After some close scrutiny of the Maxar satellite photo showing bodies on the street in Bucha matching the positions of those photographed on April 2nd, I discovered that this crucial photo from March 18th, the only “evidence” that Russian forces were responsible for the murders, has been quite clearly photoshopped, and so badly that it is indisputable. While the blob that claims to show the fallen cyclist is not convincing, it is the concrete curb behind him that gives it away, being completely distorted by the cloning of pixels to make the bike. I could have done a better job in five minutes on my phone!
I published this article and photo analysis on my blog - please say if you can read it, and offer suggestions as how to make this information public!
Hi @Dimac All I can say is rename the article The Phantom Bikeman of Bucha and ask everyone you know to share this or repost it elswhere.
Thanks Pat - and that’s an idea too. Sometimes I choose titles because I like the sound, but it’s misleading, along with the photo of Chas! I couldn’t resist that one, and also suspect the role of the Royals in collaboration with Germany.
Did the article open OK for you? I desperately need some training, and the time to change the site, but have neither. A great tutorial on Youtube set me going, only then something happened and I nearly lost the lot!
cheers David.
@Dimac The site loaded fine. As for the Royals, many say the heart of the beast is amongst the roayl families of the UK and the Netherlands!
Thanks Pat. Perhaps you can give me a hint why no-one else has commented on my findings on this board… I don’t like to think that some are weakening in the face of the PBH (permanent bullshit hurricane) - as they have here.
This is all the more the case as today the Ukies are claiming that Russia has carried out “similar crimes to those in Bucha” in Mariupol, and digging “mass graves” to hide them. In fact they are digging graves because there are a lot of bodies which must be removed from the streets and buildings and some of them may be very hard to identify - if relatives are killed or fled West.
Some absolutely unbelievable shit being talked about Russia raping and killing women and children sheltering in the Azovstal works because it sees them as Nazis and not human…!
I could read it with no problems David. Good forensics. The body, complete with bike, is not in the same position. And it’s odd that a low-resolution version of picture of the scene was released (as you indicate) when there should be a high one. We need better fakes 
Thanks Evvy - and that’s what I find frankly amazing - that the fakes were SO bad, that anyone could see them if they just looked. My focus on the bikeman was a bit distracting, as it’s really the complete corruption of the concrete curbing behind him that gives the manipulation away. I’m currently looking in detail at the image to try to figure out what they did.
I also looked at Amsterdam on Google Earth last night, and found an image with half a dozen cyclists visible. You could at least see what they were wearing, and that they were riding bikes and not scooters. I’m thinking of dressing like the PhantomBikeman of Bucha and lying down with my bike on a blue sheet, while my wife gets up a ladder to take a photo. I’ll then reduce the image to satellite pixel quality and paste it onto one of Yablunska street. What will it take! The pretence by Maxar that this was a special HD image is ridiculous, when we know what is now possible, specially in war zones.
One of the most bizarre features of the sat photos on Google Earth is that the area of Bucha where Yablunska street is has a rectangular patch of fog over it. There is a smaller patch also where I think the street with all the burnt out tanks is. What are they trying to hide? (trick question, clearly everything)
Is it compulsory to comment? I did not, until now, because the merest glance at the satellite images, weeks ago, was sufficient to engage the I Spot Bullshit filter.
FWIW I found your line of argument convincing D, and the cyclist image was definitely the right one to focus upon. The staging is very poor, and I’d urge you not to lose the Chas image which was a nice touch.
On which subject here’s a good summary of where that bastard is coming from:
As for the Mariupol situation, Patrick Lancaster’s videos, and this one in particular, show what has been happening there with no punches pulled. I await the satellite images with interest /s
Apologies for my strangled squeal Karen, and of course it’s not compulsory to comment! It’s just that I’ve been upset by the apparent lack of interest in my article and observations amongst those I’ve sent it to, when for me this is the single most crucial piece of evidence in the whole rotten edifice.
