Well lets start with the sceptical Ukrainian officers - there is a Major and a General both ref by the BBC
The interview with the General is also on its own video page
The BBC is itself being unusually coy about its coverage
It is unclear who attacked the checkpoint, with one Ukrainian officer telling the BBC it was not separatists.
Further on it quotes the Major
The defence ministry blamed the latest attack on "terrorists" - the term commonly used by Ukrainian officials for armed pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and the neighbouring Luhansk region.
Rebel claim
Speaking on condition of anonymity, an army major who spoke to the survivors of the attack told our correspondent he was sure that the attackers were not Donetsk separatists but "mercenaries".
Donetsk rebel leader Pavel Gubarev went on Facebook to deny that separatist forces had attacked the soldiers.
The reasons I do not find the Horlivka claim of responsibility credible are two fold.
1) Geography - look at the map, Horlivka is too far away and the other side on Donetsk, why would those boys come this far to find a presumably random target (nobody has indicated anything special about this Army Check Point or anything different to the many others that are closer to the town.
2) The Horlivka brigade is just another local militia, nobody has described them as well equipped mercenaries. How then could two senior Ukrainian officers be either so wrong or wish to protect the opposition militia that had just massacred his men?
It does not make sense.
I also invite you to look at the context of the rebellion.
Here are some links from the news today
In both of these different reports of different clashes, one common theme keeps repeating - that the protagonist are the Pro Russian militia and the Ukrainian Self Defence Militia. This is not a new development and I invite you to review all the clashes of the last few weeks and you will find that the Ukrainian side is almost exclusively from the Self Defence Force and not the National Army. The role of the army in actual conflict is minimal to say the least.
The National Army seems to be a passive actor, unwilling maybe to participate in a civil conflict against its own people or simply sitting on the fence to see how things play out. In addition there have been active defections to the rebels, while their are plenty of reports of weapons being sold to the Russians.
In general, relations between the Regular Army and the Rebels have been between cordial to the outright sympathetic.
An attack by the rebels against them just for no good reason seems highly unlikely, which is why the main rebel leaders and senior Army officers deny it.
This just leavers the secondary notion of professional well equipped mercenaries attacking on behalf of Russian forces.
Again, two areas where this just sounds so unlikely.
1) Mercenaries; certainly professional and well equipped ones, are expensive. If I were a Donbass militia leader and had sufficient money to hire them, I would actually prefer to spend that money on decent and heavier weapons for my own fighters, especially given that a high proportion of them have come over from the Ukrainian Army and Police or served in their younger days.
2) If attacking a target which in all probability was none hostile was not stupid enough, using a large amount of scarce capital to hire expensive mercenaries to attack it on my behalf is drooling imbecility, especially as the operation produced no tangible tactical; let alone strategic benefit, and the Army were back in control of the Check Point in little more than a few minutes.
Such an operation may possibly have made sense if a genuinely strategic facility had been taken and occupied (such as a Air Defence Base or TV Station) but clearly this was no such operation.
What then was the point of it?
SO in summary, the largest loss of life in action, in a single action, is the Regular Army who has played the least active part in the proceedings to date
The Rebel leadership deny any involvement
Senior Ukrainian Officers deny rebel involvement
There was nothing special about he checkpoint
There was no change in local control after the incident.
The only thing that really makes sense to me, is a Political militia from the pro coup side, that have come to regard large parts of the Regular Armed forces as so soft in their loyalty, that they see them as becoming indistinguishable from the rebels themselves.
