoking gun’ evidence to be handled if Russia, 1. believed it was actual evidence and 2. had any intention of letting UN investigators to the site,” Alexander told Military Times.
Odessa Journal also verified the visit.
Seagal is known for his pro-Russian stature. In particular, he showed strong support for Putin’s plan regarding the annexation of Crimea. In 2016, the actor was given Russian citizenship.
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