I actually took to printing out the article w photos and handing it to local politicians, currently in the throes of an election. Despite our being an effective party to the war, having GIVEN $100 million of weaponry to Kiev, this is not an election issue, or even being discussed. But then neither is COVID! That’s because both parties are the same on “matters of national security” and health advice from scientists, and charlatans. All we are discussing is aboriginal issues, disabilities and Trans athletes, oh and China’s assistance to the Solomon islands. There is simply no room for any alternative viewpoint other than Putin-BAD, 'Elensky GOOD. Nazis good.
BTW Chas has also had a lot to do with RomaniaI understand, and wish I had an answer as to how to break through the walls of apathy. Unfortunately it doesn’t really seem to matter how quickly the horror headlines are pulled apart by sane commentary because there will be several more tomorrow, and the next day, etc. But every careful deconstruction is valuable and will one day be the version that makes history, or so I hope.
I only see headlines by accident e.g. the other day I topped up the car with petrol (the cost of which exceeded what “fill her up” used to cost, I’ve had this same little girlie car for 6 years). A newspaper headline in the garage forecourt implied that refugees from Ukraine ending up in Russia would be settled in the Arctic. I’m guessing this comes from the same propaganda mill that scares Ukrainian army regulars away from surrendering because of how brutally the Russians will treat them. Zero evidence for either.
Meanwhile, in the real world, refugees in the UK will be sent to Rwanda. Apparently our home secretary got this idea from Israel. But the nice Aryan folk fleeing Count Putincula get to live c/o middle class families… until the novelty wears off in a few weeks to come.
Actually I think that’s the case with most false flags. There was a blogger called Chris Spivey, much maligned by the lamestream. He used to do analysis of false flags, mostly based on photos. He did an analysis that I remember of a “muslim murder” of a UK serviceman in broad daylight, Lee Rigby. Anyone who looked at the images and followed the detail would have spotted it. In the Niece false flag all one needs to know is that a judge ordered the lockup of all the CCTV in niece for the next 70 years.
The real issue is most people are asleep and for many of those that are not, the permanent bullshit blizzard (h/t Rhis) gives them the headline and that’s all they need.
Here in rural France hardly a day goes by without some eejit asking for donations for Ukraine. My answer is always the same. Where the eff were you when 5 million Palastinians were ethnically cleansed from their ancestoral homes. Where were you when we bombed the shit out of Afghanistan, or invaded Iraq, tried to destroy Syria, and provided weapons to kill innocent Yemenis. I’m not allowed to post any political comment on the local Google group despite others posting Ukie support stuff or info on the jabs.
Sorry about the rant, but I have to let the steam off occasionaly.
Your article is good and the more that appear the better. Like others here, to me the whole thing (allegations of Russian war crimes in Bucha) looked very dodgy right from the start. I recall the video recording with the accidental image through the car sideview mirror of one of the “bodies” moving to get up. Then it came out that the mayor, when announcing the liberation of Bucha somehow managed not to notice a massacre on the streets of his own town. The announcement that a “clean-up operation” was taking part by some military battalion made it plain as day what happened.
What’s so awful is the stranglehold of the MSM narrative on a large majority of the population. It’s just so tiring to always have to fight the plain lies and distortions pushed down people’s throats. And it’s increasing in intensity over the years with new allegations coming thick and fast and others dropped if the narrative falls apart (but of course the damage having been done).
ps Not sure what “Chas” is and his(?) connection with Romania.
Also there’s this pretty forensic analysis to complement yours
I’m not sure about the Romania part myself but Chas refers to the Prince of Wales
I was born in March 1964. At the same time a beat combo called The Beatles released a single called Can’t Buy Me Love.
Also at the same time, the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred, when three North Vietnamese torpedo boats supposedly attacked the US Destroyer Maddox (it was later proven to be a false flag). The following month America started dropping bombs on Vietnam, thus heralding the start of the Vietnam war in which more than 50,000 American military were killed (average age, 19), and God knows how many Vietnamese, Cambodians, etc.
