Massacres in Ukraine: whodunnit?

Deciphering the info war

Warning: Graphic content

Now that the Russians retreated from a rather large tract of land, with several larger communities, we hear about massacre, murder of civilians, torture even, perpetrated by the Russians, near Izyum.

People now refer to Bucha 2.0, and this is meant to convey that this ‘new’ massacre only cements the savage barbary of the Russians, and the moral high ground of the Ukrainian defenders. (And implied: keep sending us trillions of dollars in aid, and thousands of pieces of heavy military equipment, rockets, ammunitions, weapons, etc., in a joint effort to defeat this evil!).

The NYT wrote an article earlier this week, titled, “The Singular Offense of the Mass Grave”, subtitled, very ominously: “Violent loss is even more devastating when the dead are disposed of without identification. When Russians pull out in Ukraine, they leave a trail of anonymous death.”

The article represents the tone Western media is using as they push the story about the Izyum mass grave.

“Restoring human dignity to the most dehumanizing of scenes — heaped anonymous corpses, the reduction of lives to nothing, the stench of abandonment — is a painstaking forensic endeavor.”

There is so much wrong with this article, and this line in particular. But before we can start unraveling the actual story, we need to take a step back in time.

In 1932, Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany, and on January 30, 1933, he and his new cabinet were sworn in. As part of their take-over of power, they passed several laws regarding public education: students now had to learn about an Arian based history, built around their nationalist ideology. Through means of ‘encouragement’, over 97% of all teachers had become member of the National Socialist Teachers League, using newly printed books and curricula.

If you assume that they got started in earnest in the schoolyear of 1933-34, the class of 1938 would be the first to graduate high school having run through a full 4 year curriculum of Nazi ideology. The next year, the war would start, and many young men 18-19 years old, would enlist, fully immersed in this statewide indoctrination. Even people who did not sign up with any of the SS units, but simply with the Wehrmacht, still had to carry that mental baggage with them into war. We all know how that turned out, and how those young soldiers, SS and Wehrmacht alike, carried out unspeakable acts. From their point of view, they thought it defendable, as they were cleansing the world of ‘Untermenschen’ who did not deserve to live, just as they had learned in school.

Fast-forward to Ukraine, 2014. A US and EU backed/instigated color-revolution had just deposed the duly elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, and illegally installed their own government, headed by Petro Poroshenko. (For more background information, see this article “The War in Ukraine: Europe’s Meddling”)

From that article:

“Yanukovych claimed this vote was illegal, and likely coerced, and turned to Russia for support. The Russians, on their end, considered what had happened a coup, and did not recognize the new government. In the South and East of the country, the region where Yanukovych had strong support, saw widespread protests, some in support of the coup in Kiev, but many also against it.

This continued to escalate, to the point where Russia stepped in militarily, annexed Crimea, and where Luhansk and Donetsk broke away as independent states, a situation that started a war between Ukraine and those two new states […].”

Now, based on reports from Ukraine, mainly in the parts the Russians have overrun, we hear about a similar decision made by the Ukrainian regime: change the curricula, change the books, change history.

One report shows a children’s book, titled "Stepan Bandera and me", found in one of the libraries in the Kherson region. As that message from Slavyangrad stated: “In a playful way, a sadist and a terrorist are described as a national hero. Education is very important. Especially in a wannabe Reich.”

 Another report stated (translated through Google Translate):

“Ukrainian propaganda knows no boundaries. Base Russophobia is invested in the minds of children even at the level of general education programs.

Commissioner for Human Rights in the LPR Victoria Serdyukova got acquainted with the textbooks of the school course.

“Historical facts are systematically distorted in Ukrainian textbooks. Reissued in 2019, the manuals include a whole section on “Russian occupation”, Ukrainian exceptionalism and Russophobia. The upbringing of the young generation of Ukrainians takes place on the example of such historical characters as Mazepa, Bandera and Shukhevych, and Russia is an aggressor country for the Ukrainian people, which is an indiscriminate accusation.

