Russian State Media Claims Ukraine Shot Down its Own Plane Over Kyiv, Chooses Serene Picture of Cranes as ‘Photo of the Week’

As Vladimir Putin continued his deadly invasion of Ukraine on Friday, the Russian media was working overtime in its war on fact-based news.

While misinformation and disinformation campaigns make parsing out exactly what is happening on the ground in Ukraine difficult, Russian state media was spinning a narrative that was easily debunked by simply turning on the television and seeing the images coming out of the country.

As Insider’s Kieran Corcoran notes, Russian state media “had a common theme: Russia is winning, Ukraine is planning atrocities, and there are no Russian attacks on Kyiv.”

Reuters, which posts news bulletins from around the world including Russian state media, sent out an alert on Friday:

Russia denied carrying out missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Friday, Russian news agencies cited a defence ministry source as saying, after Ukraine accused Moscow of attacking residential areas.

The same source told Russian media that the aircraft downed over Kyiv on Friday morning was a Ukrainian fighter jet hit by friendly fire.

The rest of the world’s media, however, reported “Pre-dawn explosions rocked Kyiv, and gunfire was reported in parts of the city, while Ukraine’s military said a group of Russian spies and saboteurs was seen on the capital’s outskirts.”

Air raid sirens and missile strikes in and around Kyiv have sent tens of thousands into bomb shelters and underground metro stations in the past few days, events which have been well documented on cable news and social media.

As far as what caused the massive explosion over Kyiv in the pre-dawn hours of Friday, which resulted in plane debris landing on a high-rise apartment building and setting it on fire, Ukrainian officials are claiming they shot down a Russian plane.

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry says Kyiv’s air defenses have downed a Russian aircraft. Here’s a collection of videos showing a massive explosion with debris raining over apartment high-rises on the left bank of the Dnieper River. pic.twitter.com/Ub3LdzdTh0

— Alejandro Alvarez (@aletweetsnews) February 25, 2022

Russia’s state-controlled wire service, TASS, published the story in English as “Ukraine’s fighter was attacked by Ukrainian air defense over Kyiv by mistake — source.”

Meanwhile, Russia’s “private,” but highly regulated wire service Interfax published its weekly “Best photos of the week” and chose to skip over any coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and instead highlighted “Black-throated cranes in the National Nature Reserve in China.”

Interestingly the credit on the Interfax’s photo of the week was from “Zuma/TASS.”

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