DISINFO: Bucha massacre was staged and responsibility for attack on children's hospital in Okhmatdyt is not clear
SUMMARY
To be able to write something like this, you have to be able to look away perfectly. Even if you entirely ignore the fact that Bucha looked very, very much like a staged attack and that there is still no evidence as to which missile hit the [Okhmatdyt children's] hospital in Kyiv. Anyone who can still react emotionally to Bucha today has successfully looked in the other direction in the nine months of war in Gaza.
To even remember the pictures of Bucha, you have to search for them on the internet. And then you realise again that the splinters are missing, the blood and every human reaction that you also see in Gaza - the dead are covered up.
RESPONSE
Several recurring pro-Russian disinformation narratives attempting to discredit the evidence that Russian forces were clearly responsible for the deaths of civilians in Bucha in 2022 and the air attack assault on the Okhmatdyt children's hospital in Kyiv in 2024. There have been comprehensive international investigations and undeniable corroborating evidence in both instances.
The material and links may contain distressing/ graphic content.
On the alleged "staged" provocations in the Ukrainian cities of Bucha,
1) Russia's claims that video footage showing dead bodies on the streets of Bucha is staged have been fact-checked and debunked by the BBC, Bellingcat, The Atlantic Council, Mediazona, the Insider, Sky News, the New York Times and others.
Accounts of violence against civilians in Bucha have been collected by Human Rights Watch:
On March 4, Russian forces in Bucha, about 30 kilometres northwest of Kyiv, rounded up five men and summarily executed one of them. A witness told Human Rights Watch that soldiers forced the five men to kneel on the side of the road, pulled their T-shirts over their heads, and shot one of the men in the back of the head. “He fell [over],” the witness said, “and the women [present at the scene] screamed.”
See also here.
The European Union has condemned in the strongest possible terms the reported atrocities committed by the Russian armed forces. The EU called for accountability for human rights and international law violations by the Russian Armed Forces, including full support for the investigation launched by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. See the full debunk here.
See a related disinformation claim, alleging that videos from the Ukrainian town Bucha are context-and-evidence-free and the West is spreading fakes about Russian atrocities in Bucha.
2) On the attack on Okhmatdyt children's hospital in Kyiv. The narrative is an attempt to blame the victims of a Russian missile strike and exonerate Russian forces of a potential war crime.
On 8 July 2024, Russia launched at least 40 missiles at targets across Ukraine, including the country's largest children’s hospital. At least 38 people were killed across the country, including 27 in Kyiv. More than 100 people were injured. The fall of the missile was captured in hi-resolution video and appears intact and deliberating falling on its target.
A video of the attack taken by a Kyiv resident and verified by The New York Times showed a missile moving downward at high speed before striking the children’s hospital. Fabian Hoffman, a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo specialising in missile technology, identified the weapon as a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile. The United Nations on 9 July 2024 said there was a "high likelihood" that the children's hospital in Kyiv suffered "a direct hit" from a Russian missile.
The type of the weapon and its trajectory suggested that Russia intentionally targeted the hospital, according to Mr. Hoffman. He said that the missile's trajectory “appears controlled,” and that it was likely programmed before launch.
Mr. Hoffman also noted that the missile was not struck by a Ukrainian anti-air-defence interceptor, and was “fully intact, with no visible damage to the fuselage.”
Open-source intelligence collective Bellingcat published a detailed report concluding that a Russian missile hit the hospital.
Other Russian attempts to dismiss the responsibility of this act involved affirmation without any evidence or with pictures of previous events reused wrongly for this attack.
See the statement by the EEAS Spokesperson on the large-scale missile and drone attacks by Russia targeting civilians in Ukraine including a children’s hospital.
There is well-documented evidence of numerous war crimes the Russian army has committed since Russia launched its unprovoked and unjustified aggression against Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Russia’s military often targets schools, kindergartens, hospitals, orphanages, churches and other civilian objects. One of the most infamous atrocities Russian troops have committed in Ukraine so far was an airstrike on a maternity and children's hospital in the city of Mariupol on 9 March 2022.
Read similar disinformation cases claiming that Children's hospital in Kyiv was hit by an American Patriot air defense missile, The attack on children’s hospital in Kyiv was a NATO false flag operation, that Kyiv Children’s Hospital incident was result of Ukrainian air defence missile, that Okhmatdyt hospital bombing is a savage Ukrainian crime, that Children's hospital in Kyiv hit by Ukrainian air defence missile, that Russian wrongly blamed for missile attack on children’s hospital, or that Russia strikes military sites, Kyiv children’s hospital hit by fragments of Western air-defence missiles.