Rather than trying for some excuse like “they were Nazis and they deserved it” or “those people are actually Russians massacred by the Nazi Ukrainians,” the Kremlin on Monday simply went with “it’s a hoax” when addressing the discovery of mass graves of civilians massacred by the Russian army near the recently recaptured Northeastern Ukrainian city of Izium, the Moscow Times reports.
“It’s a lie and of course we’ll stand up for the truth in this entire story,” Kremlin spokesworm Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday. “Kyiv is pushing the same scenario in Izyum as it did with the provocation in Bucha,” he continued referring to a massacre in the small village near Kyiv where in late March as many as 1,300 civilians were slaughtered by a Moscow-loyal Chechen militia.