"The Second Bucha": How Russians React to Ohmatdyt Attack

Summary

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On July 8, 2024 a missile hit National Specialised Children's Hospital “Ohmatdyt” in Kyiv – a medical facility specialising in treating children with difficult diseases, including cancer. Ukrainian officials immediately claimed that it was a direct attack by the Russian army. On the other hand, Russian officials denied the allegations and stated that it was a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile launched by NASAMS that hit the hospital. Additionally, they claimed that it was a “bloody PR-operation” by Ukraine to draw attention of the NATO summit members in Washington.  

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Most Russian private profiles agree with the official version that Ukrainian air defence hit the hospital. We identified that more than 50% of Russian individuals on YouTube are blaming Ukrainian air defence. This finding is particularly surprising, considering YouTube's distinct anti-disinformation policies that may remove content deemed as fake news, making it "unfriendly" towards the Russian point of view [1]. In contrast, social media platforms popular among Russians, such as VK and Odnoklassniki, are controlled by large Russian companies, while Telegram lacks transparent moderation policies. These factors significantly influence discussions on these platforms, making it not surprising at all to see such comments on VK (approximately 70-75% blame Ukrainian air defence), Odnoklassniki (~85%), and Telegram (~70%).

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The politically neutral audience fueled hate speech towards Ukrainians. In this context, “politically neutral” indicates the audience without a clear political stance. Such an audience does not support the regime in every aspect. In addition to blaming Ukraine for the attack, 26% of comments from politically neutral profiles were filled with xenophobic terms such as “khokhols” and “banderites”. 

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Russians still recall the Bucha massacre as a benchmark of a “great hoax”. Approximately 6% of private accounts have compared the recent attack to the Bucha massacre, asserting that both events were staged by Ukraine to solicit more weapons from the West. This narrative has found support from Dmitry Peskov, who referred to the attack on the hospital as a "bloody PR operation." [2]. 

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Russian anti-war celebrities, being abroad for over 2 years still have a significant impact on the Russian informational space. Alla Pugacheva, a popular Russian singer who left Russia in 2022, condemned the attack on July 9. This condemnation resulted in a surprisingly large number of media posts dedicated to her—18% of all publications regarding the attack that day. Despite the influence of anti-war celebrities in the infospace, many disapprove of their stance. For example, Russian MP Alexei Zhuravlev asserted that Pugacheva should be designated as a “foreign agent,” a political label primarily used to suppress opposition. This claim was echoed by most Russian media.

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Methodology

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For this research, we sourced data from around 300 channels, including the most popular Russian social networks such as vk.com, telegram, youtube.com, and odnoklassniki.ru. The data collection period spanned from July 8 to July 9, resulting in the aggregation of around 66 900 documents. A "document" in this context refers to posts, comments, and articles that we extracted and analysed from Russian social networks and other sources.

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Data was collected using the keyword “Охматдет”. 

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Sentiment towards the attack on the hospital was identified using a machine learning model. To measure the attitude towards the topic we calculated the proportion of positive comments to negative ones. As a result, the sentiment expressed in the posts, comments, and articles is represented on a standardised scale. A value of -1 indicates the most negative sentiment, while a value of 1 indicates the most positive sentiment. Although the sentiment regarding the attack was largely negative, there were different reasons behind it throughout audience subtypes.

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The audience was classified by political affiliation (liberals, uncertains, and loyalists) and account type (media, bot, and individual accounts). This classification was based on our historical data. For political affiliation, accounts consistently expressing liberal views were categorised as liberals, whereas those with opposing viewpoints (e.g., coherent support of the Russian regime) were labelled as loyalists. Accounts with mixed or unclear views were categorised as uncertains. Account types were determined through manual labelling for media, private profiles, and bot accounts. Additionally, we employed algorithms to identify unusual activity indicative of bots.

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We employed topic modelling, a machine learning technique for discovering common patterns in large collections of texts. This method facilitated the identification of primary document clusters (document groups based on the similarity of their contents). We also calculated sentiment associated with each cluster as a mean sentiment value of the associated documents. Short summaries were generated for each cluster with a GPT 3.5-Turbo language model. A combination of these techniques provided our research team with a high-level overview of online discourse around all four topics.

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Overview 

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Trends

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The day of the attack and the day afterwards are similar in terms of the number of the documents – 32 700 and 34 200. The general sentiment regarding the attacks was -0.62 on July 8 and dropped to -0.67 the next day. This was mostly driven by media outlets that were more active and more negative on July 9. In this case, the negative sentiment is mostly related to an increase in “hostile” words featured in pair with the keyword “Ohmatdyt”. These words came out of reciting Russian officials, predominantly Dmitry Peskov (“bloody PR operation” [2]), Vasily Nebenzya (“Kyiv regime violates humanitarian law” [4]), and Maria Zakharova (“inhumane Nazi essence” of Ukraine [5]). 

