The website of Russia’s Foreign Ministry has a new section – one devoted to refuting items about Russia in the Western press that it claims are false.

The new section, titled “Examples of publications printing false information about Russia,” provides links to the allegedly false articles. In addition to a link, each item includes a brief Russian-language description of the article, along with a superimposed red stamp reading “FAKE” and the claim that the article contains “information that is untrue.”



Thus far, the ministry has cited five articles, published by the websites of NBC News, Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, The New York Times, Bloomberg and the Santa Monica Observer, a California newspaper.

Among them:

The NBC News item, posted on February 11,reported that Russia is considering returning to the U.S. former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who stole large quantities of classified information and is now living in Moscow, to “curry favor” with the Trump administration.

The Santa Monica Observer article, published on Monday, concerned the death in New York on Monday of Russia’s U.N. ambassador, and was headlined: “Vitaly Churkin is 5th Suspicious Death of Russian Diplomat in 3 months.” The ministry’s item on the Santa Monica Observer article is slugged “On insinuations about the causes of death of Russian diplomats”

Russia's Foreign Ministry provides no information to back up its allegations the stories are false.

This article contains material from VOA’s Russian Service.