U.S. Officials Say Russian Units That Carried Out Bucha, Ukraine Atrocities Have Been Identified – One U.S. government official familiar with ongoing investigations into atrocities committed in Bucha, a suburb of Kiev, over the last week says that the specific Russian military units responsible for the torture, rape, and murder of innocent civilians have been identified.
The official said that the identification of individuals within the unit is now an “extremely high priority” for the U.S. intelligence community.
It comes after video footage shared over the last week showed dead Ukrainian civilians lying in the streets of Bucha, once a popular commuter town for government officials and professionals who worked in Kyiv. We reported on claims that an underground torture chamber was discovered underneath a children’s hospital, and how women and children had been brutally raped by Russian soldiers, and some even branded with swastika-shaped burns.
The official told CNN that intelligence officials have been using all tools available to analyze streams of intelligence to determine who is responsible for these crimes, and that the United States is now at the stage of “narrowing down” responsibility after undertaking the task as soon as the atrocities came to light.
Russia Continues to Deny Wrongdoing in Ukraine
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who previously argued that Ukrainian soldiers were targeting residential buildings with missiles and blaming Russian soldiers, told reporters on Monday that video footage of deceased civilians lying in the street was fake.
Peskov said that experts in the Russian Ministry of Defense had “identified signs of video fakes and various fakes,” but did not go into specifics.
“We would demand that many international leaders do not rush to sweeping accusations and at least listen to our arguments,” Peskov said, adding that Russian diplomats are continuing with their effort to convene a meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss “Ukrainian provocations” in Bucha.
It is unclear what effect the Bucha tragedies and the international outrage in response to it will have on continued peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
Russia faces condemnation from fact-checking organizations, the media, and political figures on both sides of the aisle.
Rachel Muller-Heyndyk, a senior fact-checker from Logically AI, said that Russia is engaging in the “most obvious campaign of disinformation.”
“But then having seen the events over the past few days, it seems to be that that has been taken a step further,” she said. “A lot of what they’re saying seems kind of outlandish and ridiculous.”
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
