Posts
Who
slipped? How fake report on ‘Russian soldier deaths’ in Ukraine
set MSM on fire
RT,
27
August, 2015
A
Forbes report on alleged Russian army casualties in Ukraine citing a
dodgy Russian website has sparked a media and Twitter storm. Some
said Russia had “finally slipped” with the leak on its troops in
Ukraine; others were baffled by the “fake publication.” RT
decided to investigate.
A
Forbes contributor, Paul Roderick Gregory, published an article on
Wednesday citing a Russian web source called “Delovaya
Zhizn”
(translated as Business Life), which was said to reveal “official
figures on the number of Russian soldiers killed or made invalids in
eastern Ukraine.”
The
report, dated March 2015 and entitled “Increases
in Pay for Military in 2015,” was
altered, with the relevant information being removed, after the
Forbes publication came out. However, the original copy was webcached
by Google.
The
cache shows that the website, which has articles on Russian finance,
markets and leisure, claimed that the Russian government had paid
monetary compensation to Russian soldiers who “took
part in military actions in Eastern Ukraine.”
Without
citing a source, the article claimed that as of February 1, more than
2,000 families of soldiers killed in Ukraine had received
compensation of 3 million rubles (about $50,000) and those crippled
during military action – a half million rubles (about $25,000). It
added that another 3,200 soldiers wounded in battle had received
compensation of 1,800 rubles for every day they were in the conflict one.
The
Forbes contributor accused “Russian
censors”
for “quickly
removing the offending material.”
The
Forbes report was picked up by Western media and independent
journalists. The International Business Times reported that
the Russian article had “accidentally
published the leaked figures.”
Russia's own KIA figures of Russian military dead in Ukraine apparently (accidentally) revealedhttp://t.co/Aqa9UCJ5fo
— Daniel Baer (@danbbaer) August 26, 2015
An article by
The Independent on Wednesday called Delovaya Zhizn a “respected
news site in Russia,”
and cited the head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham
House, James Nixey, who said that the report is a “nail
in the coffin”
in proving Russia is engaged in military action.
So
if number of Russian casualties in Ukraine reported yesterday was
fake, what are real numbers? Please post links to best reporting.
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) August 26, 2015
Another
media outlet piling on was was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
(RFE/RL), which claimed it
had received a response from some Anatoly Kravchenko from Delovaya
Zhizn, who said the website had “received
the casualty figures from relatives of dead servicemen as well as
‘insider information’ from the Russian Defense
Ministry.” However,
they added that the website’s representative had “declined
to identify any specific sources.”
Western
officials, including two former US ambassadors to Russia and to
Ukraine and the US ambassador to OSCE, also retweeted the report.
Amazing. This really happened? Both the printing and the removal? What does this episode mean?https://t.co/K82wXhsAIy
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) August 26, 2015
.@McFaul Wow. If true, this would mean #Russia military casualties in eastern #Ukraine far higher than most estimates.
— Steven Pifer (@steven_pifer) August 26, 2015
The
publication sparked a Twitter storm with some western journalists,
researchers, analysts and think-tanks giving their full trust to the
source.
Russia Inadvertently Posts Its Casualties In #Ukraine-War 2,000 Deaths, 3,200 Disabled via@forbeshttp://t.co/pHi6FYOEPo
— steffendobbert (@steffendobbert) August 27, 2015
Russia lists losses in Ukraine war-deaths near US killed in Afghan war speak to lethality of semi conventional war http://t.co/pcuYUmyJLK
— Wright Smith (@WrightLSmith) August 26, 2015
Russian site: 2000 Russian soldiers killed, 3000 injured in Ukraine. http://t.co/FFK6U7Tpjj Lot of casualties for a war they're not fighting
— Jewish Policy Center (@thejpc) August 26, 2015
Russia's Ukraine toll: 2000 dead, 3200 incapacitated. @MarkUrban1@NataliaAntonova Did budget reveal soldier deaths? http://t.co/KfWkF6GYcJ
— Steve LeVine (@stevelevine) August 26, 2015
However,
at a certain point the media storm came to a halt. Bloomberg’s
Leonid Bershidsky concluded that the initial Delovaya Zhizn report
was fake, questioning the URL, Bs-life.ru, and exposing a grammatical
error (“v Ukraine” instead of “na Ukraine”).
