Russia's War Against Ukraine
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Halya Coynash: Russian advance video footage of Slovyansk shootout
The shootout in the early hours of Sunday morning at a militant checkpoint near Bylbasivka on the outskirts of Slovyansk received swift and extensive coverage on Russian television. So swift in fact that the video of the event may have been made in advance. Ukrainska Pravda has posted a screen shot of the video shown on Russian Lifenews and posted on YouTube with this dated April 19, although the channel phoned its correspondent who said that the shootout was at “around 1.30 a.m.” on April 20. The video and report were posted on the Lifenews site at 8.53 a.m. that morning. Such discrepancies are, of course, possible if equipment or a server from a different time zone are used, though why they should be in this case seems unclear.