As gruesome videos and photos of bodies emerge from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Kremlin-backed media are denouncing them as an elaborate hoax — a narrative that journalists in Ukraine have shown to be false.
Denouncing news as fake or spreading false reports to sow confusion and undermine its adversaries are tactics that Moscow has used for years and refined with the advent of social media in places like Syria.
In detailed broadcasts to millions of viewers, correspondents and hosts of Russian state TV channels said Tuesday that some photo and video evidence of the killings were fake while others showed that Ukrainians were responsible for the bloodshed.
“Among the first to appear were these Ukrainian shots, which show how a soulless body suddenly moves its hand,” a report Monday on Russia-1’s evening news broadcast declared. “And in the rearview mirror it is noticeable that the dead seem to be starting to rise even.”
But satellite images from early March show the dead were left out on the streets of Bucha for weeks. On April 2, a video taken from a moving car was posted online by a Ukrainian lawyer showing those same bodies scattered along Yablonska Street in Bucha. High-resolution satellite images of Bucha from commercial provider Maxar Technology reviewed by The Associated Press independently matched the location of the bodies with separate videos from the scene. Other Western media had similar reports.
Over the weekend, AP journalists saw the bodies of dozens of people in Bucha, many of them shot at close range, and some with their hands tied behind them. At least 13 bodies were located in and around a building that residents said was used as a base for Russian troops before they retreated last week.
Yet Russian officials and state-media have continued to promote their own narrative, parroting it in newspapers and on radio and television. A top story on the website of a popular pro-Kremlin newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, pinned the mass killings on Ukraine, with a story that claimed “one more irrefutable proof that ‘the genocide in Bucha’ was carried out by Ukrainian forces.”
An opinion column published Tuesday by the state-run news agency RIA Novosti surmised that the Bucha slayings were a ploy for the West to impose tougher sanctions on Russia.
Analysts note it isn't the first time in its six-week-old invasion of Ukraine that the Kremlin has employed such an information warfare strategy to deny any wrongdoing and spread disinformation in a coordinated campaign around the globe.
“This is simply what Russia does every time it recognizes that it has suffered a PR setback through committing atrocities,” said Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow with the Russia and Eurasia program at the Chatham House think tank. “So the system works almost on autopilot.”
Before the war, Russia denied U.S. intelligence reports that detailed its plans to attack Ukraine. Last month, Russian officials tried to discredit AP photos and reporting of the aftermath of the bombing of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which left a pregnant woman and her unborn child dead.
The photos and video from Bucha have set off a new wave of global condemnation and revulsion.
After his video appearance Tuesday at the U.N. Security Council, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy enumerated the killings in Bucha by Russian troops and showed graphic video of charred and decomposing bodies there and in other towns. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed them as staged.
Across social media, a chorus of more than a dozen official Russian Twitter and Telegram accounts, as well as state-backed media Facebook pages, repeated the Kremlin line that images and video of the dead were staged or a hoax. The claims were made in English, Spanish and Arabic in accounts run by Russian officials or from Russian-backed news outlets Sputnik and RT. The Spanish-language RT en Español has sent more than a dozen posts to its 18 million followers.
“Russia rejects allegations over the murder of civilians in Bucha, near Kiev,” an RT en Español post said Sunday.
Several of the same accounts sought to discredit claims that Russian troops carried out the killings by pointing to a video of Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk, taken March 31, in which he talked about the suburb being freed from Russian occupation.
“He confirms that Russian troops have left Bucha. No mentioning of dead bodies in the streets,” top Russian official Mikhail Ulyanov tweeted Monday.
But Fedoruk had publicly commented on the violence before the Russian troops left in an interview with Italian news agency Adnkronos on March 28, where he accused them of killings and rapes in Bucha.
In an AP interview March 7, Fedoruk talked about dead bodies piling up in Bucha: “We can’t even gather up the bodies because the shelling from heavy weapons doesn’t stop day or night. Dogs are pulling apart the bodies on the city streets. It’s a nightmare.”
Satellite images by Maxar Technologies while Russian troops occupied Bucha on March 18 and 19 back up Fedoruk’s account of bodies in the streets, showing at least five bodies on one road.
Some social media platforms have tried to limit propaganda and disinformation from the Kremlin. Google blocked RT’s accounts, while in Europe, RT and Sputnik were banned by tech company Meta, which also stopped promoting or amplifying Russian-state media pages on its platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram.
Russia has found ways to evade the crackdown with posts in different languages through dozens of official Russian social media accounts.
“It’s a pretty massive messaging apparatus that Russia controls — whether it’s official embassy accounts, bot or toll accounts or anti-Western influencers — they have many ways to circumvent platform bans,” said Bret Schafer, who heads the information manipulation team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.
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Associated Press writer Colleen Barry in Milan contributed.
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Seen the same willful ignorance here over the past few days. Shameful but easily recognisable.
