Posted on 04/04/2022 6:33:03 PM PDT by libh8er
Satellite images which show dead bodies lining the streets of Bucha weeks ago appear to have debunked Russian claims that they were placed there after their troops left the Ukrainian commuter town.
Authorities in Ukraine said the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in areas outside of Kyiv - specifically in the town of Bucha - after last week's withdrawal of Russian troops.
Horrific images show many civilians with bound hands, close-range gunshot wounds and signs of torture. A growing number of world leaders have voiced outrage and called for tougher sanctions against Moscow.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the accusations that Russian troops committed the atrocities as a 'staged provocation' but has yet to provide the 'empirical evidence' he says proves they are not responsible.
Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Defence issued a lengthy statement which said no civilians had suffered violence at the hands of Russian troops and that the images were staged.
.....
A second video depicted three more bodies which satellite images show appeared there between March 20 and 21, according to the Times, again - before Russia said they left the town.
Meanwhile, other Russian claims include that one body appears to move in a video taken from a moving car but this was later debunked by fact-checkers and proved to be a mark on the windshield in higher quality footage.
Russia's defence ministry added: 'It is of particular worry that all the bodies of the people whose images have been published by the Kiev regime are not stiffened after at least four days.'
But a forensic pathologist who has worked on war crime investigations told the BBC that after four days, the process of stiffening - known as rigor mortis - has usually subsided.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Would you accept the idea that the propaganda coming from Ukraine is only half true? And the propaganda coming from Russia is also only 50% true? Because that’s most likely the reality, as much as the Zelenskyy fan boys here refuse to believe it. Instead they push the idea that Ukraine did nothing wrong before the war and nothing wrong afterward. 😂
I read these stories and the question I have to ask is Why? What benefit is there to the Russians to shoot al these civilians and leave them lying in the streets? Why do that just to hand the Ukrainians a huge public relations win? They know that something like this has to look terrible in the world’s eyes. So why do it?
On the other hand staging dead bodies makes great propaganda for the Ukrainians so I can understand that. I know someone is lying and in all probability everyone is lying about some aspect.
I don’t believe the Russians are animals acting out of primitive blood lust. They are rational actors. Their intentions may be quite evil, but they are rational. The Russian soldiers don’t have some great animosity towards Ukrainians, they are fighting a war based on orders from superiors. Those superiors know they have to make some case on a world stage to justify their actions. While all of Europe may be against them, Asia, Africa and S. America are still sympathetic enough to keep doing business with them. An atrocity threatens that. So again, why would Russians do this?
I understand it’s war and many things are possible, including lies about satellite images. But I certainly would not be surprised if Russian soldiers did it.
Maybe the food scattered among the bodies was a “last meal” before execution, in retaliation for Russians killed. People with their arms bound who were systematically executed, you would expect them to have been killed in a group and the bodies clustered together, but scattered along the road? It’s just hard to make the pieces fit any hypothesis.
Until or if there’s an unbiased forensic examination, we can’t sort out who was killed by fragments from shelling as opposed to bullets.
I don’t have any reason to assume either side are all angels or devils. In war you have psychopaths who find each other and go on killing sprees because the environment is permissive. No army is immune to atrocity.
Just started reading the comments, so I am sure you have already been answered here, but when enough people are killed, or you cannot safely get to the dead due to deadly line-of-site “kill funnels”, (like I have experienced in several towns in Syria), and which has kept evacuation and aid organizations from civilians in need of help in many towns and cities jn UA, the bodies will sit.
I have experienced significant numbers of unburied dead bodies in probably close to 150 locations over the years.
It is almost always due to civilians being the target.
In a few cases, we were unable clear out all the enemy fire for days, so to get at numbers of dead bodies. So we would just have to see and smell it all as well.
*i lost contact with a number of Evangelical missionary friends of mine in UA mostly in the last couple of weeks - some American, some Russian, some Uktainian, who had reported weeks ago, some of their own evacuation and “water” distribution teams being shot dead by Russian forces.
