Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech as he visits the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur Region, Russia April 12, 2022.
Evgeny Biyatov | Sputnik | Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his closest ally, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, unveiled a new theory on Tuesday about who was to blame for the murders, rapes and torture of hundreds of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine while the town was occupied by Russian troops.
It was not, they insisted, the Russian soldiers who witnesses, satellite imagery and forensic evidence all suggest went on a monthlong rampage of looting and killing.
The real culprits, Lukashenko claimed without evidence, were British operatives who conducted a “psychological special operation” in the leafy suburb of Kyiv.
Lukashenko and Putin spoke during a carefully orchestrated news conference at a space launch facility in Vostochny, in Russia’s Far East. It was Putin’s first public appearance outside of Moscow since Russia launched its brutal Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
Lukashenko said he and Putin discussed in detail “the psychological special operation in Bucha carried out by the British.”
The Belarusian autocrat then told reporters that the Russian Federal Security Bureau would provide them with materials to back up his seemingly absurd claim.
“If you need addresses, passports, license numbers and brands, on which date they arrived in Bucha, and how they did it, then the FSB can provide these materials,” Lukashenko said,...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...