No, a 'Czech mercenary' didn’t testify that Ukraine carried out the Bucha massacre
Pro-Russian accounts on social media have been claiming that the Ukrainian Army were the real perpetrators of the massacre of hundreds of Ukrainian civilians in the town of Bucha in 2022. As proof, these accounts have been sharing an article published by a Czech media outlet on July 8 about the trial of a Czech mercenary in the Ukrainian Army who allegedly claimed that he had been the “executioner” of “innocents” in Bucha. It turns out this article does not claim Ukraine carried out the massacre.
Issued on:
- The massacre of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha in 2022 was supposedly carried out by the Ukrainian Army, or so a number of pro-Russian accounts started to claim beginning on July 8. These accounts based their claims on an article in a Czech website claiming that a Czech volunteer in the Ukrainian Army admitted during his trial that he had been an “executioner” who killed “innocents” in Ukraine.
- However, the article does not make the claim that Ukraine was behind the Bucha massacre. During his trial, the Czech volunteer was accused of looting but not of killing Ukrainian civilians. The volunteer did speak indirectly about executions taking place but he was talking about the executions of Russian prisoners of war.
The fact check, in detail
Was the Ukrainian Army the real perpetrator of the Bucha massacre of Ukrainian civilians back in February and March 2022? That’s the claim made in a tweet on July 8 by French lawyer Régis de Castelnau. De Castelnau claimed that Russia did not carry out the massacre, as everyone thought. Instead, he said that Ukraine staged it all.
"Ukraine carried out the Bucha massacre,” he wrote in a tweet in French on X. “They killed the people who appear in the photos and they put their bodies out in the streets AFTER the Russians left.” The post had already garnered 185,000 views by July 16.
As proof for his claims, De Castelnau included a post that itself had garnered more than 250,000 views from an X account that claims to share “alternative news”. That tweet featured a screengrab of an article by Czech website České noviny about the trial in Prague of a Czech man named Filip Siman who fought with the Ukrainian Army and apparently admitted that he acted as an “executioner” in Bucha.
Another French conspiracy theorist Silvano Trotta shared a thread on X on July 9 that also accused Siman of executing "innocents" and trying to "make it look like it was the Russians”. That discussion thread cited Czech news outlet Seznam Zprávy which apparently reported shocking admissions by the former soldier: "We were the police, we were the court, we were even the execution platoon,” Siman allegedly told the court.
Misleading statements
These claims, however, are misleading.
The article in České noviny shared by De Castelnau doesn’t claim that the Ukrainian Army was responsible for the Bucha massacre, which you can see if you check the full article on the media outlet’s website.
The article published by Seznam Zprávy, cited in the discussion thread by Silvano Trotta, also doesn’t claim that Ukraine carried out the Bucha massacre. Seznam Zprávy does say that Siman was said to play the role of executioner within his battalion. It also included Siman’s quote that his unit was the “execution platoon”. However, Siman wasn’t referring to war crimes carried out on Ukrainian civilians, as Trotta claimed.
Our team spoke to the journalist who wrote the article published by Seznam Zprávy, Matěj Nejedlý. He said that Siman had “indirectly admitted that he and his squad had been involved in the execution of captured Russian soldiers". He was not, it seems, talking about the execution of civilians.
Accused of looting and illegally serving in a foreign army
The former fighter was standing trial on accusations of looting and illegally serving in a foreign army.The screengrab of the tweet by České noviny that De Castelnau shared mentions that he was accused of looting but does not mention the Bucha massacre.
Czech site České noviny reported that back in March 2020, Filip Siman was serving in a battalion in the Ukrainian Army made up of international volunteers called Karpatska Sich. In the Czech Republic, serving in a foreign army without the “authorisation of the president” is a crime that could result in up to five years in prison, reported Czech news site Seznam Zprávy. The media outlet cited an expert who said that there was a possibility that Siman would be pardoned for his foreign service, considering the fact that much of the Czech political class supports aid to Ukraine.
Siman would still face "an exceptional sentence for looting”, České noviny reported. He is accused of taking the belongings of fallen soldiers and civilians in Irpin and Bucha, including gold bars, money, jewelry and designer sunglasses.
Recurrent disinformation about the Bucha massacre
At his trial, Siman justified his acts by claiming that soldiers were taking items that belonged to Ukrainians in case the Russians moved back in, in some cases, or for intelligence purposes.
The Ukrainian Army arrested him in April 2022 before he was released and sent back to the Czech Republic.
There has been a lot of fake and misleading information that has circulated online about the Bucha massacre since it was first reported in April 2022. Much of this comes from pro-Russian accounts who have claimed that the Ukrainians put out fake bodies or even that they carried out the massacre themselves after the Russians pulled out of the city. The New York Times spent nearly eight months investigating the massacre. They published their findings in December 2022, establishing that the 234th Air Assault Regiment were the perpetrators of the massacre.