Ukraine: the butchers of Bucha

By Richard North - April 4, 2022

It’s been something of a slow burn, but the horrific events uncovered after the retreat of the Russians from the Kiev Oblast, and in particular the town of Bucha, are rapidly gaining currency amongst the international community, provoking predictable and widespread condemnation.

What are cautiously termed the “alleged” atrocities of Bucha are by no means the only examples of Russian barbarity, with graphic details coming in from other locations, all adding to a powerful case for accusing the Russians of war crimes.

Certainly, the evidence in Bucha is sufficient for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to issue a formal statement saying, “I am deeply shocked by the images of civilians killed in Bucha, Ukraine”, adding: “It is essential that an independent investigation leads to effective accountability”.

But what has also been predictable, in a wearisome sort of way, are the ritual denials from the Russians, recorded by the Moscow-based RIA Novosti, one of the state controlled news agencies. It has the Russian defence ministry saying that: “During the time that Bucha was under the control of the Russian Armed Forces, not a single local resident suffered from any violent actions”.

All photographs and videos published by the Kiev regime, allegedly testifying to some kind of “crimes” by Russian military personnel in the city of Bucha, Kiev region, the defence ministry added: “are another provocation”.

The West, with the help of staged photos and videos from Bucha, says RIA Novosti, wants to portray the “Ukrainian Srebrenica” and accuse the Russian Federation of “genocide” of the local population, although the clumsiness of preparing these materials is visible to the naked eye.

Referring to video clips such as this, the defence ministry claimed that the material had been “staged”, saying how “corpses” moved their arms and their limbs so as not to be run over by military vehicles. In the rear-view mirror of one car, from which filming takes place, it alleged, one of the “dead” gets up as soon as the car passes by.

The defence ministry pointed out that all Russian units completely left Bucha on 30 March and that, the next day, Mayor Fedoruk confirmed in a video message that the city was free of Russians, but did not mention any residents shot in the streets. All the so-called “evidence of crimes” appeared only when SBU officers and representatives of Ukrainian TV arrived there, four days after Russian troops had left.

The ministry then complained that the UN Secretary General has urged that the “events” in Bucha should be investigated, and that the West had “hastened” to condemn Russia without studying the details.

Interestingly, RIA Novosti cites Bogdan Bezpalko, “a member of the Council for Interethnic Relations under the President of the Russian Federation”, who believes the footage can be compared to fake videos of the White Helmets from Syria.

This refers to a practice not unknown in the Middle East of staging “atrocities” for the benefit of the Western media, something we came across in July 2006, which we investigated extensively on our previous blog, producing a detailed report of our findings.

This was the claimed incident in the southern Lebanese village of Qana, where it was claimed that an Israeli air strike (or strikes) had caused the partial collapse of a three storey residential building, killing a large number of women and children.

Our investigation showed that many of the subsequent scenes of the recovery of children’s bodies had been staged for the benefit of the press – which almost certainly colluded in the process of what we came to call “Qanagate”. And nor could we ever adduce any evidence that there had even been an Israeli air strike on the building, or that women and children had been sheltering there at the time claimed.

The Russians, therefore, are tapping into a well-founded vein of scepticism, where experience suggests that after-battle photographic reports must be treated with a great deal of caution, and that media claims should not be accepted uncritically, no matter how plausible the may initially seem. For too long, the media have polluted the well, and eroded their own reputations.

That said, the scenes recorded are – as the Guardian observes, straight out of Putin’s playbook, redolent of Grozny and the 2016 battle of Aleppo. Despite the Russian complaints, the evidence we are seeing is entirely credible and in-line with previous Russian interventions.

Furthermore, there is far too much good evidence of abuse for it to be discounted. This even amounts to Russian tanks smashing civilian cars with people inside. In some of them, dead bodies have been discovered still inside the wrecked vehicles.

In due course, once the expert investigators from the International Criminal Court get down to work and issue their reports, we shall know something of the truth. But, for the moment, the strict truth doesn’t matter. Dead bodies littering the streets of Bucha, and much more besides, have become part of a gruesome propaganda war.

Already, Zelensky has condemned the killings as “genocide”, claiming that the Russians in Ukraine were seeking “the elimination of the whole nation, and the people”.

He is joined in his condemnation by US Secretary of State Blinken, who has said that his department would help document any atrocities the Russian military had committed against Ukrainian civilians. Nato Secretary General Stoltenberg called the deaths a “brutality”, strongly welcoming a war crimes investigation.

But the most profound effects of the rush of publicity on the “atrocities” is to transform the status of the conflict. While the Wall Street Journal reminds us of the complexities of the issues, and the way that they have been mishandled over the decades, the shades of grey have been abolished by the brutality of the Russians.

The new status of the conflict is characterised by an open appeal to the Dutch prime minister and parliament by the Ukrainian and Dutch honorary consuls, referring to a call from Zelensky who declared: “It is time to make a choice, it is time for black or white, the good and the bad”.

This has now become a battle of good against evil. The Ukrainians wear the white hats, the Russians the black. There are no ambiguities and the Western nations are challenged to join the good guys, pledging their unconditional support.

Such is the momentum that, despite the obvious downside effects, the German defence minister is saying that the EU must discuss banning the import of Russian gas, making it very clear that her view has been influenced by the Russian “atrocities” near Kiev.

With such polarisation, it is very hard to deny the needs of Ukraine and we are now seeing a change in policy, whereby the US is now assisting in the transfer of offensive weapons to Ukraine. We are thus seeing Poland purchasing late-model Abrams tanks from the US and then passing its Soviet-era T-72 fleet to Ukraine, to assist in the recovery of Donbass.

Up to press, it has been policy to restrict the provision of weapons to those which can be considered “defensive”, we are now seeing Ukraine being equipped to bring the war to the Russians.

In the final analysis, though, this must represent another of Putin’s misjudgements. He might have been able to get away with his brand of savagery in Grozny and Aleppo where, bluntly, no-one much cared what happened to the inhabitants. But to unleash his thuggery on a European city, in the full glare of the Western media, was not the most inspired of strategies.

And yet, the man who is capable of permitting such things, despite the obvious backlash, is one who might not be deterred from even greater savagery. We have not heard the last of this.