Child's Crucifixion Appears to Have Been a Lie

Viewers of Russian state TV recently learned about a 3-year-old boy nailed to a board by Ukrainian officials in front of his mother; it was "just like Jesus," the report said. Afterward, the mother, who was said to have committed a crime, was reportedly dragged around a central square in Slovyansk behind a tank. It's a story that would shock any viewer, but the thing is: There's no indication that it actually happened, Russian opposition leaders say, per the Daily Beast. They suggest the story was made up to stir anti-Ukraine sentiment.

Russia's most popular TV station cited just one witness, and opposition figure Boris Nemtsov is calling the story "dangerously false." A Wall Street Journal reporter did some investigating of his own: "I spoke with dozens of people, but strangely, none of them mentioned anything about the crucifixion of a 3-year-old boy," Alan Cullison noted, according to the Moscow Times. A Russian journalist's video comes to a similar conclusion, the Times reports. But "on seeing the horrors of such inhuman torture, an ordinary viewer would have only one intention: to join the volunteer forces and ‘seek revenge against the Ukrainian fascists,'" Nemtsov posted on Facebook. (More Russia stories.)