On August 9, the Television Service of News (TSN), part of Ukraine’s television channel 1+1, falsely reported that the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) of the OSCE had confirmed that pro-Russian militants had used phosphorus bombs against Ukrainian forces.
This news was reposted by other Ukrainian media, such as Censor.net, Depo, VolynPost, and Rakhivnews.
However, the SMM report, dated August 4, only stated: “The SMM visited Ukrainian Armed Forces positions around Stanytsia Luhanska, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces commander told the SMM that their position had been shelled by 152mm artillery on 2 August between 22:10 and 00:10hrs and two soldiers had been killed. He added that some of the projectiles carried chemical burning substances.”
On August 6, the Deputy Chief of the OSCE mission, Alexander Hug, told a briefing: “We have not been able to identify the exact type of weapon used. Should we find out what weapon has been used, we will report about it publicly.”