The Russophobic agenda was included in textbooks at the suggestion of NATO countries, judging by the number of logos and links indicated in the books,” Victoria Serdyukova said.”

This is similar to the brainwashing young children in some of the Palestinian territories undergo, where they parade around as ‘shahids’, martyrs, in military dress, complete with mock rifle and mock suicide bomber vest. This way, you fully jeopardize a nation’s future, poisoning it.

Another way they are actually changing history, is by denying that Ukraine was ever Russian, insisting on a very nationalist identity throughout the ages. Now, that claim is not correct, strictly spoken, but you cannot deny the very close link between Russia and Ukraine, both stemming from the same group of Scandinavian traders/warriors (Vikings, let’s call them what they were), known as Kievan-Rus. As this area developed, it also grew, taking over adjacent areas, to the point that there were different regional subdivions, all using the name ‘Rus’: "Belarus" (White Russia), "Chorna Rus'" (Black Russia) and "Cherven' Rus'" (Red Russia), among other principalities. This era can be defined as stretching from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries, at which time the Mongols came in, destroying the existing cities (among which Kiev). Of the territories that used to be Kievan-Rus, only the principality of Novgorod, in the North, managed to stave off the Mongolians. In the neighboring territory, the Principality of Vladimir-Suzdalian Rus, formed in the late 12th century, where the town of Moscow grew and gained prominence (later becoming the seat of the Grand-Duchy of Moscow, under the rule of Alexander Nevsky).

Fighting back against the Mongolians, you had the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, which was located in the Easternmost part of what is now Ukraine, and surrounding areas. It is credited in classical Ukrainian history with uniting the Western and Southern branched of the East Slaves, consolidating their identity. (The aforementioned Stepan Bandera collaborated with the Germans during WWII, and his organization was responsible for widespread massacres of Poles in this now province of Galicia: their racial hatred was first and foremost aimed at Russians and Poles, only secondarily towards Jews, but that didn’t stop them from massive pogroms against Jews in Ukraine. Notice also how the SS raised a volunteer unit consisting mostly of people from the Ukrainian region, called the Waffen Grenadier Division Galizia, the emblems of which can be seen today on Ukrainian soldiers and militia.)

They got taken over by king Casimir III The Great of Poland. From this point on, the territories of what is now Ukraine got run over and divided, back and forth, by Poland and Moscow (used in very broad sense here), with one notable exception, the Cossack Hetmanate.

First, a map of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Under Polish rule, the people from the Eastern parts, now Ukraine, were treated very poorly, and pushed into serfdom. Those people became renowned for their fierce martial spirit, and unmatched skill on horseback (with a nod and a thank you -not! to the Mongolians), better known as the Cossacks. Despite being used in different military units and many campaigns, the local nobles never bothered to listen to them, so the Cossacks revolted, and founded the Cossack Hetmanate.

This is regarded as the first direct precursor to the present day country ‘Ukraine’, and covers roughly what is now central Ukraine.

Today, there are a number of posts and memes floating around on pro-Russian side, that present a map similar to this one below, that is supposed to show how Ukraine is actually really small, and only exists by the grace of the Tsars, and of various Communist leaders. The small heartland, and the date, refer to the Treaty of Pereyaslav. The Cossack uprising had started in 1648, and in 1654 the  Hetman (leader) of the Cossacks, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, sought and gained a treaty with the Muscovites (Russians), with the agreement stipulating an autonomous Cossack state, as a vassal of the Russians, in exchange for protection. This started a war between Russia and Poland, that ended in slight territorial loss for the Poles. The territories of Ukraine east of the Dnieper became fully under Russian control, under the 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo (negotiated without any representation from the Hetmanate, which basically divided the Hetmanate in half).

From then on, Russia under the Tsars (and Tsarinas, Catherine II of Russia played a very important role as well), and later, post 1917, the Bolsheviks, added territories to Russia, and rearranged the administrative structures and territories into what eventually became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which became simply Ukraine upon the dissolution of the USSR, keeping the territories that had been added to it throughout the years.

