Medvedev Slams Bucha Provocation as Ukrainian Propaganda Fake

Over the weekend, the Ukrainian authorities and media circulated footage from Bucha near the capital Kiev appearing to show scores of corpses in the city's streets. The Russian Defence Ministry said that all of the photos and videos were a staged "provocation" as Russian forces had completely withdrawn from the town as early as 30 March.

Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has slammed the Bucha provocation and information on the Mariupol maternity hospital as "fakes that were made in the cynical imagination of Ukrainian propaganda".

He wrote on his Telegram channel that these fakes "were concocted for vast amounts of money by numerous PR agencies and 'troll factories' supervised by Western governments and their 'pliant' NGOs".

Medvedev added that Ukrainian nationalist battalions are ready to kill civilians for the sake of slandering and dehumanising Russia.

According to him, "day by day, the news about 'horror stories' and 'victories' [by the Ukrainian Army] is becoming more delusional. However, the Kiev fake machine does not stop at anything!"

"All because this deep 'Ukrainianism', fuelled by anti-Russian poison and all-consuming lies about its identity, is one big fake", Medvedev wrote, adding "this phenomenon has never existed in history, and doesn't now".

He also pointed to the spread of Nazi ideology among the Ukrainian military, stressing that in almost every Ukrainian Army unit seized by Russian troops, Nazi banners, literature, and posters had been found. "This is not a game of fascist aesthetics as the Westerners are trying to prove to us. This is an ideology", the Deputy Security Council chairman underscored.

Bucha Provocation

The remarks come after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the Bucha provocation as "yet another fake attack" that Ukraine is attempting to use against Russia.

He emphasised that the horrendous scenes in Bucha were staged after Russian troops left the city, with the Ukrainian authorities, induced by their "Western patrons", promoting "fake videos" from Bucha via social media.

"Russian servicemen left this city on 30 March, on 31 March the mayor of the city solemnly said that everything was in order, and two days later we saw how that very performance was organised on the streets, which they are now trying to use for anti-Russian purposes", Lavrov said.

This came after the Ukrainian and Western media accused Russia of being behind the mass killing of civilians in Bucha as they spread footage that showed dead bodies strewn across the streets of the town. Moscow has vehemently rejected the accusations, calling the footage from Bucha "another provocation" produced by Kiev specially for media outlets in the West.

Russian MoD Rejects Claims of Russia's Involvement in Mariupol Hospital Attack

Last month, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov dismissed claims of Russian involvement in the 9 March attack on a Mariupol maternity hospital as an "information provocation by Kiev".

He stressed that a ceasefire regime had been declared by Russian forces on 9 March to allow for the evacuation of Mariupol's residents, and that Russian aircraft did not take to the skies over the city that day. The Russian military also repeatedly warned about the presence of Ukrainian troops and neo-Nazi Azov regiment militants at the city's hospitals.

On 24 February, Russia launched a special military operation to demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine, responding to calls for help from the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics which saw weeks of intensified attacks by Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defence Ministry said that the operation was solely targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure with high-precision weapons, and that the civilian population is not in danger.

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