Many questions about recent events in the Ukrainian city Bucha

On 3 April 2022, Ukrainian authorities and Westerners accused Russia of committing a massacre of civilians in Bucha, a town on the outskirts of Kiev.

Russia on the same day called for a special UN Security Council meeting Monday to address claims that Russian forces committed atrocities against Ukrainian civilians in Bucha, a town outside Kyiv.

Russia denied the accusations and said Kyiv staged footage of the corpses.

Ukraine claims that the opposite happened.

However, several inconsistencies indicate that the Bucha massacre is likely to be an episode worthy of the Timisoara mass grave case (a textbook case of misinformation -click link for details).

To understand what really happened, we need to go back to the chronology of events regarding Bucha.

On 30 March 2022, the Russian army withdrew from Bucha, as part of the redeployment of troops to the main theatre of operations, namely the Donbass. Alexander Kots, a journalist who was with the Russian troops in Bucha, even says that the Russian army had started to withdraw from this area already several days before, and that 30 March is just the date when the last soldiers left. The Ukrainian army did not immediately realize that the Russian army had left and continued shelling the area for several days, which may have caused civilian casualties.

On 31 March 2022, the mayor of Bucha, Anatoli Fedorouk, recorded a video in which he expressed his joy at the departure of the Russian armed forces from his town. At no point in the video does he mention the massacre of civilians. The mayor smiles broadly and speaks of victory, etc. Not a word about a possible massacre in Bucha, not a word about civilian casualties. Not a word about civilian casualties. Nothing. Which is strange, to say the least.

At the same time, the Telegram channel Bucha Live, which reports on Bucha, does not mention any massacre of civilians on 29, 30 or 31 March 2022. There is nothing on this channel before the public scandal broke. Rather strange for a channel that is supposed to be aware of what is happening locally.

On 1 April 2022, a video was posted on Twitter by an account belonging to a Ukrainian woman, who said she had received it from her brother. It clearly shows bodies lying in the street, but also at 8 seconds a fresh crater, probably left by a mortar shell, is clearly visible to the right of the road. Several bodies are only a few meters away from this crater, which seems to clearly indicate that these civilians died because of a recent shelling (and therefore a shelling by the Ukrainian army) and not because of a bullet in the head (they are not tied up unlike other bodies).

 

On 2 April 2022, the Ukrainian police published a long video of their journey through Bucha, in which only one body can be seen in all the streets visited (at the beginning of the video – and from the state of the body, it is obvious that it was killed by a bombing.

This video is such a blot on the narrative that some in Ukraine are saying so publicly.

“Our source in the presidential office said that there is a big scandal in Bankova about the video of the national police, which was posted online on the instruction of Anton Guerashchenko on the clean-up of Bucha. It is this video, which shows strong discrepancies with the images of the murdered residents, which went viral yesterday, but which was made two days after the clean-up and was not included in the state police report, that is now raising questions. Mr Arestovich considers Mr Guerachthchenko’s actions a deliberate provocation, as the video raises many questions as to why there are no dead people in the streets and the mayor is only reporting on the clean-up operation,” the post reads.

On the same day, 2 April 2022, the head of Kiev’s territorial defense, Sergei Korotkikh, nicknamed Botsman (who fought in the neo-Nazi Azov regiment), publishes several videos of the work of ‘his guys’. In the second video of his post, at 6 seconds you can clearly hear one of the guys asking if he can shoot the “men who don’t have blue armbands” (Ukrainian army armbands). To which his commander (Botsman) replies positively.

However, a number of bodies, including those in the famous “torture cellar”, wear white armbands, typical of civilians living in a Russian-controlled area (these armbands are used to indicate that they are not hostile), and echo those of the Russian army in Ukraine.

Moreover, if we look at Botsman’s Telegram channel, we can clearly see that the first photos of dead AND tied up people, date only from April 2, i.e. when Botsman and his men are already on the spot with the Ukrainian police to (and I quote there the Ukrainian media LB.ua, in an article of April 2, 2022) clean the city “from saboteurs and accomplices of the Russian forces” !!!

If you put this together with the question from Botsman’s team about being able to shoot men not wearing a blue armband, the scenario starts to become clearer.

Let’s highlight the other inconsistencies. On the numbers alone, no one agrees. Prosecutor General Venediktova announces 410 bodies, the mayor of Bucha told AFP by phone 280 bodies found in mass graves, AFP itself speaks of only 24 bodies seen, and Associated Press announces 20 dead in the streets.

If we look at the different bodies, four different locations emerge:

– Yablonskaya Street, where about 20 civilians were killed, presumably by Ukrainian army shelling on Bucha after the departure of Russian soldiers. They were left behind until 3 April 2022. A BBC report sheds light on this. At 16 seconds, the cameraman films a mortar shell embedded in the asphalt. Once geolocated, we realize that this shell comes from the south, i.e. from the place where the Ukrainian army was!

– The mass grave near St Andrei’s church. The trench was dug by the municipal authorities in consultation with Russian troops, to bury civilians who died during the exchange of fire between the Russian and Ukrainian armies.

And this trench does not date from 30 or 31 March, but from mid-March, as this video from 13 March shows, where the bodies were decently buried. The video also clearly states that the people buried died as a result of the bombing. So there is nothing to do with civilians executed by the Russian army. According to the video, there are 67 bodies in this mass grave.

more on the source: Ukraine – The massacre of Bucha, a Ukrainian Timisoara – Donbass Insider (donbass-insider.com)

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