Thread by @noclador

Were the russians in Makiivka executed?

No. And I will explain all the facts in this thread 🧵:

Yesterday the @nytimes published an article about the dead russians in Makiivka... and didn't bother to ask a single military expert, officer, weapons expert, or Ukrainian.
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Instead they went to an Assistant Adjunct Professor for Epidemiology at UC Berkeley, who is quoted: “It looks like most of them were shot in the head,” Dr. Rohini Haar, medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights, said in an interview.

Wrong. And a military expert would
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have told the NY Times that this is nonsense.

First: here are the videos of the before and after of the incident. Video 2 in the linked tweet is before and Video 3 is after.

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Here is a screenshot from Video 2.
There is a Ukrainian machine gunner on the ground (red circle). I added his line of fire in yellow.
We can also spot a toy car and a tree trunk. Those are important later.
There are two additional Ukrainian soldiers in this video, but they
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will move before the next video so I did not mark them. Here is a video taken by a Ukrainian soldier that participated in the events.

Now let's analyze this video.
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Here is the machine gunner from earlier. He uses a PKM machine gun. The machine gun is level with the heads of the dead russians later. His job is to keep the surrendering russians in check.

And again we see the toy car.
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The toy car, a children's swing and to the right another Ukrainian soldier (which the NY Times forgot to count).

And this Ukrainian soldier doesn't have his rifle up. He is not expecting any resistance.
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Two more Ukrainian troops. One with his foot on the aforementioned trunk, the other to the side behind the machine gunner. Both with their rifles pointing down. They too aren't ready for any shootout.

So we have five Ukrainian soldiers, with one filming, three having their
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rifles down, and only the machine gunner ready to fire.

If we add those four Ukrainian soldiers to the overhead shot we see that only one had a clear shot of the russian (green circle) that came out last and attacked the Ukrainians. And that the filming soldier (blue circle)
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was the attackers target (he is the injured soldier at the end of his video).

This is the approximate view of the machine gunner and his line of fire in yellow. Also note the wall section, the position of the 10th russian soldiers, & the hands of the first russian soldiers.
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If we add the position of the Ukrainian troops and their lines of fire over a screenshot of the aftermath video, you can see that two Ukrainian troops and the machine gunner had the russians on the ground in their line of fire. Only one Ukrainian soldier had a clear shot of
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attacking russian. Once this russian attacks, the soldier filming drops to the ground injured and the soldier, who had his foot on the trunk moves forward to engage. And you can hear the machine gun starting to fire - but more of that later.
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After the shooting.

Bullet holes have appeared on the wall behind the dead russians. How did these get there if the russians were "shot in the head"??
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And if the russians were shot were they lay, how come that the 10th did move behind the wall?

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"shot in the head", but the helmets didn't move? I can show you videos from the war in Syria and the Armenia-Azerbaijan war: a headshot with a Kalashnikov at that range and the helmet flies off with half the skull and most of the brain.
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These russian were hit by the much more powerful bullets of the PKM machine gun. How powerful?
Well, the first russian soldier's left hand got hit by one of the machine guns' 7.62×54mm bullets...

The destructive power and rate of fire of the PKM machine gun alone was enough
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to kill all these russians. It was not an execution, it was not a war crime.
It was a team of 5 Ukrainian troops, four of which weren't doing their job but fooling around, who tried to take 11 russian prisoner. One russian decided to rather die than surrender, and the only
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Ukrainian soldier ready to fire did as is expected in such a situation. The soldier filming goes down = the machine gunner fires to neutralize any threat. That's it.

If the NY Times had asked a military or weapons expert instead of epidemiologists and lawyers, they wouldn't
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have provided the russian propaganda with this gift.

If you still have doubts: here is a PKM machine gun being fired, and after that I added three times the audio from the last second of the Ukrainian soldier's video.

You be the judge what we hear in that last second.
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