By Joe Lauria / Consortium news

Hours after learning on Sunday that there had been a massacre in Bucha, a town 63 km north of the Ukrainian capital, the verdict was in: Russian troops needlessly massacred hundreds of innocent civilians as they withdrew from the city, leaving their bodies strewn on the streets.

Unlike their legal systems, when it comes to war, Western nations dispense with the need for investigation and evidence and pronounce politically motivated guilt: Russia is guilty. Case closed.

Except that the case hasn’t even been opened yet and the sentence is already proposed. French President Emmanuel Macron, for example, has called for Russian coal and oil to be banned from Europe. “There are very clear indications of war crimes,” he said on France Inter radio on Monday. “What happened in Bucha requires a new round of sanctions and very clear measures, so we will coordinate with our European partners, especially with Germany.”

Other voices are now dangerously call for the United States to go to war with Russia over the incident.

“This is genocide,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Confront the Nation on CBS. “Russian mothers should see this. See what bastards you raised. Murderers, looters, butchers,” he added on Telegram.

Russia categorically denied having anything to do with the massacre.

Where to start

If there were to be a serious investigation, one of the first places an investigator would start would be to lay out a timeline of events.

Last Wednesday, all Russian forces left Bucha, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

This was confirmed on Thursday by a smiling Anatolii Fedoruk, the mayor of Bucha, in a video on the official Facebook page of the town hall of Bucha. The translated message accompanying the video says:

“March 31 – the day Bucha was released. This was announced by the mayor of Bucha, Anatolii Fedoruk. This day will go down in the glorious history of Bucha and the entire Bucha community as a day of liberation by the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the Russian occupiers.

All Russian troops are gone and yet there is no mention of a massacre. The beaming Fedoruk says it’s a “glorious day” in Bucha’s history, which would hardly be the case if hundreds of dead civilians litter the streets around Fedoruk.

“The Russian Defense Ministry has denied the Kyiv regime’s accusations regarding the alleged killing of civilians in Bucha, Kyiv region. Evidence of crimes in Bucha only emerged on the fourth day after Ukrainian security services and Ukrainian media representatives arrived in the city. All Russian units withdrew completely from Bucha on March 30 and “not a single local resident was injured” during the period Bucha was under the control of Russian troops,” the Russian MOD said in a statement. Publish on Telegram.

What happened next ?

So what happened on Friday and Saturday? As one points out room by Jason Michael McCann on Point of view zero, The New York Times was in Bucha on Saturday and did not report a massacre. Instead, the Time said the withdrawal was completed on Saturday, two days after the mayor said so, and that the Russians left “behind dead soldiers and burnt-out vehicles, according to witnesses, Ukrainian officials, satellite images and military analysts”.

the Time said reporters found the bodies of six civilians. “It was not known under what circumstances they died, but the abandoned packaging of a Russian military ration lay next to a man who had been shot in the head,” the newspaper said. He then quoted an adviser to Zelensky, who said:

“The bodies of people with their hands tied, who were shot dead by soldiers, lie in the streets,” councilor Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter. “These people were not in the army. They had no weapons. They posed no threat. He included an image from a scene, photographed by Agence France-Presse, showing three bodies on the side of a road, one with their hands apparently tied behind their backs. The New York Times was unable to independently verify Mr. Podolyak’s claim that people were executed.

It is possible that on Saturday the scale of the horror had yet to emerge, and not even the mayor had been aware of it two days before, although photos now show many bodies out in the open. on the streets of the city, something that would likely be hard to miss.

In Bucha, the Time was close to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, whose soldiers appear in the newspaper’s photographs. In his article, McCann suggests that Azov may be responsible for the murders:

“So something very interesting happens. [Saturday] April 2, hours before a massacre was brought to the attention of national and international media. The US-EU funded Gorshenin Institute online [Ukrainian language] site Left Bank announced that:

“Special forces have started a clearing operation in the city of Bucha in the Kyiv region, which was liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The city is cleared of saboteurs and accomplices of the Russian forces.

The Russian army has now completely left the city, so this sounds like retaliation to everyone. State authorities are said to be scouring the city for “saboteurs” and “accomplices of Russian forces”. Only the day before [Friday]Ekaterina Ukraintsiva, representing the authority of the city council, appeared on an information video on the bucha live Telegram page wearing military fatigues and sitting in front of a Ukrainian flag announcing “cleansing of the city”. She informed the locals that the arrival of the Azov battalion did not mean that the liberation was complete (but it was, the Russians had completely withdrawn) and that a “complete sweep” had to be carried out.

Ukraintsiva was speaking a day after the mayor declared the city liberated.

On Sunday morning, the world learned of the massacre of hundreds of people. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “We strongly condemn the apparent atrocities committed by Kremlin forces in Bucha and throughout Ukraine. We seek accountability by using all available tools, documenting and sharing information to hold those responsible accountable. President Joe Biden on Monday called for a “war crimes” trial. “This guy is brutal, and what is happening in Bucha is outrageous, and everyone has seen it. I think it’s a war crime.

The Bucha incident is a critical moment in the war. An impartial investigation is warranted, which probably only the UN could conduct. The Azov Battalion may have carried out revenge killings against Russian collaborators, or the Russians carried out this massacre. (Once again the Pentagon dampens the hysteria of war, saying he cannot confirm or deny that Russia was responsible.)

A rush to judgment is dangerous, with irresponsible rhetoric about the United States directly fighting Russia. But it is a rush to judgment that we receive.

[Update: Satellite images, published after this article appeared by The New York Times, purportedly showing bodies strewn on a street in mid-March, should be considered by an impartial investigation. It cannot be considered at this point as conclusive evidence.]