Moscow will convene an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council over an incident in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, according to the Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the organization, Dmitry Polyansky. Ukraine has accused Russia of massacring civilians in the town, while Moscow dismissed the incident and gave proofs it was staged by the Kiev forces.
“In light of the blatant provocation by Ukrainian radicals in Bucha, Russia has demanded a meeting of the UN Security Council to be convened on Monday, April 4. We will bring to light the presumptuous Ukrainian provocateurs and their Western patrons,” Polyansky wrote in his Telegram channel.
A graphic footage from Bucha, a town to the northwest of Kiev, emerged over the weekend, showing multiple bodies clad in civilian clothing scattered around.
New Srebrenica. The Ukrainian city of Bucha was in the hands of 🇷🇺 animals for several weeks. *Local civillians were being executed arbitrarily*, some with hands tied behind their backs, their bodies scattered in the streets of the city.#RussianWarCrimes pic.twitter.com/outzejdidO
— Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU) April 2, 2022
Kiev immediately blamed the Russian military for the incident, with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba alleging it was a “deliberate massacre.”
Bucha massacre was deliberate. Russians aim to eliminate as many Ukrainians as they can. We must stop them and kick them out. I demand new devastating G7 sanctions NOW:
-Oil, gas, coal embargo
-Close all ports to Russian vessels and goods
-Disconnect all Russian banks from SWIFT pic.twitter.com/oZkCAETCQp— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) April 3, 2022
Western policy – for Ukraine or against Russia?
Top Western politicians were quick to back and amplify Kiev’s claims, with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg saying about the incident that it’s “a brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe for decades.”
“And it’s horrific, and it’s absolutely unacceptable that civilians are targeted and killed, and it just underlines the importance of, that this war must end. And that is President Putin’s responsibility, to stop the war,” Stoltenberg told CNN.
A similar stance has also been taken by some other officials. French President Emmanuel Macron said that “Russian authorities will have to answer for these crimes,” thus recognizing he believes the Ukrainian videos.
Besides, the UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss claimed that such “indiscriminate attacks” on civilians should be probed as war crimes.
“We will not allow Russia to cover up their involvement in these atrocities through cynical disinformation,” she said.
The US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in an interview on CNN that the images were in line with the Biden administration’s warnings that Russian forces would commit abuses.
“You can’t help but see these images as a punch to the gut, and look, we’ve said before Russia’s aggression that we thought it was likely that they would commit atrocities,” Blinken said.
The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, expressed his shock over the images and said in a tweet that more EU sanctions against Russia “are on their way.” The president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, said on Twitter that the images were “cold reality of Putin’s war crimes.”
But the West’s support of Ukraine, and it’s every statement comes from the Western politicians own interests in the situation. Now, American lawmakers said the reports from Bucha justified further assistance to Ukraine, with some calling for the provision of more surface-to-air missiles to help Ukrainian forces. So, the Europe used the case to justify its boosting military power of Ukraine against Russia. Doesn’t seem like Europe really wants the war in Ukraine to stop, does it? If yes, how can it happen with increasing the number of armament then?
Russia refutes the veracity of Bucha videos
Moscow has firmly rejected any involvement in the case, accusing Kiev of staging the whole affair to frame Russian troops. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry itself said Russian troops pulled out of the town on March 30, which was also backed by the The Wall Street Journal.
“When leaving the city of Bucha, the Russian occupation forces mined civilian buildings, infrastructure and areas within the settlement,” the post claims, thus confirming that Russia left the area.
The local mayor confirmed this in a video address a day later without mentioning “any local residents laying shot in the streets.”
“March 31 will go down in the history of our Bucha community as the Day of Liberation. The liberation by our Armed Forces of Ukraine from Russian orcs, from Russian occupiers. So today, I state that this day is joyful. Joyful and this is a great victory in Kyiv region! And we will definitely wait so that there is a great victory all over Ukraine,” the mayor of Bucha Anatoly Fedoruk said.
Moreover, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry published on its Facebook page the information that Bucha was liberated and attached a few pictures, which do not show any of the “dead.”
After this, Ukraine’s Special Forces Regiment “SAFARI” began a clearing operation in Bucha, according to the National Police of Ukraine.
“At the moment, the combatants of the organised special forces regiment of the National Police, Safari, which includes the representatives of subdivisions of the Special Tasks Police, the Rapid Operational Response Unit, the Tactical Operational Response Police, and explosive ordnance disposal experts, is working in the city,” the office reported adding that “the city is being cleared from saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces.”
In the report for April 2 that contains relevant information on what has happened during the day, Ukraine did not mention anything about the alleged “massacre”.
Besides, the nationalists of the “Azov” battalion of Ukraine were already in the city after Russian troops left it. Their presence was confirmed by The New York Times.
Also, the Boatsman Boys brigade filmed discussing if they can kill civilians wearing the blue armbands (white for Russians, blue for Ukrainians). Meanwhile, on the videos from the alleged “massacre” some bodies can be seen wearing white armbands, which Ukrainian forces could have considered an insignia of the Russian troops.
