After both Kyiv and the West accused the Russian military of massacring civilians in the town of Bucha over the weekend, Russia’s chief investigator ordered on Monday an official examination, branding the accusations a Ukrainian provocation.
The head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, ordered the probe on the basis that Kyiv is deliberately spreading false information about Russian armed forces in Bucha.
After Moscow previously on Sunday dismissed the incident as having been staged by the Kyiv forces, Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the UN Security Council, Dmitry Polyansky, said that it will convene an extraordinary meeting of the UNSC over the incident on Monday.
Polyansky said in a post on Telegram that Russia has demanded the meeting in light of the blatant provocation by Ukrainian radicals in Bucha, accusing Russia of massacring civilians, with an aim to bring to light, as he pointed out, the presumptuous Ukrainian provocateurs and their Western patrons.
Firmly rejecting any involvement in the incident, the Russian Defense Ministry said Russian troops pulled out of the town on March 30, pointing out that the local mayor didn’t mention any local residents laying shot in the streets when confirming Russian troops’ pullout in a video address a day later.
The Ministry added that the alleged evidence of the civilian deaths emerged four days after their withdrawal, when Ukrainian intelligence and media teams arrived in town, which, according to Moscow citing multiple inconsistencies, shows that all has been staged by the Kyiv regime for Western media.
Moscow is accusing Ukraine of staging the whole incident to frame Russian troops.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Sunday for an independent investigation that will lead to effective accountability over civilian deaths in Ukraine while Human Rights Watch detailed in its report instances of war crimes during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Be the first to comment