I do hear some bits of the common Russian perception of the war. The Russian media is obliged by law to parrot the official party line rather than doing indpedent reporting, and their narrative differs a lot from what we're hearing from reporters from different news outlets from different parts of the world having "boots on the ground" in Ukraine. It would clearly be a false balance fallacy to put any weight on the Russian media. Still, I think it's important to pay attention to what's going on in the Russian media and have the counter arguments ready ... in case you one day meet an "ordinary" Russian or some other person who for some reason or another is subscribing to the Russian point of view.
The Russians now consider it was a bad idea to "pull back" (retreat) from the areas around Kyiv, because that allows the Ukrainians to "invent" horror stories from those territories - even producing fake videos with actors pretending to be dead people. Yes, it was even said by the Russian representative in the UNSC. Nevermind that the claims that the video was fake has been debunked. Nevermind that there are sattelite images showing that the corpses has been lying around in the same places also when the territority was occupied by the Russians. Nevermind that lots of reporters from lots of different news outlets have been there and seen dead bodies with their own eyes. Nevermind that there are lots of credible interviews of different survivors done by different reporters that confirms the horror. Nevermind that credible organizations, like the OSCE and Amnesty International has been doing research and confirms that war crimes have taken place. The evidence is thick.
(Відео: Військове телебачення України, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
The Russian authorities was very quick to categorically deny that any war crimes had taken place in Bucha - but how can they know? Let's assume the best, let's assume there were no explicit orders from Kremlin on targetting civilians - it's not an entirely unreasonable assumption. How can Kremlin know what was actually taking place on the ground? The answer is obvious - they cannot, and they do not want to investigate.
There are other stories also emerging - stories on young Russian conscripts being polite and reasonable. Stories on Russian soldiers being terrified and scared. Stories on Russian aid organizations trying to help (and Ukrainians that rather would starve than receive food aid from Russians). Stories on Russian soldiers claiming to have killed a solider from Chechnia after said soldier had raped and then killed an Ukrainian lady - and then buried the victim. I think it's not unreasonable to assume the atrocities were performed by a minority of the soldiers.
I believe that what has happened here is entirely possible to explain by human psycology. Ever heard about the Stanford prison experiment? If not, I'd recommend to check the wikipedia article. The quick summary of the experiment is that when the right conditions are in place, normal people may become evil. Admittedly, the validity of the experiment is contested - but I still think it's relevant. The Milgram experiment is also relevant. Those soldiers have been exposed for a lot of propaganda and have been told over and over again that all Ukrainians are brain-washed nazis. From what I've heard, people are now openly saying on the state television in Russia that the very idea of Ukrainian nationality must be eradicated. Those soldiers also probably haven't had proper training in the rules of war. Some of them have seen their friends die a horrible death due to Ukrainian artillery attacks - attacks that could be performed with high precision due to reports from the civilians on the ground, in Bucha and other places - so they want revenge on the local Ukrainian civilians for that. Some of them are shit scared - and probably for good reasons, according to the Ukrainian propaganda quite some civilians had been armed - some with hand weapons, others with molotov coctails - under such conditions it may seem like a good idea to shoot first and ask later. Everything considered, I think atrocities were bound to happen, with or without the knowledge of Kremlin.
(Philip Zimbardo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Don't get me wrong - my point with this post is not to find excuses for the atrocities. The point with this post is just to point out that even if one is to ignore the wast amount of evidence, and even if Kremlin doesn't know anything about those atrocities, it's very likely that the atrocities actually took place, so Kremlin is very wrong when they categorically deny that such things happened.