“Yesterday, the Kiev territorial defense entered Bucha and received permission to shoot all men who are without a blue armband, i.e. civilians. That’s where the dead on the streets came from,” the Russian journalist, Vladimir Soloviev shared the post in his Telegram.
The purported “evidence” of the incident emerged only four days after the withdrawal, when Ukrainian intelligence and “representatives of Ukrainian television arrived in the town,” with multiple inconsistencies showing that the affair has been staged by the Kiev regime for Western media.
Thus, Russia categorically rejects the accusations of involvement in the killings of civilians of the Ukrainian Bucha, as stated by the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov on Monday, April 4. He also said that Russia supports discussing the situation in Bucha at the highest level.
“We believe that this topic should be discussed at the highest possible level, so it was our initiative to consider this topic at the UN Security Council. We know that this initiative was blocked,” he noted.
Peskov added that Russian diplomats will continue their active efforts to promote this issue on the agenda of the Security Council.
“The topic is too serious,” Peskov stressed.
He also said, the Kremlin does not trust the videos of civilians killed in Bucha, as they contain forgeries and fakes.
“From what we have seen, the video materials cannot be trusted in many ways, because our specialists from the Ministry of Defense have identified signs of video forgeries and various fakes there,” the Kremlin representative said.
And once again, Peskov pointed to the fact that “the factual, calendar sequence of events also does not speak in favor of the reliability of these statements.” Peskov’s attention was also drawn to the fact that international media journalists were present in Bucha and used personally filmed video materials in their reports. He was asked if the Kremlin also considers these videos fake.
“It’s particularity concerning that all the bodies of people whose images were published by the Kiev regime, after at least four days, have not stiffened, do not have characteristic cadaveric spots, and have fresh blood in their wounds,” the Russian Ministry of Defence noted, adding that all these inconsistencies show that the whole Bucha affair “has been staged by the Kiev regime for Western media, as was the case with the Mariupol maternity hospital.”
⚡ Official Statement by @mod_russia ⚡
All the photos and videos published by the Kiev regime in Bucha are just another provocation.
Facts 👉 https://t.co/L91uGBs4r5
❗ This confirms conclusively this is another #hoax by the Kiev regime for the Western media. pic.twitter.com/VO3umSNwkE
— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) April 3, 2022
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the situation as “yet another fake attack.”
“We requested an urgent meeting of the Security Council on this specific issue because we see such provocations as a direct threat to international peace and security” Lavrov said. “Russian servicemen left this city on 30 March, on 31 March the mayor of the city solemnly said that everything was in order, and two days later we saw how that very performance was organised on the streets, which they are now trying to use for anti-Russian purposes.”
West wants Russia to “bear responsibility”, but refuses to hold UN meeting
The Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said that the Russian side asked to hold a meeting of the UN Security Council on Monday, April 4, because of the situation in Bucha.
However, London refused to agree to hold a meeting of the UN Security Council on the events. In turn, Moscow will again demand its holding, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
It is quite clear that calls for an objective investigation from the UN Secretary General will be ignored. For exactly the same reasons that calls for an objective investigation into Eastern Ghouta and Khan Sheikhoun were ignored.
Because if you start to dig all this seriously, it will turn out like with the “chemical attack in Douma”, when OPCW field experts who visited the site did not find signs of organizing an attack by the Assad government, after which the OPCW leadership, under pressure from the US and UK, was forced to put pressure on experts and edit the report to hush up this story, where even before the investigation itself, the perpetrators were appointed.
Of course, the story with Bucha, from which white threads stick out in all directions, all the more does not encourage “investigations”. Therefore, with a probability of 99 per cent, we will also not see independent autopsy results.
Russia’s investigation
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation is investigating a criminal case under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) due to fakes about the mass murder of civilians in Bucha.
It is reported that, according to the available information, “in order to discredit Russian servicemen, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine has distributed to Western media videos filmed in the city of Bucha, Kiev region, as proof of the mass destruction of civilians.”
“According to the data of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, all materials published by the Kiev regime about the crimes of Russian servicemen in the specified locality do not correspond to reality and are provocative in nature,” the Committee stated.
Chronology of the events:
1. On March 30, Russian troops left Bucha.
2. On March 31, this information was officially confirmed by the mayor of Bucha.
3. On April 1, the “Azov” Ukrainian nationalist battalion entered Bucha.
4. On April 2, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry on its Facebook page reported that Bucha is “liberated” from Russian “invaders” with only pictures of shelled houses, no dead people around.
5. On April 3, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry published the video of the alleged “massacre” in Bucha.
An independent investigative journalist, Vanessa Beeley, has commented on the accusations against Russia in connection with the situation in Bucha.
“As president Zelensky accuses President Putin of ‘genocide’ in the Bucha town near Kiev the media is automatically running with another story to criminalise Russian forces without a full investigation. This, of course, is the role of the NATO-aligned media, to protect their ‘side’ from repercussions for the war crimes they have been committing for decades,” she said.
Ru-Main, 04.04.2022
Source: RT, Interfax
