Sherlocking Bucha

The Bucha Massacre is probably the most infamous event, so far, of the current Ukraine War. It occurred early during the initial invasion by Russia in 2022. Over 450 dead people were found in Bucha after Russians left the city, and pictures of dead people lying in the streets with their hands bound behind their backs soon became iconic and turned the event into a rallying cry against alleged war crimes committed by Russia. Accusations, investigations by reporters, debunking articles, and counter-accusations came from both sides for months, all adding to the controversy and complexity.

This article is about several things: First, this is about the Bucha Massacre, and I will be adding my twenty cents to the cacophony of theories of what really happened in Bucha. To justify this conceit, I will be contributing some unique arguments and one thorough proof derived using Sherlockian techniques that will flip part of the narrative upside down, and which I haven't seen anywhere else. But this article is also a continuation of my previous two articles where I discussed the general dire state of the news nowadays, demonstrating several generic methods with which one can extract useful information from news articles, and ways to expose whether the truth has been distorted. Finally, I hope to counter the very binary attitude of news outlets and their followers nowadays, by not taking a clear side.

Some quick background facts that are relevant to our investigation: The Battle of Bucha commenced on the 27th of February, a mere three days after the initial invasion. Fierce fighting continued inside the city with tanks and soldiers losing and regaining territory for around 13 days, until Ukraine officially announced that Russia had fully occupied the city on the 12th of March. After this, there were still some counter-attacks launched by Ukraine into Bucha, but the city remained occupied by Russia for 17 days until March 29. After an agreement with Ukraine in Istanbul, Russia agreed to withdraw its troops and did so from Bucha on March 30. On their way out, the fighting continued against retreating Russian soldiers. On the 31st of March, the mayor declared Bucha Russian-free and Ukraine declared a victory despite the fact that it happened as a result of an agreement. On the 2nd of April, reports and images started emerging from Bucha unveiling the massacre, claiming that Russians had killed them all during the occupation. Finally, despite all claims pointing the finger at Russia, Russia demanded a UN Security Council probe into Bucha and was blocked by Britain (why?).

The Adventure of the Speckled Evidence

There are numerous articles from the West covering Bucha and evidence of war crimes. I will pick only a couple that I felt were representative and important. Be aware that most of these articles contain pictures of dead people, but these are not too graphic.

• First and foremost are the documentaries and articles by PBS Frontline together with Associated Press published six months after the event. These are important because they represent a comprehensive investigation that took months. We assume they would present the best evidence and arguments they could find during these many months of detailed investigations within Ukraine itself. Here is the Bucha-specific PBS documentary, an accompanying article with more detail by PBS, and here is one AP article about the cleansing in Bucha.

• Second, here is an early Reuters article on Bucha from April 5 with the iconic pictures.

• Third, there is an eyewitness account and interview by someone who was in Bucha at the time, published in Belarus in Russian (use Google translate). I linked to the original since other newspapers edited it. I included it because it added some interesting details to the stories.

A Study in Target

One very important general point that needs to be made about most of these articles and investigations, is that they are very ambiguous about forensics. By this I mean that they do not specify how these Ukrainians died. As I mentioned in the introduction, the Bucha battle involved intense fighting in the beginning, middle and end, within the city itself. While Russians were invading Bucha, obviously the battles would involve heavy shooting, tanks and artillery from both sides. While Russians were occupying Bucha and leaving Bucha, any shelling into Bucha would mostly come from the Ukrainian side. Here is one example of a video of Ukrainian tanks pummeling Russians as they were leaving, clearly showing extensive damage to civilian areas and homes inflicted by Ukrainians. Another example is in the above article containing a witness account by Skyba who described sheltering in the cellar from shelling after Russians took him prisoner. Obviously, one cannot have a war like this in an urban area full of civilians for a whole month without many civilian casualties. So not only would some of the deaths be due to Ukrainian fire as well as Russian, but unless either side was aiming at citizens or not being careful and proportional enough, these deaths would not even count as war crimes.

In other words, with many of these eyewitness accounts, the articles never mention whether the victims were killed in an execution (for example, by a gunshot close to the head), or explosions, or crossfire (distant shooting). Instead the articles tend to group all civilian deaths together within the context of Russian war crimes, leading readers to blame the Russians for all the deaths, and to assume each and every civilian death is a crime.

