Assassination of the Russian Ambassador: Fake?

As some readers might be aware, on several occasions in the past I’ve dealt with internet allegations that certain terror attacks were ‘fake’. The most notable event was probably the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 where I went to considerable length to point out the problems with the idea that all involved were ‘actors’, complete with fake blood and injuries. This ‘fakery’ meme, spawned over the last 10 years or so, invariably involves ‘Youtubers’ who claim to have ‘busted wide open’ the ‘obvious’ deception by way of ham-fisted and extremely subjective analyses of video and picture evidence.

So I wasn’t surprised to see the same claims being made about the recent assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, along with the same bumbling analysis. As with other incidents, the main claim here is that there is no blood to be seen in the video of the assassination itself. And this claim is, it seems, true. There is no blood visible around the body of ambassador Karlov. Does this mean he was ‘acting’?

I’m a bit put out that I even have to point this out, but the video of the assassination that all the ‘Youtubers’ are using for their claims is about 50 seconds long. That is to say,  ambassador Karlov is seen lying on the floor for 50 seconds after he was shot. He was also shot 3-4 times in the back, and he fell backwards, almost immediately, on to his back. Some of you might be aware of the idea that when someone has an injury that is bleeding, you put pressure on it to stop the bleeding. This works for gunshot wounds too, and is particularly necessary when the victim’s heart is still pumping the blood around their body.

When you lie on your back, you are putting pressure on the skin and fascia of your back. In the case of ambassador Karlov, his own body weight was placing sufficient pressure on the wounds to stop significant external bleeding. Having said that, not much pressure would have been necessary to stop external bleeding, because it is likely that his heart stopped pumping blood around his body fairly quickly due to likely damage to his heart from the 3-4 bullets.

End of story.