La Jornada: Bucha: the inevitable clarification

And the

last weekend, The Ukrainian government has released photos and videos of corpses in the streets of Bucha, a town 37 kilometers from Kyiv, which days ago was in the hands of Russian military forces. He then stated that 410 bodies were found in those towns and other towns near the capital, many of them in mass graves, many of whom had their hands tied and shot in the back of the neck. President Volodymyr Zelensky attributed the result to the executions carried out by withdrawing Russian soldiers, referred to the genocide and demanded that those responsible for crimes against humanity be brought to justice.

This rhetoric was immediately approved – and even increased – by Western rulers and the media, who automatically accepted the Ukrainian president’s version as correct. Yesterday, the US President spoke about pursuing his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for these actions.

In turn, the Moscow authorities immediately denied that the Russian army had committed such atrocities as I described Another production of the Ukrainian regime for Western mediahighlight it All Russian units abandoned Busha completely on March 30 (that is, three days before the alleged discovery) and debunking widely circulated photos and videos as fake. The Russian police have opened an investigation into the matter, and the Kremlin has asked the United Nations Security Council to analyze it A blatant provocation of the radical Ukrainians.

The available elements indicate that it was possible to commit a barbaric act in some towns near Kyiv, but at present nothing allows us to conclude that it was the Russian forces who occupied these towns.

Unfortunately, after the massive media campaign that provoked anti-Russian sentiment, it seems that a large part of public opinion in the United States, Europe and Latin America is inclined to believe any accusation against Russia. It is worth noting, as a point of reference, that in 2003, more than a decade after the demonization of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime, lies finally prevailed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and systems to launch them on American soil. Which served as the main pretext for the conquest and destruction of that Arab state.

In the present case, a minimum of clarity and common sense should be sufficient to understand the inadmissibility of accepting any of the copies as true without waiting for thorough examinations and analyzes of the place, conditions, bodies, photographs and video recordings. It is clear that such an investigation can only be carried out by a neutral international entity. So, it is troubling that the Security Council is so intoxicated and polarized by the conflict, and therefore unqualified to do the job.

Finally, it is necessary to bear in mind that wars are favorable spaces for the perpetration of all imaginable atrocities, but also for the concealment of their authorship and even for their invention. As long as there are no conditions to explain the validity and responsibilities of this episode where appropriate, it is advisable to wait before joining a version and trust that the truth can emerge long before it is made clear. The task of historians.