My point…? nothing changes, except most music is crap thesedays. This track got to No.1 a few days after I was born in 1964…
Thanks all, and apologies for interrupted explanation of Chas’ Romanian connections, which are multiple. Mostly charitable as far as one can see, being involved in community building projects and nature reserves and so on, but in Bucovina next to the Ukie border and not far from Lviv. Remembering Chas doing his sword dance in Riyadh, the intimate connection between the Royals and the British military and Intel bunch is long-standing. I’m sure he will be closely involved in dealings with refugees, probably in Romania, and perhaps also in facilitating the transport of weapons into Ukraine from Romania - as was the case with a military plane shot down by the rotten Russkies when flying in over the sea to Odessa. Could have even been carrying the wonderful “Bushmaster” ATVs we so kindly donated, after repainting them in suitable colours and with a Ukie flag on the side.
As for the Bucha massacre - I link to an article by Tony Kevin, our resident rejected dissident and Putin admirer, who reads a lot of Russian official stuff through his Ambassadorial networks. He had this analysis published on “The Scrum” which is a subscription site. I could copy his article onto here if you’re interested. There is pretty solid evidence of what happened, as suggested by your article above - which I hadn’t seen. I assisted Tony with his article, and get a mention in it fwiw. (a lot to me!)
In fact what he details is a REAL atrocity, carried out by the most ruthless criminals and then used in a disinformation operation that will cause the deaths of many thousands more innocents. What they did was also a dreadful warning to anyone who dares voice support or just tolerance of Russian influence - as in Kharkiv where Ukies are still in control. Without them Kharkiv would have been liberated by Russian forces long ago.
This is the link to Tony Kevin’s article:
This is the first part of the article, with essential points:
By Tony Kevin
The success of “disinformation warfare” often stems from an initial, massively coordinated presentation to world media of a simple but false story, which no amount of scientific and rational argument can later dislodge. Such a story is framed to appeal to emotional triggers that enrage and incense people before they have the chance to see if the story is true…
— David MacIlwain, Wodonga, Australia.
When do corpses begin to smell?
— Google, multiple references.
15 APRIL—It is a daunting task now, 11 days after the news on 4 April of the alleged massacre by Russian soldiers of up to 200 Ukrainian civilians in Bucha—and hundreds more by the Kiev regime’s count—to challenge the Russian atrocity narrative, so firmly is it now lodged in the minds of Western readers. It seems to have already passed beyond fact into realms of legend, of folklore. But let me try and introduce the subject this way with some general propositions.
I assert that Ukraine’s present government, centred in Kiev and Lvov, is now so extreme-nationalist in its avowed ideology and style of governance that it can fairly be described as a kind of fascist or Nazi regime. Under its governance and under the pressures of an increasingly cruel and desperate war, Ukraine is reverting to savagery. Yes, I know President Zelensky is of Jewish ethnicity—but this is politically irrelevant. The important thing is that he is the puppet and mouthpiece of a thick layer of extreme nationalists—“Ukronazis” may be the justified term—who are now strategically embedded into Ukrainian government, the armed forces, and the police at all levels, such that they are in position to drive Ukrainian policy and governance. As a result, Ukraine is rapidly descending into cruel and hateful behaviour toward Russians and toward its own people. It is ceasing to be a civilized country.
Russia’s initial assumption when it went into this war (which I freely admit I shared) was that below the Kiev government and its extreme-nationalist influences, powerful as it and they are, the mass of Ukrainian people would feel some kinship to Russians, were not at heart hostile to Russia, and would be open to accepting Russia’s fraternal assistance in the denazification of Ukraine. Did Russia expect a short and easy war ending in joyful joint flag parades in Kiev, in Kharkov, in Odessa? It seems they did. They, and I, were wrong.
Peeling another layer off this onion, has the fatal Russian flaw in this war been its perhaps naïve belief in the essential brotherhood of Russians and Ukrainians? Had Moscow not realized how deeply the virus of Russia-hatred has, after so many years of bitterly anti–Russian Western propaganda and the extreme-nationalist propaganda evident in Ukraine, the latter well-funded and well advised by Anglo–American professionals in these dark arts—had this contaminated the minds of more and more Ukrainians to an extent Russia did not anticipate?
