Ukraine's information war

The first casualty of war is said to be truth, and this certainly seems to be the case in Ukraine. With government and separatists fighting an information war, unbiased reporting is extremely hard to come by.

In the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk shards of metal lie scattered around the park. Rebel leader Vasily Nikitin and a journalist are staring at the ground, examining them. The shards were found right beside a blood-stained car, says Nikitin. For him, that's evidence that the Ukrainian army is deploying cluster bombs in its war against the separatists. Eight men were killed, he says.

The national television channels report a different version of events. They say that the separatists fired a rocket at a Ukrainian plane and accidentally hit the regional administrative building - which was in rebel hands. So: an accident.

Rodion Miroshnik, a journalist in Luhansk who has reported for the regional channel Luhansk Oblast TV for 25 years, says that's pure propaganda. "It was a lie!" he says, outraged. "But that's normal in Ukraine these days."

t has certainly become very difficult to obtain definitive information in this conflict. The biggest news broadcaster, 5 Kanal TV, belongs to the billionaire Petro Poroshenko, who was recently elected president. Other national broadcasters are also in private hands.

Miroshnik says that the reporting on many of these channels is biased, complaining that the rebels are never given a voice. He also says that his bosses in Kyiv try to influence reporting. "They tell us how we're supposed to report on events in Ukraine," he says. "We have to call the fighters in our area 'separatists' or 'terrorists.' Not 'freedom fighters.'"

http://www.dw.de/ukraines-information-war/a-17700203