Accepting the fake claims of a massacre is as bad as or even worse than denying a real one. Besides the immediate damage caused by the deception, it undermines trust and empathy when a real massacre happens.
The allegations of the Bucha massacre are false.
The Russian military left Bucha, Ukraine on March 30, 2022. On March 31, Bucha mayor Anatoly Fedoruk triumphantly declared Bucha liberated. On April 1, a video shot from a moving car appeared on Twitter, showing 7 (maybe 8) dead bodies on the Yablonska Street in Bucha. By April 3, the number of bodies found on the streets of Bucha had grown to 20, and mass graves were shown. Kyiv claimed that the Russian military had executed between 280 and 410 civilians in Bucha. Russia denied these accusations (RIA FAN in Russian, April 7) and demanded a special session by the U.N. Security Council to refute them. This request was blocked by Britain.
Mass Graves
The mass graves are real, but the decision to bury the deceased in a mass grave was made by the local authorities in consultations with clergy after the morgue was overflowing. Deceased people, including those who had died from natural causes and shooting by both sides, were buried there.
Burying the dead in mass graves in Bucha was known since March 10, at least. It was discussed in Russian-speaking forums with videos. Satellite imagery of the dug grave (CNN, April 3) from March 10 matches description by the local abbott (CNN, April 5):
The local morgue in Bucha ran out of space as deaths mounted in March; to deal with all the bodies, a tractor was brought in to dig a mass grave in the grounds of the Church of St. Andrew. … There were too many dead people, and there was no way to properly bury them because getting to the cemetery was simply unrealistic because of the shelling.
Bucha was under Russian control at that time, so shelling was likely not by them. Until April 2–3, nobody claimed that victims of executions had been buried there. This practice of temporary burial in mass graves (“???????? ??????,” literally “brotherly graves”) is being reported from other contested areas of Ukraine. It has nothing to do with alleged war crimes.
There is a huge cultural misunderstanding. In the West, mass graves are associated with mass murder. In Russia and Ukraine, they are associated with fighting a war. Even permanent burial in mass or brotherly graves is not unusual in times of war.
Other Evidence
Among approximately 20 bodies shown in the photos and videos, some appear to be obviously staged. For example, one body photographed on April 3 had its hands tied behind with a snow-white shred —impossible if the body had lain there for four days. Moreover, all the bodies were shown from angles from which the faces could not be seen.
As of April 7, no names of victims have been released by Ukraine. In an interview with DW.ru, Mayor Fedoruk refused even to tell when the names would be released. No autopsy results were published. The territory is in the hands of the Ukrainian government, and it is supposed to provide evidence of executions, if any.
The most attention went to the seven or so bodies on Yablonska Street. There are claims that they could be identified on satellite photos made as early as March 11. This is hard to believe, given the Russian and Ukrainian tradition to bury dead persons quickly and natural decomposition happening to bodies remaining exposed.
Whether these seven people were killed when the Russian troops were in the town or later, the cause of death cannot be determined from the widely available evidence. These men might have been killed by Ukrainian artillery. Bucha, a small town (50,000 residents pre-war, per Mayor Fedoruk) bordering the slightly bigger town Irpin, was near the frontline for about a month, and Ukrainian artillery fired toward Bucha even after the Russian troops withdrew. The videos show craters next to some bodies. There could be air bursts, not leaving craters. Some of them might have died from a stray bullet or an attack of marauders. There is no evidence of a massacre by the Russian troops.
The assertions that the bodies moved immediately after the car moved past them are not correct. Some people on the Russian side say that the men were murdered by the Ukrainian paramilitary organization Azov or other forces after the Russian military withdrew. I did not find any evidence in support of this and thus consider it not true. This claim has been followed by allegations that the same happened in other towns from which the Russian military retreated.
We need to put an end to these lies because:
- they constitute blood libel;
- they increase hatred between Russians and Ukrainians;
- they guide our policy in the wrong direction.
PS: I was born and raised in Kyiv while Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.
‘Nazi hunter’ Eli Rosenbaum tapped to head DOJ team investigating war crimes in Ukraine
This should prove interesting.
The Ukrainians seem to be demanding a better use of propaganda. Human Rights ombudsman, Lyudmyla Denisova, has been fired by the Ukrainian parliament for employing propaganda as Human Rights violations by Russia. Her claims of gang rapes emanating from the propaganda campaign launched after Russia withdrew from Bucha could not be confirmed. The claims of systematic, organized sexual assaults, included claims of “a 6-month-old girl was raped by Russians with a teaspoon,” “two raped babies orally and anal,” and “a nine-month-old daughter was raped by candlelight” as well as claims of genital mutilation found on corpses with bound hands.
