Ukraine Unspun

Backers of pro-Russian separatists have recently accused Ukraine's armed forces of using powerful ballistic missiles against civilian populations in eastern Ukraine.

But Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) says it can prove that a report on a TV station run by Russia's Defense Ministry, which claimed to show a Tochka-U missile strike, was actually old footage of a failed Russian Proton-M satellite launch in Kazakhstan.

The August 20 report on Zvezda, the Russian channel, shows footage it claims was shot in eastern Ukraine.

"The Ukrainian Army struck Makiyivka with a Tochka-U rocket," causing "destruction to the city," says the TV host as video of a flying object falling and exploding just beyond a high-rise plays in the background.

In the video, the force of the explosion is so powerful that the windows in the apartment of the person filming shatter shortly after impact.

But the NSDC has produced a video rebuttal, which it says shows clearly that the Zvezda material is actually taken from the failed July 2013 launch in Kazakhstan of a $200 million Russian Proton-M rocket.

Comparing it with user-generated video of the 2013 crash, the NSDC highlights both the trajectory and the outline of the cloud of smoke following the explosion, proving, it says, that the events are the same.

While RFE/RL cannot independently confirm the NSDC video, Zvezda has taken a photo of the explosion off its website and Russia's state-run RT television channel, which frequently carries content favorable to pro-Russian separatists, itself says the video is of the Proton-M rocket failure.

-- RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, with contribution by Glenn Kates

What do Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and parliament speaker Oleksandr Turchynov have in common with members of a satanic religious sect based in central Ukraine?

They are all part of a broad movement to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church, according to Russia's leading state-run broadcaster.

The August 17 report on Rossia 24 begins with news that a devil-worshipping religious sect has received permission from local authorities to build a church, focusing on footage of a lamb that is apparently about to be slaughtered in a ritual sacrifice.

But to reporter Nikolai Sokolov, the wooly ruminant is only the furriest of the many potential victims of the new pro-European Ukraine, which, he says, "is now an ideal laboratory for [religious] sects."

And the trouble, he says, starts at the top.

"Where Kyiv Rus was born the Russian Orthodox Church is losing numbers," he says, referring to the medieval Slavic state that laid the Orthodox foundations for modern-day Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. "Many politicians are of different religions. Oleksandr Turchynov, for instance, combines his activities in the parliament with meetings of Baptists. To them he isn't just a parishioner, but a spiritual teacher."

There are an estimated 100 million Baptist community members worldwide, but they make up less than 1 percent of Ukraine's population.

But Turchynov is not the only non-Orthodox believer in power, says Sokolov.

Yatsenyuk is something that may be even worse: "a follower of Scientology," the controversial religious group that Russia has refused to recognize.

Except he's not. Despite popular online rumors that he is either a Scientologist or Jewish, Yatsenyuk identifies himself as a Ukrainian Greek Catholic -- a church that makes up 14 percent of Ukraine's population.

But perhaps for the purposes of the report it's a difference without a distinction.

Russian officials and media figures opposed to the government in Kyiv have frequently padded their rhetoric with nationalistic calls to protect ethnic Russians and their Russian Orthodox beliefs, wherever threats may arise.

And some actions by pro-Russian separatists appear to be at least indirectly tied to these religious calls.

In June, a group of local residents and armed Russian Cossacks in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in March, ransacked a Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

And earlier this summer, four leaders of a Protestant church in Slovyansk -- then controlled by separatists -- were kidnapped from a service and killed some 16 hours later.

-- Anna Shamanska with contributions from Glenn Kates