Best case scenario, the bodies are fake and no killing happened. Worst case, Azov had a field day and killed as many people as they could and then blamed Russia. Either way the odds that the a group of Russians did it is very low.
Shit like this is why they banned RT and other Russian news outlets. So they can invent atrocities and then not give the other side a chance to explain themselves.
It truly is remarkable how there hasn’t been any proper investigation regarding this and yet EU leaders have already decided to deport Russian diplomats and impose further sanctions. Basically everything that comes out of Zelenskyy’s mouth is ”source: just trust me bro”, so it is very apparent that order comes from the US.
The fact that Russia, the country accused of war crimes, wants them investigated says it all. The West has already declared Russia guilty, and are purposely keeping their side of the story away from the headlines.
What do you think about the satellite images? Like, I can’t comprehend what benefit Russia would get out of doing this but I also don’t want to go full FAKE NEWS!!! on every single thing I read.
The rational default position should be to disbelieve everything you hear about Russia, China, Cuba… etc. basically anything geopolitical from western mainstream news. On every single thing you read.
As I posted elsewhere the satellite images can be independently analyzed by geolocation experts. Russia claims you can tell the picture released by the NYT actually corresponds to April 1st and not to March 19 because of the specific position of the shadows (which are different every single day of the year and would even allow one to tell the time of day at which they were taken), and signs of recent rainfall.
Hopefully this will be debated by neutral parties in the future.
Even if you ignore the possibility that the date of the satellite picture might be false, and accept them at face value as showing black block of dark pixels that are indeed human corpses, there are still many few issues:
- the weeks between the supposed date of the picture and the video we saw means the corpses would have been there long enough to start becoming bloated, which is not visible in the pics and videos from early april, so at minimum those were different corpses
- yes people have checked the weather, temps have been too high for them to have preserved the corpses
- the satellite picture is not showing anybody near the corpses, and no russian vehicule is in sight. However what might be traces of damage from artillery shelling or similar attacks might be visible. A possible explanation might be that those were simply people killed by an ukrainian artillery attack on the russian occupied town, and yes the ukrainian themselves have presented earlier videos of supposed artillery attacks on the town (you will note how this means they didn’t care much from the civilians).
- some of the corpses seen in the later videos were seend with not only their hand attached (so they weren’t killed randomly while walking the street), but also with white armbands (supposed to mark pro russian civilians, pro urkainians civilians use blue or yellow armbands instead)
- we have a video of an ukrainian soldier seeong someone without a blue armband and asking for autorisation to fire (he got it), in other words, at least for this specific case we have confirmation of an ukrainian soldier shooting at what looked like a civilian.
- the mayor of the town made an interview on the 31th about the town having been “liberated” without mentionning anything about random killings by the russians during their occupation
- an ukrainian journalist drove empty streets the following day with not a corpse in view, and no mention of any massacre or killing, once again you might have tought that this would have been one of the first thing reported.
Here are some sources which contradict the narrative of Russian troops committing this massacre while they were present in Bucha.
While these claims check out and imply armed defenders of Ukraine may have killed civilians, it doesn’t exonerate Russian soldiers. Take this for instance:
New York Times: Satellite images show bodies lay in Bucha for weeks, despite Russian claims
<sup>(Non paywall version) – (New York Times Reliability Discussion (mostly positive))</sup>
Excerpts from article:
An analysis of satellite images by The New York Times rebuts claims by Russia that the killing of civilians in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, occurred after its soldiers had left the town.
[…] review of videos and satellite imagery by The Times shows that many of the civilians were killed more than three weeks ago, when Russia’s military was in control of the town.
I recommend reading the article itself, since it shows dated video footage alongside satellite imagery to make the claims.
This leaves three explanations -
- The first is the NYT is lying - Given their track record and the reliability discussions linked above, this seems highly unlikely. This is in addition to requiring everyone else working together to fabricate the story.
- The second is the civilians were killed by Ukrainians before Russia took over Bucha. This is also highly unlikely, since Russia would have said something about it somewhere (and they haven’t as far as I’ve been able to see).
- The third is Russian soldiers killed civilians. This isn’t too far fetched IMHO, given Ukraine encouraged civilians to fight back, and that we’ve seen military from around the world take out their anger on civilians.
Why does it seem unlikely to you the NTY is lying? They are fresh out of a scandal for their lies about Hunter Biden’s laptop, that is literally just a week old lol. They are one of the favorite printed western outlets for spreading misinformation about geopolitical events by western security agencies (and please, using Wikipedia, a shit-tier source crawling with glowies to exonerate them is really foolish), all the way back to Operation Mockingbird but their journalistic integrity pretty much disappeared over 2 decades ago when embedded journalism became a thing and they agreed to route their stories through a Pentagon censor before publishing.
Their satellite image comes from a private company and analysis team which have already been involved in making fishy claims about Xinjiang and is directly contradicted by statements and footage by other sources. Sure is worth looking into, but as long as it’s not independently verified we don’t need to trust Maxar Technologies about the date they’re supposed to correspond to, or take the NYT’s word about what they supposedly found.
Do you have any resources on Maxar Technologies and their claims that got debunked?
Pretty sure they work directly with the US department of defense
Here is one example where an Australia-based Pentagon cutout called ASPI used their satellite imaging to claim it had geolocated 380 detention centers in Xinjiang which turned out to be innocuous facilities.
Also, for historical record here’s Colin Powell using satellite imaging to claim the Pentagon had found WMDs in Iraq. We all know how that went.
Concerning the current images released by the NYT, Russian analysts say you can tell they were taken on March 28 and April 1st (and pinpointed to nearly the exact time of day), and not on February 28 and March 19 as the NYT claims, based on the position of the shadows and signs of recent rainfall. Surely independent experts will be able to corroborate either version. In these situations access to raw data is invaluable while “analysis” by parties with a stake in the outcome is always dubious at best!
Thank you, where can I find the Russian analyses?
Here is the Telegram post from Rybar GEOINT team:
Here is a machine translation:
The [Maxar] image of the “Massacre in Bucha of March 19” was taken on April 1
Thanks to the help of our OSINT and GEOINT team (https://t.me/rybar/30413), we were able to accurately determine the time of the snapshot.
▪️The picture from the NYT allegedly dated March 19 shows sandy alluvium after a downpour that went from the 31st to the first.
▪️ The attached comparison from NYT is based on two shots that have identical shadow positions. They allegedly compared March 19 and February 28. In fact, they compared February 28 and April 1 - the time and position of the shadows coincide. The original dates of the photographs are in US time. ▪️ Information is available on the Maxar website which satellites have filmed the Buchi region in the last period. A total of three satellites were involved.
▪️ Having checked the angle of declination of the Sun above the horizon, in the SunCalc program we were able to find out by enumeration the exact time of the picture and the direction of the shadows.
▪️ The picture was taken on April 1 at 11:57 GMT (14:57 local daylight saving time). #Bucha #Kiev #Ukraine #fake @rybar
The first is the NYT is lying - Given their track record and the reliability discussions linked above, this seems highly unlikely.
This has to be a pisstake.
Given their track record I would say they are lying.
I think he’s either some kind of niche troll or a complete imbecile.
It sounds credible, too bad the guy isn’t citing sources or cares to elaborate to make his claims verifiable
