Following April 4th, Georgian-speaking Facebook users have been claiming repeatedly that the Ukrainian National Police (НПУ) entered Bucha on April 2nd and did not find any corpses on the spot.
On April 4th, the Facebook account “Karosa Ni” posted the video with the caption: “Here is a video from the National Police of Ukraine, dated April 2nd, 2022. There are no corpses in the streets.“ The post shared into the public group “People’s Army” on April 5th claims that this is the first footage taken in Bucha and proof that there are no corpses on the street. The author of the post also claims that Ukrainians or mercenaries “arranged a massacre” in Bucha.
In a post published on April 7th, the Facebook account “Find the Truth” claims that the National Police of Ukraine video shows the same road on which corpses are supposed to be.
It should be noted that on April 4-8th, a video with almost identical content, that no corpses were found in the video of the National Police of Ukraine, and this fact casts doubt on Ukraine’s accusations against Russia, was also published by Russian-language Facebook accounts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).
The posts disseminated on Facebook contain two pieces of disinformation: 1. The video published by the National Police of Ukraine shows different parts of the city, and the scene showing the corpses was not recorded on the street where corpses were found initially. 2. Selected scenes in the video show two corpses; hence the claim that no corpses are to be seen in the video is false.
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The footages shared by the National Police of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense were recorded in different parts of the city.
On April 2nd, the video was published by the National Police of Ukraine with the caption “Special forces of the National Police are clearing the city of Bucha.”
By using geolocation tools, Myth Detector has identified the route of the Ukrainian police, which looks like this:
The Ukrainians left the Kyiv region using the Seventh Highway (M07), which is part of the road connecting Kyiv and the Polish city of Lublin – E373. It is on this road that all the points that the Ukrainian forces have passed are located, except for the final point.
The first point that we can recognize from the video is the border between the Kyiv region and the city of Hostomel:
The map of the same spot from the Google Maps:
The last point, shown at 7:11 in the video, depicts a burnt pharmacy and an embossing art studio called Kovalsky Dvorik, located at 101 Station Street in the city of Bucha.
The shot from the Ukrainian National Police’s video:
The photo from 2021 depicting the same location:
As for the footage of the bodies found in Bucha, it was published on April 3rd by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. However, this does not prove that the footage was taken later than the footage of the National Police of Ukraine, as information about the bodies found in Bucha was public on April 2nd. Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk told AFP about it.
The footage released by the Department of Defense was verified by The New York Times and Meduza.io. According to both publications, the footage was taken on Yablonska Street in Bucha.
The mentioned street is located in the south-western part of Bucha and is distanced from the route of the National Police of Ukraine.
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The video published by the National Police of Ukraine shows two corpses
The aforementioned posts voiced the assertion that no corpses can be found in the video published by the National Police of Ukraine.
In fact, two bodies do appear in the selected shots of the video.
The first one can be seen at 0:20 after the National Police forces cross the bridge on the Irpin river.
The second corpse appears at 4:55 in the car near the Cathedral of St. Anna.
Notably, the account “Find the truth” does not publish the full version of the video. In the post, the scene showing the first body has been cropped out.
For more disinformation around the Bucha Massacre, see the articles prepared by “Myth Detector:”
- Kremlin Propaganda and Georgian Facebook Accounts Deny the Bucha Massacre
- Kremlin Expert Questions the Blame of the Russian Soldiers in the Bucha Massacre
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