Berlin: The emails from Russia were pretty straightforward: The government in Kiev was to be referred to as fascist and compared to puppet dictatorships whenever possible. News reports were to mention as often as possible that the puppet master was the United States.

For good measure, the Russian advisers even insisted that media handlers in the so-called "People's Republic of Donetsk" provide a daily count of how many stories featured the phrase "It's worse in Ukraine."

The leaked emails, which were acquired and are being reported on by the German magazine Die Zeit and Germany's public television broadcaster, ZDF, provide hard evidence of how closely involved Russia is in the separatist movement at the heart of Ukraine's so-called civil war, which has taken almost 10,000 lives since 2014. That runs counter to the narrative promoted by Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials.

The emails, sent to the Donetsk and Luhansk information ministries - the two oblasts, or provinces, and main cities in the Ukrainian region known as Donbas - include instructions to the separatists to insist in local news reports and statements to foreign reporters that Ukraine downed Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 in March 2014, killing 298 people. A report this week by an international team of prosecutors said the missile that struck the aircraft was a Russian BUK that had been brought into Ukraine from Russia in the hours before it was fired and that its launcher had returned to Russia afterward. Russia said the report was "politically motivated."