Fascist-style regimes rely on two things: wall-to-wall propaganda narratives and citizens’ well-founded fear of instant death. History is quite clear on this point. In Ukraine this syndrome began its current, critical phase a few weeks ago, with sadistic public floggings in the streets of naked minors of all ages and both sexes and alleged to be criminals, these images salaciously spread around social media. Now it has quickly degenerated to the stage of real acts of torture and murder of captured Russian prisoners of war—these filmed and displayed on social media.
And also now, we see repeated Ukrainian government disinformation narratives involving real, officially supported mass murders of Ukrainian civilians, murders immediately blamed on Russia in clumsy, lethally false scenarios that are now nevertheless accepted unquestioningly in the West. In recent days we have seen this weapon deployed in towns around Kiev, in Mariupol, and in Kramatorsk. In every case, the narratives are false and easily proven so.
I have also watched in horror a propaganda video, one assumes simulated but widely seen, of a pretty Ukrainian maiden in folk costume and wearing a floral headpiece, joyfully slitting a Russian soldier’s throat with a sickle after abusing him and his nation in the harshest language. The woman who appears in this video, made on 11 April, is a professional actress from Lvov, Adrianna Kurilets. It can be found on RT via the link above or under the title “ISIS–style Ukrainian video investigated.”
There is deep social pathology here.
Russia’s alleged culpability in the Bucha massacre—easily disproven, as this essay will show—vividly exemplifies these frightening, rapidly expanding tendencies in Ukraine. Let us now look closely at the case of Bucha: at fiction, fact, and forensics.
Chronology of an allegedly Russian atrocity.
On 30 March, the Russian Ministry of Defence announced, by Moscow’s account as a diplomatic goodwill gesture to facilitate ongoing Russia–Ukraine peace negotiations, it had completed the withdrawal of its armed forces from a number of localities in the Kiev region, including Bucha, a town 25 kilometers northwest of the capital with a population normally of 37,000. There is general agreement from all sides that this withdrawal from Bucha was indeed accomplished on the Wednesday, 30 March.
As a result of intense fighting in the first fortnight of the war, which began on 24 February, many of Bucha’s inhabitants had fled this mixed Ukrainian– and Russian-speaking town before Russian forces captured it on 12 March. Starting on 4 April, British newspapers reported that during the Russian occupation of the town, Russian soldiers had systematically tortured, mutilated, and executed many Ukrainians in the basement of a summer camp. I cite as an example a 5 April report in The Independent that readers can find here.
Russia has unequivocally denied all such claims. At a media briefing at the U.N. on 4 April, in immediate response to these press reports, Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative at the U.N., made these remarks:
On April 4 the Kiev regime, with an active support from its Western sponsors, started to promote in Western mass media fake news about alleged “atrocities” of the Russian military forces in the town of Bucha (a suburb of Kiev) in Ukraine. From the very beginning it has been clear that this is nothing else but yet another staged provocation aimed at discrediting and dehumanizing of the Russian military and levelling political pressure on Russia.
Not many of you know about the Russian military, but I assure you that the Russian military is nothing that it is being accused of, in particular as regards “cruel atrocities” against the civilian population. It is not the case. It never was and will never be.
Similarly emphatic denials have been issued by President Putin, by the Russian Defence Ministry—“not a single local resident has suffered from any violent action while Russia was in control [of Bucha]”—by Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson, and by Kremlin presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov. In a wide-ranging, half-hour interview with Mark Austin of Sky News on 8 April, which can be viewed here, Peskov states flatly:
The whole situation in Bucha is nothing more than a well-staged insinuation, nothing else.
On 31 March, Anatolii Fedoruk, Bucha’s mayor, confirmed the Russian departure the previous day in a celebratory video, “Bucha liberated,” which was distributed on the City Council’s Facebook page. The mayor’s video was posted the next day, 1 April, on Ukraine 24, a national television channel.
Readers can view this video here.
