“We need to bring you these facts”
The war in Ukraine is entering “something of a new phase,” Jake Tapper said Monday – a new phase “where the world is being confronted with new images and survivor testimony of the horrors Vladimir Putin and his army are inflicting on the people of this country.”
Tapper anchored “The Lead” from Lviv, Ukraine. “Ukrainian forces were able to liberate the town of Bucha over the weekend, just outside the capital of Kyiv, to the west,” he said, “just about 300 or so, 325 miles from where I’m standing. Closer than San Francisco is to Los Angeles. Closer than Corpus Christi is to Dallas. Bucha was once known as a bedroom community outside Kyiv but it may now be known for something else. Something terrible.”
“CNN is here in Ukraine to bear witness to the world of what Russian soldiers did and are doing to these innocent Ukrainian civilians,” Tapper continued. The images are graphic, “they’re disturbing, but we need to bring you these facts. Because the Kremlin and its propaganda outlets and allies are already claiming images such as this one are ‘fake.’ They are not fake.”
Photographic proof
“The Russia Ministry of Defense responded to disturbing video showing dead bodies in the streets of Bucha as ‘fake,’ but new satellite images from Maxar Technologiesshows that the bodies had been laying in the street for weeks, and when the town was under Russian control,” CNN’s Paul P. Murphy reports.
The New York Times was the first to publish the key satellite imagery. The NYT’s report is extremely detailed…
Ukraine coverage notes
— “Don’t be mistaken, Bucha is not alone,” former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko told Brianna Keilar, who co-anchored “New Day” from Lviv on Monday…
— Drudge’s banner right now is “RUSSIAN ATROCITIES SHOCK WORLD” paired with a photo of a frail hand buried in the dirt…
— In the UK, “The Daily Mirror has published a letter to the Russian people, outlining the list of atrocities Vladimir Putin’s regime has committed in Ukraine.” Tuesday’s front page says in both Russian and English, “YOU NEED TO KNOW…”
— The WSJ’s Warren P. Strobel has a new story about the US “release of Ukraine intelligence,” a strategy he says he is internally called “downgrade and share…”
— What makes this war different: “Virtually everyone on the planet can either observe the fighting at a granular level, participate in some way or be affected economically — no matter where they live,” Thomas L. Friedman writes… (NYT)
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