These people need to be shamed and ridiculed not ignored.
Well said.
The very same people who two years ago decried Covid as a "harmless sniffle"; insisted two months ago that fascist Russia "never had any intention" of invading sovereign Ukraine...are now parrotting the fascist Russia line that these atrocities are a "hoax".
These pro-fascists are predictable and they are a disgrace.
Very predictable response from a Putin lackey.
This Russian regime is currently just as reviled as the Nazis were in 1945. Russia will never be allowed back among the nations of the world, until Putin is gone.
Regardless of guilt, would anyone expect them to be like "Oh yup, we are doing all the war crimes!"? When has a country ever done that when they weren't coerced to?
Russia is not going to confirm its troops are responsible. Russia still refuses to admit its responsibility for shooting down MH-370 over Eastern Ukraine. Russia never takes responsibility for its actions.
I watched a History channel documentary on WWII and Soviet troops were shooting anything that moved rather than shoot only at military targets. They leveled everything and shot civilians as easily as soldiers. They had a policy in Grozny of destroy everything and kill anyone you see. Same in Aleppo when they destroyed that city. It is Russian military doctrine to shoot everyone and destroy everything of the enemies.
Allied nations use discretion and where possible try to avoid civilian casualties. They are not perfect at it and make mistakes. They generally end up admitting their mistakes. They use fit for purpose munitions. As Russia's aim is destruction and kill any enemy the use of "dumb" munitions and artillery barrages on cities and towns is within their doctrine, but they are not honorable enough to admit their barbarity in fighting war. It probably disgusts most of them also but the person at the top dictates direction and policy that the rest must follow.
More Russian atrocities will be found and its effects on Ukraine forces will probably make some so enraged they commit atrocities against Russian soldiers and spies. WWII showed when one side committed massacres the other side would often have a "no prisoners" policy if units identified as committing atrocities were ever caught.
Nazi SS murdered US troops in Western Europe and so when SS became prisoners, many were shot. War does horrible things to the humanity of people and things unthinkable become possible.
Stop the war, and stop the horrors and deaths of innocent civilians, stop the destruction.
Denouncing news as fake or spreading false reports to sow confusion and undermine its adversaries are tactics that Moscow has used for years and refined with the advent of social media in places like Syria.
Unfortunately these techniques used by Russia have long been used by the UK and US.
Read Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent.
True. The question is, how can Putin be taken out?
i remember so called "chemical weapons attack" of Assad against syrian civilians.
all of media coverage and white helmets staged videos...when specialist came to investigate incidents they did not find any proof that Assad did so and you guess what-no more media coverage,all fakenews went to to be "forgotten".so called "novichok" attack in Salisbury-same thing...no one ever cares about that anymore...
in case of recent event in Bucha I have one question-Cui bono?
how about to let independent investigators to come,investigate all case and than lets talk who did and why did?
or must we believe all talk of UA government?
any thoughts guys?
that is the million Ruble question
So, which side does not engage in "information warfare" and can be trusted? It isn't like MSM isn't lying and parroting whatever is convenient for them (and their masters).
In this conflict, there is no side that can be viewed and trusted as independent.
With the absence of independent observers, court and prosecution, the truth will be decided by whoever ends up writing and rewriting the history books.
It’s gone from, “only Nazis we’re killed”, to “there were no killings”, to “the killings were staged”, to “well, I wasn’t personally there so who can even say what the truth is? Maybe this is all a butterfly’s dream. So stop worrying and let Lord Putin kill more children.”
Well, it's perfectly obvious it was staged 4 days after the Russians left the town.
Every Russian will carry a rock of shame of what has been done by the government they support and in their name around their neck for the rest of time!
That is not worth much nowadays LOL!
Want to bet on that?
You know, I am getting heartedly sick of people spouting this nonsense about 'MSM', white helmets and fake news... what sort of weird bubble are these people living in? Newspaper cuttings on the wall? Tin foil on the curtains, darkened rooms and police monitor radios?
This is a war, people are being killed by the Russians - executed going by the reports. How any sane person can sit there and spew forth some of the drivel I've seen above boggles the mind.
The only thing I know for sure is that both sides there are like brothers in a historical sense, which also includes having the same violent mindset, common history during the USSR period, were together drilled and have fought in red army for decades and therefore use similar or the same harsh and brutal military methods and skilled hi-spec propaganda measures. It is impossible for outsiders or bystanders who are not Russian or Ukrainian to get even only near to the truth of what has happened and is happening there. Without waterproof indications or proofs no one can or should judge on anything in that whole area, including the Bucha and other places’ massacres.
Putin and his Russian government have zero credibility. Thet destroyed that permanently when they invaded Ukraine after repeating that they won't.
It's so difficult and confusing which side to believe. Showing an image of ruined buildings, the announcer of Russian television narrated that the Ukrainian force had left the town after destroying the buildings in town completely. As to many civilian deaths, the Russian authorities accused Ukraine of using its citizens as human shields.