One problem: this Ukraine had very artificial borders, and the Western intelligence agencies supported anti-Russian groups within Ukraine in their bid to dislodge Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence. This only exacerbated the rising tensions between Russian speaking people in the East, and the Ukrainian speaking people in the West of Ukraine. There were many ‘banderites’ to be found, as the sentiments from the earlier Ukrainian nationalist groups had survived. This included a viral hatred against Poles and Russians. (Interestingly, Poland is now one of their greatest supporters, housing over a million Ukrainian refugees, and having sent a lot of military support, even if some say that this is not without any hidden, ulterior motives, including eyeing an annexation of the region around Lviv, or Lwów, as the Poles remember it. One cannot look at European history, without taking into account old feuds. Very old feuds, often…)

This history is not unimportant. The fact that Ukraine hosts 2 large groups, Ukrainians and Russians, within the same borders, cannot be seen apart from it, and it explains some of the animus that exists between the two groups. Putin claims that Ukraine was ‘always’ part of Russia, isn’t true, either (the fact that Moscovites were part of the Kievan Rus, doesn’t mean that all Kievan territories belong therefore to Moscovites), nor his claim that the Eastern areas of Ukraine are part of ‘the historical South of Russia’ (while it is a fact that the development of the largest cities there happened in the 18th century by British industrialists (they founded Luhansk in 1795) and Donetsk in 1869), initially  more Ukrainian speaking people lived there, as proved by the 1926 Soviet census; the claim that the Holodomor is responsible for the change in demographics in favor or Russian speakers, doesn’t fully hold, either, as Donetsk was much less heavily hit by that famine than Luhansk was, yet both regions have comparable demographics today.)

If we are to accept Ukrainian claims about that territory based on general romanticist claims about the ‘Hetmanate’, we also need to accept the Russian claims, on the same general grounds. How far back does one need to go, to establish claims of ownership? This is a debate that is very hard to hold, as events that succeed each other in less than a single generation can and did drastically rearrange whole maps and power balances.

Things are what they are, and the situation on the ground today is what it is. A more democratic approach might be that of a referendum, and let the people themselves decide, in their own regions. The response against that is usually a good sign of where ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ tend to fall, sort of in a Solomonesque way: ‘Cut the child in half, and give each mother one half’, and then the king decided based on who showed actual love for the child, giving up all her claims on the contested child (See 1 Kings 3:16-28 for the full story, if you don’t know it yet). Here, look at which group cares about the people themselves, without forcing them.

And no, I am not talking about the contested referendums that are taking place as I am writing this, but about a similarly contested referendum in 2014, in the aftermath of the color revolution, ousting a democratically elected president in favor of a new government that was pro-EU/pro-NATO.

Remember the story about Hitler’s command regarding education, in the fist few months of being in power? That comes back now. While back in 2014 the violence against Russian speaking Ukrainians was not something new (there are older examples of similar violence, see this video on Telegram, as Youtube is banning it because it violates their policy on Hate Speech, even if the only hate speech is that of Ukrainians it exposes ), it is a common divide-and-conquer technique of CIA and similar groups to create unrest in a target country, to then use that unrest to force through their own agenda.
On May 2, 48 people were killed when the Trade Union House, where they had sought refuge from attacking pro-Maidan mobs, caught fire. Some claim they were trying to hold a referendum, similar to those in Donetsk and Luhansk. This became a very important event for the Russian speaking people in Ukraine. Meanwhile, people outside where chanting ‘let them burn’, watching people jump to their death trying to escape the fire under cheering, beating those who survived the jump, the fire department, while only 5 minutes away, took over 40 minutes to arrive after having slowed down their response to many emergency calls, police were largely absent and slow to step in, and so on.

Who caused the fire? Reports are conflicting, and try to speak about a shared responsibility: ‘both sides where throwing petrol bombs at each other’. The official investigation remained rather vague, as well. This became a symbol of the violence done to Russian Speaking Ukrainians.

The official Ukrainian position, voiced by their leaders, was to blame Russian special forces and mingling, in an attempt to undermine their rule.