This led to NGOs with an interest in helping the rape victims seeking out the victims, so they could potentially appeal for some of the massive aid being sent to Ukraine. To their surprise, none of the claims made by Denisova could be confirmed.
Following this nearly 200 signatures of news correspondents, Human rights activists, lawyers, psychologists, teachers, and public organizations signed a letter severely chastising her actions of disseminating unconfirmed reports as follows:
The Servant of the People Party, Zelensky’s political party, decided to pass a vote of no confidence against Denislova as reported by Christopher Miller:
Following the no confidence vote, however, the UN condemned her removal with the following tweet:
As victims of their own successful propaganda campaigns, Ukraine seems to have been lefton several fronts having to deal with a harsh reality that is quite distinctly different from the propagandists claims emanating from Kiev. Beyond the claims of supposed organized brutal rapes with no confirming evidence, Ukraine has had to deal with the their supposed victories over Russia as it has continuously been losing ground, and the supposed non-neoNazi composition of its Azov Regiment as the Nazi iconography of the Azov headquarters is seen also painted in body art of the Azov members themselves.
More can be read here:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/rape-allegations-against-russian-troops-in-ukraine-were-fake.html#more
and here
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-fires-human-rights-chief-perpetuating-russian-troop-systematic-rape-stories
Reader, you said,
That is a libel. Poland did not have sovereign territory after September, 1939. The “extermination camps” you refer to were obviously Nazi German, not Polish, located in the German “Government General”.
https://imgs.search.brave.com/DOYlEzz4Qq423IcWpPoVnWZZ3IO2bto4BX8Ahs-oZ28/rs:fit:640:420:1/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly9lbmN5/Y2xvcGVkaWEudXNo/bW0ub3JnL2ltYWdl/cy9sYXJnZS84ZjM1/ODMwZC04YTQ1LTRi/MjYtODE3Zi03MzFi/ZThiMDBhNGMuZ2lm.gif
Shame on you!
War crime evidence surfaces around Kharkiv supporting the videos of Ukrainian torture videos of Russian POWs is now being revealed. What appears to be POWs, in the same village where the videos of knee-capping of Russian POWs were shared in April, are now being reported by Spanish news groups. The bodies have hands tied behind them and bullet wounds in execution style at the back of the head. Where is the outrage to challenge the Ukrainians for their grotesquely bizarre delights in such outrages. I hear crickets to end this outrage, even as the US and EU are now the paymasters of the deviant “soldiers” who are committing these atrocities. This is unacceptable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAyfmNTJq1g
@Adam Dalgliesh
I was talking about Poles because I think that your parents are from Poland or you were born there and you picked up the Polish ideas and “patriotism”.
I think this because as soon as I started posting on this site I happened to encounter your going on the barricades for the “poor, innocent” Poland who had nothing to do with Nazi crimes.
Poland is the only country in the world that had six extermination camps on its territory, even Germany didn’t have that, probably because the Germans would not allow such an open display of murderousness and cruelty on their own territory.
Before the war Poland had 3 million Jews, now it has about 2,000, and it is not because the three million left Poland for the greener pastures – they were exterminated in the full view of the Polish people and with their knowledge – and a few thousand that were left were forced out of the country in the 1960s.
The only two countries where the population of the Jews could be counted in millions after the war were the USSR (“Russia”) and the US.
If anyone’s posts may be called spaced out, they must be yours because your posts about Russia, Poland, and Ukraine are devoid of all objectivity and sound reasoning.
If one applied the same standards to Germany (at least) as you apply to Russia, Germany should have been turned into a burned out desert after the war.
@Adam
I have shared a small part of why I do not believe the Russians committed the crimes at Bucha. None of it is relatable to Holocaust denial. The testimony shared by Ted of Vivarto’s friend [thank you Vivarto for sharing this news] seems to conclude any doubt that I had, and admittedly there wasn’t much.
My conclusion wasn’t because I did not believe the Russians could commit such crimes, nor that they would try to obfuscate their guilt. It is because I believe either side could commit such crimes, and both sides would obfuscate their guilt. In point of fact, I do believe the Ukrainians have been committing crimes against their own people for many years, and this was prior to the Russians entering the fray and adding to the motivation to shoot their white arm-banded countrymen. Given the totality of situation in Bucha, I simply do not believe there is a strong case to be made against the Russians.
The action taken at the UN also seemed to shy away from a desire to pursue the truth and rather to rest on an assumption of truth, and that was likely due to the fact that they were not convinced of Russian guilt either. They just didn’t care about the situation on the ground, just how they could use the accusation against Russia to gain a political advantage without a possibility of exposing the truth, of which, as the Pentagon stated clearly, they were uncertain, which should be weighed as significant, I believe.
