Investigative journalists from the Russian news outlets
Novaya Gazeta and
TV Rain who visited Sloviansk did not find any supporting evidence to back up the allegations, nor did they find any audio or video footage of the incident which was unusual as actions of the Ukrainian army in the city were well documented at the time.
BBC News pointed out that there is no "Lenin Square" in Sloviansk, although there is an "October Revolution Square". The incident was later widely used as an example of
disinformation or
fake news that "became the standard" for modern Russian
mass media. In Russian mass culture, the episodethis "good piece of
propaganda"became "synonymous for journalist fakes." The spread of the news about the "crucified boy" was later used for
statistical analysis of the expansion of fake information in modern
social networks and
search engines.
Galina Timchenko, the former editor of Russian news portal "
Lenta.ru", said that it was a gross breach of professional ethics by the leading Russian television channels. Russian opposition leader
Alexei Navalny called
Channel One Russia "nuts" for airing the report. The story was officially retracted by Channel One, which was the first to air it, on 21 December 2014, saying they had merely relayed a purported eyewitness report. When Elena Racheva asked Russians returning from the
Luhansk People's Republic in 2015 why they had gone to the Donbas, some volunteers explicitly cited the crucifixion story. In 2021 Russian journalist Masha Borzunova found Pyshnyak who was living in Russia and admitted she "regrets" fabricating the story. A similar story was distributed in April 2021 when Russian media widely reported that a Ukrainian
UAV killed a boy in
Oleksandrivsk village. Investigative journalists determined that the child had actually died as a result of the explosion of a
land mine stored unsafely in a village resident's garage. The UAV narrative was invented by the press service of the
Donetsk People's Republic. == See also ==