Russian propaganda fabricates fake story about British journalists illegally crossing border into Russia to justify attack on them in Kramatorsk

On the night of August 25, 2024, Russian troops launched a missile attack on a hotel in Kramatorsk where foreign journalists were staying. The attack killed Ryan Evans, a member of the Reuters team, and injured several other journalists.

The international human rights organization Reporters Without Borders believes that the Russian attack on Kramatorsk was specifically aimed at journalists and is preparing a lawsuit. Russian government officials traditionally deny such allegations. In particular, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not give a direct answer to the question of whether Moscow had deliberately attacked the hotel in Kramatorsk. However, he said that Russia had allegedly attacked “only military infrastructure” or objects that are “in some way connected with military infrastructure.”

However, as is often the case, military propaganda speaks for Russia, not the official spokespersons. One of the largest z-Telegram channels posted that Evans and his colleagues, who were in the hotel in Kramatorsk at the time of the attack, allegedly illegally crossed the Russian border and were on Russian territory in violation of Russian law. According to Russian intelligence, the media representatives did this to film a report in the Kursk region, which is under the control of the Ukrainian armed forces. That is why they became the target of an attack in the hotel in Kramatorsk. This disinformation was then picked up by other z-military bloggers and Russian media.

This is a fake. Neither Evans nor Reuters journalists Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey and Daniel Peleschuk, who were injured in the Russian attack on the hotel in Kramatorsk, crossed the Ukrainian-Russian border in the Kursk region, nor reported from Sudzha or its surroundings. And Reuters journalists did not do that either. There are no videos with reports from the Kursk region on the British agency's official website and social media platforms.

There were indeed reports by Ukrainian and foreign journalists from the area of ​​Kursk region controlled by the Ukrainian armed forces. In particular, these were journalists from Ukrinform, 1+1, Hromadske, CNN, Washington Post and RAI. The Russian FSB has initiated criminal proceedings against some of these media's correspondents under Article 322 of the Russian Criminal Code. However, there were no Reuters journalists among them, and certainly not the agency's late security adviser Ryan Evans.

This is not the first targeted attack by the Russian army on foreign journalists, stresses Reporters Without Borders. “One thing is certain: since the beginning of the war, the Russian army has been deliberately attacking journalists and their teams to prevent them from reporting, in violation of international law,” said Jeanne Cavelier, head of RSF's Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, in a comment to Radio Liberty.

Currently, a preliminary investigation is underway under the procedural supervision of the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor's Office in the framework of a criminal case on violation of the laws and customs of war (Part 2 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called on the world to condemn the Russian attack on the hotel in Kramatorsk where foreign journalists were staying. According to the Foreign Ministry spokesman, “targeted attacks on media have become a systematic war tactic of Russia.”

According to the Institute of Mass Information, in the two years and six months since the start of the large-scale invasion, Russia has committed 620 crimes against journalists and media workers in Ukraine. Since the large-scale Russian aggression, as of August 24, 84 media workers have been killed in Ukraine; 10 of them were killed while performing journalistic duties.

In this way, Russia continues to use its propaganda and fake news to put pressure on the work of independent journalists covering Russian aggression against Ukraine. Unable to influence the situation on the battlefield in the Kursk region and protect its own citizens, Russia is trying to present a different version of events with the help of its propagandists in the information space.

To achieve this, the enemy fabricates fakes about the “huge losses” of the Ukrainian armed forces in the Kursk region, passing off old photos and videos or those taken in other areas as events in the Kursk region. Another example of Russian propaganda is the “justification” for the murder of a Reuters employee.

Andriy Olenin