@Reader. Reader, your comment strikes me as spaced out. For one thing, I was writing about Ukrainians, not Poles. The Poles and Ukrainians are not the same people. Historically, they have often fought with each other. Their languages are quite different. My comments about the defenders of Mariupol said nothing about Poles.
The claim that the Poles as a people helped the Nazis exterminate the Polish Jews is an outrageous lie. I don’t blame you for it since I know it originates with other people, mainly Haaretz, which is a bitterly anti-Israel newspaper, although written by Jews and published in Israel. They are real self-haters. So it is perhaps no surprise that they hate and libel Poles as well. Unfortunately, som Israeli politicians who should know better have slandered the Poles as well.
There is no solid documentary evidence or eye-witness testimony implicating any but a very small number of Poles who betrayed Jews to the Nazis, or murdered them themselves. Less than a thousand. The Polish communist government that took overPoland in December 1944 conducted a search for these people, and accepted testimony from Jews who knew about such collaborators. But they were able to identify a small number. On the other hand, Yad Vashem has identified and honored more Poles who saved the lives of Jews, often at great risk to themselves than people from any other European nation. Tens of thusands of Poles have been honored by the Yadfor their work saving Jewish lives.
The appalling truth is that far more Jews were betrayed to the Nazis by their fellow Jews, in Poland and several other countries. Most of these individuals were appointed to serve on Jewish “councils” that the Nazis set up when they occupied Poland. The leaders then persuaded the Jews in their city or town, including Warsaw, to move into the ghetto areas that the Nazis had established. These areas of course were much to small to house the huge number of Jews that were herded into them. And then the Nazis denied them food, causing many to die. These Jewish councilmen also ordered all the Jews in their towns to appear for a census of the Jews their towns, held in some sort of public square, in which each and every Jewish head of household was required to give his name and those of every member of his household. These were all recorded by the S.S. officers, who later used these lists to make sure that every single Jew listed on them was killed.
Once in the ghettos the Jewish councilmen urged the Jews to obey Nazi orders to get on the trains that took them to the death camps. The Nazis also hired a substantial number of Jewish policemen to round up the Jewish residents and bring them to the death trains. These Jewish policemen were also employed to arrest any Jew suspected of resistance activities and bring them to the Gestapo headquarters to be tortured and murdered.
It is important to point out that these Nazi-appointed police were Jews, not Poles.
Many of the Jewish councillers and police were well-intentioned but naive. They believed that far fewer Jews would be killed if all the Jewish obeyed orders from the Nazis. They didn’t think that the Nazis intended to murder all the Jews, but just exploit them as cheap labor in the concentration camps.
They also hoped that the Nazis would allow them to survive if they assisted the Nazis in rounding up their fellow Jews. But in most cases, the Nazis murdered these collaborators along with all of the other Jews,
So instesad of falsly blaming the Poles for the Holocaust, we should look in the mirror.
The Israeli government’s collaboration with the PLO and even Hamas, providing the “Palestinians” with aid and jobs even though leaders are terrorists who are more or less openly attempting to exterminate the Jews of Eretz Israel. They are no better or different than the Nazis, yet our government gives them financial assistance, and even collects taxes for them No so different from the way the foolish Jewish councilmen collaborated with the Nazis and facilitated their genocide.
When will we ever learn to get tough on our enemies, and stop unjustly blaming our friends?
@Adam
I just talked to Vivarto who has a number of Ukrainian friends. One of his friends who lives near Kiev told him that the talk in the neighborhood is that the bodies on the street were put there by Ukrainians after the Russians left. The neighbours also said that they thought the Ukrainian Army killed some people and set the whole thing up,
Adam: Well, maybe they’ll get their own poem out of it, at least.
“Why is the charge of the Light Brigade famous?
Image result for light brigade
Charge of the Light Brigade, (Oct. 25 [Oct. 13, Old Style], 1854), disastrous British cavalry charge against heavily defended Russian troops at the Battle of Balaklava (1854) during the Crimean War (1853-56). The suicidal attack was made famous by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his 1855 poem of the same name.” – Brittanica
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade
@Adam
I didn’t ask you this..That aside you answer my question as follows,
I think you are saying that the west should double down on sanctions. But the sanctions aren’t working.. Not enough countries are supporting them.
And if we are not certain, then what?
@Adam Dalgliesh
I am stunned.
Your blind hatred of Russia and the “Russians” is showing.
This is ironic because there are as many “ethnic” Russians or Ukrainians as there are “ethnic Americans”.
The Poles have two psychoses – the Russian one and a Jewish one.
They helped their noble Arian friends, the Germans who so nobly defended the Western Europe from the wild Russian hordes, to finish off the 3 million Polish Jews.
