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Russia Claims Ukraine Staged “New Bucha” in Deadly Sumy Strike to Disrupt Peace Talks
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![Photo of Vlad Litnarovych]( "Photo of Vlad Litnarovych")
Russian state media figures have attempted to reframe the deadly missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy as a Western-orchestrated provocation designed to derail potential negotiations with Moscow, calling it a deliberate effort to manufacture a “new Bucha,” Russian media outlet Agenstvo reported on April 14.
In Sunday night’s broadcast of Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov on Russia’s state-run Rossiya 1 channel, prominent Kremlin propagandists Vladimir Solovyov and Margarita Simonyan dismissed Russia’s role in the attack—which killed 34 civilians and injured 119—while offering an alternative narrative that blames Ukraine.
“Traditional German propaganda, along with the British, is trying to create another Bucha—another attempt by Ukrainian authorities to disrupt any possibility of agreements,” Solovyov claimed, opening the show with a segment on the Sumy strike.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has not officially responded to the strike. Still, Solovyov linked the timing of the incident to ongoing backchannel talks between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and representatives of US President Donald Trump.
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“Just as Putin spends four and a half hours talking with Trump’s people, something like this immediately happens,” Solovyov said.
Solovyov went further, alleging that the target was a group of Ukrainian soldiers involved in operations in Russia’s Kursk region. “As always, the number of dead soldiers is being concealed,” he said.
To explain the high civilian death toll, Solovyov repeated a familiar Kremlin talking point: that a Ukrainian air defense missile had gone astray.
“Traditionally, a Ukrainian air defense missile hit the wrong target, which unfortunately led to the deaths of civilians,” he said—a claim also made after Russia’s deadly strike on Kryvyi Rih in early April, which killed 21 people, including nine children.
Simonyan, who spoke immediately after Solovyov, echoed the conspiracy-laden rhetoric.
“Will they turn what happened in Sumy into a new Bucha, or will they choose some other incident? Who knows what else might happen in a war? There are plenty of explosions, plenty of things,” she said. “They’ll try to create a new Bucha every time, because that’s their only way to prolong the war.”
Simonyan also suggested Ukraine was manipulating events to influence Trump, calling him “impulsive and impressionable” and saying Ukrainian actions were designed to “produce something spectacular” that could lead to “an irreversible decision” by the US president.
The Kremlin has not released an official statement regarding the Sumy attack.
The missile strike on central Sumy occurred on Sunday, April 7. Experts say the weapons used had the hallmarks of a ballistic missile with fragmentation warheads—similar to those used in the April 4 attack on Kryvyi Rih. Both strikes targeted civilian areas and had no clear military purpose, analysts say.
The international response was swift. US President Donald Trump commented on the strike, calling the Sumy strike “horrible.”
“They told me it was a mistake. But I think it’s horrible,” Trump said. “I think the whole war is a horrible thing.”
Earlier, a large number of foreign leaders, including Keith Kellog, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Ursula von der Leyen, Kaja Kallas, and many others condemned the brutal Russian attack on Sumy.
-21d0b63c17f6020e4df75f6c6f9a2f4f.jpg "Photo of Ivan Khomenko")
