Russian TV Propagandist Caught Playing Three Different Roles

Unfortunately for Russia, some of its attempts to sway the public are embarrassingly transparent, Paul Roderick Gregory writes for Forbes.

Three Russian TV channels have featured hospital-side interviews with a Russian man who had a bandaged nose and insisted he was attacked by extremists in the eastern Ukrainian city of Nikolayev. However, in each interview the man, calling himself Nikolai Petkov, said he had suffered different injuries and had a different background story.

In an interview on Rossia 1 national news, Petkov described himself as an ordinary citizen of Ukraine peacefully protesting against the new Ukrainian government when he was wounded by ultra-nationalists working in conjunction with Ukrainian police.

In an interview on NTV national news, Petkov claimed to be a German spy working with a team of European mercenaries against both civilian protestors in eastern Ukraine and neo-Nazis from Kiev. In this version, Petkov was shot in the leg and nose by Ukrainian extremists.

In a third interview with the National Independent News of Crimea, Petkov insisted he was a doctor taking part in the protests against the new Ukrainian government. Neo-Nazis supposedly fired on the protestors, and Petkov was hit in the leg and nose while trying to tend to the injured.

This is the latest example of Russian propaganda in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine. Last week, Russia's Foreign Ministry warned Russians against going abroad due to the risk that they might be snatched up by the American intelligence officers.