To be fair, the Reuters article quotes the mayor and other officials who said that only 50 of the dead residents were executions. Does this mean the other 400 were presumably casualties of war and not war crimes? Reuters says: "The others were either killed in crossfire, or their deaths are so far unexplained." And yet, most other articles since then use the 450 count as evidence of Russian crimes. Even for these 50, where are the forensics? Reuters, at least, was honest and wrote they were: "not able to independently verify who was responsible for killing the dead residents.". But everyone else after that didn't bother with being careful once Bucha became politically important.

Not only do citizens get killed from crossfire during such a war, but, in addition, prisoners often get killed from friendly fire. To understand how common this can be, just imagine where prisoners are usually taken and held during a battle, then take into account that the other side often shells military targets. Obviously, prisoners are going to get killed often along with their guards while they are being held inside a war zone. This point is vital to remember since most of the accounts deal with prisoners being killed.

Another critical forensic detail they leave out is that, even in cases of executions, the articles don't specify whether the bullet came from a Russian or Ukrainian gun.

This is all very critical and undermines most (not all) of the eyewitness accounts and articles, leaving discriminate readers with no possible conclusion. It is possible that they have this forensic evidence but didn't share it, but given its importance, this is dubious. In fact, one could argue that the lack of these critical details may even prove that the specific accounts of deaths that omitted this information were not war crimes, otherwise they would tell us this important information. And it would be very simple to do so, for example, by simply stating: "His body was found with a bullet to the head fired from close range".

For example, the above links include the following story about Dima: His grandmother saw him taken away for the crime of photographing Russian tanks, and he was found dead much later. But how did he die? The articles leave this story unfinished, assuming the readers will fill in the gap they purposely left out. Similarly, Dima's grandmother's husband was also taken away and then his body was found 'charred'. Wouldn't a charred body likely denote an explosion rather than an execution? We aren't told. Another story is told here of a long search for a woman's husband, whose body was finally found long after he was dead. An autopsy was performed, finding that he "died of multiple gunshot wounds". Does this mean he was caught in a crossfire or executed? By the way, even the wife is said in the article to "doubt it was bullets that killed him", but there are no answers.

One often-told Bucha story which includes pictures, involves a pile of eight dead people all found next to the infamous 144 Yablunska Street industrial building where Russians were processing prisoners. That area was strewn with dead people with a total of "40 bodies along Yablunska street and 12 around 144 Yablunska". But keep in mind what I said about buildings used for military purposes being prime targets for shelling. Nowhere do they tell us exactly how these people were killed.

All that said, there are some eyewitness accounts that are more precise and credible, where the information does point to an execution by Russians. For example, there is the story of Skyba, a Ukrainian soldier who personally witnessed Russians shooting prisoners and who barely made it out alive after being shot himself. There are also first-person witnesses to Russian violence against prisoners. Another case involves two dead men, both found with a gunshot to the left eye, which points to a pattern that matches executions.

These cases are based solely on eyewitness accounts however, and they may be fake actors. For example they may be Ukrainian soldiers helping the cause by telling fake stories. However, my feeling is that this is too widespread and authentically detailed to be all fake, and I lean towards believing at least some of them as true. The unusual details and lack of logical gaps and contradictions lend these stories authenticity in my eyes. But this is not hard evidence, and if shown evidence to the contrary, I would change my opinion. What these articles really needed, however, is forensics to back the witnesses.

There are two qualifications that I would like to add to this accusation of Russian war crimes: One is that even by eyewitness accounts, Russians were not killing civilians, but soldiers (or civilians that participated in the war thereby becoming soldiers themselves). I will demonstrate and explore this point further below, but we see this is true already in the above articles where they write repeatedly that most civilians were let go, and only soldiers ('volunteers') were shot. Obviously, this is still a war crime if the soldiers were already taken as prisoners, but it needs to be said.

This shows that it was not an indiscriminate killing spree, but an aggressive hunt for soldiers and participants, and only some soldiers were killed while innocent civilians were released. It also explains why Russians were not simply killing everyone on the spot.

