As I’ve said many times before, commenting on the developments in Donbas and other hot spots, if Russian journalists arrive in your locality, expect provocations. And now a whole landing team of Russian propagandists has been deployed in Donbas. Their arrival was accompanied with intensified shelling of Ukrainian defense positions and civilian neighborhoods in the government-controlled territory.
At the same time, false flag strikes are being observed in the occupied areas, to accuse Ukraine. One of the first fake reports on this topic was published by someone who has for years been engaged in such bloody journalism – Semyon Pegov.
So, this morning, at 7:34 local time, Pegov posted a video of what he claimed was a shelling in the area of Donetsk airport by the Ukrainian military.
As early as 8:09, Pegov posted an update, reporting directly from the site, showing the aftermath of the “Ukrainian attack” and a tail part of the exploded mine. Moreover, the so-called war correspondent could not even explain of what caliber the mine was. So much for professionalism in war reporting… But, that’s not even the point.
The fact is that Pegov in his report inadvertently exposed himself and the entire staged act of “shelling.”
When the video was initially uploaded, showing the “shelling” and the ensuing explosion, I immediately had doubts that this was an blast from a mortar strike. The shape of the explosion and even the sound wave are not natural, say, for a 120 mm mine blast. But, nevertheless, I decided to wait it out, and I was right in doing so, it turned out.
When Pegov delivered his report “from the scene” just half an hour since the blast occurred, what caught my eye was an electric pole, allegedly damaged by a mine. And it was this pole that exposed Pegov’s hoax.
The thing is that the pole was damaged in a way showing that the explosive device had been planted right on it. This assumption is further backed by the traces of the explosion wave seen around the pole.
So the scenario was something along these lines: some local resident is driving down the street somewhere in Donetsk and, in a certain spot on his route, an earlier planted IED is set off. So here comes a great plot for the report: “Ukraine’s insidious army is shelling Donetsk!”
However, fake reports by Russian journalists are traditionally as lame as their performers.
Let me remind you that a pool of blood-thirsty journalists from Russia, including Alexander Kots, Dmitry Steshin, Semyon Pegov, Daria Aslamova, and many others, since 2014 have taken part in a wide range of acts of sabotage “just for the camera”, while civilians were actually killed for this sake. They were, are, and will be accomplices in war crimes and remain war criminals themselves.
The latest report by Semyon Pegov has confirmed this assumption once again. In order to stage a fake story, in order to accuse and discredit the Armed Forces of Ukraine, they set off explosives in the residential neighborhood, without thinking about the fact that someone may get hurt or even killed.
So this is the true face of Russian “war journalism.”