TV story about a crucified boy

The October Revolution Square in front of the Slavic City Council

On the evening of July 12, 2014, on the Channel One, the plot was shown: “A refugee from Slavyansk remembers how the little son and the wife of the militia were executed under her”. In it, a woman who introduced herself as a native of Transcarpathia, Galina Pyshnyak, spoke about the events that allegedly occurred immediately after the Ukrainian military regained control of Slavyansk , ousting supporters of the DPR ^{[7] [8]} :

City center. Lenin Square. Our Executive Committee is the only square where all people can be driven. Women were gathered in the square because there are no more men. Women, girls, old people. And this is called an indicative execution. They took a child of three years old, a little boy in shorts, a T-shirt, like Jesus , nailed to a message board. One nailed, two held. And it's all in my mother’s eyes. Mom was kept. And mom watched the baby bleed. Screams. Squeals. And they took the incisions and made the child suffer. It was impossible there. People lost consciousness. And then, after an hour and a half the child was tormented and died, they took their mother, tied up to the tank unconscious and spent three circles in the area. And the circle of the square is kilometer ^{[9] [10]} .

The same story was shown again on Channel One the next day, July 13, 2014, in the weekly news program of Irada Zeynalova ^[1] .

As the journalists of Novaya Gazeta and the Internet resource Slon.ru found out , shortly before that, similar messages had already appeared on social networks:

• On July 9, an active supporter of the “ Russian Spring ”, Alexander Dugin, published on Facebook a text about the crucifixion of a six-year-old ^[11] boy in Slavyansk and the execution of all men of Slavyansk under the age of 35 ^{[9] [10] [12]} .
• On July 11, a similar story was posted in the VKontakte community of “Reports from Strelkov” ^[9] .

The identity of the woman who gave the interview was revealed almost immediately - it really turned out to be a resident of Slavyansk, Galina Pyshnyak, who arrived in the city from Transcarpathia several years before the events described. Her husband was allegedly a local police officer who joined Strelkov’s detachment ^{[4] [13]} .

Yevgeny Feldman, a correspondent for Novaya Gazeta , who visited the front-line Slavyansk, interviewed several dozens of local residents, and not one of them confirmed the information from the sensational story. A similar result was the investigation conducted by journalists of the Rain ^[13] .

The search for documentary materials that could confirm this story on the Internet did not yield any results (although photo and video materials about the actions of the Ukrainian military in Slavyansk are available in large quantities) ^[9] .

Also, journalists from the BBC and Novaya Gazeta found that some of the allegations of the plot are obviously not true. For example, in Slavyansk there is no Lenin Square, which allegedly drove the locals ^{[4] [10]} .

The head of the Channel One’s South Russian bureau, Yulia Chumakova, who recorded a scandalous video, categorically refused to communicate with Novaya Gazeta journalists who tried to find out the details of the plot and redirected them to the public relations directorate of the television company ^[14] .

Once again, the question of this plot surfaced on December 18, 2014, during the next meeting of Vladimir Putin with the press. Ksenia Sobchak led him as an example to the issue of inciting hatred on Russian television. However, the question remained unanswered. Three days later, on December 21, Irada Zeynalova on the air of the program “ Vremya ” stated that “the journalists did not have and there is no evidence of this tragedy, but this is a real story of a real woman who escaped from hell in Slavyansk” ^{[14] [15] [ 16]} .

The show on the central Russian state channel of the plot about the “crucified boy” was used by Western researchers as evidence that misinformation and lies ^[17] have become the norm for modern Russian media ^{[18] [19] [20] [21] [22]} . Journalist Arkady Ostrovsky sees an analogy between this technique and those used to incite hatred during the Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire ^{[23] [24]} .

Journalist David Satter in his book “The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia's Path to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin” suggested that the television story was intended to incite nationalist hysteria ^[25] . The publicist Linda Kinstler agrees with this opinion, noting in The Atlantic magazine that the television story had spread over the Russian Internet, reinforcing anti-Ukrainian sentiments and setting the population to support hostilities ^[26] .

Philologist Oksana Issers notes that on television, this television story is considered a model of journalistic "fake" - obviously false, absurd information ^{[3] [27]} . Fortune magazine editor Anne VanderMay, in her article for , viewed the “crucified boy” as part of a broader Russian advocacy campaign, sometimes referred to as “4 D” . dismiss, distract, distort, dismay (denial, distraction, distortion of facts, intimidation) ^{[28] [29]} . In a detailed article in The Economist magazine, “fake atrocities” from the plot of Channel One were cited as one of the evidence that in Russia, as in many other countries, post-truth politics is becoming the predominant direction of political culture ^[6] .

• The crucified soldier is a propaganda myth of the times of the First World War.

