Russia's Child Crucifixion Lie

The scene described on Russian state TV was gruesome: a small boy nailed to a board in eastern Ukraine for a crime his mother committed.

The details were horrifying. Ukrainian officials had nailed a 3-year-old, clad in just his underwear, to a wooden board “just like Jesus,” right before his mother’s eyes, according to Russian state television. Then, said Galina Pyshniak, Channel One’s sole witness and a pro-Russian refugee, the military in Slovyansk had grabbed the mother, tied her to a tank, and dragged her three times around the city’s central Lenin Square. “The Ukrainian army are not liberators—they’re bastards,” she said.

The headline was misleading. The story didn’t offer proof it was a lie like in Rathergate. It just said there was a witness who said it was true, but that they weren’t credible because they were pro opposition. The anti separatists told us so. For me, I see no reason that the word of a Kiev Ukrainian is any more believable. Both sides are propaganda fire hoses.

“Russian media are worse liars than ours. Ours imbellish and spin. Theirs just make up things whole cloth.”

You can’t be serious; thousands upon thousands of dead Iraqis would disagree. I don’t know what will eventually happen in Ukraine, but we’ve done much worse on fabricated nonsense. Has the Ukrainian situation even reached the death toll of our bombing of Serbia to divert attentions from BJ Clinton’s sexcapades?

Russian state TV pulled the story once it was outed as an outrageous hoax. The “witness” wasn’t even from the area, no evidence was found, etc. Either it happened or it didn’t. It didn’t.

That’s the pattern with these whopper Russian agitprop lies. They did same with the “Air Traffic Controller” Put the lies out and if they don’t stick just throw them down the memory hole.

Ok, so where does the burden of proof lie? The side that makes an outrages claim, or the side that is forced to defend against it? Imagine if someone accuses you (just an example) of rape. Details are added to invoke a strong emotional response - you invited a group of your buddies and took turns raping her for 5 days.

Any chance of you being left unscathed? HELL NO. Even if you’re found innocent, there’s a stigma of just being accused.

The fact that you’re entertaining this lie means Russians won. The Russian “journalist” talks with a wife of a separatist leader who’s got a sick imagination. There are no witnesses, not even rumours of the event in this city. There won’t be a followup to this story, but that’s ok, the damage (to demonize Ukrainians) has already been done. Even if they retract the story, it’s already too late, they would need to reach every single viewer who watched that story and tell them their story was BS. This is psych war 101.

There could be some value in the information Russians put out, but it always has to be confirmed by someone else. Advise is, take note of their info, but make decisions as if that info is not there.

Your last statement,”everybody lies” - that’s just a cop out. Russians manufacturing an atrocity is morally equivalent to Ukrainians lying about what? (I don’t know. I remember seeing a claim that Ukrainians were exaggerating the numbers at the protests in December - I’ll give you a picture and we can count how many tens, or hundreds of thousands of people are in that picture)

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