DISINFO: Russia not involved in Bucha provocations in Ukraine
SUMMARY
[...] Russia is not involved in what happened in the town of Bucha outside Kyiv. Those who keep repeating these accusations are behind these provocations. Moscow has not seen a list of people whose bodies were shown in Bucha by BBC correspondents. It is a shame that such a basic thing has been left unanswered.
RESPONSE
This case contains graphic/distressful content.
This is a recurring disinformation narrative from pro-Kremlin outlets denying Russia’s involvement in war crimes in Ukraine. This claim was made in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
There is well-documented evidence of Russia’s involvement in atrocities in the town of Bucha and other surrounding settlements outside Kyiv is the first weeks of Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked aggression that was launched on 24 February 2022.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report in December 2022 on killings of civilians, summary executions and attacks on individual civilians in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions spanning 24 February 2022 to 31 October 2022, while these regions were under Russian occupation. This is what the report said about Bucha:
‘For example, the town of Bucha (Kyiv region), which was under control of Russian troops from 5 to 30 March 2022, suffered from particularly high numbers of killings. By 31 October 2022, OHCHR had documented the killings of 73 civilians (54 men, 16 women, 2 boys, and 1 girl) in Bucha, and was in the process of corroborating an additional 105 alleged killings (85 men, 11 women and 9 adults whose sex is yet unknown).’
An eight-month visual investigation by The New York Times concluded that the perpetrators of the massacre along Yablunska Street were Russian paratroopers from the 234th Air Assault Regiment led by Lt. Col. Artyom Gorodilov. It said that ‘the killings were part of a deliberate and systematic effort to ruthlessly secure a route to the capital, Kyiv.’ ‘Soldiers interrogated and executed unarmed men of fighting age, and killed people who unwittingly crossed their paths — whether it was children fleeing with their families, locals hoping to find groceries or people simply trying to get back home on their bicycles,’ according to the investigation.
Babel also collected information about some of the victims, buried in a mass grave near the Church of Andrew the First-Called.
Read similar disinformation cases claiming that Alleged Bucha massacre is fake, that Bucha is a Hollywoodian staging whose sole purpose was to stop peace negotiations, and that Bucha was a setup organised by MI6.