Now their dream is to help their noble Western friends and the noble Nazis from the Azov battalion (oh, how it hurts when a noble Nazi is killed by a vicious Russky!), to finish off the “Russians” and to take their land in which the “hyena of Europe” (Churchill) is hoping to share.
If you weren’t Jewish, you would be a flaming antisemite in addition to being a flaming Russophobe.
@Ted.
Ted, you are asking what is by far the most important and relevant question here.
My own personal opinion, and it is only that, is that the West should embargo all trade and financial dealings of any kind with Russia until they withdraw from Ukraine. That will cause a great deal of suffering among people in the West, and probably also in Russia. I would suffer personally because of my low income, like other low-income people. But I don’t see any other means of discouraging Putin from attacking other countries on his published “hit list.”
Since the Western powers, including the U.S., have signed treaties promising to defend several of these countries, they will find it hard to avoid going to war with Russia.
Also political pressure pressure from the very large Polish-American and Hungarian-American communities would make it impossible for the USG to avoid taking this step.
So in my opinion, the only way to save the people of the Western democracies and the Russian people from this appalling disaster will be to use maximum economic pressure, far more than is being applied at present, to force Russia to back down.
And Putin will back down if Russia faces economic ruin, because he is at heart a pragmatist. And if he refuses to back down, I think his colleagues in the Russian government wiould politely but firmly insist on his resignation.
@Sebastien. From Yahoo News: https://www.yahoo.com/news/death-captivity-mariupol-ukraine-battle-141300550.html. The last batallion still resisting (I think it is the Azov batallion) say they will now be forced to surrender. They have completely run out of ammunition. All their infantry soldiers have been killed. Members of artillery and other units have nearly all lost limbs. The few surviving members will be forced either to surrender or die fighting “with their bare hands.” The battalion commander criticizes the ukraine government for “writing them off” by not sending a relief force.
My own opinion: I am reminded of Leonidas and his three hundred Spartan defenders of Thermopolae ( they were actually reinforced by 700 men from a less well-known city state, but that always gets left out of the story) who fought to the last man.
I can’t help but admire such incredible courage and unselfish patriotism, even though some members of the battalion, although by no means all, had belonged to neo-Nazi organizations in the past.
@Felix
Stop insulting people and using ad hominems.
@Adam.
Of what relevance is it whether Russia committed atrocities? Let us assume that we are certain that it did, what should the west do about it?
@peloni@Ted. https://christiansfortruth.com/piles-of-corpses-at-dachau-and-buchenwald-were-dead-german-soldiers-staged-there-for-propaganda-purposes/.
This antisemitic site illustrates my point that Putin’s claim that the atrocities in Bucha were staged or fabricated imitates exactly the way neo-Nazis have tried to explain away and deny the Nazi atrocities.
This “Christians for Truth site claims that the huge numbers of emaciated bodies discovered at Dachau and Buchenwald were actually of German soldiers who had died in British prisoner-of-war camps, and whose bodies were then dumpred at Dachau and Buchenwald by British intelligence agents. The films of the victims of the two camps were made, according to “Christians for Truth,” by Alfred Hitchcock, who allegedly had been given a contract by the U.S. government, working with the British, to fabricate atrocities using the film techniques he had developed in Hollywood! Hitchcock, they claim had been working on faking German atrocity films for three yeats before the end of the war.
Putin’s lies about Bucha and the numerous other places where Russian soldiers committed massacres follow this neo-Nazi script almost exactly. Probably the FSB has studied these neo-Nazi Holocaust-denial sites and followed their script in order to deceive Russian and world opinion.
Last video from ALB (here): March 10, testimony from a young man from Mariupol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hc-50-su4Y
@ Steven: Ukraine was never meant to fight. Their President was a Jewish comedian and, of course, a coward. Biden offered him a secure route to escape. Instead, Zelensky asked for ammunition. Like Ester, he rose to his calling and Ukraine with him. Whatever deal Biden and NATO made with Putin vanished. The triumph of Nationalist over Globalism..
@Honeybee
From the beginning, Europe was for an INDEPENDENT Ukraine, with no access to NATO/EU and independent from Russia.
This was rejected by the US warmongers!
And here we are.
@Adam
Your initial statement was not describing the efforts of the Russian govt as similar to the Holocaust denyers. Rather it was describing people who find a valued support in challenging the current pro-Ukrainian narrative which has more holes in it than a slice of Swiss cheese. You describe such people who would challenge this narrative as “Putin-atrocity-deniers” and the “Putin apologists” and most distastefully proscribe them as being similar to Holocaust denyers. Your more recent statement changes this charge to describe the Russians but I am addressing the initial statement.
