Astronomy May Have Just Debunked Russia's Claims About a Ukrainian Incursion Into Crimea
Image adapted from Georges Méliès’ famous film, Le voyage dans la Lune.
Russian state television may have broadcast false evidence released by the Federal Security Service (FSB) allegedly showing the discovery of a weapons cache belonging to “saboteurs” the Kremlin says the Ukrainian government sent into Crimea. (Kyiv denies these accusations.)
On August 10, the Russian state TV network Channel One aired a news segment with footage from the FSB supposedly depicting the results of a special operation by federal police on August 8: the discovery of dozens of improvised explosive devices, mines, and ammunition, supposedly recovered from Ukrainian spies. Slightly later in the broadcast, there is a brief shot of the Crimean sky with a full moon. Sasha Andreeva, a blogger living in Moscow, points out that the moon depicted in the scene could not have been filmed any later than July 21—the last time there was a full moon in the Northern Hemisphere.
The full moon over Crimea, but when? Image: Channel One
Writing on Facebook, journalist Sergei Parkhomenko shared Andreeva's finding, adding that Russian investigators similarly submitted apparently false evidence against the Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, when she was on trial in Russia. “The FSB's academies need to start teaching astronomy,” he joked, referring to research by open-source investigative journalists at the Conflict Intelligence Team suggesting that the shadows cast by trees in the background of video footage of Savchenko's capture actually refute the prosecution's claims about when she was taken into custody, thereby exonerating her.
Left: the moon over Crimea on August 8, the day of the alleged terrorist infiltration. Right: the last full moon in the Northern Hemisphere, on July 21. Image: Moonconnection.com.
One thing not entirely clear in Channel One's report on Crimea is whether the shot of the moon is being presented as a scene from the FSB's special operation, or just as stock footage of the peninsula. If the latter, it could be that Andreeva and Parkhomenko are jumping to conclusions.
This post is part of RuNet Echo, a Global Voices project to interpret the Russian language internet. All Posts · Read more »
3 comments
Good point, but the footage was just filler. More interesting is the identity of the prisoner, and reports that the whole thing was opportunistically cooked up to cloak a drunken shootout among Russian soldiers. Similar trumped-up allegations have preceded several aggressive invasions over the past century.
The banksters need a war desperately right now. They’ve tried so hard in Syria and it just hasn’t worked. Now they’ve got crazy Trump actually saying we should stay out of the Middle East and focus on our own problems, and people are listening… What’s a self-respecting globalist financier to do?
Without the US military killing people and breaking things, there is no future growth path for them. So they send their puppets like Kasich and Romney out to talk up the fight against “evil” and threaten Russia and China, hoping to fool those dumb white ‘Murkins one more time into sending their sons off to die for God and Country and Goldman Sachs.
The IMF Jéws are in bed with the Turks, Saudis, and NATO, they are worried about a Trump audit of the Federal Reserve… and about Trump and Putin teaming up to destroy them once and for all… Trump is a vote for peace, and peace does not make money for the weapon industry. The pseudo secular media and their Zíonist masters profit from destabilization.
Retaining control of US foreign policy is what drives Hillary’s flying monkeys… along with the millions Goldman Sachs and the Saudis have paid her.