An English text accompanying Fedoruk’s video, which is, curiously, no longer accessible online, says in part:
31 March—the day of the liberation of Bucha. This was announced by Bucha Mayor. This day will go down in the glorious history of Bucha and the entire Bucha community as a day of liberation by the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the Russian occupiers.
All of the Russian troops had left the day before, the city was safely liberated, and yet Mayor Fedoruk made no mention of a massacre that was supposed to have littered the streets of Bucha with corpses, as the world was to be told three days later.
Nebenzia, the Russian Federation’s U.N. representative, made this point in his 4 April press briefing:
He [Fedoruk] does not mention any mass atrocities, dead bodies, killings, graves, or anything like that. It is hard to imagine that a city mayor can “forget” to address such a devastating scenario.
Now matters take a significant turn.
At 7.25 pm local time on 2 April, the National Guard of Ukraine posted a forensically significant seven-minute video. It is titled “Special Forces Regiment SAFARI Begins Clearing Operation in Bucha from Saboteurs and Accomplices of Russia” and can be viewed here.
The video shows members of Ukrainian armed forces in heavy armoured vehicles, flanked by heavily armed soldiers on foot in full combat gear, entering Bucha and patrolling the town, pushing many wrecked and burnt-out vehicles off the roads, and encountering some grateful residents who came out of shelters to greet them. There is one dead body seen alongside a road in this whole video.
The descriptive text says in part:
Special forces have begun a clearing operation in the city of Bucha in the Kyiv region, which has been liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The city is being cleared from saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces. (My bold.)
I have assumed this video would have been made during the “clearing operation” on 1 and/or 2 April. Bucha residents made no mention during it of mass killings they had seen or heard.
Prelude to a massacre.
On Friday, 1 April, the Deputy Mayor of Bucha, Kateryna Ukraintsiva, made an important, and in retrospect chilling public announcement on the “Bucha Live” Telegram website, a local news site watched by local people. I urge readers to watch this video to get a sense of her coldly dispassionate words.
Dimac, many thanks for the interesting article.
One obvious thing here is that the internet has largely remained working in Ukraine, and thesedays just about everyone has mobile phone cameras.
I’ve yet to see any convincing footage of what the western media is telling us about what’s happening.
It’s true about the phone cameras, though was also true back in 2014, when somehow no-one within 10 miles of where MH17 came down managed to film the contrail of the BUK missile the Russkies fired at it, either in video or still shot. Sometimes it is the dog not barking that gives things away, just like it was the absence of a satellite view of the area from the new hi-tech US satellite that would have proven the plane WAS shot down from the ground.
Your second point is actually related, because Western audiences have seem almost nothing or nothing of actual fighting or shelling or dying since the start. All they’ve heard is personal stories from refugees who have fled the area because of what they have heard is happening and may happen, viz the Russkies are coming and they’re going to string you up and rape you - or something worse which you can only imagine. And you can imagine many things that are far worse than the reality (so long as you don’t cross the Azovs)
But it is quite extraordinary the absence, and why I always say to my partner’s irritation, that “you can’t claim that Russia has killed ANY civilians”, but also we can’t prove that the Ukies have, except that this is what they do, specially to Russian speakers. We don’t need to prove their guilt, any more than we need to prove the guilt of Israeli soldiers and settlers in murdering unarmed Palestinians.
One could extend this to the things that we HAVE seen, like the Tochka-U missile outside Kramatorsk station, pointing to where it came from. Had someone filmed it dropping in and bursting onto the crowds we would have more to go on.
I’ve only just got to look at this from Tony Greenstein - and a far more comprehensive analysis than Tony Kevin’s, including more forensic details - and of course confirming the whole wretched sordid and criminal story.
The onlly difference I have is that he/they made the same error as I did initially, in assuming the Sat photo was genuine, but taken to order after the bodies were laid out on the street. Perhaps a misdated satellite photo could have been disproved, so they photoshopped the bodies in position instead. Why they were so careless to do something SO significant, so central to the whole disinformation blizzard - well who knows!