I do honestly have a strong belief that the Russians could have committed this crime, but if they did, there are a good many questions for which the only possible answers defy credulity. Among these are why did the Ukrainian mayor provide political cover for the retreating Russians who just killed many of his own citizens by not immediately announcing the Russian massacre. Also when the Ukrainians were conducting a cleansing operation after re-entering their city, was it really something other than what Ukraine has been doing to her Russo-ethnic citizens over the past 8yrs and as is reportedly described on the Ukrainian website. Furthermore, why was there a delayed report of war crimes that came days not hours after the Ukrainians regained control of the city when the bodies were strewn along the streets that the Ukrainian army would have had to travel. These are just a few such oddities that can not be answered with seriously convincing answers and do not rely on any statement of Russia, only common sense and a critical expectation that the Ukrainians should not be believed against all reason.
Regardless of the actual details as to who did commit the crimes at Bucha, though, no one should be held to the libel of being a Holocaust denyer, simply because they disagree with a particular interpretation of the evidence provided. To raise this claim as fair is to completely erode the wickedness and particular vicious crime that Holocaust denyers actually commit when they attack our history as false. Also, it is acceptable for people to disagree on even clearly obvious matters without it being ascribed to a malicious intent as would be the purpose of the comparison of Holocaust denial. By doing so, you provide such villains as David Irving with a claim of a lesser crime than he is well known for having committed and place people such as myself in a very unpleasant position of considering if we have taken up a position of anathema simply by looking at the facts and fairly stating something stinks in Ukraine, and in this case at least, it is not the Russians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU0JMBOTKTk. Sky News reporters have been collecting evidence of massacres at several other villages in the Kyiv area in addition to Bucha. One is a village called Makariv, the subject of this video. The Sky News reporter interviewed several residents who described in detail how their relatives had been tortured and murdered by Russian soldiers who went door to door on a killing spree. The reporter drove in a Ukrainian police car that drove to every house where the occupants had called in to report that one or more of the relatives had been murdered. The Ukrainian cops then dug up the dodies from their temporary graves in peoples gardens and put them into black plastic body bags, while the film crew filmed the process. The reporter said the bodies emitted a strong odor as they were put in the police van.
If the Bacha murders had been an isolated incident, perhaps it could have been faked by the Ukrainians. But there are reports of these incidents, described by eye-witnesses, throughout Ukraine. Also massive photographic evidence of destroyed civilian apartment buildings and railroad stations used by civilians. The Bucha massacre was not an isolated atrocity, but one of hundreds of atrocities. They could not have all been made up, not even by biased Western journalists.
@ Felix: I did not choose my pretentious name, it was chosen by my mother. You have displayed your ignorance of Hebrew.
@Peloni. While the photographic and eye-witness testimony of survivors of the Holocaust seem convincing to you and me,m and all reasonable people, pro-Nazi “revisionist” historians have come up with all sorts of arguments, some of them plausible, to discredit this mountain of evidence and claim that the Holocaust was a hoax. Huge numbers of emaciated bodies found in German concentration camps after the war? They were actually victims of Russian concentration camps holding mainly German civilian prisoners and POWS. Ditto the phographs of people being shot and buried in huge trenches. Or the emaciated bodies were Germans who had starved to death because of the tight British blockade of Germany. Or they were victims of typhus epidemics caused by biological weapons spread by Jewish doctors, or British and Russian aircraft. The pro-Nazi “revisionists” also claimed that the Nazi gas chambers actually were washing and delousing stations just as the Nazis told the victims. The crematoria? They were used to cremate the dodies of people who had died of infections, in order to protect other prisoners from becoming infected.
The hundreds and thousands of Jewish survivors who told stories of what they had endured or seen? They were lying. Maybe paid by the Zionists to do so.
While the atrocities committed by the Russians in Ukraine have not –at least not yet–reached the scale of the Holocaust murders, the arguments used by the Russian government to explain away the evidence of their crimes are very similar. The photographs of people being shot with their hands tied behind their backs could have been fakes. Or the they may have been shot by Ukrainian soldiers. The thousands of Ukrainians who have told journalists on camera that they witnessed or personally endured atrocities, including family members, are all lying. The thousands or tens of thousands of buildings reduced to rubble, sometimes entire neighborhoods or villages, were either all faked, or the Ukrainian armed forces destroyed these buildings (why?). No innocent civilians were in these buildings when they were bombed. The Ukrainians bombed their own radio stations, railroad stations, and power plants. The intercepted radio transmissions in which Russian commanders are heard ording their men to kill civilians were all faked.
The Russian denials that their soldiers killed the Ukrainian civilians photographed in Bacha with their hands tied behind their backs have to be put in this context. Also in the context of all the lies that the Russians, and Putin personally–have already told, such as the invasion being a “special operation,” that the Zelensky government are “Nazis” who took power in a coup, that the Ukrainians want to be part of Russia, etc. Also, their making it a crime for Russians to call the invasion an invasion, not a “special operation,” to spread the “lies” of the Western press to express opposition to the war, even in private conversations, etc. Governments that tell the truth don’t need to put people in jail when they say things that condradict the government’s claims.