The other qualification is a theory of mine that there were different Russian units coming in and out of Bucha, and some specific rogue individuals and units may have been shooting the prisoners while the rest of them weren't. The witness accounts mention this inconsistent behavior and changes several times, and I will further prove this below and explain later why this may be somewhat important. For example, in the account by Skyba, he himself says that one Russian shot him while another unit picked him up again later and tended to his wounds (this detail alone made him more credible in my eyes). The article in the Belarus paper also talks about changing units, stating that only some of them were brutal.

Some may argue that the PBS documentary shows CCTV footage of Russians doing everything except beat and kill prisoners. The argument would then be, if they had so many cameras, how come not a single one of them caught actual evidence of war crimes? (Note that rounding up some civilians for questioning is normal for a war of this kind and is not a war crime.) But it's perfectly plausible that Russians would only kill in a safe place away from cameras so this argument doesn't have merit.

The Russians infamously denied all of this outright, and claimed everything was fake, staged news. Their accusations that bodies were seen moving in rear-view mirrors, and dummies were being dragged in streets in a stage production were thoroughly debunked. Frankly, their absolute denials and poor arguments did them no favors. But just because their attempts at proving they were fakes failed, that does not mean their claim is wrong.

Another counter-argument that does have some merit, however, is the question as to why the Russians would leave behind evidence of their crimes, having been warned in advance they were retreating, and having plenty of time during the occupation to burn the bodies. But this too is not hard evidence or an absolutely compelling argument, although it bears consideration.

The Case of the Cellphone Soldier

One interesting and unusual aspect of this war is the 'crowd-sourcing' of the war. One Western AP article discusses this phenomenon in the middle of its story about a missing person. President Zelenskyy asked citizens throughout the country to help with the war effort by reporting enemy troop movements with their cellphones, and he set up an app and database through the Ministry of Digital Transformation. The contributions by citizens were so widespread that "in just five weeks the bot had collected 257,000 reports on military hardware, troops and war criminals." The AP article says that several citizens detained and abused by Russians admitted to the reporters to participating in the war in this fashion.

This is obviously a serious problem for Russians, effectively recruiting millions of citizens to participate in the war, putting Russian troops in additional danger by employing millions of spies. More importantly, this turned any citizen who participated this way into a legal military target under the rule of 'Direct Participation in Hostilities', as the article itself admits. Obviously, under these circumstances, Russians had to provide special instructions to its troops on how to deal with this problem.

As opposed to what the article says however, logically and legally, this response should not be restricted to only detaining citizens with cellphones. Imagine the following scenario: Russian troops are making their way through a city street about to attack Ukrainian soldiers. A citizen sees the troops from his window, and films the tanks with his cellphone. Russians don't have time to start invading homes and arresting civilians during an attack; furthermore, the civilian is about to post this information and expose these troops to the enemy within a few seconds. In this scenario, obviously the troops would have to shoot the civilian on the spot from the street through the window. If you look at it this way, there is no difference between a cellphone and a gun. The civilian has chosen to put himself in danger by participating in hostilities. Given that this was a widespread and known phenomenon with millions of citizens knowingly participating, pointing a cellphone at troops is identical to pointing a gun, and the response by troops should be identical as well.

Obviously, whenever possible, these citizens should be detained rather than shot, and detained participants cannot be shot or tortured. But, during a live war scenario, these citizens can be, and probably were shot legally in some cases. But these articles don't admit to this reality.

Most importantly, this could also explain some quotes from soldiers about being commanded to kill civilians. In other words the orders may have been: If you see a civilian filming you while approaching the enemy, kill him. It all depends on the context of the order, and taking such an order out of this context would be a distortion.

A Scandal in Russiya

Another type of evidence presented by these articles is a collection of recordings of phone calls made by Russian soldiers, intercepted by Ukraine. In these recordings, Russian soldiers seemingly admit to killing civilians. Though this may seem like the strongest and most irrefutable evidence in the report, I will now demonstrate why this is not the case:

First of all, recordings can be easily faked. Anyone with an axe to grind with Russians can record themselves for 2 minutes, attach a fake phone number to the recording, and send it as evidence of an 'intercepted phone call'. The article mentions that a 'Dossier Center' verified the recordings. How is this even possible? I doubt it was a digitally signed recording along with the sender/receiver and timestamp. The article says they verified it "by cross-referencing Russian phone numbers, social media accounts, public reporting and information in leaked Russian databases". In other words, they merely verified the phone numbers they were given. But who says the numbers weren't attached to a fake recording?