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Sentiment towards the attack on Ohmatdyt by Political Affiliation

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There are similar values in sentiment across different political affiliations. This means that all three groups produce negative content related to the damaged children’s hospital, but which is pointed at different actors. In the case of Loyalists it is Ukrainian air defence and in the case of Liberals it is the Russian army that launched the missile. Uncertain audience mostly aligned with Loyalists and only a fraction of it expressed an opposing point of view. 

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Sentiment towards the attack on Ohmatdyt by Channels

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The relatively higher sentiment of YouTube content might be explained through the use of more “neutral” vocabulary towards the events by content creators, whereas other platforms might allow more hostile content towards Ukrainians due to their Russian origin.

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Sentiment towards the attack on Ohmatdyt by Account Types

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As mentioned above, the more negative sentiment by the media might be explained because of reciting Russian officials that used “hostile” words towards Ukraine. 

Account activity is defined based on the frequency of the posting. Most of the audience is in Occasional and Regular categories since these are mostly individual users that post or comment something once in a while (once a week or more rarely). On the other hand, Frequent and Consistent audience is mostly media or bloggers that post everyday or several times a day.

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Sentiment towards the attack on Ohmatdyt by Account Activity

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There is a clear difference in sentiment of Consistent audience compared to the rest. Since the sentiment here matches the sentiment of the media, we can claim that the reasons for this difference are similar to the ones in the Account Type breakdown. 

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Narratives

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The attack on a children's hospital in Kyiv: accusations and denials

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65% of the mentions of the attack on the day it happened regarded the search for a guilty side. 

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“Now there is a complete crackdown on photos and videos in order to pity the West and start begging for everything again. Just scum. They deliberately hit themselves. How disgusting their fag words are” [6] 

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“The strike of the Russian Armed Forces on a children's hospital in Kyiv was a direct hit, and not an accidental fall of debris” [7] 

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Since the content from YouTube was ahead of other channels in terms of the number of the documents, we made a deep dive into the distribution of opinions there. More than a half of YouTube comments on this topic blamed Ukrainian air defence. We identified this activity in the comments section of both Russian and Ukrainian videos. In the latter case, some Russian commenters persuaded Ukrainians that Russia is not responsible for the attack.

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“The Russian missile was not even close there. And there are also square fragments from the Norwegian rocket. And note, This was all posted by the Ukrainian Telegram channels. Ordinary Ukrainians were filming.” [8] 

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“Ukrainian air defence destroys Ukrainians, this is horrible😢” [9] 

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“They are telling you that Russia is hitting you, in fact this is propaganda of the Ukrainian authorities, these are American missiles that are landing on civilians, understand, Russia is not hitting civilians, Ukraine is once again blaming Russia so that the West will believe that Russia is to blame again” [8] 

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Searching for arguments that support claims aligning with “Ukraine hit itself” narrative 

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Among private profiles, 10% of the documents supported claims that it had been a Ukrainian missile that hit the hospital. 

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“Our media urgently began to issue “debriefings” and prove that it was a Ukrainian air defence missile... Honestly, I personally don’t care whether it was our missile that went off course, or whether it was a Ukrainian air defence missile that crashed” [10] 

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“I found an old program about about the history of the rocket, so, I think I’ll look at the launches, and there’s an orange test rocket, they’re launching, and guess what, they’re filming it from that angle, the same angle only from above , he is flying in parallel, he is filming, you can see the retractable engine, and the wings in this angle are one to one, like on a rocket that was filmed, I resemble the wings of a NASAMS. You can check it, it’s all about the camera angle” [11]

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5% of media documents on July 9 directly stated that it was the NASAMS anti-aircraft system that launched the missile towards the hospital. This narrative was driven by claims of Vasily Nebenzya, the Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN. He said it was a NASAMS missile that hit the hospital [4]. This version was supported by the spokesperson of MFA of Russia Maria Zakharova [5]. 

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“Facts suggest that a children's hospital in Kyiv was destroyed by a Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) missile launched to intercept an attack on a military plant” [12] 

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“Russia demanded an answer from Norway after the rocket fell in Kyiv. It was this country that supplied the NASAMS air defence system, from which the Ukrainian Armed Forces fired a missile at a children’s hospital in Kyiv.” [13] 

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Another 7% of media publications on that day were citing the press secretary of Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov. Additionally, he fueled the “Second Bucha” narrative mentioned below, stating that Ukraine launched a “PR operation” around the attack. 

