The BBC posted an interview (well, part of it, I’m sure) with the Russian ambassador to the UK and it is a sight to behold. The interviewer shows the ambassador some video and images of some of the events from the war, including Bucha and Mariupol, and essentially asks if this is indicative of how Russia is conducting the war. The answers boggle the mind.

I was expecting the dissembling on Bucha and a shooting from another city, but the lies about Mariupol really got me. Mostly because (a) I’d been watching the images and reports coming out of Mariupol for the past three months, (b) I’m not an idiot, and (c) I’ve got an eye-witness in my house that contradicts his lies about what happened in 2014. He talks about a referendum in Mariupol in 2014 where (he claims) the people voted to leave Ukraine but then the army showed up and forced the city to stay. Utter crap.

Despite having a majority Russian-speaking population, Mariupol was then and had always been proudly Ukrainian. There was never a referendum and it was never part of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). Some Russian-support “separatists” took control of the city’s administration building (City Hall) for about three weeks, but that was it. People didn’t want them there, didn’t support them (especially after they set fire to the building), and never wanted anything to do with the DPR. (Given what has happening in Donetsk and Luhansk, you can’t blame them. It’s when the term “warlord” was being used to describe the leaderships of some of the factions in those locations.)

Mariupol always had an independent streak and for much of the past eight years just wanted to be left alone. They didn’t like the Ukrainian army being stationed there, but with Russian forces only a few kilometers away put up with it. They didn’t want to join Russia or the DPR; they were always Ukrainian through and through. For that Russian ambassador to say anything else is lies and propaganda.

Not sure why I can’t post this video — haven’t I embedded BBC videos before — so here’s the link again: Ukraine war: BBC interview with Russian ambassador to the UK