DISINFO: Bucha was a macabre fabricated show to justify the war
SUMMARY
Bucha was a macabre fabricated show to justify the war. The West welcomed the Kyiv regime’s claims and amplified them without question. In three years, the Ukrainian regime and Western media failed to provide any plausible explanation as to why Russian forces would commit such heinous violations. It was implicitly taken as evidence of Russian “barbarism” and “unprovoked aggression” against Ukraine. Then-US President Joe Biden said the atrocity reaffirmed his claims that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was a war criminal.
RESPONSE
Recurrent denial of war crimes committed by Russian forces during the full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. This latest example is a well-known pattern of pro-Kremlin disinformation obfuscating atrocities against Ukrainian civilians committed by Russian armed forces in Bucha, near Kyiv.
Evidence of Russian atrocities in Bucha is overwhelming. Several executions and shooting of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha were recorded on video by witnesses and Ukrainian drones. Satellite images show that some of the corpses were already lying on the streets weeks before the Russian withdrawal. Incriminatory radio conversations by Russian troops were intercepted and released by German intelligence.
Dozens of Bucha survivors have been interviewed by world-class international outlets, including The New York Times, BBC, The Washington Post, Associated Press, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Radio France Internationale, Al Jazeera or El País. Ukrainian forensic teams are uncovering further evidence of these Russian war crimes.
Other false allegations denying Russian involvement in the Bucha massacres were further debunked by international outlets like Deutsche Welle, El País or France24. Furthermore, a similar pattern of Russian war crimes has emerged in places like Borodyanka, Chernihiv, Hostomel and others.
Accounts of violence against civilians in Bucha have been collected by the Human Rights Watch (see also here):
On March 4, Russian forces in Bucha, about 30 kilometres northwest of Kyiv, rounded up five men and summarily executed one of them. A witness told Human Rights Watch that soldiers forced the five men to kneel on the side of the road, pulled their T-shirts over their heads, and shot one of the men in the back of the head. “He fell [over],” the witness said, “and the women [present at the scene] screamed.”
Video footage showing dead bodies on the streets of Bucha have been fact-checked and debunked by the BBC, Bellingcat, The Atlantic Council, Mediazona, the Insider, Sky News, the New York Times and others proving that Russian armed forces committed the massacre.
The European Union has condemned in the strongest possible terms the reported atrocities committed by the Russian armed forces. The EU called for accountability for human rights and international law violations by the Russian Armed Forces, including full support for the investigation launched by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
Read more about the EU's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. See also our article The Bucha massacre: mapping a year of Kremlin denial.
Read here similar cases claiming that the West is spreading fakes about Russian atrocities in Bucha, that The so-called ‘Bucha massacre’ appears to have been fabricated, that Bucha is another Ukrainian provocation, that Bucha was a setup organised by MI6.