The international political scene is abuzz with allegations that Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine.
Bucha was liberated from Kiev and revealed evidence that Russian soldiers had been involved in the murders and rapes of Ukrainian citizens.
Read RedState’s coverage of the Russian Army going back to its WW II roots in the killing of civilians in Bucha at The Ukrainian Army Liberates Territory From Russian Invaders and Discovers Murdered Civilians; Shocking Evidence of Mass-Scale Russian War Crimes Raises the Stakes in Ukraine; Russian Torture Chamber Discovered in Liberated Ukraine Town as the Russian Army Continues to Do What It Is Good at Doing.
Russia’s atrocities have obviously caught Moscow by surprise, though they shouldn’t have. When you fire up your barely trained and unsoldierly army to invade a neighboring country to “denazify” it, you can’t be shocked when your soldiers start killing nazis. People who may be nazis. People who may have harbored nazi ideas or who knew of someone who did. The murders in Bucha were a direct and foreseeable outcome of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pre-war rhetoric, and he deserves the moniker of “convicted war criminal;” see BREAKING: Joe Biden Calls for Vladimir Putin to Face War Crimes Trial for Atrocities in Ukraine.
The Russians have so far presented three different narratives for the explanation of the dead bodies found in Bucha.
Fake massacre
Statement from the Russian Defense Ministry #Bucha, on top of everything else offensive and absurd about it, appears to offer as evidence… vampirism, I guess? pic.twitter.com/Vkm5cbLoaZ
— Dmitry Grozoubinski (@DmitryOpines) April 3, 2022
The reader must be able to count in order for this explanation to work. The Ukrainian Army units liberated Bucha in March 31 and drove out the Russian units, or stragglers. Reports were first filed by journalists on April 1. They included images of deceased civilians. The first war crimes stories appeared in the media on April 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIViqdiaOW8
Ukrainians killed by the Ukrainian Army because they collaborated with the Russian occupying forces
It was an important story on social media for both pro-Russian accounts and RUS-bot account. This is a rumor that a Ukrainian security force was clearing Bucha. This allegation was not reported in any Russian newspapers. You can translate Google Chrome by right-clicking on the link. This is an example from Twitter of the genre.
🇷🇺#SMO #Ukraine #Bucha
Simple question: How do you think they “cleared the territory” of these saboteurs and Russian collaborators ? Did they chase them out into the hills ?https://t.co/cD4QtP19vO pic.twitter.com/NsP5sZqow5— John Delacour (@JohnDelacour) April 4, 2022
Again, keep in mind that this alleged police operation occurred after the war crimes stories appeared–to the extent it existed,
Ukrainian artillery claimed the lives of many people.
The Russians today unveiled their third invention. You can see that both Ukrainians and Russians were killed by Ukrainian artillery.
🇷🇺RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE US ANATOLY ANTONOV SAYS THE UNITED STATES IS DELIBERATELY HUSHING UP THE FACT THAT AFTER THE WITHDRAWAL OF RUSSIAN TROOPS, UKRAINIAN FORCES SUBJECTED THE CITY OF BUCHA TO ARTILLERY FIRE, WHICH COULD HAVE LED TO LOSSES AMONG THE CIVILIAN POPULATION.
— UK R REPORT (@UKR_Report) April 4, 2022
They are using this excuse to justify their actions before the United Nations. I believe the two other ones will soon vanish. There “might” have been some civilian casualties from artillery, but absent field forensic work, that can’t be established.
The Ukrainians have buried dozens of Russian soldiers that the Russian Army couldn’t be bothered to recover. But, of course, that doesn’t explain the civilian dead.
the Kremlin continues: the artillery shells fired by the Ukrainians at Bucha were special ones; they didn’t explode but instead tied the hands of ukrainian civilians and then shot them in the back of the head, these shells also raped women and tortured children https://t.co/7pSaq6S8ju
— Phil L Staddon (@Philip_Staddon) April 4, 2022
The Q-Source appears to have created this Twitter thread to provide alternative theories that gloss over the brutality of the Russian Army during both victories and losses.
#RUSSIA|n #MoDStatement Ren forces’ control, not a single local resident suffered from any violent acts. #BUCHA
1—During the time that the city was under #Russia|n forces’ control, not a single local resident suffered from any violent acts.
2—Civilians freely moved around the city and had access to cellular communications. 1/5— Gleb Bazov (@gbazov) April 3, 2022
This is a cross between “deny everything, admit nothing, blame others, and make counter-accusations” and Bart Simpon shouting, “I didn’t do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can’t prove anything.”
This dog’s breakfast of stupid is the case that Russia is trying to take to the UN Security Council.
“It is hard to imagine and realize, but the British presidency of the Security Council, which has just begun, is trying to deny us our right to request a separate Security Council meeting on the terrible Ukrainian provocation in Bucha. We requested the April 4 meeting at 3 P.M. (10 P.M. Moscow time – TASS), 24 hours before the scheduled meeting [on Tuesday] in full compliance with the Security Council’s rules of procedure,” Polyansky said in his Telegram channel.
“We will insist that the meeting be held on Monday, as requested,” the diplomat said.
“We are shocked at the scale and brutality of the staging organized in Bucha in the best traditions of ‘white helmet cinema,’” Polyansky pointed out, “Today’s Ukrainian neo-Nazis are completely faithful to Goebbels’ old Nazi school of provocations and are trying to shift the blame to Russia.” He noted that “there are striking inconsistencies and mistakes in the production.” “It has already been refuted on the Internet,” he noted.
This is a Russian-style way to deal with crisis. The Russians might be masters of creating macro-level fake narratives, like the KGB’s epic creation of the story that the CIA created AIDS in Africa, but they are somewhat dimwitted on crisis management. Russian media can’t challenge government narratives, so the Russians have the freedom to throw stuff against the wall and hope it sticks. They used this strategy to handle the shooting down of Malaysia Airways Flight MH-17 as well as the poisoning and killing of Alexsei Navalny, the opposition leader.
This time, the only thing that saved this incident was the presence of hundreds of witnesses and independent journalists. This will continue to exacerbate the problem as more and more places are liberated.
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