Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[Firn]

The Moscow Times has more and a link on the incident.

A Forbes correspondent who was with a group of journalists that came under fire from a military base in eastern Ukraine has said the news crews were set up by separatists, leading to an incident in which a Russian television cameraman died.

Ahead of the Sunday night shootout that killed Channel One cameraman Anatoly Klyan, the press service of the separatist People's Republic of Donetsk called journalists and told them to assemble near the rebel administration building, Forbes correspondent Orkhan Dzhemal wrote Monday in an article posted on the magazine's Russian-language website.

A separatist rebel identified by his nom de guerre Gyurza, or Viper, addressed the gathering, telling reporters that they would travel with a group of Ukrainian women — [not]* the mothers of conscript servicemen — to a government military base whose commander had supposedly agreed to surrender to the rebels, Dzhemal wrote.

Keep in mind that heavily armed seperatists have used activists and civilians in the past to provide a cover for storming bases and buildings. In this case it is impossible to know how high up the trip organisation went and to which degree or at all the televised outcome was intended. Blunders happen in war, especially if one relies on the nice cooperation of the opponent. It is just sad how many have already died during the Russian intervention.

Overall the incident and the dead are 'just' a small facet of the current war. A political solution has of course to be found, but considering the low level of support enjoyed by the insurgents mostly set-up by the Kremlin it might be not that problematic. The difficulty of the military campaign for Ukraine depends of course to a considerable degree on the quantity and quality of Russian investment in it's war.

*A special bus was prepared for the journalists and for these women. And I must note, when I dug further into this story, the women were not the mothers of the soldiers who served on that base, as it was later announced. These were certain activists who had hung around the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers.

From the interpreter mag.