Thread by @brechtcastel

Dubious timelines on #Bucha keep circulating. The #OSINT community, @bellingcat & @nytimes have debunked a lot.

In this thread I’ll focus on a video from this man, the mayor of #Bucha.👇 1/…

#OSINT 🔎
#Verification 🎥
#GeoLocation 🌍
#HowToOSINT 🧐

@bellingcat @nytimes According to these timelines 👇 Russian troops left #Bucha on 30 March.

Source? Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Telegram.

Other Russian sources claim Russians were still around 1st of April.

➡️ Exact timing is unclear: no visual proof. 2/…

@bellingcat @nytimes Another source in this discussion is the mayor of Bucha Anatoly Fedoruk.

Timeline: “Mar 31: Mayor of Bucha announces town 'liberated', makes no mention of atrocities.”

Is this correct? Investigate! 3/...

@bellingcat @nytimes A video message (43 sec.) from Fedoruk came online on 1 April - not 31 March - on #Facebook, #YouTube and the website of the city of Bucha. 4/...

@bellingcat @nytimes The video first appeared online on Facebook on 1 April at 5.31pm.

So the recording dates from that moment or earlier. ⏲️

He speaks of '31 March', but whether the video was recorded on that day is uncertain. 5/...

@bellingcat @nytimes Where the video was shot, we do know.

If we compare the video (top) with the building of the city council of Bucha on Google Streetview (bottom), visual elements are similar. ✅

➡️ So the mayor was present in his city when he recorded the video. 6/...

A transcript of the video was published by Ukrainian press agency Ukrinform:

"March 31 will go down in the history of our Bucha community as the Day of Liberation. The liberation by our Armed Forces of Ukraine..." (1/2) 7/...
ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/344…

"... from Russian orcs, from Russian occupiers. So today, I state that this day is joyful. Joyful and this is a great victory in Kyiv region! And we will definitely wait so that there is a great victory all over Ukraine." (2/2) 8/...

Why is this video so crucial in the timeline❓

The fact that Fedoruk doesn't speak about the corpses, although he is the mayor of that city, is interpreted as an indication that there were no corpses on the streets of Bucha at that time, or even that there was no war horror. 9/

No atrocities are mentioned in this very short video message, BUT right under the video on the website of Bucha this IS the case: archive.ph/pm2N6 👇10/...

If we translate this Ukrainian text with Google Translate, we read that 'too high a price was paid' for the liberation of Bucha: 'human lives'.

According to the city administration, 'the city has been going through a humanitarian crisis since the beginning of March'. 11/...

On the morning of 1 April, the city council posted a video: 'At the moment, the city is still occupied; there are many mines, damaged houses and even corpses. That is why we ask those who stay behind not to go near dangerous objects. The liberation of the city continues.' 12/...

All this additional info (from the same source!) was left out in the timelines. 13/...

There is a great deal of evidence that a large number of civilians were killed in #Bucha when the Russian army was in control of the area.

The fact that the mayor of this city did not mention this in a short video message does not change this. 14/...

nytimes.com/2022/04/04/wor…

Exact death tolls are difficult to determine, but it is certain that a mass grave has been dug and is being used next to the centrally located church in Bucha.

On 12 March, a video appeared on Facebook showing body bags being loaded from a truck and placed in the grave. 15/...

Mayor Fedoruk testified about the atrocities in his city in dozens of interviews. For example:
edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2… 16/...

The fact that in his short video message, with a hopeful message to fellow citizens who have fled, the misery of war is not explicitly mentioned, gets a lot of attention.

The reason is Russian propaganda. 👇👇👇17/...

On 4 April, the Russian Embassy in Canada shares an article from the site waronfakes[.]com.

That tweet is also shared by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Twitter, an account with more than 500,000 followers. 18/...

This article uses the short video and writes underneath "Would he rejoice if dozens of his countrymen were lying in the street, shot dead at the time? Why does he say nothing in his statement about the cruelties of the Russian torturers? About torture, rape and murder?” 19/...

Here again this one message from Fedoruk is highlighted without the text message accompanying the video about the high price in 'human lives'.

Moreover, all his testimonies about the atrocities that took place in his city are left out of the article. 20/...

The site waronfakes[.]com came online in March and is registered in Moscow. 21/...

https://twitter.com/Techjournalisto/status/1511370189442629637

An analysis with CrowdTangle shows that the article is shared by the Facebook accounts of the Russian embassies in Indonesia 🇮🇩, Japan 🇯🇵, Egypt 🇪🇬 and Australia 🇦🇺, reaching more than 600,000 Facebook users. 22/...

Conclusion: the video message from mayor Fedoruk is real and not edited. It was put online on the website of #Bucha with a message of the heavy costs in 'human lives' for this 'joyful day'.

This video was then cherrypicked and used for Russian propaganda. 23/...

What have we learned? 👩‍🏫

1) A video being "real" doesn't mean it tells the full story. 📽️
2) Looking for the original footage gives you broader context. 📃
3) Use CrowdTangle if you want to know which Facebookpages shared an article or webpage. 🔄 24/...

In my full article @Knack (in Dutch) I dig a bit deeper in the full dubious timeline about #Bucha.

You can read it here for free. 👇 25/26

knack.be/nieuws/factche…

@Knack Did you learn something from this #OSINT for #FactChecking?

Follow me (@brechtcastel) and check out my channel on #YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCMBPt… 🙏

Older 🧵🧵underneath this tweet:

https://twitter.com/brechtcastel/status/1390688405416198145

26/END

@Knack Update: The video also went viral on #Twitter with Spanish caption doubting when the massacre occured.

(Found this because someone reacted with my factcheck. 💯👍) 27/27