A man watches the Russian news channel ‘Russia 24’ (Rossiya 24) at a pro-Russian protesters’ camp near the office of the SBU (Ukrainian Security Service) in Luhansk.

AFP

Moscow

Russian state television has blamed a technical error for its airing of footage of an Islamist insurgent shot dead by security forces in 2012 in a report on killings of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

“Every day peaceful citizens continue to die,” said the voiceover on Rossiya 1 television on Friday, showing video footage of a body lying on the ground surrounded by heavily armed troops.

The voiceover said the grim footage was filmed during a deadly standoff between pro-Russian rebels and pro-Kiev forces in the rebel stronghold of Sloviansk (also spelled Slaviansk and Slavyansk).

But the presenter later acknowledged that it actually showed a North Caucasus fighter shot dead by Russian forces in a security operation in 2012.

The embarrassing revelation came as state television pulls out every stop to give Moscow’s line on the Ukraine crisis, while accusing Western media of deliberately smearing Russia.

The television report on Rossiya 1 claimed the footage showed a man shot dead by the National Guard volunteer forces in Ukraine.

“Not far from Sloviansk, the National Guard shot a man. They left the weapon beside the body, demonstrating that they shot an enemy,” the voiceover said.

But the footage was traced back to November 2012, when Rossiya 24 television aired it in a report on a security operation in Kabardino-Balkaria in Russia’s North Caucasus.

The show’s presenter Ernest Matskyavichyus wrote on Facebook that the editors had taken the video from the Internet.

“As it turned out later, the fragment used came from events in 2012 in Kabardino-Balkaria. Discovering the error, we immediately removed the video,” he wrote.

Matskyavichyus was one of 300 journalists to receive an award from President Vladimir Putin in May for their “objective coverage of events in Crimea”.

A powerful executive within the state media group, Dmitry Kiselyov, stressed there was no intention to deceive viewers.

“There was a mistake made in this report but mistakes are possible. Everyone under the sun is guilty of this,” Kiselyov told the Slon.ru website, calling it “a mistake but absolutely not manipulation”.

“It could have been a computer error or the young nymphs we have as editors wrongly took something from somewhere,” said Kiselyov, who was placed on the US sanctions blacklist for backing Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

The channel’s press service refused to comment. A member of staff who asked to remain anonymous told AFP he believed the video had been deliberately posted on the Internet “as a provocation”.