French Volunteer: I Witnessed Bucha Frame-Up

Former soldier and writer Adrien Bocquet visited Ukraine and told Sputnik that he witnessed preparations for a false flag provocation in the Kiev suburb of Bucha in April.

French writer Adrien Bocquet traveled to Ukraine twice in April on missions to deliver humanitarian aid, medical equipment, and medicines. He visited both the Polish-Ukrainian border and the Kiev suburb of Bucha, observing Russian prisoners being tortured and killed and Ukrainian fighters setting the stage for a false flag frame-up of civilian massacres.

The writer alleges to have witnessed the torture and murder of Russian POWs in a hangar in the northern part of Bucha in early April when the Ukrainian military had regained control of the city.

“When I talk about murder and torture, I am talking about the murder and torture of the Russian military. Officers were the first to be executed. I heard shouts when the ‘Azov men’ asked who the officer was. As soon as they got the answer, they immediately shot that person in the head [...] The worst thing is that I saw no human attitude, no emotions, because I saw people being executed, people being tortured, people being killed, shot in their limbs, heads,” Bocquet said.

Bocquet noted that he often interacted with the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Azov fighters, who shocked him with their inhumane treatment of Russians, Jews, and people of other races.

“I had to pretend a lot to avoid showing my opinions and emotions and above all not to show disagreement with their opinions. Disagreement with their Nazi ideology, especially when they expressed attitudes toward Jews and people of color, because they made very cruel statements. And first of all, I'm talking about hatred towards Russians, because they [...] call you ‘Russian dogs’. And for all these soldiers, for members of the Azov Battalion, the main task, as they have always told me, is to torture and kill ‘Russian dogs’. As a former military man, I was surprised. Because everything showed that their main goal was to torture and kill 'Russian dogs' while they never even talked about the liberation of their population,” the volunteer recalled.

Furthermore, he witnessed preparations for a false flag provocation in Bucha, which looked to accuse the Russian military of massacring civilians.

“When we entered Bucha by car, I was in the passenger seat. And as we drove through the city, I saw bodies of people on the sides of the streets, and at the same time I saw people's bodies being taken out of trucks and laid out next to the bodies lying on the ground to give the effect of mass killings,” Bocquet said.

Nationalists of the Azov Battalion.

© Sputnik / Yevgeniy Kotenko

He added that there were journalists nearby who immediately started filming as soon as piles of bodies were set up.

“One of the volunteers who was at this place the day before, I emphasize that I didn't witness this, but one of the volunteers told me… He told me that the day before he saw refrigerator trucks from other cities of Ukraine coming to Bucha and unloading bodies and laying them out in rows. I realized from this that they were staging mass massacres,” the interviewee explained.

He noted that both volunteers and locals were pressured and threatened with imprisonment and reprisals to avoid bad publicity.

“We distributed medicines, including those containing narcotic substances, painkillers, containing morphine. They told us openly: if you don't share with us, you won't get where you need to go. I clearly remember that we had to deliver these painkillers to a children's hospital, and we were told that if we didn't share, we wouldn't get there. Moreover, when we were near Bucha, we were escorted by military guards, they were Azov fighters. They escorted us to one of the hangars and told us to prepare a separate box of morphine-containing drugs to allow us to drive on,” Bocquet said.

Furthermore, the volunteers were restricted from taking photos and videos.

“We were warned that [if we took photos or videos] we would get imprisonment for ten years or more severe consequences. This ban also applied to the locals. This pressure was exerted by the military, primarily by the Azov men. Today, Europe does not understand how great the pressure is on the population of Ukraine,” said the Frenchman.

He admitted that he himself started receiving threats after he began talking about the crimes of Ukrainian fighters. He also expressed fears that he would be persecuted by the French authorities.

“Of course, I'm afraid of that, I'm afraid that they are going to fabricate some things against me in order to silence me or put me in jail,” he concluded.

In early April, Ukrainian media and social networks published photos and videos of dead bodies lying in the streets, which were allegedly taken in Bucha after the Russian military withdrew. The Kiev authorities accused Russia of massacring civilians.

Ukrainian soldiers examine destroyed Russian military vehicles following a battle in Bucha, close to Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 4, 2022.

© AP Photo / Efrem Lukatsky

In response, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that this was yet another provocation and stressed that not a single Bucha resident had been harmed by the Russian military while the city was under its control. The ministry also noted that all units had fully withdrawn from Bucha on March 30, and the city's exits to the north were not blocked, while the Ukrainian troops were shelling Bucha with artillery, tanks and multiple rocket launchers around the clock.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in turn, called on the international community to conduct an impartial investigation into the provocation in Bucha. He stressed that Russia categorically rejected any allegations of involvement in the deaths in that city and demanded that international leaders should not rush to draw sweeping accusations, but listen to Russia's arguments.