But look at how the Ukrainian authorities themselves handled this investigation: bungled on every possible level. Even the UN Human Rights Office stepped in, and in a 2016 report stated:

“criminal prosecutions ... appear to have been initiated in a partial fashion. Only activists from the 'pro-federalism' camp [anti-Maidan] have been prosecuted so far, while the majority of victims were supporters of 'pro-federalism' movement... The investigations into the violence have been affected by systemic institutional deficiencies and characterized by procedural irregularities, which appear to indicate an unwillingness to genuinely investigate and prosecute those responsible.”

And in the conclusions of that report, they made this rather scathing remark:

“At the same time, OHCHR has observed an apparent lack of motivation to investigate some cases and a formalistic approach in the work of investigative bodies, especially when it concerns acts allegedly committed by Ukrainian forces. Cover-up and political bias are not uncommon, especially when alleged perpetrators belong to the ranks of the military and law enforcement. As a result, some perpetrators continue to enjoy impunity.”

None of those seen beating anti-Maidan protestors, none of those responsible for the slow-walking of the Fire Department response, none of those seen throwing molotovs, etc. or any others from the pro-Maidan camp were ever prosecuted, let alone imprisoned. Only about 20 anti-Maidan people were kept imprisoned for over 2-3 years, and when finally released, many were promptly rearrested by the Ukrainian SBU on new charges. (All in all rather eerily reminiscent of what is going on regarding the J6 investigations!)

Where initial violence can be ascribed to extremist elements, and a government that out of expediency covered up for those crimes (consolidating their own power), that is no longer the case. We know about the constant information warfare, depicting Russians and Russian speaking Ukrainians as sub-humans, the glorification of the killing of such Russian speaking Ukrainians (even top politicians, such as members of the very nationalist pro-Ukrainian Svoboda party that held several top functions in the new government, spoke with impunity about this massacre. Iryna Farion, known for her heated rhetoric, tweeted “Let the devils burn in hell”, and this is not an isolated example.), or about the change in history books, praising Bandera and other Nazi-collaborators. Since 2014, Surviving members of the 14th SS Waffen Grenadier Divizion Galicia have been honored in public.

And where one could claim that the violence against Ethnic Russians in Ukraine was only the work of isolated extremists, we now have video of pervasive Nazi symbolism among Ukrainian soldiers, even in Zelensky’s own bodyguard unit, official propaganda dehumanizing Russians, newscasters who spew hatred and call for murder with impunity in ways that would have made Radio Mille Collines in Rwanda blush, even literally quoting SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann ‘In order to destroy a nation, you must destroy, first of all, children,’ in order to justify murder, and given his position, actively calling for the killing of ALL Russians, not just those in Ukraine. (That was Fakhrudin Sharafmal, a broadcaster at Channel 24. He apologized the next day, but how many incited by his first statement heard the second? Sadly, this is not the only example, either.) We have the example of people who accepted Russian food who got shot by Ukrainian troops (allegedly, no hard proof, see Bucha), but where that example might be hard to prove, we now have an official directive that accepting Russian food, as a Ukrainian citizen, equals high treason! This is in blatant violation of International Accords and the Geneva Convention, in a roundabout way: Russia is obliged to provide food, where Ukraine is unable to do so. Ukraine would rather have their own citizens starve, than accept Russian food.

And we have, most disturbingly, the different videos that show children doing the Nazi salute, or shouting Nazi slogans… This is poisoning the future of Ukraine, by poisoning the minds of those children… Would it surprise anyone when reports come out of that war zone about Ukrainians being killed by Ukrainian troops? A mindset was created, that makes such excesses not only possible, but encouraged.

Who has heard in Western media about the use of butterfly or petal mines? British political strategist and activist Anthony Webber spoke about them, saying “I was concerned to learn that Petal mines were used by units of the Ukrainian armed forces in certain parts of Ukraine… One of the problems is that we only get one side – only the Ukrainian point of view, so it wouldn't surprise me if the media in the UK said that the Russians laid these mines."

