To deny en bloc, to point out a trick by the opposing party or to accuse the enemy. Here is the communication strategy adopted by Moscow to respond to the appalling images that have been circulating since this weekend on social networks and on Ukrainian television on the abuses in Boutcha. Entering this city near kyiv on April 1 after the departure of Russian forces, the Ukrainian soldiers, accompanied by journalists, were the first spectators of a chilling crime scene: corpses of civilians littering the streets, some barely fallen from their bikes, many lying in the middle of the road or in the gutter… But also mass graves sheltering the bodies of civilians. Terrifying images that prove the deliberate actions of the Russian army against Ukrainian civilians.
According to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, the lifeless bodies of 410 civilians were thus found in the territories of the kyiv region recently taken back from Russian troops. His office also reported on Monday evening the bodies of five men with their hands tied found in the basement of a children’s sanatorium in Boutcha. However, the Kremlin does not accept the accusations which overwhelm it. The Kremlin is adopting a familiar tactic: deny no matter what, deny despite the evidence.
When many European and Western countries have denounced war crimes, even a “genocide”, perpetrated in the city located near the Ukrainian capital, Moscow has rejected all responsibility and finds little credible parades to its guilt. In recent years, the Russian government has developed a familiar manual in response to allegations of bombings in Syria, the downing of the MH17 airliner in eastern Ukraine, poisoning or acts of violence targeting Chechen civilians during the conflicts in the 1990s and 2000s. – Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, assuring that it was necessary to “seriously question this information” and promising to present “documents” showing the “true nature” of the events. Worse, Russia has called for an emergency meeting at the UN Security Council over “hateful provocations by Ukrainian radicals”.
Fake corpses says Moscow
Denying any involvement, the Russian authorities recalled that the soldiers had left Boutcha on March 30, suggesting that the bodies found could have been placed in the street after the departure of the troops. “On March 31, the mayor of Boutcha, Anatoliy Fedoruk, confirmed […] that there were no Russian servicemen in the city, but he did not mention locals shot dead in the streets with their hands tied. It is therefore not surprising that all the so-called ‘evidence of crimes’ in Bucha did not emerge until the fourth day, when the Security Service of Ukraine and representatives of the Ukrainian media arrived in the city. “, Assaulted the Russian Foreign Ministry in a message broadcast on Telegram. Information called into question by a review of videos and satellite images. “An analysis carried out by the Times shows that many civilians were killed more than three weeks ago, when the Russian army controlled the city”, underlines the American media.
By comparing a video filmed by a member of the city’s municipal council with images provided by the company Maxar Technologies, several journalists from the media’s “Visual Investigations team” established that some of the bodies scattered along a street in Boutcha, had been since March 11, when the Russian army was still occupying the city.
“To confirm when the bodies appeared and when the civilians were likely killed, the Visual Investigations team of the Times conducted a before and after analysis of satellite images. The images show dark objects similar in size to a human body appearing in Yablonska Street between March 9 and March 11,” the daily details, before specifying that the causes of death are unclear. “Some of the bodies were in side of what appears to be an impact crater. Others were near abandoned cars […] Some have their hands tied behind their backs with white cloth.”
Blame the enemy as guilty
To promote its propaganda, the Kremlin can count on the official media – independent titles are almost non-existent in Russia today – and social networks. On the latter, several versions have thus been relayed by pro-Russian and often conspiratorial accounts. Russia began by accusing the Ukrainian regiment with neo-Nazi sympathies, Azov, of being responsible for this massacre of civilians which outraged the whole world. The regiment is at the heart of Russian propaganda in this war undertaken on February 24 under the pretext of “denazifying” Ukraine.
Another argument revealed by Moscow: the littered bodies would be actors pretending to be dead. On the one hand, therefore, the soldiers of Azov are accused of abuses, and on the other they are said to be actors. Accusations difficult to reconcile. But the objective is not missed for all that since it is a question for the Kremlin of confusing a part of the Western population, and to lead it to doubt everything, even and especially of a war crime.
No abuse against civilians, Kremlin says
To support their defence, the Russian officials attempt assertions that are quickly contradicted by the facts and the testimonies collected on the ground. Thus, the Russian Ministry of Defense says in a statement on Sunday that “while the city has been under the control of the Russian armed forces, not a single local resident has suffered violent action”. And to add: “The Russian military delivered and distributed 452 tons of humanitarian aid to civilians in the kyiv region”.
However, the NGO Human Rights Watch shows the opposite in an article published on Monday. The humanitarian organization indeed reports several testimonies contradicting the assertions of Kremlin officials, citing “rapes, murders and other acts of violence against persons detained by Russian forces [qui] should be investigated as war crimes”.
“On March 4, Russian forces in Butcha, about 30 kilometers northwest of Kyiv, apprehended five men and summarily executed one of them. A witness told Human Rights Watch that soldiers had forced the five men to kneel by the side of the road, covering their heads with their T-shirts and shooting one of them behind the head. [s’est effondré]’, said the witness, ‘and the women [présentes sur les lieux] screamed'”, reports the NGO which denounces “war crimes” as well as several Western leaders including Joe Biden. The American president declared that he wanted a “trial for war crimes” and wanted to take “additional sanctions” against the Russia, in reaction to the events of Boucha.