Brussels - The European Parliament at a plenary meeting in Strasbourg on Thursday, July 17 adopted a resolution on Ukraine, which expresses support for Ukraine and condemns actions by Russia.
VKontakte profile of Dmitry Tlyustoangelov
VKontakte page removed of Gukovo man who filmed Russian "Grad"s bombarding Ukraine teritory
The Bell/The Interpreter (RUS) : 17. July 2014
The citizen reporter in Gukovo who filmed Grad rockets taking off from Russia and flying into Ukraine has had his page removed from VKontakte, Russia’s most popular social network.
Dmitry Tlustangelov was relaxing at the lake in Gukovo with his family yesterday when he caught sight of smoke across the water and videotaped it with his camera phone. A little boy’s voice is heard saying, “What is that?” And he replies, “It’s a Grad.”
Dmitry then uploaded it to his VKontakte page and word spread rapidly about the scene: it appeared to confirm reports that Russia had been shooting at Ukrainian positions from inside its own territory. (See our Ukraine Liveblog for stories here, here , here, here and here on this and other citizens’ videos from Gukovo which we have geolocated).
Soon other videos were added and people were consulting Google maps and Google Street View; yes, surprisingly, Google’s trucks have reached even this border town in Russia and local people have uploaded their own photographs to Google maps which then helps to locate videos.
Dmitry Tlustangelov was relaxing at the lake in Gukovo with his family yesterday when he caught sight of smoke across the water and videotaped it with his camera phone. A little boy’s voice is heard saying, “What is that?” And he replies, “It’s a Grad.”
Dmitry then uploaded it to his VKontakte page and word spread rapidly about the scene: it appeared to confirm reports that Russia had been shooting at Ukrainian positions from inside its own territory. (See our Ukraine Liveblog for stories here, here , here, here and here on this and other citizens’ videos from Gukovo which we have geolocated).
Soon other videos were added and people were consulting Google maps and Google Street View; yes, surprisingly, Google’s trucks have reached even this border town in Russia and local people have uploaded their own photographs to Google maps which then helps to locate videos.
They were driven by a sense that they couldn’t allow untruths to remain; as one reddit user named “rainydio” from Dneptropetrovsk Region, who suggested this position for the video, “This is a violation, welcome to the information age. Sanctions are being discussed. They have to force khuylo ["dickhead," pejorative name for Putin] to say ‘this Grad was bought at the army depot, we don’t know where it is from, it shoots itself. So the bastard’s leg twitches.”
But by the end of the day it turned out that Tlustangelov’s page was completely removed, with the familiar “sad dog” that stands for a “404″ at VKontakte.
Of course numerous people had both his page and his video in Google cache, and many were praising him as the “man of the day” and urging Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to give him an award.
VKontakte profile of Dmitry Tlyustoangelov
From his profile, we can see that Tlustangelov, age 20, who studied at the police academy, makes an unlikely hero for Maidan. His entries show him proudly wearing the black-and-orange St. George ribbon of Russia nationalists and pro-Russian separatists, and his VK entries are filled with the things typical of his age and views — Russian nationalist inspirational sayings, anti-Ukrainian jokes and memes, and a crude, racist joke about Obama.
It’s not clear whether his page was removed by VKontakte management (which is certainly more cautious about anti-state activity since the departure of founder Pavel Durov), or whether he himself removed it to avoid the glare of publicity.
In any event, the story has raced far ahead of him now, and his sunny afternoon at the lake with the tilted camera and the smoke in the sky has been immortalized on thousands of media sites.
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