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“The hit of a Ukrainian anti-missile missile at a children's hospital in Kyiv is a PR operation involving blood, Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said” [14] 

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“Moscow intends to tell the truth about the missile hit on a children's hospital in Kyiv both in Russia and in those countries where the audience is ready to hear it, said Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov.” [15] 

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Uncertain audience aligning with Russian official version

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Among the audience that has no clear political stance and does not show unconditional support of the regime, 26% of comments consisted of hate speech towards Ukrainians.

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“Kokhols, what’s up with your fucking mug?🤣” [16] 

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“Another treason in Bandera-state 🐷” [17] 

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Particular sub-narrative is the usage of a Facebook post by Ukrainian MP Maryana Bezuhla. She posted an image of the damaged hospital right after the attack, tagging Air Force Command of Ukrainian Army and writing “Don’t lie about “debris” once again” [18]. This post was of particular value since the audience used it to highlight the symptoms that confirm the lack of unity within Ukrainian society. 

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“Kokhol kills kokhol😃” [19] 

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“They are eating each other” [19] 

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Only a small part of uncertain audience claimed it had been a Russian missile that hit the hospital

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“Russian troops have just launched a missile attack on residential areas of Kyiv. Among the facilities hit by Russian missiles is the Ohmatdyt children's hospital, one of the largest not only in Ukraine, but throughout Europe. Dozens of dead and wounded civilians” [20] 

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The majority, on the other hand, stated that it was “obvious” that a Ukrainian anti-air missile was the cause. Some were directly citing officials, some were jokingly saying that it was the “explosion of the air conditioning system” in the hospital. 

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“Kokhols’ air defence destroyed the Ohmatdyt children's hospital in Kyiv.

If there had been a direct hit, several buildings would have been completely demolished, but we see an obvious result of air defence.” [6]  

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“Well, what can I say?💁🏻‍♂️ you need to be more careful with air conditioners” [21] 

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“Got a defective air conditioner again 😂” [22] 

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Acknowledging that Russia is responsible for the attacks, but claiming that the West would blame Russia no matter what 

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The majority of the audience with oppositional political views stated that it was Russia who hit the hospital. However, a small portion of private accounts expressed disbelief that the international actors would claim otherwise even if it would have been a Ukrainian anti-air missile. 

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“What difference does it make to us who they believe. Stop making excuses....” [23] 

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“Even if it is 100% an anti-aircraft missile. NATO doesn’t care, but the population of Ukraine has already been told what to do and the population is howling, cursing Russia.” [24] 

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“It doesn't matter what Russia says. The “picture” will outweigh any arguments. Western newspapers have already published front pages about the Russian strike on the hospital. Considering how kindly the West treats children” [25] 

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Accusing Ukraine of attempting to stage a 'second Bucha’  

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Approximately 6% of comments by private accounts were comparing the attack on the hospital to the events in Bucha. They claimed that both of the events are staged. In the case of the attack of the hospital the main argument connected it with the summit of NATO. According to this logic, Ukraine would exploit the image of children with difficult diseases as a mean to get more weapons. 

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“THE KYIV REGIME URGENTLY NEEDS A NEW BUCHA BEFORE THE NEW NATO SUMMIT” [26] 

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“Bucha. Round two” [27]  

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“The hospital exploded just in time, with the right crowd, proper preparations and media coverage. Bucha 2 has arrived. Now let's see why all this holy war was brewed.” [28]  

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Additionally, 5% of individuals blamed Ukraine for using residential areas as a “shield”. They claimed that Ukraine constantly places air defence near civilian building.

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“So I can’t understand how long they are going to tolerate the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are literally hiding behind the civilian population and setting up air defense and strategic factories in the city” [29] 

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“The use of residential development is part of their military strategy since the beginning of the SMO” [30] 

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Alla Pugacheva: reaction to the attack on the children's hospital

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2% of all documents on the topic are related to the reaction of Alla Pugacheva, a Russian popular singer who left Russia in October 2022, to the attack. She stated on her Instagram that “God is patient, but there is a limit to everything” [31], meaning that hitting a children’s hospital is a “red line”. Her mention mostly has a negative tone of voice with posts calling to designate her as a “foreign agent” – an initiative by a Russian MP Alexei Zhuravlev. Additionally, this narrative was mentioned in 18% of media publications on the day after the attack, having a strongly negative sentiment towards Alla Pugacheva.  

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‍“It is about time for Pugacheva to be recognized as a foreign agent and deprived of all property in the Russian Federation, as it should be, for discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and working on Western propaganda”. [33]

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