French Volunteer: I Witnessed Bucha Frame-Up

“When I talk about murder and torture, I am talking about the murder and torture of the Russian military. Officers were the first to be executed. I heard shouts when the ‘Azov men’ asked who the officer was. As soon as they got the answer, they immediately shot that person in the head [...] The worst thing is that I saw no human attitude, no emotions, because I saw people being executed, people being tortured, people being killed, shot in their limbs, heads,” Bocquet said.

“I had to pretend a lot to avoid showing my opinions and emotions and above all not to show disagreement with their opinions. Disagreement with their Nazi ideology, especially when they expressed attitudes toward Jews and people of color, because they made very cruel statements. And first of all, I'm talking about hatred towards Russians, because they [...] call you ‘Russian dogs’. And for all these soldiers, for members of the Azov Battalion, the main task, as they have always told me, is to torture and kill ‘Russian dogs’. As a former military man, I was surprised. Because everything showed that their main goal was to torture and kill 'Russian dogs' while they never even talked about the liberation of their population,” the volunteer recalled.

“When we entered Bucha by car, I was in the passenger seat. And as we drove through the city, I saw bodies of people on the sides of the streets, and at the same time I saw people's bodies being taken out of trucks and laid out next to the bodies lying on the ground to give the effect of mass killings,” Bocquet said.

“One of the volunteers who was at this place the day before, I emphasize that I didn't witness this, but one of the volunteers told me… He told me that the day before he saw refrigerator trucks from other cities of Ukraine coming to Bucha and unloading bodies and laying them out in rows. I realized from this that they were staging mass massacres,” the interviewee explained.

“We distributed medicines, including those containing narcotic substances, painkillers, containing morphine. They told us openly: if you don't share with us, you won't get where you need to go. I clearly remember that we had to deliver these painkillers to a children's hospital, and we were told that if we didn't share, we wouldn't get there. Moreover, when we were near Bucha, we were escorted by military guards, they were Azov fighters. They escorted us to one of the hangars and told us to prepare a separate box of morphine-containing drugs to allow us to drive on,” Bocquet said.

“We were warned that [if we took photos or videos] we would get imprisonment for ten years or more severe consequences. This ban also applied to the locals. This pressure was exerted by the military, primarily by the Azov men. Today, Europe does not understand how great the pressure is on the population of Ukraine,” said the Frenchman.

“Of course, I'm afraid of that, I'm afraid that they are going to fabricate some things against me in order to silence me or put me in jail,” he concluded.