Such mines are prohibited by the 1999 Ottawa Convention, but are used in very large numbers over population centers in the Russian held territories. They are small, butterfly shaped mines, often made from a plastic or composite material which makes detecting harder, they blend in with their surroundings, and don’t really kill people, but maim them. Unless small children run into them, it might kill them.

A report on Telegram stated:

“"Sappers have already neutralized about 19 thousand "Petal" mines.

Every day, specialists from the pyrotechnic work squad of the DPR Ministry of Emergency Situations detect and destroy about 300 explosive objects.

It should be noted that already 39 civilians were blown up by Petal mines, one of them died in the hospital. Two children were among the victims."”

The effect is gruesome, blowing off part of the foot of the victim, or blow out a tire of a vehicle. Such wounds will invalidate the victim for life.

This gave rise to media campaigns to warn people about this:

“Danger, do not touch, call 101.”

Here, a cassette of such petal mines did not work as intended, and did not spread the mines over a large area from the air. Picture was taken in the Donetsk area.

There are many, many videos from the Russian held areas that show such mines. Ukraine is waging a war against her own citizens, not just the Russian troops. Against women and children.

Meanwhile, Zelensky plays towards the media and the international opinion makers, and states, while his own troops are dropping those bomblets into civilian population centers: "We are not Russia precisely because every life matters to us. And we will use every opportunity to save more lives and to limit Russian terror as much as possible."

This is not the only example.
Patrick Lancaster, an independent British war correspondent, reported on 5-22-2022 how his vehicle got a flat tire because of ‘flechettes’, small metal darts, that were fired by Ukrainian troops.

Ukrainian forces have used these since the beginning of the fighting in the East. In an abandoned Ukrainian artillery position in the Luhansk Republic, shells with such flechettes were found.

 
They work similarly, and are aimed to inflect wounds to people, while minimizing damage to military equipment and positions. When fired at civilian settlements, the aim can only be that of killing, wounding and terrorizing the civilians.

The Guardian wrote about them, and shows how they are used:

Notice the nasty wounds such flechettes make, bending inside the victim’s body, creating multiple wounds by the same single flechette.

I already noted here and in a previous article the newest directive that forbids receiving or handling any Russian aid or food packages, which is designated as treason. This is inhumane, and targets their own population in a conflict zone, already suffering from a complete meltdown of normal infrastructure and chain of supply, often going without food for days or weeks, even, during prolonged firefights in their neighborhoods.

Or I could mention the deliberate artillery shelling of civilian areas by the Ukrainian forces. This is not something new, that started with the Russian invasion, but this has been going on since 2014. The people from Luhansk and Donetsk have their own monument, remembering the ‘Alley of Angels’, which they erected already in 2015, with the names of children killed in shelling on their territories.

In 2017, another monument was added, of Kirill Sidoryuk, 13 years old, who was protecting his younger sister during a bombardment, shielding her with his own body. He did not survive, his sister did.

Is all that cold Russian propaganda?

No.

It is verifiable fact, as I have chronicled in earlier articles.
The gamble of the West to use neo-Nazi elements to destabilize Ukraine (remember how it was the Azov and Right Sector militias that really provided the muscle, discipline and organization that made the protests that led into the color revolution and deposition of the duly elected president possible!) in order to install their own pro-western regime is backfiring. A complete lack of regard for human life, the orchestrated campaigns dehumanizing their opponents, cemented more and more by official directives, is inevitably leading to such excesses and killings.

Which brings us to Bucha and Izyum, the two examples Ukraine and the West holds out as ‘proof’ of Russian barbarism. (Notice how trying to defend actual truth against such information war campaigns will make it appear as if I am defending Russia. I am not. I am defending truth. Against the murderous acts of the Nazis and their acolytes, I can easily place the murderous acts of the Soviets during that same period, and after. The mindset that made such heinous crimes possible is not dead and gone in Russia, at the moment, either. Has Russia ever properly accepted responsibility for Katyn, for example, and at least apologized for it? Didn’t think so.)

