Although it has been known for months that Russian artillery has been firing into Ukraine, it was only yesterday that the independent group Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) finally documented incidents of it.  While I respect the work of independent monitoring organizations, I think this documentation could have come much sooner.

Russia, of course, has been denying that their military was firing into Ukraine.  Even when the photographic evidence was pretty clear, they would come up with nonsensical responses or just outright denials.  Occam’s Razor has not been Russia’s friend in their aggression.  (As an example of Russian explanations, consider this:  their media has reported that MH17 was not shot down by Russian troops [or Russian-controlled rebels] using a BUK surface-to-air missile.  In actuality — according to Russian news reports — MH17 was the missing airliner from flight MH370 that had been smuggled to Amsterdam, loaded with blood-drained corpses, piloted by remote control until it was over rebel territory, and then destroyed by a self-destruct device on the plane.  I’m not kidding — that was a story that had actually been reported by the Russian media.  Because Russian troops shooting down a civilian airliner is just far too simple an explanation.)

So anyway, I’m glad that OSCE has finally agreed with journalists’ reports from the past months about Russian artillery fire.  Hopefully, this is just a first step to independent verification of active Russian activity in and toward Ukraine.