That
"Business Life" report of Russia's Ukraine casualties is a
fake. Bs-life.ru -- come on, are you serious? (Plus the "Š²
Š£ŠŗŃŠ°ŠøŠ½Šµ" slip)
— Leonid Bershidsky (@Bershidsky) August 27, 2015
How propaganda works. Nobody has heard of bs-life.ru. http://t.co/fE6J6rDkgD is obviously a 'shell' site too. pic.twitter.com/2Q3KS6J455
— Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) 26 Š°Š²Š³ŃŃŃŠ° 2015
AP
journalist Nataliya Vasilyeva pointed out the ease of spreading fake
information on the web.
“The
ease of spreading rumors in the digital world is astonishing,”
she wrote.
the
ease of spreading rumors in the digital world is astonishing.
— Nataliya Vasilyeva (@NatVasilyevaAP) August 27, 2015
“Two
days of Western officials retweeting a Forbes report quoting a
Ukrainian web-site quoting a non-existent Russia news web-site re
Ukraine,”
she dded.
“The
main problem here is, of course, where was the Forbes online editor
when the story was published, why nobody bothered to check sources?”
The
main problem here is, of course, where was the Forbes online editor
when the story was published, why nobody bothered to check sources?
— Nataliya Vasilyeva (@NatVasilyevaAP) August 27, 2015
Indeed,
the Russian State media watchdog, Roscomnadzor, has four registered
media sources of that name on its website. All of them are
listed as print publications – newspapers or magazines. Electronic
media is not mentioned.
The
Delovaya Zhizn (bs-life.ru) website, however, does not contain any
reference to a print edition or mail subscription. Moreover, it does
not detail its staff, its owner or founder, or any relevant contact
information except for an online reply form.
RT
attempted to contact the publication by phone numbers collected
through open sources on the web, but received no answer by phone.
RT’s
Ilya Petrenko also visited a Moscow address for Delovaya Zhizn that
he found online, but there was no sign of the obscure website’s
office there.
However, after sending a request via an online form, RT got a reply from someone called Anatoly Kravchenko – the same name as was used in Western media reports – introducing himself as “representing” Delovaya Zhizn.
The statement said that the original story in question had not contained the part about “[Russian] servicemen in Ukraine”nor had it been edited by any of the site’s staff until August 23.
“On August 23 the editorial staff received emails requesting clarification of the information contained in the article, in its last part. This is how we discovered that the site had been hacked… and an editor removed the part of the text added by the perpetrators to the story,” the email said.
However, after sending a request via an online form, RT got a reply from someone called Anatoly Kravchenko – the same name as was used in Western media reports – introducing himself as “representing” Delovaya Zhizn.
The statement said that the original story in question had not contained the part about “[Russian] servicemen in Ukraine”nor had it been edited by any of the site’s staff until August 23.
“On August 23 the editorial staff received emails requesting clarification of the information contained in the article, in its last part. This is how we discovered that the site had been hacked… and an editor removed the part of the text added by the perpetrators to the story,” the email said.
MSM quotes site on ‘Russia losses in Ukraine,’ same source tells RT ‘got hacked from Kiev IP’http://t.co/lzgoZxxtPLpic.twitter.com/HnCcEVIAVM
— RT (@RT_com) August 28, 2015
It
added that the site had been hacked on August 22, allegedly from a
Kiev-registered IP address.
The
statement stressed that the news site “does
not have any political orientation and does not support any political
power in the RF [Russian Federation].”
RT
could not immediately confirm the identity of the contact –
something which apparently did not stop Western news outlets from
citing the claims.
This
is not the sole example of unverified information related to the
Ukrainian conflict appearing on the web. However, few
such “leaks” make
it to big media.
In
one of the instances, US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was
caught posting unverified images on his Twitter feed in September
2014. The photos, which he said showed US-Kiev military exercises in
Ukraine, had already been published in July 2014 and in October 2013.
In
another case in April, Pyatt claimed that Russia’s military was
continuing to expand its presence in eastern Ukraine. As proof, he
posted a picture of a Buk-M2 missile defense system that he said was
stationed in Ukraine. However, it turned out to be a two-year-old
photo from an air show near Moscow.
Here is the original Forbes article
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