However, let us assume for the sake of argument that these intercepted phone calls are not fake. Even so, they are still not proof. In the previous sections I have provided some context and background with which to interpret these recordings:

For starters, the first phone call in the documentary is blatantly and maliciously mistranslated, adding a word that wasn't there. I got it translated myself. A soldier and his girl are discussing why he is drunk. The article version says: "it's easier to shoot civilians". But the actual Russian dialogue says "on the contrary, drinking makes it generally easier to shoot."... with no mention of the word 'civilians'. All he is saying is that being drunk makes it easier to be a soldier and perform his difficult job.

But now we reach the most important problem with these recordings: The context has been edited out, and we all know how one key phrase can radically alter the meaning of what is said.

Take the aforementioned conversation between 'Maksym' and his wife. There are no less than four versions of this conversation: Two separated snippets in the documentary, another longer but still edited version in the article, and yet another version in the written article with additional snippets that had been cut out of the recordings for unknown reasons. Why did they do this? What has been cut out? Note that I am not speculating about edits; the four different versions prove this beyond doubt.

In one repeated quote he says: "Hide the weapons from me. I think I’m going crazy. I’ve already killed so many civilians.". This time he does use the word civilians. However, since the audio is definitely edited, we could insert any context to change the meaning and assume that they cut it out. For example imagine if the conversation actually went something like this: "Ukrainian soldiers were hiding in a civilian building and I had to kill them all. Hide the weapons from me! I think I’m going crazy. I’ve already killed so many civilians." As you can see, this version of the recording is not a war crime. Not only that, but it portrays a moral soldier who is feeling bad about having to cause civilian casualties due to war, and who got himself drunk to handle his guilty feelings. We saw similar situations in the Vietnam War by US soldiers.

For that matter, who says this recording took place in Bucha? What if the context is an attack on Mariupol with missiles and these are the weapons he is talking about?

In only one version of the same conversation, they add the following context: "You know how many civilians I killed here? Those men leaked information.". Remember what I wrote earlier about cellphone-soldiers and how it would be legal to shoot them in some cases?

In short, the evidence presented is so messy and edited, I managed to come up with three scenarios in two minutes that flips the evidence upside down, destroying any proof of a war crime.

Another example is the second phone call in the documentary. In this recording, the soldier talks about an order "to kill everyone whether civilian or not". Once again, what is the context? Why are they providing us only with this snippet? What if the context was the civilian cellphone-soldiers I described above? Or even simpler, what if the context of the order was to bomb a building that had both soldiers and civilians inside it?

In another recording, 'Ivan' calls his mother and talks about shooting anyone, even old ladies and children. But then he adds "Anyone who has weapons, gets killed" and "If we have to, we will kill”. This recording explicitly talks about the legal scenarios I mentioned (killing civilians that partake in the war, or due to necessities of war), and yet they include this as evidence of a war crime?

Similarly, the phone recording with 'Lyonya' becomes even more explicit in describing the exact situation. His mother asks why civilians got killed and he explains: "Mom, there is fighting going on. And suddenly he jumps out! You understand? What if he’s got a grenade launcher?". QED.

Note, once again, that I am not saying that there is no evidence of Russian war crimes. Merely that the articles did a very poor job of demonstrating any. As far as phone interceptions in the articles are concerned, there is zero evidence.

The Adventure of the Illustrious Defector

For this smaller adventure, I want to comment on this interesting article involving a Russian defector who deserted the Russian military after serving for several months in Ukraine.

Note that this article is written by CNN and purportedly provides evidence from a Russian soldier about Russian war crimes, yet they somehow missed that it also provides evidence to the contrary. Let me explain:

First, regarding his statement that they received a "direct command to kill anyone sharing information about the unit’s positions, whether military or civilian" and "if someone had a phone, we were allowed to shoot them": I already covered this in the "Cellphone Soldier" section and explained why this is legal, depending on the context. Again, imagine troops in a live attack that spot a cellphone spotter in a window. He doesn't say that they were ordered to shoot prisoners.