One of my Russian missionary friends(from Russia) had three bus loads of mostly women and children, when I received a desperate communication for prayer one evening (almost three weeks ago), as their team and some of the women and children were being executed right outside the busses.
Some of these teams were either frequently going past UA/RU LOC’s to where there were known mass casualty incidents, and specifically children in need of help. Others were refusing t leave their church people. They were all reporting dead bodies strewn throughout village and city streets.
This is not new news at all.
Additionally, I have been in several locations where dead bodies were basically used as different types of mine and explosive triggers.
Don’t want to ever break such news, but most Americans are truly separated from reality here -
The Russians may have assumed anybody left in the area who was of “fighting age” was a potential partisan. So, go house to house, pull out suspects and dispatch them immediately. Why bother to take time to gather them, be exposed to fire, etc.?
BTW, I did a bit of research on this company, Maxar, that supplied the satellite images. I’d say their business model would be severely damaged if they got caught faking images.
Some of the Russian statements are awfully clumsy lies. Rigor mortise usually relaxes in 24-48 hours, for example.
Can you document this? It would be most damning.
Break the news as often as you can. We desperately need it here on FR. Thanks for the post and also for your work.
Deterrence against an immediate threat (suspected partisans).
Besides, anyone who might resist is “obviously” a Nazi, and the mission is to “de-Nazi” Ukraine.
Yes - very hard reality.
Prayers for your friends, BTW.
I marvel at the disassociation going on with regard to the evil being cast on humanity around the world. Few are willing to address the millions who have been killed by the Covid/vaccine bio-weapon operation, but the Ukraine killings raise howls of crimes against humanity. Something is very wacky here. I dare say many of the same people so outraged with the Ukraine war are victims themselves of Covid/vaccine operation, which makes Hitler and Putin look like pikers.
Whose satellite images...?
“If true, this evidence would put the Russians in a very bad light. They won’t survive the public relations disaster that will be coming“
Yea they will. This is how the Russians have done things since the Bolsheviks took over. While I was reserving judgement on who was responsible, the satellite images are very damaging for the Russian storyline. They are also a warning to everyone that they are going to kill you anyway, so you might as well fight.
The one thing I can say, is this is going to end up arming Ukraine more, and cutting Russia off more. Russia will have to ask China for more help, which is how I saw this playing out. China will be the only winner here.
And I'm gonna believe that...why?
I will document a few examples and will make it a habit to record them as I see them in the future:
Poster "Yesthatjallen" channels Russia's Ministry of Defense with her post attempting to claim that Russians left on March 30th but no one complained about bodies until "4 days later". These facts are false, but she repeats them because she heard them either from Russia's MOD itself or Russian bots spreading it thereafter:
https://www.facebook.com/mod.mil.rus/?ref=page_internal
See the post on April 3rd at around 11:03am.
Russia's MoD also questions the lack of rigor mortis and signs of decomposition, as the Putinists in this thread do as well (despite obvious signs of people being very dead and for quite awhile).
The image she used to make her point was posted on 4Chan, and as far as I can tell, originates there:
https://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/371021197
My reverse google search also took me to this twitter profile, who looks a lot like your average Nazi 4chan poster, but couldn't find the image:
https://twitter.com/YEASTY_COMMIE/with_replies
Nevertheless, such accounts constantly re-post Russkie BS. Maybe twitter deleted it.
NorseViking also used this argument, but because he is dumb, he screwed it up and said it was a "2 day" gap rather than 3 days (at the time):
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4052171/posts?page=47#47
See post 47.
In post 73 of the same thread, CarolinaReaganFan does my job for me, posting from the following link to claim a pile of dead Russkies were executed by the evil Ukrainians:
https://southfront.org/ukrainian-soldiers-carried-out-execution-of-russian-pows-photos/
Besides just looking like a really crappy and shady website, the website is registered in Russia and has apparently been sanctioned for spreading disinformation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SouthFront
Next to consider is this bit of propaganda:
https://t.me/boris_rozhin/39211
This video is actually a combination of Russian lies (each one was spread independently by Russian bots). The first second or so shows what appears to be movement of the arm, but which is glare or something on the windshield. This was spread quite widely on Twitter by troll accounts that I saw.
