fact check
Russia continues to deny any responsibility for the killings of civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha. The condition of the corpses is said to exonerate their own soldiers. A fact check refutes that.
The atrocities in the small Ukrainian town of Bucha have drawn criticism of Russia from around the world. The Russian government counters that the pictures are a “staging” and “provocation” by Ukraine. In terms of time, Russia cannot be responsible for the crimes.
claim: The condition of the corpses proves that the dead lay in Bucha only after Russian soldiers had already left the city.
valuation: Not correct.
facts: Russia’s Defense Ministry makes various claims about the images and timing in Bucha. So it is said that corpse stains would be missing on the recordings and no rigor mortis was recognizable. However, that should have been the case with a Russian perpetrator, because at least four days passed between the Russian withdrawal and the discovery.
Expert refutes claims about corpse stains
But the first recordings from Jablunska Street in Bucha were already circulating on social networks on April 1st. Russia claims to have left the city on March 30. However, there are also reports that there were still fighting in the city on April 1st. Either way, there are less than four days between the print and the first shots.
In addition, an expert contradicts the claims about corpse stains and rigor mortis. According to Benjamin Ondruschka, Director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), corpse stains appear on the parts of the body that are below at the time of death. So if a person dies on their back, corpse stains form there – and not on the face, which can often be seen in the videos.
At the request of the German Press Agency, Ondruschka analyzed recordings from Butscha. According to his assessment, the claim that there was no rigor mortis also lacks medical logic: “You don’t see rigor mortis without further ado, you can only examine it on the corpse.” If a dead person is not moved, the position of a corpse does not change for a very long time. It is quite possible that a corpse would look like this after at least two weeks under the local weather conditions.
Many bodies have been lying in the streets for a long time
Several high-resolution satellite images from the US service Maxar, which are available to the DPA, show that many of the bodies have been lying in exactly those places along the road in Bucha since at least March 18, where they were later found. The New York Times first reported on the satellite photos.
There is also at least one video showing a killing in Bucha. A drone footage shows a cyclist turning onto a street where Russian tanks are suspected to be parked. Then there’s shooting from there. The video was made in the first weeks of the war, as comparisons with other recordings from Bucha show. The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24. Another video from the same location shows a cyclist killed in early April. The New York Times and the research network Bellingcat first reported on this case.
Since the atrocities in Bucha became known, Russia has repeatedly spread false or unsubstantiated claims, some of which contradict each other. The Russian Ministry of Defense had previously claimed that two bodies on a city street were moving in one shot. This is wrong, as video analyzes by the dpa have already shown.
Source: Stern
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