site.btaUkrainian Embassy Slams Council for Electronic Media Chair's Statement about Bucha Massacre as "Manipulative"

In a Facebook post on Wednesday in Ukrainian, Bulgarian and English, the Ukrainian Embassy in Sofia described a statement regarding the Bucha tragedy made by Council for Electronic Media Chair Sonya Momchilova as "unacceptable and manipulative".

Interviewed on YouTube by vlogger Asen Genov on Tuesday, Momchilova said she "absolutely disagreed" with allegations that the Bulgarian media are "a vehicle of the Kremlin's interests and information" and specified that "propaganda runs in the opposite direction, too: about Putin's illness, his disease, about Bucha, etc."

"We categorically insist that distorting the facts in the context of Russia's full-scale armed aggression against Ukraine is unacceptable," the Embassy said.

It quotes a March 31, 2023 declaration, adopted on March 31, 2023, as condemning the Bucha massacre as "a symbol of the horrors of the Russian aggression" and one of the "serious crimes under international law that have been committed on the territory of Ukraine". The Embassy recalls that Bulgaria official joined the declaration in April 2023.

"Following the de-occupation of Bucha in the spring of 2022, international experts documented 1,400 killings (including 37 children), numerous cases of rape, torture, and other war crimes. Currently, nearly 11,000 war crimes are being investigated in the Kyiv region," the post states. "Overall, within the framework of the International Criminal Court and the Special Tribunal for investigating crimes committed by the Russian political leadership against Ukraine, evidence has been collected regarding 96,000 war crimes, along with the destruction of vital civilian infrastructure (over 100,000 objects)."

"The Embassy of Ukraine expects the Council for Electronic Media and the relevant Bulgarian institutions to refute and take the necessary measures to respond to the dangerous and misleading claims regarding the atrocities committed by Russian occupiers in Bucha. These claims contradict the official position of the Republic of Bulgaria as a member state of the EU and NATO," the statement says.