As more atrocity sites are discovered in 🇺🇦 following the ouster of 🇷🇺 occupation forces, we can anticipate that the “denial stage” of Russia’s campaign will follow a familiar pattern. Again, I think Serb nationalist negationism of the Bosnian Genocide is instructive. 🧵
Despite the chaotic scenes in Bucha, the first step of this process has already taken place out of view. 🇷🇺 forces have already taken steps to obscure the extent of their mass killings. Expect (variously effectively) concealed mass graves to be discovered in coming days/weeks.
It’s possible that in areas along the Belarus/Russia border, persons & bodies will actually have been transported across the border to be killed/buried there. The Milosevic regime did this both during the Bosnian Genocide and Kosovo in Serbia proper. balkaninsight.com/2015/04/23/ser…
The “quality” of the burial sites will also vary depending on how much time the perpetrators had to do their work. The longer the occupation, the more organized and/or concealed the burial sites are going to be. There’s not going to be a consistent model.
Secondly, Russian govt/media will insist that any apparent civilian deaths are fabrications. This is crude but effective propaganda that will buy the regime more time to come up w/ more coherent narratives. This will co-exist w/ claims that the numbers are (grossly) inflated.
It will also co-exist w/ claims that any actual civilian deaths were “false flag” attacks by the UA govt, i.e. they attacked their own people. This is the go-to claim by SRB nationalists viz the Markale massacre(s), ditto the 1995 Tuzla massacre.
As the scale of the killings becomes impossible to dispute, they’ll shift to claiming that those killed were actually active combatants, not civilians and/or POWs. This remains the standard issue line viz the Srebrenica Genocide by SRB nationalists. One example below already. 
A particular variation will also admit to (some portion of) the killings but claim that they were “justified reprisals” for still “greater” atrocities committed by UA forces. Again, this is a standard SRB nationalist talking pt re: the Srebrenica Genocide.
Finally, watch also for atrocity glorification to co-exist w/ denial. Perpetrators will have recorded/photographed the killings and/or the results. Extremist Russian media will publish examples of this too. Glorification will likely increase w/ time as it has in Serbia.
In this context, it’s also likely some actual evidence of mass killing will be falsely portrayed as Ukrainian atrocities by Russian media. They’ll do this intentionally to confuse international media/perception. We’ve seen this in Syria most recently, also amplified by RUS media.
Throughout this entire process, Western “anti-imperialist” figures will be & are critical nodes in disseminating disinformation, denial, & negationist narratives. They’ll do the heavy lifting in skewing perceptions among folks in the U.S., EU et al. Again, cf. Syria.
It’s important that we anticipate. They are already doing this, they will continue. They will have some success. But if we prepare for it & organize sustained counter disinfo campaigns, we can check their efforts. The work of @SrebrenicaMC & @SrebrenicaUK is instructive.
In short, concealment/denial are the final stage of atrocities. The situation in Ukraine remains fluid but we cannot pretend like we don’t know where this is going. Moreover, we should expect mass killings to continue. It’s why NATO must continue to arm UA to prevent these. /x
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