Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed that Russian massacres of civilians in Ukrainian cities such as Bucha, Mariupol, Kramatorsk or Kremenchuk are a staging by the authorities in Ukraine and their Western allies.
Lavrov made this claim in a statement to the Russian media outlet "Isvestia". He went further by claiming that such stagings by Westerners had been carried out years before, mentioning the Recak massacre in January 1999.
This statement was reported by several Serbian-language media outlets. Hibrid.info has only been able to find Lavrov's statement translated by Serbian media outlets, as the Russian ones are not accessible to internet users in Kosovo (see reason). here).
Parts of Sergey Lavrov's statement, from the broadcast of the Serbian media Nova.rs, translated into Albanian:
T: Lavrov compared Kosovo and Buca, spoke of "corpses dressed as civilians"
Losing on the battlefield, the Ukrainian regime and its Western patrons do not shy away from bloody stagings to demonize our country in the international public opinion. Bucha, Mariupol, Kramatorsk, Kremenchug have already happened.
Lavrov cites as the first example the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija and the village of Racak in 1999. A group of OSCE inspectors arrives at the site of the discovery of several dozen corpses dressed as civilians. The head of the mission immediately, without any investigation, announces that it is a case of genocide, although it is not the mandate of an international official to make such conclusions.
Besides "Nova.rs", the article was also published in "Hello.rs" and in several other Serbian media.
But the Russian diplomat says the claim is unfounded and untrue. First of all, unfounded because he provides no arguments for his claim that there were stagings for the recent massacres in Ukraine and that of Recak in Kosovo, which, according to him, were "dressed in civilian clothes."
So, for this claim, Lavrov does not provide any facts to support this. He had said this months ago (April 3), denying the Bucha massacre (here). But the same claim has been refuted by satellite images, which prove that the dead bodies were seen on the streets of Bucha even before the withdrawal of Russian troops, to deny Lavrov and the official Kremlin that they were placed behind, calling them a staging by the Ukrainians (see here).
Even for the denial of the Recak massacre committed on January 15, 1999, Lavrov has not presented any facts. Similar claims have been made by senior Serbian officials, who have called the Recak massacre a fabrication and a fabrication. It was the Serbian Interior Minister, Aleksandar Vulin, who claimed without facts that this massacre committed during the war in Kosovo was “a big lie”, but without providing any facts (see here).
But the same have been denied by international factors (here), who were participants in missions during the war in Kosovo, condemning this denial by the Serbian minister.
The argument that the Recak massacre was carried out by Serbian forces has been made by many world human rights organizations, among them the most credible "Human Rights Watch"(HRW).
Analyze:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed without evidence that the massacres in Ukrainian cities were not carried out by his country's army, but, according to him, they are just staged by the Ukrainians themselves.
He also mentioned in the same context the Recak massacre as an example of such staging.
In addition to not providing any facts, Lavrov's claims have been refuted with facts and arguments by the media and credible international organizations.
The claims of Lavrov and Vulin, based on fact-checking and analysis, are assessed as "Manipulation of Facts" and "Disinformation".
Reasoning:
The evaluation as "Manipulation of facts" is given to those media reports that use facts known to be correct, but interpret them in a distorted way. These reports typically use inaccurate information to draw inaccurate conclusions or claims, thereby misdirecting consumers' conclusions of media content in relation to the actual meaning of the facts presented.
A “Disinformation” rating is given to media reporting that contains a “mix” of inaccurate sources or even half-truthful content. This rating will also address reports that have incorrect attributions or headlines that do not reflect the text in terms of information accuracy.