The Russian government’s lies and censorship of all reports that contradict these lies are the main reasons why we should dismiss its claim that the Bacha murders were faked.
@Adam Dalgliesh
I realize that you cannot be objective in regard to the Ukraine-Russia issue because your Polish roots are hurting but can you, at least, calm down a bit?
I’m talking here about basic human issues Peloni in the sense of grow up Jews are just a part not the whole.
But you right to be concerned. These nobodies like leading Israel have voted for sanctions oh dear the Russians will remember THAT I mean remember big time. Wow! These pen warriors like Honey bee.live in America and basically don’t deep down give a shit plus they’re very dense meaning.not smart…look at her name she chose……..how pretentious is that!!!
In the first case Russia is free to wage a military campaign against its neighbour state if that state has produced a gun and threatens to blow it’s brains out. We don’t even need to draw on the NATO wars as precedent as there’s no comparison.
Second care for who you like but I would suggest you should care for Putin for a great many human reasons and also for your specific Israel reasons because Putin has been very friendly and helpful to Israel.
And most people have not the slightest notion of Russian history and all is left is hate
You yourself have just made a hateful reference to Putin
@Honeybee
@Edgar
@Felix
@Adam
Without any additional statements, this is true. Russia invaded Ukraine, but that is a separate conversation to the appearance of Ukrainian dead days after the Russians withdrawal alongside a delayed declaration of Russian atrocities as testified by Ukraine, a nation quite at ease with the marginalizing of human rights violations, as clearly stated by the Ukrainian govt itself, just a few days ago.
In point of fact, Russia did invade Ukraine, and if this is the limit of the conversation, than Russia is guilty. Just as NATO is guilty of every invasion, every bombing and every war that they have conducted over the past 30yrs. Herzogevinia, Serbia, Libya, Syria, …. When was NATO ever attacked? How many wars have they conducted? How many stable nations have they brought to a the vision of a failed state? How many millions of victims lie dead in complete ignorance of the crimes that they committed against NATO? How many more must meet that same fate?
More specifically, how many nations did NATO border that they made war upon? None, in fact. How many nations directly threatened NATO and were then victims of NATO’s warring actions. None, again. How many nations that NATO made war upon threatened NATO with the potential of developing a nuclear weapon, while already holding biological weapons that might be deployed against NATO? That is correct, none, once more. All of these factors and more were present to support Russia’s war upon Ukraine, adding to its validation beyond even the most justifiable of the NATO wars.
I care nothing for Putin and his nation beyond the role that his nation might come to play vis a vis upon Israel. Still, I honestly do believe that after a reasonable reflection, he had every right to have his security concerns addressed with more than threats, and it is the world’s loss, and more specifically, the loss of the US-dominated world, that Russia came to recognize that her national security concerns would not be so much as considered by the arrogant, imbalanced, unstable and imperial-natured US administration. The deep irony, which will have a cruel impact upon the US and her foolish allies, is that Russia was consequently motivated to find a way to check the US control over the world, and may succeed in permanently changing the world order more to her own benefit, at a great cost to the US and her silly allies. I have many concerns with regards to this realignment that could so easily have been avoided, but my greatest concern is for the role that Russia might come to play against Israel in the coming weeks, months and years as a penalty for Israel’s continued subservience to the Americans whose interests she continues to hold as higher than her own, once again, despite the recent, distant and routine betrayals to divide her nation and empower her enemies.
@Adam
The events in Bucha were nothing to be compared to the Holocaust, just as those who are speculative of the spotty evidence and refusal to gather more definitive data should not be described as being in the same class as those vile, manipulative, and hate motivated beings that form the basis of Holocaust deniers. It is a fair presumption to expect proof of war crimes and to analyze them beyond the presumption that the Russians must be guilty. In point of fact, the Russians have every reason to expect a close inspection of the crimes that they are accused of committing, just as the West has every reason to present the Russians with the detailed evidence implicating the Russians in their crimes. Furthermore, those who would cast the guilt upon either party should actually judge the evidence fairly and gather what details are possibly available given that this matter is now completely isolated from any war zone.
The Nazi’s were not convicted of their crimes based on propaganda standards nor due the testimony of selected voices. The Nazi’s told the world plainly of their intent to murder our people, they significantly succeeded in their attempts to prove their words serious, they boldly documented their crimes and they left indescribable horrors to document their crimes. The starving victims whose broken bodies stood as silent testimony of their near-death escape, shouted such silent testimony of the crimes committed against our people even before a single word could be uttered. There is, in fact, no comparison between whatever came about in Bucha and the Holocaust, none whatsoever.
