Because the ever-reliable Russian media said it? Stop the presses, it must be true! And when I say “stop the presses”, I mean, “do it now or you might accidentally come down with a bad case of polonium-210”.
Russia is ranked #148 in the world in terms of press freedom. Russian media is basically a well-funded, centralized propaganda operation. Even blogs are legally required to toe the party line. The media agencies pay actors to go around to different areas to make up stories, which they package into sleek “reports” to put up online.
Some of the more funny times were when they had the same actor give wildly different stories on different networks (one news agency even managed to track down one of their actors and pretend to be another Russian news agency, and she discussed with them what sort of rate they usually pay her and what sort of story to make up this time).
I’d say the shark-jumpingest moment had to be was the “Ukranians crucify a child in Slovyansk so they could cut him up in front of his mother before keel-hauling her on a tank” one. I mean, the cameraman had to be trying not to ruin the take by cracking up on that one. If you’re going to go that ridiculous, why not just outright say “they all eat Russian babies for dessert!” and get it over with?
I think when the smoke dies down, we are going to hear about a LOT of things, from both sides. It is a civil war, after all. In a country that was very violent long before this ever began.