Information spread in the media that fighters of the Chechen battalion “Akhmat” in Melitopol attacked an NTV journalist and her cameraman. We have checked whether this information is true.
The news about the injured employees of the NTV channel began spread January 30, 2023 in Ukrainian Media and Telegram-channels. According to media reports, in the city of Melitopol, Zaporozhye region, Kadyrov’s men raped a Russian journalist from the NTV channel and beat her cameraman. To Telegram-posts Also attached is a photograph of an appeal allegedly written by the NTV management to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation with a request to investigate the incident. Many Telegram-channels they add that “this topic was prohibited from being covered in the news so as not to “discredit the army.” They are trying to hush it up quietly, but NTV management has already reached the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation.” This news also spread on social networks Facebook, "VKontakte", Instagram, YouTube.
Reports of an attack on an NTV film crew are based on two arguments: photographs of the channel’s statement to the Investigative Committee (IC) and video, which allegedly captured an attack by Kadyrov’s men on the cameraman. The video can be found in some Ukrainian media, for example in “Apostrophe" According to the article, “the video is quickly removed from the Internet” in order to hush up the incident. Another Ukrainian publication, “Dialog.ua”, puts forward the version that among the attackers is Khasan Ibragimov, who, according to the publication, is the nephew of Ramzan Kadyrov (we were unable to find confirmation of this). However, the video circulated by the media has nothing to do with the alleged incident with NTV employees. First of all, it was removed and posted on the Internet a few weeks earlier - December 26, 2022. Secondly, this video captures the beating of a man in Simferopol (and not Melitopol) by Akhmat security forces and a man similar on Khasan Ibragimov. Most likely, it was because of the confusion with the video that many media outlets began bind Ibragimov's name with the NTV incident.
As for the photograph of the TV channel’s statement to the Investigative Committee, we were unable to detect any obvious signs of photo forgery. However, this cannot serve as proof of authenticity, especially in the case of a black and white text document that can be created without the use of graphic editors. Pro-government online agency "Noodles.media" assertsthat there are inconsistencies in the document. For example, the crime was reported by the employer, NTV editor-in-chief Alexandra Kosharnitskaya, and not by the victim; the statement was submitted to the Investigative Committee’s department for interaction with the media, which does not accept reports of crimes, and instead of the standard wording “violent acts of a sexual nature,” the statement reads “violent acts of a sexual nature.” However, as written in the statement itself, “information about this incident was immediately reported to the military commandant’s office and law enforcement agencies of the city of Melitopol. However, employees of JSC NTV Television Company were denied the opportunity to open criminal proceedings and record the circumstances of the crime. This information was also sent to the acting governor of the Zaporozhye region E.V. Balitsky. At this time, no response has been received to our appeal." That is, the Investigative Committee is already the third authority to which NTV allegedly turned.
It is theoretically possible that due to the inaction of law enforcement agencies, the editorial staff of the TV channel decided to act through their own connections in the Investigative Committee - the Media Relations Department - to ask for “assistance in the investigation.” Thus, an atypical addressee of the appeal does not provide complete confidence that the document is fake. But the wording “violent acts of a sexual nature” arouses greater suspicion (wording in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - “violent acts of a sexual nature”). A Google search for such a phrase returned only six results, and none of them appeared in any authoritative source. The NTV statement cited several articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. If it was indeed signed by the editor-in-chief of NTV, then most likely she used the services of lawyers who would hardly have made such a mistake in the wording.
Another argument from pro-government agencies is that Zenkova works in the Ural bureau of NTV and films stories in the cities of the Urals and Western Siberia. This is mostly true, except for the three week business trips Zenkova in Donetsk in July 2014 (military operations in the city began after the arrival of the film crew). And in September 2022, Zenkova released reportage from Turkey. According to the text of the statement to the Investigative Committee, Zenkova and the cameraman were in Melitopol on an editorial assignment and were attacked on January 17, 2023. In January, Zenkova released videos, filmed in Yamal (January 4 and 6), Surgut (January 23), Chelyabinsk (January 30) and Ust-Ilimsk (January 31). We were unable to find either confirmation or refutation that Zenkova was in Melitopol on the day of the incident.
Olga Zenkova, as well as its operator Artyom Epifanov, are members of the Ukrainian “Peacemaker” database, an open database of personal data of people who were in the combat zone in Ukraine or who pose a “threat to the national security of Ukraine.” Apparently, they got there as employees of the Russian state media, and not for their war reporting.
It is worth noting that the NTV channel itself denied reports of an attack on his employees. But Ukrainian media explain this is because they allegedly put pressure on the state channel to hush up the story with the participation of Kadyrov’s men. “Verified” called the telephone number of the “executor” Sergei Prokhorov indicated in the application. The call was answered by a woman who did not comment on whether she knew Sergei Prokhorov or whether she was related to NTV, but she was clearly aware of the story. Perhaps because we were far from the first to call her about this.
The earliest publication of a photograph of a statement to the Investigative Committee that we were able to find appeared in the Ukrainian Telegram channel Top News January 30 at 11:05 (173,000 views on the day of publication). At 11:25, another popular Ukrainian Telegram channel posted the same photo with the hashtag “#nampishut” and its logo “Look for yours”, which writes about captured and killed Russian soldiers in Ukraine (192,000 views). At 12:11 Ukrainian Internet resource “Reviewer” published a photograph with the publication’s logo superimposed and wrote that he “received the document from my own sources.” Not a single Ukrainian source specifies how exactly he or his subscribers got hold of a photograph of NTV’s statement to the Russian Investigative Committee.
Thus, the arguments of both sides raise questions and do not indisputably prove one version or another. We were unable to find either direct confirmation or refutation that on January 17, NTV employees were in Melitopol and were attacked. Nevertheless, the dubiousness of the original source, the inaccuracy of the wording in the published appeal to the Investigative Committee, as well as the release schedule and geography of Olga Zenkova’s stories raise serious doubts about its authenticity. And since the photograph of the document is, in fact, the only argument on which the version of the Ukrainian media is based, there is reason to consider the entire story to be fabricated.
Cover image: Telegram
Most likely not true
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