The most-read item on RIA Novosti in Russia on Monday was not a report of an event. It was a report of something a foreign journalist said.
RIA carried remarks it attributed to Ibrahim Nabar, a correspondent for the German broadcaster Welt who is based in Kyiv. In the passage RIA quoted, he says Ukraine's air force has stopped publishing its tally of which incoming missiles were shot down and which were not, and gives a reason: that the figures had begun to look catastrophic and were frightening people. He is further quoted saying that many Ukrainians are worn down by not knowing, and that the fastest Russian missiles in particular unsettle them.
Two things are worth separating here. The first is what was said, which is a matter of record only inside RIA's own report — we have not seen the Welt broadcast and cannot confirm the wording or the context in which it was given. The second is that this, rather than any battlefield report, is what Russian readers opened most on Monday.
The item sits in a run of similar pieces on the same front page: a note that American commentary has described the missile strikes as a threat to Ukraine's government, and a separate item on European reaction to remarks by Dmitry Medvedev.
Why it is on the board
It was the most-read story on RIA Novosti in Russia. We are showing it because it was read, not because we can confirm it. A story built on a single quoted remark, carried by a state news agency and about the other side's morale, is a different object from a report of something that happened — and the difference is the point of putting it here.
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