DISINFO: Ukraine is setting up to accuse Russia of war crimes
SUMMARY
Ukraine’s special services have staged a big-scale anti-Russian setup to discredit Russia’s armed forces. During the Orthodox Christmas Eve, they opened graves of local residents who died of natural causes in several cemeteries of the region of Kharkiv. After the exhumation, the corpses of Ukrainian citizens were mutilated and thrown in mass graves to create a false “evidence base” of alleged “tortures” and “shooting” of civilians by Russian troops. Representatives of the Ukrainian security forces took pictures and filmed the corpses and, in the presence of false “witnesses”, they imitated the work of “forensic experts”. The goal is to maintain the attention of the Western public and to convince the foreign partners of the Kyiv regime to continue supporting it.
RESPONSE
Conspiracy theory not backed by any evidence, aiming to deny Russia’s well-documented war crimes in Ukraine. Contrary to what this disinformation story alleges, there is massive evidence of Russian atrocities against civilians and other crimes throughout the invasion of Ukraine, including footage, drone and satellite images, incriminatory radio conversations, testimonies of witnesses and survivors, and forensic proof.
Further, these atrocities and war crimes follow a similar patter in most territories previously occupied by Russian troops, as in Bucha, Borodyanka, Chernihiv, Hostomel, Lyman, Kherson, Izyum or other areas of the Kharkiv region. This evidence has been documented by personnel of the Ukrainian prosecutor office backed by international advisors, as well as by UN investigators, International Criminal Court experts and reputed human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch, and international reporters.
EU supports the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigators - see here. The Ukrainian General Prosecution Office, 13 EU Member States and the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC have opened investigations on war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives in our database, such as claims that war crimes accusations are war propaganda against Russia, that ‘Izyum atrocities’ were staged by Ukraine through controlled media, that the West fights Russia through psy-ops like Bucha and the Mariupol maternity hospital, or that Ukraine staged fakes about Bucha, Mariupol and Kramatorsk.