This poster on twitter debunks this lie:
https://twitter.com/AuroraIntel/status/1510641101643919368
The second lie is a claim that the body at the 2 second mark lifts in the mirror as the car passes, but it is clearly just the bending of the reflection, and this body is seen in multiple videos (and now satellite) in the same spot. He is a very dedicated actor.
The third lie is the editing. If you watch the video, you will notice a cut at the 2 second mark. I didn't catch this at first until it was later pointed out in media twitter accounts that Russians were spreading a edited video that cut together two separate videos to make it appear that the body turned over on its side as the car passed.
Carolina in post 79 (referenced above) references the second lie detailed above, asking if anybody saw "[in the] rearview mirror video of the body getting up after the camera crew had past?...LOL"
NorseViking posted this same video and cited the second and the third lies, apparently either unaware or uncaring about the edit. He wrote: "LOL. At 0:02 the “corpse” is moving his hand. At rear view mirror you can see him sitting a few moments later. There are dozens of such gaffes. There was a video where the corpse was smoking cigs in his bodybag, and another where the guy walked away from his bag. Mariupol hospital bombing is totally debunked, where the actress hired to play “victim” is interviewed and told the whole story."
See post 14: Note also he claims there are "dozens" of such examples, exaggerating what the Russkies have to work with (just this video).
Here is an obviously fake account on Twitter making the same claim as Caroline:
https://twitter.com/Henry7525/status/1510651651887190026
Posters are also claiming Ukrainians came in and shot these people, or else used crisis actors. Naturally these claims are all being repeated by Russian bots, but my hand aches too much to dig up specific examples.
LOL. Try Googling Dresden. Coventry. Tokyo. Nanking. This social media generation has no idea what true war crimes look like.
If you really care about these people…don’t you want real justice instead of falling for a contrived outrage?
If you had been following the Russian goals and strategy of dealing with civilians in first Syria and now here, you might recognize that this makes absolutely no rational sense whatsoever. The Russians have the goal of separating their military targets from civilians, leaving behind new political governing bodies free from the ISIS and now Azov types….as they just did in Mariupol where about 150 council members elected a new mayor by show of hands.
The only sources saying the Russian goal is total defeat of Ukraine and destruction of its cities….is Western propo.
Only one side in the Uke war has been killing Uke citizens en masse …. since 2014. If these photos are from Donbas 2015, will you still be outraged?
Unlike the Uke neo nationalists, Russia has no goal of “ ethnically cleansing” citizens by their language culture ties and sympathies. They’ve made it clear they feel historical culture affinities with Ukrainians in general, not just the 30% Russian speakers.
Even Uke soldiers are being given the option to lay down arms and go home…unless they are mercenaries or members of the neo-nazi ultranationalist right, or if they refuse to surrender. Then no mercy. Battlefield annihilation or war trials.
Russia cleans out military units and criminally savage extremist groups in these towns, intends to leave behind a reformed Uke political body, then move on. They did not bring sufficient troops to occupy. Perhaps a strategic error as the Ukes extremists move back into those towns behind then and kill “ collaborators’. Mariupol will be a bloodbath if the Russians don’t leave security behind. Everyone who did not fight to the death will be treated as a traitor.
After our US track record over many countries, of replacing regimes by force and by stealth, we sure can’t claim its not a legitimate goal. Even if we disagree on the foreign and security policy that the next Uke regime will adopt,
Use your brain, don’t be manipulated by our pitiful propagandized Western MEdia.
I prefer to wait for the investigation to be completed - of course THAT will remain to be seen if Independent or biased as things remain now.
Prove it.
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