After Russian troops withdrew from the town on the outskirts of Kyiv, images of bodies lying in the streets subsequently emerged and members of media organisations also saw corpses.
Ukraine accused Russia of a “deliberate massacre” but Russia called it “a staged provocation by the Kiev regime”. It made a series of unfounded claims about the footage from Bucha.
After the Russian withdrawal, footage taken from a car as it drove through the town showed bodies on either side of the road.
Pro-Russian social media accounts then circulated a slowed-down version of the video, claiming that the arm on one of the bodies moved.
Also, can someone with a medical degree explain to me, how a dead person can move their arm, after being dead for several days? #bucha #fakenews #ukrainefakes pic.twitter.com/ToJhzJkcju
— Irina Molotova (@IrinaGalushkoRT) April 3, 2022
Sky’s @HaynesDeborah describes scenes of ‘absolute devastation’ in Bucha, where people gave harrowing accounts of brutal killings.
WARNING: This video shows distressing images of people who have been killed.
Read more here: https://t.co/aYjTb9OYCa pic.twitter.com/m3D3hvetV2
— Sky News (@SkyNews) April 4, 2022
Russia’s Bucha “Facts” Versus the Evidence
Recent images from the town of Bucha just outside Kyiv, captured as Ukrainian forces regained ground following the retreat of Russian forces, show widespread destruction and corpses in civilians clothes strewn across streets.
These images have been shared on social media and broadcast by members of the international press who have visited the town in recent days.
Initial reports from human rights organisations on the actions of Russian forces have detailed violence targeting civilians. Interviews with local residents, meanwhile, have accused Russian troops of carrying out summary executions of unarmed men over suspicions they had fought for Ukrainian armed forces in the Donbas in 2014, or even “simply for having a tattoo of Ukraine’s national emblem”.