Now, Bucha.

I already spoke a little about this in my April article ‘Ukrainian propaganda’, but a lot more can be said.

It is amazing how the story on Bucha keeps evolving.

One could literally write a PhD dissertation on this, digging through all the messaging by both sides on this.

There are so many different articles, each with different videos, pictures, supporting elements.

Yesterday, I missed a very interesting article by the NYT, which included satellite pictures to prove those corpses where there for a very long time, definitely from when the Russians were there.

It claims that the civilians in question were shot 3 weeks ago, when the Russians controlled the town, since March 11.

It presents a very convincing side by side video of the satellite image and one of the videos of a car driving through that same street after the Russian withdrawal, with the corpses in the exact same positions as 3 week ago.

Horrible. To kill people like that, and leave them out on the streets, like animals. Truly horrible!

(There is an interesting take by some, using the known date and time of the pictures, that then use the length and direction of the shadows to prove that those satellite images are NOT from the purported dates…)

But then you look closer…

See the bodies near the stack of pallets?

There are other pictures taken of each of those body locations.
As published by Doba (a Ukrainian media outlet), pictures by Ronaldo Schmidt from AFP show this scene from a different angle.

The AP has a different picture, where the middle body is gone. (I realized I can’t post the picture without a license, which is not feasible for me on a free substack.).

Reuters published this picture, with only 2 bodies, as well.

Now, this by itself doesn’t mean much. The middle person could have been collected by family.

But there is more.

Look back, 3 pictures up, with the man standing with his hands in his pockets, next to the 3 bodies.

Look behind him, in the street.

NO BODIES.

Yet, we know there should be, as the 3 bodies from the first picture should still be there (encircled), as well as several others that were right behind them, from that point of view (5 arrows).

Same thing: perhaps at that time they were already picked up by that time.

But there are some other problems: if those bodies had been there since March 11, they had to be in a much further state of decomposition than the pictures with close-ups of body parts show, especially that in the last 2 weeks, Kiev and surrounding area had at least a full week with high temps in or near 60 degrees, with lows that remained well above freezing.

Another problem is with the following picture, also from Bucha, but from an undisclosed location:

This is from April 2nd.

There is a set of 2 pictures of the same body, but they are held by AP, and I cannot show them (as I don’t have a license). Still, it shows this body in two different locations. The first picture, taken at 06:06:13 AM, shows the man laying down just past the yellow tube, visible on this picture as well, just above his shoulders. So a good 2, 2 and half meters further up. But a second picture, taken at 06:13:23 AM, shows this body in the same location as on this above picture. The cables, nor the tube, has been moved: so the body was NOT dragged. The body lays in the exact same position, with the legs bent in the exact same position. The arm is bent up, where originally it was down, tucked under the body, and now we see the belt and pants stick out, where before the belt and pants were flush with the man’s lower back. Also important to note: a 3rd AP picture shows the man with a white armband, sign of neutrality/pro-russian stance (white flag, taken as treason, and as such: pro-russian).

Two possibilities: the man walked from one position to the next.
The man was fully picked up (not dragged), and placed on the curb. If he was picked up, the fact that the legs are still fully in the same position, show extreme rigor mortis, which peaks around 12 hrs after death (after which secondary flaccidity sets in as muscle enzymes break down, which is completed within 1-3 more days). This would indicate that this man was killed less than a day before this picture was taken, and NOT 3 weeks ago.

This would even place it after the Russians had left Bucha, according to claims by the mayor from Bucha celebrating the liberation of his town on March 31st in this video.

A message from another local politician asked local residents to stay inside on April 1st, so to not to interfere with Ukrainian troops, in line with this archived article from a Ukrainian source (!!) that clearly talks about “Special Forces Regiment SAFARI Begins Clearing Operation in Bucha from Saboteurs and Accomplices of Russia”, while it reiterates that Anatolii Fedoruk, the mayor of Bucha, had announced the liberation of his town from Russian invaders on March 31st.

