DSatellite images released by US company Maxar Technologies on Monday appear to refute Russian claims, the images prove that the bodies of people in civilian clothes found in the Ukrainian town of Bucha were already there before Russian troops evacuated the scene. Accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity (indiscriminate bombardment of Ukrainian cities, kidnapping of civilians, rape, torture, murder, etc.), whether they come from the Ukrainian authorities, the media or NGOs, have multiplied since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24 by the Russians, who have since faced fierce resistance from the forces of kyiv, and who deny the abuses.
Elizabeth Throssell, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, also said on Tuesday that “all signs point to the fact that the victims were deliberately targeted and killed directly” and that “this evidence are very disturbing,” pointing out that international humanitarian law prohibits the deliberate attack on civilians, which amounts to a war crime. “We have to investigate, but if we can understand that a building, for example, is hit in a military context, it is difficult to imagine what would be the military context of an individual lying in the street with a bullet in the head or the burned body,” she said.
In Maxar footage dating back to mid-March, several bodies of civilians can be seen lying dead in a Boutcha street or on the sidewalk. The Ukrainian army recaptured this town northwest of kyiv a few days ago from the Russians. Ukrainian authorities claimed over the weekend that they had found numerous bodies in Boutcha after the withdrawal of enemy troops. These “high resolution images (…) corroborate recent videos and photos on social networks revealing the presence of bodies lying in the streets (of Boutcha) and abandoned for several weeks”, indicates Maxar Technologies in a press release. In an analysis of close-ups of Yablonska Street provided by Maxar, the American daily New York Times wrote on Monday, after comparing them with video footage of bodies littering this street shot on the 1er and April 2, that many of them had been there for at least three weeks, when Russian forces controlled the town.
Russia “categorically” rejects
On Saturday, Agence France-Presse saw in Boutcha the bodies of at least 22 people wearing civilian clothes in the streets of the city. One of them was lying near a bicycle and another had shopping bags next to her. A corpse had its hands tied behind its back. On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov “categorically” rejected all these accusations, saying that Russian Defense Ministry experts had found signs of “falsifications” in the images presented by the Ukrainian authorities as evidence. a Russian massacre.
This denial was repeated in New York during a press conference by the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia. “Suddenly (these bodies) appear in the streets, lying on the ground, one by one, which to the right, which to the left, some moving, others showing signs of life”, declared Vassily Nebenzia, denouncing a bet stage “arranged by the Ukrainian information war machine”. But according to Maxar satellite images dated March 19 and 21, several bodies were already strewn on Yablonska Street on those dates.
Zelensky denounces “war crimes”
And according to the analysis of New York Times, these images reveal dark features similar in size to human bodies on that same street as early as March 9 and 11. Many of the bodies in the satellite images appear in exactly the same position on the ground as revealed by a video of Yablonka Street taken by a local councilor or by the photographs published by international media. In another image cross-checking comparison, the New York Times analyzed a video posted on Instagram of a body lying in the street in front of two cars. According to the daily, a Maxar image from March 21 shows the body and the two vehicles in the same position, in the same place.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Bucha on Monday, where he denounced ‘war crimes’ and ‘genocide’ after dozens of corpses in civilian clothes came to light in the city and other localities near the Ukrainian capital. “You are here and you can see what happened. We know that thousands of people have been killed and tortured, have had their limbs torn, women have been raped and children killed,” he said at an impromptu press briefing, after walking a few meters on a downtown street littered with the shredded carcasses of Russian armored and personnel carriers, amid destroyed houses.
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