Also note that he heard of soldiers that had raped Ukrainians and he witnessed these soldiers being chased, beaten and booted off the unit by his commanders (he complains that they weren't jailed). This means that the war crime of rape had occurred (this happens in US wars as well). But it also means that this was not commanded or encouraged, and the commanders took action against the soldiers, though not to the extent of jailing them.

But the most important fact that emerged from this article in my view, is that despite him criticizing soldiers for looting and 'having murderous intentions', he himself says he did not see a single murder! Think about it: Here is a soldier who spent many months with his unit in Bucha and other places (he defected much later in September), and he is obviously more than willing and ready to spill the beans about any and all crimes they committed, practically spitting at his Russian comrades whom he views with obvious derision, but he says he never saw a single murder. To top it all, his unit was the 64th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, which is widely seen as one of the primary butchers of Bucha. This does not compute.

Therefore, ironically, despite the fact that this is a Western anti-Russian article, this is in fact proof that Russians did not kill prisoners. At least, not the units in which this man served. This does not mean that murders did not take place, only that it was definitely not as widespread as it looks, and they can't even get evidence to this effect from a spiteful defector who was a witness for months.

I'll repeat a point I mentioned before: Based on this evidence, and based on the surviving eyewitness accounts I mentioned earlier where, for example, one unit tried to kill a man and another treated him for wounds, the inevitable conclusion I am getting from all this is that this was not systematic, and if war crimes were committed, they were performed by rogue individuals or units.

The Adventure of the White Armband

Finally, we get to evidence of Ukrainian war crimes.

My Sherlockian analysis is based on the famous pictures in the Reuters report of a dead man in the street with bound hands. Note that this picture has become iconic whenever Bucha is mentioned, and this dead man is featured often from many angles. The assumption behind this picture is simple: Since Russians occupied the city for weeks, and since he was found in this state by Ukrainians after they came back to the city, and since his hands were bound and he was shot, ergo he was shot after he was taken prisoner by Russians. This is a war crime and the bound hands prove that he was not a war casualty.

Ironically, this iconic evidence proves exactly the opposite: Ukrainian fakery and war crimes.

First I will point out the clues, as seen in this clear picture:

• The most important thing I noticed is that the right hand's fingers are deeply soggy and have skin damage, and the left's fingers are not. I am no expert on decomposition but it is obvious that whatever damaged the right fingers did not damage the left, therefore it cannot be be due to decomposition but is most probably water damage. I.e. the right hand had been lying in some wet dirt, snow or in a puddle for some time, and the left had not.
• Also note that there is dirt on the hairy part of fingers but no dirt on the sleeve. I'm betting there was dirt on the other side of the sleeve and I will explain why.
  
• Another clue is the white cloth which looks unstained despite the dirt and damage to the hand.
• In this picture, we can see that the right shoulder and arm are much more drenched than the left side even though the body is lying on its side and the right arm is not touching anything. Similarly, there seems to be more blood on the right side and to the back of the hoodie. The tilt of these stains indicate the body was moved slightly, but also indicate in which position the body had been lying.
  
• Similarly, in this picture, there is a clear line of dirt from the ground down the right side of his pants which shows the same tilt. The rest of his clothes from this angle are not similarly dirty.
  

An obvious first conclusion is that this body was slightly turned on its side for the picture, and the right hand was moved, since there is nothing that could explain the damage to the right hand if it were lying in that position. This is not a problem in itself; as it is OK to move the body to demonstrate the photographic evidence (the white cloth binding the hands).

What is damning, is if you combine all of the above clues and try to come up with a single position for the body that would explain all of them. I challenge anyone to come up with a single explanation that covers all of these clues.

I physically tried this for several minutes, keeping my hands behind my back and contorting myself in every painful position I could imagine to try to explain how all these specific parts of my hands and sleeves could be either wet or dirty from the ground, while others weren't. I could not find anything that explained the clues. For example, lying on my back with my right hand on top of my left could explain the right hand but not the dirt on the clothes and bent fingers. Lying on my left side with my right hand on the floor while being tied could not explain the dirt on the clothes. And nothing explains the clean white cloth.