In my first article, I mentioned the conversation from the Botsman video, asking if it was ok to shoot people without blue armbands (signifying support for Ukraine), and how so many of the victims in Bucha had white armbands.

But that is not all. Due to the poor sound quality of that video, a very important element was missed.

At the end of the video that was posted by a known Azov leader, we can hear in background someone starting to say "please don't kill", followed sound of gunshot. Remember, this was right after permission was given to shoot people without the blue armband!

no one @antiwar_soldier

Update: AUDIO track from a Video by Botsman from Bucha seems to contain a proof of execution of a civilian. At the end of the video, in background "please don't kill" followed sound of gunshot Here is a subtitled version.

(Part of a very interesting Twitter thread, as well, worth to look at a bit closer!)

Remember the story on ‘accepting food from the Russians’ as a crime of treason? And how I linked that as a sign of acts of revenge by Ukrainian forces when they found civilians in possession of Russian food packages? Well, here is a story about a witness of a woman, from a video posted on Telegram, evacuated from Bucha on March 25 (before the Russians left):

“There were Russians with inspection. See where there are civilians. They saw the children, asked if we were starving, if there were medicines, and so on. As a result, after a while they brought two sets of them, and literally an hour later the shelling of our house began. And after that, of course, we realized what we needed (need to leave).

Svidomo were knocking. The house accepted help from the Russians - the address was reported to the Nazis and it was covered [with artillery fire].”

All this paints a very different story than what we have been told. “410 victims in Bucha, murdered by the Russians!” But even that claim falls completely, when you look closer.

Many came from a mass grave near the church (about 70 bodies), but those were civilian victims of Ukrainian shelling of Russian positions (or deliberate targeting of ‘collaborators’, as the above witness shows), and this has been documented well before the Russians left. Then there are a few clusters of people with hands tied behind their back, likely after the Russians had left (why shoot people you just handed out aid to?). And the infamous Yabluska street, where most of the picture came from. 10 people were killed there, but not by retreating Russians, but by mortar shelling by Ukrainian forces who hadn’t realized yet that the Russians had left.

A gruesome clue is in this picture, with the keys out: this person was ready to come back inside his home, but got surprised by the shelling, caught in the open…

A much more direct clue, smoking gun level, are the pictures of explosion craters in the sidewalk, and a picture of an unexploded mortar shell (the position of which proves it was shot from the Ukrainian lines).

The mass grave showed that dozens were killed by flechettes. Even the Guardian reported on it, result of forensic study of the exhumed bodies.

The article blamed the Russians for using those flechettes, and they wrote “According to a number of witnesses in Bucha, fléchette rounds were fired by Russian artillery a few days before forces withdrew from the area at the end of March.”

Problem is, those bodies with those flechettes were buried much earlier, and if Russians wanted to kill civilians, they would used better means than tank/artillery rounds with flechettes, instead of firing them on their own positions! Those are not precision weapons, at all. Instead, this corresponds with the Ukrainian army’s practice, and goes against the broader analysis of what the Russian army had been trying to achieve. As my previous article on Russian tactics explained, why try to minimize antagonizing the local population, and then massacre them like that in Bucha, anyway? Right before you leave, with the bodies still in the streets, for all to see? Cui bono? Who benefits? This makes so little sense.

But now the Russians retreated from the area around Izyum, and a new wave of allegations are made. Eagerly referring to Bucha, as if reminding us all that Russia already is a proven war criminal, so we look with less critical eyes on the new information.

However, we just saw how Bucha was NOT a Russian crime (definitely not in the way it is portrayed by the Media in the West). So what about this Izyum crime?

Remember how I wrote about fears that Ukrainian troops would enact revenge? And reported on 2 cases where that seemed to have happened in those very early days of that offensive?
It is corroborated, sadly:

And

(Notice the blue tape, identifying the soldier as Ukrainian)

Now the Ukrainians ‘found’ a grave site in the woods near Izyum.

