Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted a message on Facebook on Friday, deploring what officials called Russian efforts to “mislead the world” by spreading conspiracy theories about Ukrainian responsibility for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

That effort, the officials in Kiev said, began with the deleting of a rebel commander’s post on the Russian social network VK, in which he had boasted, on Thursday, that the separatists had shot down a Ukrainian military plane. Then, the officials said, “a fabricated screenshot was published on the social network as if the Ukrainian authorities were acknowledging their involvement in shooting down the plane. The post was written in poor Ukrainian, with many mistakes and Russisms.”

Later on Thursday, as foreign correspondents in Moscow noted, state-controlled Russian television helped spread a number of conspiracy theories.

Wow, Rossiya 24 really outdoing itself: Kiev deployed Buk missiles, warned would shoot planes, Gritsenko threatened to kill Putin, etc, etc — Alec Luhn (@ASLuhn) 18 Jul 14

The main theories, the Ukrainian diplomats said, were:

1. Media reported about people who had presumably noticed a combat Ukrainian jet before the crash. Russian media shared actively the Tweet of a fake Spanish air traffic control officer who argued he saw Ukrainian military jets near Boeing-777 just before its crash. The post was later deleted along with author’s account. 2. Having failed on this version, the Russian propaganda then stated that the crash was mistakenly caused by a Ukrainian missile or Ukrainian defense missile system. Russian sources made a conclusion that airplane of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, IL 96-300, was the target of the missile. They tried to defend their argument by claiming that the shape and paint coating of both planes are similar. The fact that it was impossible to distinguish colors at an altitude of 10 kilometers was deliberately left beyond consideration. 3. Simultaneously, media started to claim that Donbass terrorists did not possess weapons which would allow them to hit targets at an altitude of 10 kilometers. Though, few days ago the very same Russian media vigorously disseminated information about fighters in Eastern Ukraine, having seized the “Buk” missile system at their disposal. The origin of this weapon can be Russian only as according to Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, no missile systems have been stolen from the Ukrainian army by the terrorists.

Nikolaus von Twickel, a Moscow correspondent for the German press agency DPA, reported that “Russian state television on Friday reminded viewers that the Ukrainian military had shot down a civilian jet by mistake before,” in a 2001 accident.

To gauge the success of those efforts to influence public opinion, Tom Balmforth, a journalist at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — a news network financed by the United States government — asked Moscow residents about the crash on Friday. While some Muscovites suggested that the Ukrainian government had staged the “provocation,” others called Russian television an unreliable source of information.

Russia Today, the Kremlin-owned satellite news network set up to report events from the Russian government’s perspective, presented the downing of the plane as a puzzling mystery, while criticizing some Western publications — an odd assortment, including the websites Bustle, Foxtrot Alpha and The International Business Times, as well as The Sun, a British tabloid — for supposedly leaping to the unfounded conclusion that rebels backed by Moscow were to blame.

Apparently distressed by the coverage of the downed plane, one of Russia Today’s reporters, Sara Firth, quit in protest on Friday. She later told Buzzfeed: “I couldn’t do it anymore. Every single day we’re lying and finding sexier ways to do it.”

I resigned from RT today. I have huge respect for many in the team, but I’m for the truth. //t.co/mZ1g0R7N0D — Sara Firth (@Sara__Firth) 18 Jul 14

In a statement responding to Ms. Firth’s resignation, a spokeswoman for RT said: “Sara has declared that she chooses the truth. Apparently, we have different definitions of truth.”

The resignation did not entirely convince some of the network’s critics.

am suspicious of journalists who resign ostentatiously from @RT_com. Surely it doesnt take 5 years to understand you are working for liars? — Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) 18 Jul 14

Can’t understand happiness that few journalists have resigned.where were their minds and eyes while they were spreading lies before? — Kateryna_Kruk (@Kateryna_Kruk) 18 Jul 14