Russian Foreign Ministry claims exhumation of bodies in Izium "is being staged, just like Bucha"

IRYNA BALACHUK – THURSDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER 2022, 15:53

Maria Zakharova, the representative of the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, has claimed that the bodies of hundreds of Ukrainians killed by the Russians in the city of Izium in Kharkiv Oblast were a "Bucha-style staging".

Source: Kremlin-aligned information agency RIA Novosti

Quote: "As for Izium: I would like to remark that after the regrouping of the allied forces in Kharkiv Oblast, Zelenskyy’s regime is trying its best to repeat the Bucha scenario in Izium. The very same scenario that they were trying to write themselves… They’ve now learned how to do it like in Hollywood. In order to avoid the inconsistencies that the Kiev regime came up with in Bucha, the exhumation of remains is being conducted in Izium. But it’s not even possible to create what they came up with in Bucha."

Details: Zakharova claimed that the exhumation of the bodies of 450 Ukrainians killed by the Russians was being "staged", as was the discovery of torture chambers where the occupiers had tortured civilians from the occupied settlements.

Zakharova stressed that Russia had allegedly sent "batches" of "photos showing the actual burials with video footage, testimonies and descriptions enclosed" to Western countries, but apparently there had been no response.

"And that’s how it was: in a word, staged," Zakharova insisted.

Background: 

• On 23 September, the exhumation of the bodies of civilians from mass graves in the liberated city of Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, was completed. 447 bodies of civilians killed by the Russians have been exhumed; there were children among them.
• Earlier, Russian authorities had cynically claimed that not a single civilian had died during the occupation of Kyiv suburbs in February and March 2022. 
• Russian propagandists have also described the shocking footage from Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin as "staged". 

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