Ukraine - Dissecting Some War Propaganda News Items...

by Bernhard at Moon of Alabama

Last night a Reuters headline claimed:

Mass grave of more than 440 bodies found in Izium, Ukraine -police

biggerMany media, who republish the Reuters feed, repeated that headline:

Kyiv: Ukrainian authorities have found a mass grave of more than 440 bodies in the eastern city of Izium that was recaptured from Russian forces, a regional police official said on Thursday, adding some of the people had been killed by shelling and air strikes.Serhiy Bolvinov, the chief police investigator for Kharkiv region, told Sky News that forensic investigations would be carried out on every body.

“I can say it is one of the largest burial sites in a big town in liberated (areas)… 440 bodies were buried in one place,” Bolvinov said.

“Some died because of artillery fire … some died because of air strikes,” he said. Thousands of Russian troops fled Izium at the weekend.

Notice the wording. It is a ‘large burial site’ with ‘440 bodies in one place’. That does not have to mean a mass grave with 440 bodies but could also describe a graveyard with a total of 440 people buried there.

And indeed an AP video team visited the site and their video shows quite a different scenario (h/t Tore). In a wooded area there are a large numbers, maybe one hundred or two, of single graves with orthodox and other crosses. There is also one grave that has a cross which says that 17 soldiers were buried there.

biggerIn the AP video several soldiers and investigators are moving around. One Ukrainian soldier says he saw a video that the Russians made when the soldiers were buried in that one mass grave. From it, he says, he estimates that more than 17, maybe 25 or 30, he says, were buried in that grave.

The video he refers to is likely this one …