They seem to have a lot of knowledge of these so called false flag attacks. Should "one" now not occur, it would be easy to claim that it did not happen due to the lampshading, even if no such thing was going to occur at all. This could of course either be due to good intel/spying getting wind of genuine plots, or it could be a clever yet weak double bluff. Who the hell knows, right? Call me innocent or naive, but I find it hard to believe that either side would willingly take the horrible risk of killing civilians in order to discredit the other, though the rebels do have previous in this area (that pesky airliner, and other OCED reports, right?).
Well, you have to admit that Kyiv has much more to gain from having its civilians killed than the rebels, that is, if Ukraine can shock the European populace enough, it may get official NATO help and possibly even military intervention. Besides, the last false-flag operation the rebels got wind of really did happen - in Mariupol, those fake rebels I told you about ran around the city's streets for a while, nevertheless failing to catch any significant media attention. And I am sorry, but what do you mean by "the rebels do have previous in this area"? Previous what? Experience?
Also, the rebels say they got this data from a captured Ukrainian volunteer battalion officer, in case you want to know.
Also also, you are seriously underestimating how easy it is to kill civilians when you have the proper battlefield mindset and don't know them personally. Pretty much the entire military history of mankind is filled with dead civilians.
Weird when I look at wikipedia the last figure it give is 2.376 million from a 2001 census & an estimate of 2.352 million for 2007. Maybe the Russian language page is more up to date? Anyways that's a drop of about 400 000 from 2007 to 2014, so about the same rate as 65 000 from 2014 to 2015. Any thoughts on why Crimea's pop. is dropping so steadily?
Ukrainian population in general has been dropping at pretty much that rate since the end of the Soviet Union.
Yes, it may have more to gain from having them killed - by someone else. It has a lot to lose if there is even ANY suspicion that it is killing them itself.
By previous I mean that what evidence that has been brought to the worlds attention and posts made in this thread and others regarding said evidence suggest that the rebels are guilty (or at least more probably guilty) of potentially more acts against non-combatants than the AFU (note, I am not considering them innocent by any stretch of the imagination - artillery in urban combat is going to cause casualties in the populace), be it artillery strikes or the elephant in the room - that shot down airliner. Though, as always, most of this info is far from objective (like the video you linked - of course the NR soldier is going to accuse his enemy), save for the sketchy reports of the observers. One thing is for certain - the whole thing is a mess wrapped in a cluster fuck, and it will be a long time before even the smallest amount of truth emerges from the blind accusations and baseless claims.
So, these fake rebels - did they actually do anything other than running around? I would expect a false flag operation to at least cause a small amount of chaos and destruction rather than just "attention seek". Could that have been a false-false flag operation to try and generate credibility for future claims? Though that way madness lies - considering everything as multiple layers of bluff is just silly.
Captured volunteer? Sucks to be him. Do we have anything more to go on than Cassad's word that this individual exists (probably) and that he said these things (possibly - if he was sufficiently "persuaded") and that they are true (debatable, and probably totally unverifiable)? As you yourself have noted, Cassad's words are not the most objective - possibly at best patriotically propagandist, and possibly at worst blatant lies or misinformation. Heck, it could just be a clever ruse to prevent the AFU dropping any artillery in the area for a while in order to gain some temporary advantage.
Oh, and yes, I have no idea how easy or hard it would be to turn the trigger on a non combatant, and am thankful for that. However, most civilian war casualties are often "collateral damage" - as in, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, not necessarily the intended target, save for a few notable exceptions to this rule.