Almost a day after the start of the infamous events in the building in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka, no one has a comple...

Almost a day after the start of the infamous events in the building in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka, no one has a complete—and, most importantly, objective—picture of what happened.

We all clearly saw how uncertainty breeds conjecture, creates a basis for manipulation and the discrediting of the military, and how provocateurs seem to appear out of nowhere, trying to destabilize the situation toward a violent confrontation after which it will no longer matter how it all began.

The evening extinguishing of the information fire and the containment of the scandal, which commanders of Azov, the National Guard, and Kirill Budanov personally joined, did not remove the main questions about the situation as a whole.

And there are several of them.

1. What actually happened in that building, who was in it, on what grounds, and which of the things being spread on social media are true and which are not.

2. Who started the mass riots, the attacks on the police, and who was, in medical terminology, the “index patient” from whom the local residents’ attention to this building began?

3. What goal did the organizers of the provocations pursue, who acted as their organizers, and how did the story acquire media circulation with clear emphases on discrediting the military?

And each of these questions must have not just an abstract answer, but must receive a procedural assessment from the respective law enforcement agencies.

Therefore it seems to me that there should be three criminal cases, one for each specific block.

The State Bureau of Investigation has already announced the start of an investigation under part 5 of article 426-1. This will concern the first item on the list of key questions.

The topic of mass unrest should be promptly examined in a separate criminal case by investigators of the National Police. Who was present, who played what role, how the attacks on the police and the National Guard were coordinated.

The Security Service (SBU) should investigate the third block, since we all clearly saw the rapid external coordination of the provocations along with the simultaneous spread of messages discrediting the army.

An independent, swift, and public investigation of these three cases should be accompanied by joint briefings of representatives of the SBU, the State Bureau of Investigation, and the National Police, during which the country's major media will be able to ask all questions about the circumstances surrounding the building in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka.

Bringing the guilty to account, regardless of whom it concerns, must also be as public and as swift as possible.

In this story, not only must society receive answers to the questions, but those who next time might want to play such “games” must clearly understand how it will end for them.