Civilians who were tortured, and a mass grouping of Ukrainian soldiers! Clearly, proof of murder and crime by the Russians! Thrown together in nameless graves, as an ultimate sign of disrespected!

“They are two extremes that remind us that the idea of someone missing, buried anonymously, is a violation of a fundamental instinct to honor the dead,” as a NYT article gravely wrote.

But what is really going on?

Many graves are individual graves. What mass murdered would bother with such ordeal?
Many graves DO have names on them, both of civilians, and of soldiers.
The Ukrainians did not ‘find’ this grave site, they STARTED it at the beginning of the fighting, to bury victims of the fighting, both civilian and military. Some of the dates of death are from early March (see picture below), while it is confirmed that the Russians only took control of Izyum by April 1st.

Manu of the graves have flowers, from local residents, who knew the people buried there, and honored their beloved death. Some graves had stone markers.

This is not a typical mass grave to cover up a criminal mass murder!

Some of the graves are indeed only marked with a number, but that would indicate some kind of list with information about the body buried there. Why else bother marking a grave with a number, if it did not refer to a record? We are getting insinuations of dehumanizing practices by the Russians, based on very one-sided information that did not bother to due even basic due diligence.

And dehumanizing? Russians have reported many times that Ukrainian military counterparts did not agree with ceasefires to come collect their own dead. It was left to the Russians, then, to collect and bury the Ukrainian KIA. How does that show ‘dehumanization’?

A picture that went around the media, of one of the corpses, shows it wearing a blue and yellow plastic bracelet. Sign of genocide, the media insists. But pictures of the body, showing it wearing military pants, and the tattoos on the upper body, allow to identify this body with a soldier of the Ukrainian army.

I have not seen any proper forensic report to prove the claims of torture. Simply reports of broken bones and such are not enough: such can be and often are seen with victims of modern warfare, inflicted by explosions, or falling debris.

The report about a single case of a body with hands tight together, and a noose around the neck, is also without any context. Which grave? Any info and date there, that might indicate when this victim was killed? Remember, the grave site was in use weeks before the Russians had arrived there.

A lot of questions, many that dispel the accusations and insinuations outright, and that point at a much more mundane explanation: this was a makeshift grave site, to bury the civilian and military victims of the ongoing fighting in and near Izyum (including civilian victims of the indiscriminate shelling by Ukrainian forces, as amnesty International had documented).

Talking about Amnesty, as circumstantial evidence: Ukraine is refusing Amnesty access to graves in Izyum. Amnesty International has shown to try to be neutral, and is not afraid to call out not just Russia, but also Ukraine, when they make mistakes (in this case, deliberate shelling of civilian settlements and buildings!), so they cannot be trusted to keep the hoax alive. What are they hiding?

“Amnesty International would be happy to help gather evidence of possible crimes and injustices committed in Izyum if it had local access. Unfortunately, we are no longer very present in Ukraine because the Ukrainian Defense Ministry has revoked our accreditation,” said a spokesman for the human rights organization on Tuesday.

(Source)

To end with a note of hope, unexpected praise for Amnesty International. They are the only main human rights group that I know of, that is actively trying to restore a sense of humanity and normalcy in the broken relations between Ukraine and Russia: on the envelope for a fundraiser for Sasha Skochilenko, a Russian citizen who was detained by the Russian authorities for protesting the war in Ukraine, they showed two people hugging. One clad in the Russian flag, the other in the Ukrainian flag.

In an information landscape torn apart by constant attacks and a ruthless information war by all parties, this kind of sign of a shared humanity stems me hopeful.

If even Amnesty International can attempt such neutrality, and advocate such common humanity in a time when it is bon-ton to demonize Russians, why can’t the rest of us?

With all this, I pray for peace in Ukraine, and an end to all this hatred and senseless killing.

But this needs to be said, and made known in the west. Am I right in everything I wrote? Probably not. But it DOES present a different angle, that NEEDS to be taken into account, even if only to be refuted, and thus give us certainty of what actually did happen, piercing the propaganda we know we are being subjected to.

May the truth set us all free, and may peace reign!