On the bodies of people on the streets of the city of Bucha in the Kiev region on April 1, Secretary of the Buchansk city council Taras Shapravsky announced in a video message. He asked local residents not to approach the corpses, as they could be mined, and urged them not to return to the city yet because of the dangerous situation and sabotage groups. A published video from the city of Bucha (from which Russian troops had previously withdrawn), according to Ukrainian authorities and Western media, shows civilian casualties. On the media published on April 3 (including Reuters and AFP), as well as footage from Bucha showing corpses by the Ukrainian authorities. Reuters reported that they were dead civilians. The mayor of the city, Anatoly Fedoruk, told AFP that the people in the photo were shot dead. According to him, another 280 people are buried in mass graves.
Russian Ambassador accuses US of hushing up shelling of Bucha
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UN Secretary General António Guterres called for an independent investigation into what happened in Bucha.
The Russian Defense Ministry stated that the Russian military was not involved in the killings of the civilian population of Bucha, and the published materials are a provocation. The agency indicated that all units of the Russian Armed Forces left the city on March 30. “Not a single civilian was injured,” the department said.
Russia demanded to convene a meeting of the UN Security Council on April 4 because of the “blatant provocation of Ukrainian radicals in Bucha.” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Kyiv wants to disrupt the peace talks and escalate violence.
She pointed out that politicians started blaming Russia for the killings after looking at several photos and minute-long videos. They made statements in the first minutes of the material’s release, which she says leaves no doubt “who ordered this story.”