AA / Moscow / Elena Teslova
Russia on Sunday called video footage of dead civilians in the town of Bucha, near the Ukrainian capital, “false” and “provocative”.
At a press briefing in Moscow, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov pointed out that Russian troops left the city on March 30, as confirmed by the city’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk.
Igor Konashenkov claimed that if civilians had been killed as claimed, Fedoruk should have mentioned it when he announced that there were no more Russian troops in Bucha.
“All Russian units withdrew completely from Bucha on March 30,” the day after peace talks between the two sides in Turkey, the Russian official said.
And to add: “Also, on March 31, the mayor of Bucha, Anatoly Fedoruk, confirmed in his video message that there were no more Russian soldiers in the city, but he did not even mention of local residents gunned down with their hands tied in the streets.”
According to Konashenkov, the images appeared four days later, with the arrival of Ukrainian security forces and journalists.
Questioning the condition of the bodies shown in the images, he remarked that they did not show the signs of decomposition that should have appeared within four days of their presumed death.
All the photos and videos published by the kyiv regime, which allegedly testify to certain “crimes” committed by Russian servicemen in the city of Bucha, in the Kyiv region, are a new provocation,” Konashenkov said.
He denied that residents of the city suffered “exactions” during the presence of Russian troops, adding that they were allowed to take refuge in Belarus while Ukraine bombarded other possible destinations.
The official also said that Russian forces had distributed 452 tons of humanitarian aid to civilians in localities in the region.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Sunday called on international organizations to send their experts to the country as soon as possible to collect evidence of war crimes committed by Russian troops.
The Russian war against Ukraine, which began on February 24, has sparked international outrage. The European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom, in particular, have imposed heavy financial sanctions on Moscow.
According to UN estimates, at least 1,417 civilians have been killed in Ukraine and 2,038 others have been injured, but the true toll could be much higher.
More than 4.1 million Ukrainians have also fled to other countries, and millions more have faced internal displacement, according to the UN refugee agency.
*Translated from English by Mourad Belhaj
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