War in Ukraine
The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Russia denies and deflects in reaction to Bucha atrocities

Moscow says the images are fabricated. Western governments and rights groups call them evidence of war crimes.

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April 4, 2022 at 12:40 p.m. EDT
Volunteers carry away one of the bodies of eight civilian men in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 3. Two had their hands tied behind their backs. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
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RIGA, Latvia — As the world expresses outrage over mounting evidence that Russian troops slaughtered civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, officials in Moscow are denying Russian involvement and dismissing images of dead bodies as fraudulent.

Russian diplomats and pro-Kremlin accounts on Monday amplified that view on social media, going so far as to suggest that corpses in video footage were actors participating in a hoax to discredit Russia. State-controlled news programs, meanwhile, either ignored the apparent atrocities or echoed the official line.