On June 2, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti published news under the headline “FT: The Appointment of Saakashvili Is the Beginning of Problems for Poroshenko.” It was making reference to a Financial Times blog. Yet the RIA Novosti piece omitted negative references to Russia and contained translations that were badly distorted.
For example, “Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass region” was translated as “ополченцы Донбасса,” or “Donbas militia men.”
The RIA Novosti article concludes with text from the middle of the blog, which in the original reads: “One should also keep in mind the strategic importance of the Odessa region, located between Crimea – annexed last year by Russia – and the Russian-supported region of Transnistria in Moldova.”
The Russian agency, however, reproduced the sentence as: “[The blog’s author] also points out the strategic importance of the Odessa region, located between Crimea that passed to Russia after the referendum in 2014 and Moldovan Transnistrian Republic.”
