‘We Do Not Want Unknown Graves’: The Struggle to Identify Bucha’s Victims

It was supposed to be the bright spot in a grim day. Of a dozen unclaimed bodies set for burial recently at Bucha City Cemetery, one had just been identified. The dead man’s family was present and would be able to bury him with full ceremony. His grave would be marked with his name instead of just a number.

When Russian troops retreated at the end of March from the region around Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, they left behind a trail of more than 1,200 bodies. At least 458 dead were in and around the suburban town of Bucha, lying on the streets, in buildings and gardens, in cellars and in makeshift graves.

In the five months since then, cemetery workers and City Council officials in Bucha have been carrying out the grimmest of tasks: collecting and burying the dead from one of the worst massacres of the war. Dozens of the bodies remain unidentified or unclaimed.

The scale of the atrocities discovered in Bucha brought a deluge of international attention and assistance. International war crimes experts arrived to help document the killings, and new uniforms appeared, among them white hazmat suits and jackets emblazoned with “war crimes prosecutor” in English.

Yet for all of the outside help, the hard work of collecting and burying the bodies was left to the morgue and cemetery workers and a handful of volunteers. The country was still at war, and everyone was working under air-raid sirens and nighttime curfews, and with minimal equipment, after the destruction and looting by Russian troops.

Chop...chop...Timber!

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/04/the-bucha-provocation.html

The Bucha Provocation

The Bucha 'Russian' atrocities propaganda onslaught may have worked well in the 'west' but it lacks evidence that Russia had anything to do with it.

The former Indian ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar calls it an outright fake:

An indignant Moscow has angrily demanded a United Nations Security Council meeting on Monday over the allegations of atrocities by Russian troops in areas around Kiev through the past month. Prima facie, this allegation is fake news but it can mould misperceptions by the time it gets exposed as disinformation.

A Tass report says: “The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that the Russian Armed Forces had left Bucha, located in the Kiev region, on March 30, while “the evidence of crimes” emerged only four days later, after Ukrainian Security Service officers had arrived in the town. The ministry stressed that on March 31, the town’s Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk had confirmed in a video address that there were no Russian troops in Bucha. However, he did not say a word about civilians shot dead on the street with their hands tied behind their backs.”

Even more surprising is that within minutes of the “breaking news”, western leaders — heads of state, foreign ministers, former politicians — popped up with statements duly kept ready and only based on the videos, seconds-long videos and a clutch of photos, ready to pour accusations. No expert opinion was sought, no forensic work was done, no opportunity given to the accused to be heard.

I had yesterday, at 15:09 UTC, posted a timeline of the events in Bucha on Twitter. Here is an expanded version.

Mar 30 - Ru troops leave Bucha

Mar 31 - Mayor of Bucha announces town 'liberated', makes no mention of atrocities.

Bucha liberated from Russian invaders – mayor - Ukrinform

The mayor of Bucha in Kyiv region, Anatoliy Fedoruk, stated that the town had been liberated from Russian troops. Fedoruk said this in his video address posted on Facebook, Ukrinform reports.

"March 31 will go down in the history of our Bucha community as the Day of Liberation. ..."

Apr 1/2 - Azov Nazis enter Bucha

Scenes of desperation and death as the Russians retreat from suburbs outside Kyiv. - New York Times

Ukrainian soldiers from the Azov battalion walked through the remnants of a Russian military convoy in the recently liberated town of Bucha on Saturday, just outside the capital after the Russians withdrew.

Apr 3 - Ukr MinDef publishes video of 'Russian' atrocities

Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine. - New York Times, Apr 3

Footage posted by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and photographs from news agencies showed the bodies of men in civilian clothes on the streets of Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv. Images showed some corpses with hands bound behind their back.

A screenshot of the original NYT piece was attached to my tweet. It included the sentence:

The New York Times was unable to independently verify the assertions by Ukraine's Defense Ministry and other officials.

The above tweet went viral with more than 3,000 retweets and nearly 5,000 likes. People obviously recognize the importance of the above timeline for the question of who killed whom, when and how.

Gonzalo Lira, who is in Karkiv, has previously directed a professionally made movie. In this video he asserts that the main 'Russian' atrocity video, which shows cars driving down a street strewn with dead bodies, is of a professional high production quality that can only be achieved with high end equipment. He also remarks on additional evidence from the scenes that points to a false flag operation.

Lira comes to the conclusion that the Azov Nazis have killed some people in Bucha that had been too friendly with the Russian 'occupiers' and are now blaming Russia for it.

Azov gangs are known for such atrocities. Based on the above timeline I concur with Lira's conclusion.

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