The Russian government has continued to deny responsibility for a massacre of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, with the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense insisting that the corpses displayed in photos and videos taken by Ukrainian forces had been faked—even as Western reporting appeared to confirm the pictures’ authenticity using satellite imagery.

After Ukrainian forces recaptured the city of Bucha from the Russian military, which had held it since March 11, they released hundreds of images of civilian corpses on the city’s streets and in shallow mass graves, many with their hands bound behind their backs and with gunshot wounds to their heads, suggesting a pattern of summary executions.

Russia immediately denied that it had been responsible for the massacre. In the following hours, the Kremlin’s position vacillated between blaming Ukrainian forces, including the country’s neo-Nazi “Azov Battalion,” and insisting that the incident had been staged altogether. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed on its official Telegram channel that the incident was a “hoax” and that the bodies had been placed in the street after Russian troops had departed, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that the government had “identified signs of video fakes” in the footage, although neither source provided any evidence to support their conclusions. Peskov added that international leaders should not “rush to sweeping accusations, and at least listen to our arguments.”

However, satellite footage obtained by the New York Times showed that many of the bodies had appeared on the street during the three-week Russian occupation, seemingly proving that Russian soldiers had been responsible.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky described the Bucha massacre as a genocide on Sunday, implying that it had been carried out in an attempt to eradicate Ukrainian national identity. Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki concurred the following day, telling reporters that “these bloody massacres committed … by Russian soldiers deserve to be called what they are.”

“This is genocide and it must be judged,” Morawiecki said. He added that the Polish government had proposed an international commission to investigate the incident—a commission that he described as “essential if we want to find out the truth on the extent of Russian fascist crimes.”

While Biden did not refer to the incident as a “genocide,” he repeated his earlier declaration that Russian leader Vladimir Putin bore personal responsibility for Russian war crimes and added that he should face an international tribunal at the conclusion of the conflict.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters.