Moscow Employing Precisely the Same Arguments about Bucha Murders It Used Concerning Malaysian Jet Shootdown, ‘Meduza’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 5 – The Meduza news agency assembles one of the most comprehensive discussions of the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Bucha and adjoining population centers near Kyiv, a discussion that deserves particular attention because of its breadth and balance of reporting.

            But one aspect of the Meduza report deserves particular attention because it provides still more evidence that what was done there was done with the support or at least acquiescence of the Russian command: Moscow propagandists immediately deployed the same arguments against Russian complicity they had earlier used in the case of the Malaysian jet shootdown.

            Russian propagandists and diplomats used the same four arguments in both cases, an indication that Moscow was aware of what its troops had done in Bucha just as it had to have been aware of the role its proxies played in downing the civilian Malaysian jetliner in 2014 (meduza.io/feature/2022/04/06/kak-ubivali-lyudey-v-buche).

            In both cases, the same four arguments – that the bodies weren’t “real,” that the Ukrainians had not reported on the case until too late because they had staged it, that the bodies were too new to be the victims the Ukrainians claimed and that the Ukrainians killed their own people in an attempt to make the Russians look bad.

            The Russian government, Meduza says, boldly and baldly presented these notions about the Bucha killings via its permanent representative to the United Nation even falsifying the reporting it claimed to be relying (russiaun.ru/ru/news/050422_u) on just as it did eight years ago regarding the shooting down of the civilian aircraft over Ukrainian territory.

            The reasons the Kremlin did so are obvious: such an approach works both by muddying the water and allowing those disposed to be pro-Moscow to believe what they want and by ensuring that Western media driven as it is by its commitment to balanced reporting will certainly include Russian denials, however absurd, when it reports Russian crimes.

            But the very fact that Moscow uses the same propaganda tactic when faced with charges against it that the preponderance of evidence suggests are true is itself additional testimony that what Moscow is again denying is in fact what it has done and continues to do.