I have every reason to believe the Russians might have done this deed just as easily as the Ukrainians, but given the reluctance of the Ukrainians and the west to actually document the easy details that could have placed the Russians in a poor light while the Russians boldly demanded such evidence of their guilt be collected, is a strong indication that the Russian hierarchy, at least, believe in their innocence. I believe this stands as a fair judgement, just as the US/Ukrainian resistance to provide such easy evidence of Russian guilt, or even attempt collecting such easy data, is a strong indication of a presumption Ukrainian guilt. Beyond this, the timeline does not support the idea that these pro-Russian Ukrainians who were killed were killed in a timeline similar to the photo evidence provided by the trusted NYT, along with the Bucha Mayor’s silence of any war crimes in addition to other presented details all adds to these presumptions. Taken as a whole, there is a great doubt of the Russian guilt and a stronger case could easily be made against the Ukrainians. I say this without any love of either side and find the suggestion that I should be counted as a Holocaust denier due to my observations to be a vicious accusation that is far from warranted or supportable.
It is not a loathsome assault to expect that evidence be collected, nor that evidence that is collected should stand up to scrutiny. Such details are routine expectations of due process, and the Russians deserve such considerations just as the Ukrainians. But the ones who have earned such standards be equally applied more than either suspected party, are those poor souls who are being denied the ability to personally implicate the guilty party, and have had their deaths employed as as a tool of propaganda, rather than be examined for implicating evidence of the guilty. And this stands as the greatest crime against the dead of Bucha.
“Russia attacked Ukraine, Ukraine did not attack Russia.” The Arabs did not attack Israel in 1967, Israel attacked the Arabs first.
The arguments of the Russian-atrocity-deniers are nearly identical to those of the Holocaust deniers over the past seventy-five years. The photographs of the dead bodies have been faked, the testimonies of the eye-witnesses are lies, it was physically impossible to gas and cremate all those bodies in the time period in whichthe murders are alleged to have occurred; The photographs of the shootings actually show people being shot by Jewish partisans or Germans killed by allied bombings. The Putin-atrocity-deniers make use of the same or very similar arguments. The only difference is that the Putin apologists are more “main stream” than the Nazi apologists, and are usually more rational about other issues.
@Edgar, Honeybee. You are both right.
Scott Ritter is the guy who first villified Saddam Hussein and claimed that he had “weapons of mass destruction.” Then he suddenly turned on a dime. One day after making one of these broadcasts, he suddenly turned on a dime and the very next day he said Saddam had no such weapons, and was generally a good guy. He then continued in this vein for several months. An internet analyst named Jared Israel pointed this out about Ritter during the 2003 American invasion of Iraq.
This guy seems to be a gun for hire.
In the first place there is certainly in all international law the right to defend your country from invasion.
This is so strong that the United States of America under Kennedy was prepared for War over Cuba Missiles
WHERE IS THE DIFFERENCE?
There is a definite split in these comments
On the one hand those who say we absolutely must gather all of the information possible
On the other who say why bother
One terrible person saying all we need to know is that the Russians are the bad guys
The latter stinks of racism
Much of the comment about the dead bodies being propaganda and likely just war casualties from both sides made into one group, sounds as if it could be true. Especially the way it is all explained by the article.
However, I don’t know any of the facts, just what I have read in the news outlets. And they are not famous for factual information.
The point that a corpse’s hands were tied by a white strip which could not, after 4 days have remained white, I discount. It could be a plastic strip like one gets in hospitals for identification. That the faces are not visible seems very proper to me, to avoid upset to relatives. It is commonplace.
BUT, the point Honeybee has made is the one I made myself.
Russia attacked Ukraine , Ukraine did not attack Russia.
@ketzel2
This is a fair question, as is your outrage over the broken institutions which so badly betrayed their own citizens which I completely share. The answer I would offer is that a collection of international pathologists could do the audit without any regard of what organization might be employed in pursuing the results collected from the sight. Forensic pathology is a very well established science and could, as I noted, be completely recorded with the full participation of the relevant parties.
This was quite a doable feat. The munitions are not the same between the parties nor are times in which the parties had access to the area where the crimes were committed. As Ritter demonstrates, there is a great deal of proof even without the foresics that this crime was committed by the Ukrainians, but the forensics would have been further support of the truth whatever the truth was.
The fact that nothing was done while a presumption of guilt was resolved with such certainty that Russia was ejected from the corrupt institution of the HRC is, by itself, outrageous.
All they have done by such unilateral declarations of self-righteous determinations is to make certain that such crimes will likely be committed with greater occurrence and less concern by either side in the coming days, weeks and months. And it will be due to the lack of any interest by the West of any attempt of due process that the victims of such war crimes will be committed.