Images of the bombed buildings and burned-down houses remind me of the trigger-happy propensity of Russians, such as was seen in the 1993 October Coup, a political war between Boris Yeltsin, then President, and Ruslan Khasbulatov, then Chairman of the Soviet Supreme Parliament, over the institution of a new constitution.
Yeltsin ordered his army to shell the Parliament building with a cannon where Khasbulatov barricaded himself in. Could one fire cannon balls against his political foe so unscrupulously?
Is NATO membership really worth this?
Putin and his foreign minister claim the Brits are responsible. Does not get any sillier than that. Satellite images and witness accounts contradict Putin. He is hiding all of the truth from his own people.
Putin has destroyed Russia's international reputation for decades.
Is permanent pariah-state status for fascist Russia really worth this invasion of an independent nation?
They also denied invading Crimea, and they denied shooting down MH-17, and they denied assassinating dissidents with nerve agents, and they denied blowing up a hospital in Syria, and they denied plans to invade Ukraine, and now they have denied executing civilians in the streets.
In a day and age when we can video almost anything as it happens how come there's no video of this killing and burial, not a glimmer. Then all of a sudden, look what we found. I'm thinking more and more Zelenskyy has his own agenda with the Ukrainian oligarchs, because it's not only Russia that has oligarchs, we just choose not to see the Ukrainian ones.
Dont the Russian people (and the Chinese as well ) realise that their own Govt has killed more of them than anyone else.
Of course, they do. Why would Putin stop lying now?
Lt. Col. Azatbek Omurbekov
has been identified as the commander of the unit (64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade) accused of these atrocities.
Russian soldiers might be guilty of war crimes. Russia might be guilty of invading a weaker country. And Putin might be a monster.
But if people think that this will lead to a boycott of Russia and turn Russia into an isolated pariah state they need a reality check. Posters commenting here are probably from Western countries and do not realise the amount of sympathy Russia has in the third world. This goes back to the early days of the Cold War when USSR took an anti-colonialism stand, backed anti-colonial movements and supported the newly independent third world countries. This is true for African countries and also for India. And China will not give up it's support for Russia.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/ukraine-invasion-african-support-russia-shows-kremlins-soft-power-2611446
Fox is Russian media these days and the GOP the American wing of United Russia.
The despicable bunch part of both these criminal outfits are as much responsible for the massacre as the Russians!
ha ha that’s rich. warmongers supporting NATO’s never ending wars of course would say such a bombastic thing.
Well documented, investigated and recorded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_chemical_weapons_in_the_Syrian_civil_war
Russia doesnt care. Everyone else remembers what Russian agents did and it is recorded for history.
Google pictures have shown the bodies showed up while that territory was occupied by Russian forces. That corroborated that Russian assertions it was staged and fake are incorrect. Russia simply can not be trusted. Truth can not be found in Russian mouths or in pro Russian posts. It is hard to face when your nation does monstrous things. You do not want to believe and you argue it must be fake, because you love your country. But at some point you have to come to grips that your soldiers have committed crimes, horrific crimes. That has not come yet and for many they will believe even past the end that it was all made up. For the rest, this taints credibility for Russian information and opinions to the point that if Russia says it, it has a better than very good chance of being wrong, misinformation, deception and outright lies.
Reference to past Russian lies does not help their cause, it increases their guilt.
You might find third world sympathy for Ukraine is stronger than for the invader Russia. Third world nations are no strangers to big powerful nations taking them by invasion. This is not Russia versus NATO or the west. This is Russia versus Ukraine. Ukraine with no allies and no intention of invading others to create an empire.
China is Russia's "no limits" partner and India has many issues particular to it in regards Pakistan, China and Russia who all figure heavily in Indian policy and them treading carefully. Governments do not always reflect the will of the ordinary citizen so those nations should be careful in how far they are willing to accommodate Russian aggression.
The Russians have lied about everything so far, why should they start telling the truth now?
“If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth.”
……….Joseph Goebbels
sorry but that’s willful ignorance. And for a crime like this that’s a morally bankrupt position.
We can judge. We must judge. The preponderance of evidence makes it clear that Russian soldiers committed these war crimes.
Other atrocities are being discovered in other towns so it’s not only Bucha.
Lt. Col. Azatbek Omurbekov
has been identified as the commander of the unit (64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade) accused of these atrocities.
who has now been transferred to East Ukraine.
This may be news to you where you are from, but NATO didn't invade Ukraine. Russia did. Any thoughts? Care to comment on Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
Putin is regrouping,he is gonna unleashed more hell on Ukrainian,in the next two weeks,as Russian soldiers redeploy from Belarus,better that Ukrainian launch attack on Belarus and Russia,his deadline is May 9, Google Putin May 9 Ukraine Deadline