Ukraine the massacre of Bucha, a Ukrainian Timisoara
Donbass Insider
April 4, 2022
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. But several inconsistencies indicate that the Bucha massacre is an episode worthy of the Timisoara mass grave case (a textbook case of disinformation).
To understand what really happened, we need to go back to the chronology of events.
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.
UKRINFORM (Ukraine National News Agency YouTube nellEd8umKU
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).
TWITTER VIDEO "Another View of the street that i tweeted video about yesterday":
https://twitter?com/i/status/1510368736590675976
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.
VIDEO: Youtube Z7yIyNBMpQY
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! VIDEO: BBC World Service on YouTube bb5uXrK-hGI
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. VIDEO: YouTube bb5uXrK-hGI
There are nine bodies near, and in, a building that would have housed the Russian armed forces. One of the dead has his hands tied behind his back with tape and cling film (a typical Ukrainian method, visible in all the videos of people tied to poles before being beaten, which have been actively circulating on the internet for several weeks). One of the bodies also visibly shows a bullet wound in the knee, a method of torture used by the Ukrainians against captured Russian soldiers (which they themselves filmed).
Photos of dead civilians on the Zhitomir highway. This is in fact the same place where a video was filmed on 7 March showing a shoot-out involving members of the so-called territorial defense battalions.
Finally, to complete the picture, in an interview given to the media outlet Meduza (classified as a foreign agent in Russia), a woman living in Bucha and a member of the territorial defense (so not a pro-Russian), says herself that "the people lying on Yablonskaya died because of chaotic shooting", and she does not report any cases of Russian soldiers shooting civilians during the time they controlled the city. Rather odd.
If we now take all this information, and analyse what emerges from it all, the scenario that emerges is this:
On 30 March 2022 the Russian army withdrew its last soldiers from Bucha. But the Ukrainian army did not immediately realize this and continued to fire on the town for several days, including on Yablonskaya Street where there was a building occupied by Russian troops.
On 31 March 2022 the mayor of Bucha made a video to celebrate the liberation of the city, and made no mention of civilians being massacred by Russian troops or bodies being seen in the streets.
On 1 April 2022, the bodies on Yablonskaya Street are filmed from a car and the video is published late at night on Twitter. This means that these people certainly died on 31 March (after the time of the mayor's video) or on 1 April (before the time of the video showing the bodies).
On 2 April 2022, the Ukrainian police filmed the streets of Bucha and only one body obviously killed by a bombardment appears at the beginning of the video. There is no mention of a massacre, or even of the deaths on Yablonskaya Street. Yet the information is known since a video has been circulating since the day before. My hypothesis is that the Ukrainian police did not want to show the bodies because these civilians were killed by Ukrainian army bombing and not by Russian troops. The police would therefore have tried to avoid highlighting this crime of the Ukrainian army against its own population. It seems that the Ukrainian police did not have the idea of exploiting these deaths to blame Russia. This has earned them a reprimand.
Also on 2 April 2022, Botsman's team of Ukrainian fighters arrived in Bucha with the Ukrainian police to flush out possible saboteurs or accomplices of the Russian troops. Botsman's troops were given permission to shoot at men not wearing a blue armband. The Ukrainian troops then reportedly captured, tortured and killed several civilians whom they considered to have collaborated with the Russians. It was at this point that photos appeared of civilians being tortured and killed with their hands tied behind their backs, whose deaths were attributed to the Russians. The same goes for the civilians who were buried in the mass grave near the church in mid-March, even though they died during the bombing and were not executed by Russian soldiers at all.
If we add up the 67 civilians buried in the mass grave, the 20 bodies in Yablonskaya Street, and the nine near and in the building where the Russian soldiers were stationed, we are a long way from the 410 bodies announced by the Ukrainian authorities. Civilians have died in Bucha, but most of them died during the shelling of the city, including shelling by the Ukrainian army, and nine were clearly tortured and murdered by Ukrainian troops for collaborating with Russian troops.
As can be seen, the Bucha massacre case bears a striking resemblance to the Timisoara massacre, but with a Ukrainian twist. It is clear that an impartial and rapid international investigation into what happened in Bucha is needed. But it seems that this is not on the agenda, with the West refusing Russia's request for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council on what happened in Bucha.
Christelle Nιant
