Propaganda from the kremlin has launched a new attack aimed at casting doubt on the mass killings of civilians in Bucha. This time a speaker of the so-called “Global Fact-Checking Network”, GFCN, “questioned” the number of victims and called for “holding Ukraine accountable”.
This was reported by the Centre for Countering Disinformation at Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council.
We looked into who is behind this “network” and gathered the evidence on Bucha that investigative journalists, international organisations and Ukrainian investigators have been checking for more than four years.
Photo: UkrinformWho the GFCN “fact-checkers” are
The GFCN was created in russia: on 20 November 2024 the state news agency TASS and the kremlin-linked ANO Dialog signed a memorandum founding it, StopFake found.
The network’s website was presented in April 2025 by the spokeswoman of the russian foreign ministry. Among the roughly 60 GFCN “experts” are people repeatedly caught spreading false claims, France 24 found.
Reporters Without Borders called the GFCN the kremlin’s latest propaganda tool. The Centre for Countering Disinformation stresses that bringing in such “foreign experts” is a well-worn tactic to blur the body of evidence.
What the satellites saw
The kremlin’s main claim, that the bodies appeared on the streets only after russian troops left on 30 March 2022, was refuted at the time. The New York Times compared Maxar satellite images with video from Yablunska Street.
Dark objects the size of a human body appeared on Yablunska Street between 9 and 11 March, exactly where bodies were found after the town was liberated, and stayed there for more than three weeks, the analysis showed. Throughout that time Bucha was controlled by the russian army.
The claim about “corpses moving” in a video did not hold up either. The “moving hand” turned out to be a drop of water on the camera glass, and the “body sitting up” a distortion in the car’s side mirror, fact-checkers explained.
The victims’ phones and commanders’ call signs
In December 2022 The New York Times identified the unit involved in the killings on Yablunska Street: the 234th Air Assault Regiment from Pskov. Journalists analysed phone records, intercepted radio traffic and 23 terabytes of video, Agenzia Nova reports.
They found 22 soldiers of the regiment who for weeks made calls from the mobile phones of six people killed on Yablunska Street.
Earlier the newspaper published surveillance camera footage: on 4 March 2022 russian paratroopers lead nine detained men at 144 Yablunska Street. At least eight of them were shot and only one survived, Ukrinform reported.
What the UN and human rights groups documented
Human Rights Watch researchers worked in Bucha as early as 4–10 April 2022. They recorded evidence of summary executions, other unlawful killings, enforced disappearances and torture, the report says.
By 31 October 2022 the UN human rights office had documented the killings of 73 civilians in Bucha, three of them children, and was verifying another 105 cases. Most killings happened on a few streets, above all Yablunska, the UN report states.
Photo: Vitalii LytvynWhat Ukrainian investigators established
According to Bucha City Council and the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, 561 civilians in the community were killed during the occupation, 12 of them children. In 2023 a memorial with 501 plaques bearing the names of identified victims was opened near the Church of St Andrew the First-Called.
By the end of March 2026 law enforcement had solved 124 of the gravest crimes in Bucha, issued 97 notices of suspicion and sent 46 indictments to court. For Bucha and the wider district, the Prosecutor General cited 211 notices of suspicion in February 2026.
The first verdict over Bucha was handed down in absentia to nine russian soldiers back in August 2023, JusticeInfo recalls. Other cases have since reached the courts.
Centre for Countering Disinformationat Ukraine’s National Security and Defence CouncilUsing fake “international” structures and biased pseudo-experts is a well-worn kremlin tactic. Such “analysts” work to blur the body of evidence and discredit the official findings of international investigative teams
Bucha, 5 April 2022
Journalist Vitalii Lytvyn took these photos in Bucha on 5 April 2022, the day after the President visited the liberated town. This is what the world saw, and what russia still tries to call staged.
Photo: Vitalii Lytvyn
As a reminder, it emerged recently that three more russian soldiers will be tried in Ukraine for crimes in Bucha.
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