Kremlin claims Bucha massacre was staged by UkraineOver the...

Kremlin claims Bucha massacre was staged by Ukraine

Over the weekend of April 2, journalists and Ukrainian authorities reported on dozens of dead civilians found in Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, after Russian troops left the area. Images captured by multiple sources documented how some of the dead had their hands tied. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of committing genocide in Ukraine, while Charles Michel, president of the European Council, used the hashtag #BuchaMassacre when he announced the EU was preparing further sanctions against Russia.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of mass civilian casualties in Bucha, the Kremlin is trying to cover up the killings through false claims and distortion. On April 3, Russia’s Ministry of Defense shared a post from the pro-Kremlin War on Fakes Telegram channel that called the massacre a “coordinated media campaign.” The post claimed that Russian forces left Bucha on March 30, and footage of the dead only appeared four days later as a result of shelling by Ukraine. The Telegram post also included a graphic video that it claimed was proof that bodies had been placed in the streets to generate public outrage, and that some of the bodies were actually actors pretending to be dead.

A few hours later, the Ministry of Defense posted an official statement claiming that “not a single local resident has suffered from any violent action” during the Russian occupation of the city. It reiterated the narrative that footage of dead civilians only emerged four days after Russian troops left the city, and asserted that locals had been allowed to leave beforehand. The statement also claimed that the bodies did not show any signs of stiffening or decomposition. It concluded that the scenes in Bucha had been staged by “the Ukrainian regime” for Western media, and that Ukraine had done the same in Mariupol and other cities.

The Twitter account for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs disseminated a summary of the Defense Ministry statement and called that the Bucha massacre “another hoax by the Kyiv regime for the Western media.” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that Ukraine staged the massacre to scuttle peace negotiations and escalate the conflict. Russia then demanded a meeting of the UN Security Council to be convened on April 4 to discuss the events in Bucha.

Notably, Kremlin media’s own reporting undermines the narrative that Russian troops had departed Bucha four days before the bodies were documented. On April 1, Zvezda TV reported that Russian Marines were still conducting “clean-up” operations in Bucha and other cities to regain a foothold in the region. That same day, the Kyiv Oblast administration still included Bucha in its list of the most dangerous areas due to Russian forces retreating from there. These reports seemed to align with a Kyiv military administration statement the previous day, which reported that Bucha was still under the control of Russian armed forces. All of this suggests that Russia’s claims of having evacuated the city on March 30 are false.

Additionally, April 3 was not the first day that reports of civilian deaths surfaced, as the Kremlin suggested. On April 1, graphic footage from Bucha appeared on the Irpin Bucha Gostomel Telegram channel (“Ирпень | Буча | Гостомель”) in which a car is seen driving around corpses on the same street featured in the War on Fakes Telegram channel video. One of the corpses seen in the April 1 video matches a body in the April 3 War on Fakes video, despite the fact that the Telegram channel claimed the body in question was moving. On April 2, AFP reported that bodies of at least 20 men in civilian clothes had been found on a single street in Bucha. The Ukrainian fact-checking outlet StopFake also cited a graphic YouTube video filmed on April 2 by Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Komarov documenting civilian deaths in the city.

As for the War on Fakes Telegram post showing footage it claimed proved the bodies were actually actors, Russian independent outlet Mediazona analyzed the video and concluded that the “movement of a corpse’s hand” alleged in the original post was actually a visual distortion caused by a drop of water or a scratch on the windshield of the car from where video was filmed. Mediazona also debunked the War on Fakes Telegram claim that one of the alleged corpses was attempting to stand up, concluding that the “movement” seen in the footage was due to distortion from capturing the footage through the car’s rear-view mirror.

—Givi Gigitashvili, Research Associate, Warsaw, Poland

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russian-war-report-kremlin-claims-bucha-massacre-was-staged-by-ukraine/