@Peloni1986 Who will do the audit? The UN, WHO, etc.? Where will you find qualified experts? Even they can be bribed or threatened. Only eye-witnesses are to be trusted, and even they can’t be trusted unless you’ve been following them for a while, and even they can be bought or threatened. This is what I learned from Covid. So many “influencers” I used to respect suddenly claimed they almost died and please, please, get vaccinated and wear a mask. This is what we’re dealing with. Who is going to give us real data about what happened in Bucha? We will get it sometime after we find out who killed JFK.
@ketzel2
I respectfully disagree with this.
I think it is quite important to determine when war crimes are committed. I think it is important to distinguish between propaganda and actual crimes. Furthermore, if Russia is correct that they did not kill those civilians dressed in white pro-Russian arm bands, someone did. I believe if the West is allied with the perpetrators of war crimes, it is an important fact to discern, especially given the fact that these allies of the West have been reported to have committed these same type of war crimes against their own people going back nearly a decade. This fact alone should cause the West to take a reflective pause before a summary judgement of guilt of the Russians. If we are sending arms to the institutional villainy that caused these crimes, we, the West, are implicated in these crimes as well.
As to the distance, it is a simple task to have sent in the qualified experts to obtain the forensic data to support or dispute the Russian claims, and the Russians could have been made a party to the data collection to remedy any claims of fraud, the entire process could have been recorded as well. It was not a difficult task to eliminate the distance issue.
If these crimes were committed by the Russians, this fact also has merit and exposing such crimes as certain beyond a propagandists purpose would place pressure on Russia to at least address the problem.
As things stand if the Ukrainians did this deed, they have a sense of allied disregard of continuing their crimes. If the Russians did the deed, the lack of any due process provides them with the deniability to ignore the actions of their ranks. In either case these crimes will be more likely to continue rather than stop due to the lack of interest by the West and their disregard for due process while still concluding a decided position on the matter.
Gen. MacGregor vs Larry Johnson vs Scott Ritter on Bucha massacre:
Here is the input from Larry Johnson on the Bucha massacre:
https://sonar21.com/western-intelligence-delusions-and-the-failure-of-the-bucha-op/
More than this, Scott Ritter has stated that on April 1, the day before the bodies appeared, the Ukrainians announced that they were carrying out a “cleansing operation” which he notes is explained on the Ukrainian website as targeting Russian collaborators, such as those people who might be caught wearing the white armbands as in the photos from Bucha. He also cites the video that has been posted of the Ukrainian asking if he can shoot the boy without a blue (signifying pro-Ukraine) armband to which he is told F*** yes. Here are Ritters comments:
https://sonar21.com/western-intelligence-delusions-and-the-failure-of-the-bucha-op/
The evidence to support the Ukrainians or Russian stories is quite easily obtained from the bodies that have now been disposed of by the Ukrainians, while no attempt to provide a comprehensive sense of legitimacy to the claims of who was to blame for those bodies strewn on the street of Bucha, even as the Russians demanded this be done with international support. It was not an active war zone and could easily have been completed to the satisfaction and participation of all parties.
The simple reality is that as Gen. McGreggor has noted, either side is capable of such crimes as such crimes are potentially present in any war, especially a protracted war with vicious animosities being played out. He noted that war crimes were conducted in Vietnam by Americans, and that no one is beyond the potential of such violations.
Here are his comments on Bucha:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDw1u1NWc6A
Hence, when the West unilaterally decides not to confirm their already determined conclusions, which are quite self-serving to begin with, it does display a complete lack of interest in the truth of their allegations. It presents them claiming only a propaganda advantage which we should assume is all that is desired. Hence, they will claim it despite the lack of any and all due process before making their conclusions. This is a disturbing precedent and one which will play out with common use to paint the Ukrainians as saints and the Russians as villians. This is how propaganda is created and exploited, but it has nothing to do with truth or reason.
Please do listen to Scott Ritter’s analysis at the link above, it is more thorough than I have provided and it is fairly short.
It’s pointless to pretend to be Sherlock Holmes and analyze these events from a distance. The only thing I’m sure of is that both sides are manipulating public opinion. Anyone who believes that either Zelensky or Putin is doing anything positive for the world is deluded. We have the same problem in every other country: the scum against the people. The first step in getting rid of scum is to stop analyzing their movies. How do you even know it wasn’t filmed in Hollywood? I’m not saying it was, but the coverage of this war isn’t much different.
“… hands tied behind with a snow-white shred —impossible if the body had lain there for four days”. Not convincing: look on the grave color of the guy’s hand
Just the fact that Russian attacked Ukraine for no apparent cause is a war crime. Why the need to justify Russian murderous actions?