How Russia became obsessed with fake news

On 1 July, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, known as the ‘Butcher of Mariupol’, delivered a statement about recent attacks on apartment blocks in Odesa. In a familiar tone of Soviet bureaucratese, he read aloud: ‘To implement the provocation across 26–28 June, twenty foreign mass-media representatives, as well as employees of the international organisation UNICEF, were brought to Odessa [to watch] a mock attack, planned by the military administration of the
Odessa region, on a social facility where a crowd of up to 30 anti-Russian activists had been prepared in advance to act as victims and casualties. Each participant in the staged scenes was paid $100 in advance and they also received a cash reward of $500 after the videos were filmed.’37 This is just one small example. It did not make headlines in Western media and it certainly is not the most bizarre or exciting claim of false flags but these everyday types of distortion set a scene where everything is a bit mad, so you stop noticing the general insanity all around you.