The only position that could explain everything was if you separate the arms/hands and lie on your right side, with your right hand under your body so that your forearm is against the floor. This would explain the patterns of dirt on the clothes, the right knuckles getting dirty, the right fingers getting wet, the left hand/arm remaining dry and undamaged, and it even explains the clean inner side of the right sleeve. In addition, the white cloth would have to be elsewhere for this to work.

In short, this is definite conclusive evidence that this picture was faked by Ukrainians, and that somebody tilted this dead man while pulling his arms together in order to tie them with the white cloth.

The next question is, who actually killed this man? That is another card that falls with the deck once you take this story to its inevitable conclusion, and once we add a couple more important clues:

• White armbands were worn by some Ukrainian civilians as a sign of solidarity with the Russians. Here is a short interview that shows video proof of civilians, here is another picture from the same Reuters article that shows another dead man from the same location in Bucha with a white arm-band, and here is one internet post of many that show Russian soldiers wearing white arm-bands as identifiers.
• Here is an official post from the Ukrainian military on the 2nd of April declaring that "Today, on April 2, in the liberated city of Bucha, Kyiv region, special units of the National Police of Ukraine began clearing the territory of saboteurs and accomplices of Russian troops." Note the word 'began', i.e. they had already started.
  
• Here is a post from Ukrainian soldiers (the original was deleted) where you can hear Ukrainian soldiers talking about "shooting anyone not wearing blue arm-bands".

Also note that, for some reason, the other dead men next to this bound dead man, were not bound. Why would anyone tie the hands of only one person and then shoot them all?

Once we add up these clues, the rest of the story falls very neatly into place: On the 2nd of April, after Russians pulled out, Ukrainian troops killed all known collaborators, especially those wearing a white arm-band, including this famous dead man. It is unknown how many they killed, but these are war crimes. On the 5th of April, when the Reuters article came out, this dead man had already been lying in the dirt for hours or days, hence the damage to his hand. (But he was not dead long enough to show damage in the rest of his body from when the Russians were still there). On the 4th or 5th of April, a pro-Ukrainian individual must have found this dead body with a white arm-band around his arm, figured that this doesn't look good, and in a stroke of genius, managed to cover the crime AND prove that this man was killed by Russians with a single act: By removing the white arm-band and tying it around his hands instead. The rest is iconic photographic history.

The Final Problem

Let us summarize what evidence is left after we sweep aside all of the fake or inconclusive accusations and evidence:

• Many civilians were definitely killed due to crossfire from both Russian and Ukrainian weapons during the ongoing war in Bucha. This is a certainty, but is not necessarily a war crime.

• It is somewhat likely that some Ukrainian soldiers were killed by Russians after being taken prisoner. This is a war crime, but you would have to rely solely on witnesses for this as the evidence presented was not strong. In addition, most Russian soldiers were not doing this, since even a spiteful Russian defector that fought in Bucha for weeks did not witness any murders.

• Civilians that participated in the war with cellphones may have been killed. But this is not necessarily a war crime either, as I explained, depending on the scenario.

• Most reports group all dead civilians together without separating war crimes from war casualties.

• Some accusations of Russian war crimes were definitely faked. This is a certainty backed by photographic evidence.

• Ukrainian civilians that were sympathetic to Russians were most probably killed by Ukrainians, and this is a Ukrainian war crime. This is almost a certainty, but could use more hard evidence.

• Russian war crimes, assuming they were committed, may not have been reported to Putin and other officials. This last one is my only speculative explanation as to why Putin would demand a probe by the UN. This is where my theory comes in regarding rogue units performing the executions. It could explain why these actions were not reported if the chain of command was this chaotic (or if it were covered up by low-level commanders). Don't forget we saw that there were many different units in Bucha, including soldiers from the national guard, mercenaries, and Chechens, and the defector never saw a single murder.
  

• The UN probe was probably blocked by the West because they were afraid of the probe uncovering Ukrainian crimes, even if Russian crimes would be uncovered as well.