Just some two days after Russian war criminal Igor Girkin gave an interview to an odious Ukrainian host Dmitry Gordon, the so-called former "defense minister of of the 'DPR'" also appeared on the pages of a far more respectable The Times in an interview taken by Marc Bennetts.
In that interview, Girkin admitted "moral responsibility" for the downed passenger jet flight MH17 because at that time he commanded what he called "militias", at the same time stressing that the illegal armed groups of the "DPR" had nothing to do with the plane crash.
So what we have is a former terrorist leader, who once played a key role in the occupation of parts of Ukraine, is now claiming innocence on the pages of the publication whose site has tens of millions of unique visits…
Of course, many average Ukrainians, tending to trust any western media outlet unconditionally, might get goosebumps from this piece. After all, The Times isn't some Gordon-style YouTube stunt, so what's written on their site is perceived as narratives of a completely different level, tailored for a completely different audience.
However, over the six years of the Ukraine war, I've grown accustomed to seeing that Western journalism is not much different from Ukrainian. Many outlets are overseen by certain political forces or business elites, and many journalists tend to confuse their craft with that trading in Amsterdam's Red Light District. And if we talk about Mr. Bennetts, who interviewed Girkin immediately after Ukraine's Gordon, we'll see that there are more questions to this journo than clear trust.
For example, it was this guy who was directly involved in spinning a fake piece about the "Islamic State" militants allegedly fighting in the ranks of the Ukraine Army. At that time, it was one of Russian propaganda's favorite boogeyman story, usually headlined as "Ukraine is a transit base for IS terrorists ", "Ukraine supplies terrorists for IS", "IS terrorists are fighting in Ukraine's Armed Forces"… These narratives have dwelled on Russian "news" sites for years.
I wrote a plethora of articles, highlighting this lie so I'm familiar with the subject like no other. And just as well am I aware of almost every media figure who partook in channeling those narratives – in Russia and beyond. Marc Bennetts was one of those journalists who pioneered the issue.
His piece published in 2018 was dedicated to a certain "Chechen battalion" based just outside a strategic Ukrainian port city of
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