Then, said Galina Pyshniak, Channel One’s sole witness and a pro-Russian refugee, the military in Slovyansk had grabbed the mother, tied her to a tank, and dragged her three times around the city’s central Lenin Square. Alan Cullison of The Wall Street Journal, who was in Slovyansk the day after the execution was alleged to have taken place, also said he had heard nothing of the sort. Russian journalist Yevgeny Feldman of the opposition-minded Novaya Gazeta newspaper went to the scene of the purported incident in Slovyansk to ask residents whether they'd seen or heard of any such atrocity. “On seeing the horrors of such inhuman torture, an ordinary viewer would have only one intention: to join the volunteer forces and ‘seek revenge against the Ukrainian fascists,’” Nemtsov wrote on his Facebook page.
– Viewers of Russian state TV recently learned about a 3-year-old boy nailed to a board by Ukrainian officials in front of his mother; it was "just like Jesus," the report said. Afterward, the mother, who was said to have committed a crime, was reportedly dragged around a central square in Slovyansk behind a tank. It's a story that would shock any viewer, but the thing is: There's no indication that it actually happened, Russian opposition leaders say, per the Daily Beast. They suggest the story was made up to stir anti-Ukraine sentiment. Russia's most popular TV station cited just one witness, and opposition figure Boris Nemtsov is calling the story "dangerously false." A Wall Street Journal reporter did some investigating of his own: "I spoke with dozens of people, but strangely, none of them mentioned anything about the crucifixion of a 3-year-old boy," Alan Cullison noted, according to the Moscow Times. A Russian journalist's video comes to a similar conclusion, the Times reports. But "on seeing the horrors of such inhuman torture, an ordinary viewer would have only one intention: to join the volunteer forces and ‘seek revenge against the Ukrainian fascists,'" Nemtsov posted on Facebook.