Books

• Skillen D. The normalization of lying - Living with the lies // Freedom of Speech in Russia: Politics and Media from Gorbachev to Putin. - Routledge, 2016 .-- 372 p. - (BASEES / Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies). - ISBN 9781317659884 .
• Van Herpen MH The "Hybrid War" in Ukraine: From Misinformation to Disinformation // Putin's Propaganda Machine: Soft Power and Russian Foreign Policy. - Rowman & Littlefield, 2015 .-- 336 p. - ISBN 9781442253629 .
• Snyder T. Learn from peers in other countries // On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. - Random House, 2017 .-- 128 p. - ISBN 9781473549296 .
• Hryshchuk R. , Molodetska K. Synergetic Control of Social Networking Services Actors' Interactions // Recent Advances in Systems, Control and Information Technology / ed. R. Szewczyk , M. Kaliczyńska . - Springer , 2016 .-- T. 543. - 829 p. - (Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing). - ISBN 9783319489230 .
• Nalbandov R. Fear and Loathing in Russian Political Culture // Not by Bread Alone: ​​Russian Foreign Policy Under Putin. - University of Nebraska Press, 2016 .-- 648 p. - ISBN 9781612348001 .
• Monshipouri M. Social media Kyivs Euromaidan and demands // Information Politics, Protests, and Human Rights in the Digital Age. - Cambridge University Press, 2016 .-- 326 p. - ISBN 9781107140769 .
• Conradi P. “You do it too” // Who Lost Russia ?: How the World Entered a New Cold War. - Oneworld Publications, 2017 .-- 400 p. - ISBN 9781786070425 .
• Ostrovsky A. Epilogue: Aerial Combat // The Invention of Russia: The Journey from Gorbachev's Freedom to Putin's War. - Atlantic Books Ltd, 2015 .-- 400 p. - ISBN 9781782397410 .
• Setter D. A System Under Threat // The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russian Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin. - Yale University Press, 2016 .-- 224 p. - ISBN 9780300221145 .
• Raabe K. , Sapper M. Testfall Ukraine: Europa und seine Werte . - Suhrkamp Verlag, 2015 .-- 248 p. - ISBN 9783518741023 .

Articles

• Issers O.S. From the serious to the ridiculous: the gaming potential of the Russian word of the year // Political Linguistics / Recommended. prof. A.P. Chudinov . - 2015. - Issue. 4 . - S. 25-31 . - ISSN 1999-2629 .
• Kinstler L. How to Survive a Russian Hack // The Atlantic . - 2017 .-- February 2.
• Higgins A. Fake News, Fake Ukrainians: How a Group of Russians Tilted a Dutch Vote // The New York Times . - 2017 .-- February 16.
• Danilova M. Truth and the Russian media: Unhinged claims about the Malaysia jet are part of a broader propaganda campaign // Columbia Journalism Review (CJR). - 2014 .-- July 22.
• Eduard Palchys: I Can Switch Over To Belarusian Language Without Any Problems // Charter'97. - 2017 .-- February 6. - ISSN 2543-4969 .
• Kramer AE To Battle Fake News, Ukrainian Show Features Nothing but Lies // The New York Times . - 2017 .-- February 26.
• Maheshwari V. Ukraine's fight against fake news goes global: Countering Kremlin disinformation is one area where Kiev has the upper hand // Politico . - 2017 .-- March 12.
• VanderMey AW Ukraine's fight against fake news goes global: Countering Kremlin disinformation is one area where Kiev has the upper hand // . - 2016. - Fall.
• The post-truth world: Yes, I'd lie to you // The Economist . - 2016. - September 10.
• Putz C. Uzbek Nanny Beheads Child in Moscow // . - 2016 .-- March 3.
• Frye B. Conflict & Diplomacy: Detoxing Russia // Transitions Online (TOL) . - 2015. - March 3. - S. 1-3 .
• Khaldarova I. , Pantti M. Fake News: The narrative battle over the Ukrainian conflict // Journalism Practice. - 2016 .-- October 2 ( vol. 10 , issue 7 ). - S. 891–901 . - ISSN 1751-2786 . - DOI : 10.1080 / 17512786.2016.1163237 .
• Nygren G. , Glowacki M. , Hök J. , Kiria I. , Orlova D. Journalism in the Crossfire: Media coverage of the war in Ukraine in 2014 // Journalism Studies. - 2016. - November 22. - S. 1–20 . - ISSN 1461-670X . - DOI : 10.1080 / 1461670X.2016.1251332 .

• Julia Chumakova. The refugee from Slavyansk recalls how the little son and the wife of the militia were executed under her (neopr.) . Channel One (July 12, 2014). Date of treatment March 23, 2017.
• Eugene Feldman. Residents of Slavyansk about the scandalous plot of Channel One. (unspecified) . Novaya Gazeta (July 13, 2014). Date of treatment March 23, 2017.
• Lucy Ash Russia's military trick: from the Kulikovo field to the Crimea (Neopr.) . BBC (January 30, 2015). Date of treatment March 26, 2017.
• The main words of the outgoing year. 2014 Results