An eyewitness, whom Reuters cites as saying he saw evidence of a surface-to-air missile launched from rebel-held territory on the day MH17 was downed, told RT the news agency gave a false report of his interview.<\/p>\n
As a part of a March report on the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 tragedy Reuters talked to Pyotr Fedotov, a 58-year-old resident of the village Chervonniy Zhovten in the Lugansk Region of eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen interviewed by Reuters, Fedotov, the witness who described the ‘wiggling’ rocket, at first said on camera that it was fired from territory held by the Ukrainian army. Later, off camera, he said it was launched from a nearby rebel area. Asked why he had originally said the opposite, he said it was because he was afraid of the rebels,” the news agency said.<\/p>\n
RT contacted Fedotov who, after some persuasion, agreed to be filmed. He told RT that Reuters correspondent Anton Zverev was “less than accurate” with Fedotov’s testimony.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we talked about the Boeing on camera, I explained everything as it was. The things that I allegedly said off-camera were just made up by the journalist. It’s all lies. Off-camera, we never discussed the Boeing,\u201d Fedotov told RT.<\/p>\n
He added that the Reuters journalist contacted him after taking the interview, but never showed him a draft of the article. Instead he was asking whether Fedotov had got into trouble for speaking to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe journalist called me and asked if I was in trouble. I was really surprised. Why would I be in trouble if I told the truth? And then my friends told me in the article I was saying different things when the cameras were on and off. That’s when I understood why he was asking if I was in trouble,\u201d the witness explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it’s mere fantasy from the journalist or maybe he was doing it for his own benefit,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
RT\u2019s request to Reuters for comments on the controversy and raw footage of Fedotov\u2019s interview was not replied to as of publication of this article.<\/p>\n
Earlier in March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov condemned the Reuters report of witnesses\u2019 statements, saying it “looked like a stovepiping.” The top diplomat also then said that questions posed by Russia\u2019s officials remained unanswered, saying there have been no promised images from American satellites or recordings of Ukrainian air traffic controllers\u2019 communications with the plane.<\/p>\n
The Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner was downed over eastern Ukraine on July 17 last year, killing 298 people on board. <\/p>\n
Earlier Ukrainian media falsely claimed that Dutch investigators concluded that MH17 had been shot down by the rebels with a Buk missile, citing a report in the Dutch media that outlined the popular theory, but didn\u2019t claim it to be proven. Dutch prosecutors told RT at the time that the investigation had not been concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An eyewitness, whom Reuters cites as saying he saw evidence of a surface-to-air missile launched from rebel-held territory on the day MH17 was downed, told RT the news agency gave a false report of his interview. As a part of a March report on the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 tragedy Reuters talked to Pyotr Fedotov, … Continue reading “Reuters published false report on MH17 says eyewitness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[11340,9491,11341,7484],"class_list":["post-18267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-eyewitness","tag-mh17","tag-reuters","tag-ukraine"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18268,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18267\/revisions\/18268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}