"Zvezda" journalist admitted he was creating false stories on editors’ orders

Yevhen Davydov, a journalist of the Russian TV channel «Zvezda», who was detained in Ukraine, during the interrogation in the Security Service of Ukraine admitted that in his news story broadcast by the «Zvezda» channel he reported about phosphorus bombs in Sloviansk (Donetska oblast), although he was not there and did not see such bombs. The video of this interrogation was published on YouTube.

Davydov together with his colleague from the «Zvezda» channel, Nikita Konashenkov have been working in Ukraine for a month now; they began in Kyiv and then went to Donbas.

According to Davydov, his editors were telling him what to report in his news stories; he also acknowledged there were no  phosphorus bombs in Sloviansk. Davydov also added that they were forbidden to mention that there were a lot of Russian mercenaries, so in their news stories they say that in Donbas there are a lot of supporters of Donetsk People’s Republic from different cities and do not explain that different cities include Russian ones, too.

The journalist admitted that he saw Russian gunmen in the conflict zone and that he talked to them.

To the direct question about false stories, the journalist answered that all instructions on what stories to report and how to cover the events in Ukraine were given to him by the editorial office.

For the context, on June 12, the TV channel «Zvezda» reported that the Ukrainian aviation bombed the village of Semenivka near Sloviansk with phosphorus bombs. The story used the footage from the story about Iraq filmed in 2004.

The employees of the TV channel «Zvezda» correspondent Yevhen Davydov and sound engineer Nikita Konashenkov were detain on June 14 in Dnipropetrovsk. The Russian TV channel Russia Today reported that the Right Sector allegedly demanded a ransom of $ 200 thousand for the journalists. On June 16, they were handed by representatives of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast State Administration to the assistant of the military attaché to the Russian Embassy and banned from Ukraine for three years.