On 1 July, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, known as the ‘Butcher of Mariupol’, delivered a statement about recent attacks on apartment blocks in Odesa. In a familiar tone of Soviet bureaucratese, he read aloud: ‘To implement the provocation across 26–28 June, twenty foreign mass-media representatives, as well as employees of the international organisation UNICEF, were brought to Odessa [to watch] a mock attack, planned by the military administration of the Odessa region, on a social facility where a crowd of up to 30 anti-Russian activists had been prepared in advance to act as victims and casualties.