Page 4 - Vladimir Putin: Russia's Autocratic Ruler

Introduction

A Danger to

the World

On April 1, 2022, scenes of a recent massacre shocked view-
ers worldwide. The images were reminiscent of the worst
brutalities of World War II. In the town of Bucha, just out-
side Kyiv in north-central Ukraine, bodies lay strewn across a
road, in yards and alleyways, and at commercial sites. Many
victims, their hands tied behind them, had been shot in the
back of the head execution style. Some of the corpses were
burned beyond recognition. Nearly three hundred were bur-
ied in a hastily dug mass grave. Ukrainian troops discovered
the bodies, totaling more than one thousand, when they en-
tered Bucha following a monthlong occupation by Russian
forces. The Ukrainians found evidence of a torture chamber
in a basement beneath a campground. Girls as young as
fourteen had been raped by Russian soldiers. When the Rus-
sian government claimed that the scenes had been staged
by Ukraine, Western reporters who had toured the grim site
protested. “I personally saw evidence of war crimes,” said
CBS News correspondent Debora Patta. “These stories
cannot be staged, and the overwhelming grief I have wit-
nessed cannot be manufactured.” 1
Among those who falsely described the Bucha massacre
as fake was Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Fed-
eration and a longtime opponent of the West. It was Putin
who had ordered the invasion of Ukraine in the early months

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