The Norwegian professor Glenn Diesen called for an investigation and research into who had perpetrated the killing of bodies found on the streets of Bucha in March 2022. In the daily Aftenposten 28 May 2025, one Aage Borchgrevink at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee in Oslo was “appalled” by Diesen’s words. Borchgrevink believes that the mere asking such questions violates “basic norms of academic accountability and integrity.” Nothing less.
National Police of Ukraine, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Can the basic academic exercise of “demanding more knowledge” be disqualifying for an academic? Another Norwegian professor with a double Phd in philosophy and ethics, Hans Morten Haugen, on the board of the Helsinki Committee doubled down: Having no expert background or knowledge of the topic Diesen touched upon, Haugen claimed that an academic [who questions what “everyone” agrees about in the case of Bucha, is not qualified to be a professor or true academic.
Fortunately, sanity entered. Major Amund Osflaten at the Norwegian School of War (!) killed the debate by asking: “If academia is not entitled to question consensus, who will do that job then?” To some academics questioning consensus is a key task, if not an obligation. But how is it possible for a huge organization with millions in resources and a team of dozens of council members from leading Norwegians can end up in a quagmire like this?
It is a good idea to look at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee
The answer is to be found in Mr. Borchgrevink and the Helsinki Committee’s funding and portfolio:
The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is heavily financed, injected by millions of kroner annually, from the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), fully funded by the US Congress. NED was established under President Reagan in 1983 to replace CIA’s previous covert operations, support opposition media in US hostile (and not so hostile) countries and - regime change. Reagan advisor Tom Reed said of the CIA that "to mislead, that's the CIA's job". The Helsinki Committee is paid by, and does the job for, the USA in Norway. They call it "strengthening democracy". When Maria Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for for her “steadfast commitment” for regime change for “democracy” in Venezuela, people were astonished to know that two of the five members of the Nobel committee, including the chair person, were members of the Helsinki Committee’s council.
The Helsinki Committee's job has apparently been to discredit critics of the USA on one hand, and to spread criticism of Russia on the other. This escalated in one instance in Norway, to an initiative by 20 well-known Norwegian academics to ask the Helsinki Committee on March 30 to please stop the persecution of Professor Glenn Diesen. The committee was immediately supported by 50 "leading" Norwegian voices. This group turned out to be a rather incestuous attempt of little value: all 50 are current or former committee council members. Called out to save their friends? A good friend of mine left the Council in dismay. (S)he had had enough. I don’t know how many have left, but it would be a surprise if there were no more escapees.
Researchers demand answers
But what happened in Bucha? In his recent book, Hybris, (Karneval publishing house 2025), Professor Emeritus Ola Tunander at PRIO discusses this and tracks the events as they progressed. Tunander, like Jacques Baud, wisely only quotes Western and Kiev-Ukrainian sources.
Tunander finds that after occupying the city, Russian troops withdrew as a sign of good will to the promising peace negotiations that were underway. And on March 30, 2022, Bucha Mayor, Fedoruk, celebrates the liberation of the city. On the same day, the Media Center in Kiev reports that the police’ special force, SAFARI, has begun “cleansing the city of saboteurs and collaborators who have collaborated with the Russian troops.” The mayor of Mykolaiv assures that “traitors will be killed.” City clerk Kateryna Ukraintseva believes the special forces’ “cleansing” will take two to three days, while Taras Shapravskyj says it is now “dangerous to return to Bucha” - after the Russians left the city. Who is threatening now when the Russians are not there? The New York Times then shows images of the Azov battalion on its way to “eliminate collaborators.” An 8-minute video shows SAFARI on its way in on April 1. In a Telegram video on April 2, a man asks if they can shoot someone who is missing a blue armband, and gets the answer “yes”.
Only two days after Ukraine police and military are in place in Bucha, we see reports of bodies in the streets starting to circulate. The New York Times reports six bodies, and on April 3, CNN reports twenty bodies in the streets. Only after all this a story of the “Russians’” mass murder in Bucha is now being built up in Western media.
Borchgrevink tries to prove the Russians’ involvement it with quotes left and right, but falls into the old trap: that a rumor is recirculating among countless actors does not make it more true.
Tunander calls for more answers about what happened in Bucha: Where are the liquidated collaborators? What had they done? A UN commission admits to having spoken almost exclusively to Kiev-Ukrainians. What does the commission say about the purges? Could these be newly arrived Ukrainian Azov forces or the Russian troops (who had left the city 3 days earlier) who scattered the bodies in the streets? How credible are interviews in the climate of fear that prevailed in a Bucha ruled by Azov and Safari troops? Reuters quotes a Pentagon official who “neither [can] confirm nor deny” that the Russians killed civilians in Bucha. Tunander documents that the doubt is shared by many.
The right to ask questions, even where the country is in a state of war-fog’s blind faith, is a litmus test of freedom of expression and academic freedom, also in Norway, in which I hope more academics and experts like Glenn Diesen will get involved. It is of course a strength that these – unlike the Helsinki Committee and Aage Borchgrevink – are not funded by foreign powers.