Published: 17.9.2019.

Vladimir Putin had not lost power in Moscow

The party of United Russia, which supports Vladimir Putin, experienced losses in local elections in Moscow, but it did not lose the majority in the city assembly. However, this is not stated in the reports published in local and regional media websites.

On September 9, 2019, the website of TV Hayat published the article with the following headline:

PUTIN IS LEAVING POWER? HE LOST THE ELECTION! (Hayat)

In the article which discusses the local elections in Russia with a special focus on Moscow, mentioning Vladimir Putin, who won another 6-year term in presidential elections in 2018, is pointless. Although neither Putin nor his political party lost the elections, introduction in the article states the opposite. United Russia did lose one-third in the city assembly, but it did not lose the majority.

The Russian ruling party, United Russia, which supports the president Vladimir Putin, had lost about one-third in the Moscow’s parliament, and now it’s questionable who is going to hold power in the Russian capital, Reuters reported.

Although this article calls upon Reuters, in the article titled “Russia's ruling party loses a third of seats in Moscow election after protests”, published by this news agency, there is no doubt on who kept the majority in Moscow’s parliament.

REUTERS: Russia’s ruling party, United Russia, which supports President Vladimir Putin, has lost one-third of its seats in the Moscow city assembly. This has been revealed in the final data published by the Russian news agencies on Monday. However, the party retained its majority in the Moscow assembly following the Sunday’s local elections, and its candidates for regional governors appeared to have won in St. Petersburg and in 15 other parts of the country. (...) The final results have shown that United Russia won 25 out of 45 seats in the Moscow assembly.

The confusion in the article’s introduction reflected on the headlines of other media websites who shared the same news.

PUTIN LOST MOSCOW (Oslobođenje, Buka, ATV)

PUTIN LOST MOSCOW! THE RULING RUSSIAN PARTY LOST ONE-THIRD OF SEATS IN THE MOSCOW ASSEMBLY: Who is going to hold power in the Russian capital! (Kurir)

On September 9, 2019, Tanjug was the first to publish this article in our region. The article did not feature the misleading headline, but it did have an introduction that implies that United Russia had lost the majority in Moscow assembly while rising the question on “who is going to hold the power”.

Putin’s party has lost one-third of seats in elections in Moscow (Tanjug)

The Russian ruling party, United Russia, which supports President Vladimir Putin, had lost about the third of the seats in Moscow assembly and it is questionable who is going to hold power in the Russian capital, Reuters reported. Raskrinkavanje reached out to Tanjug news agency and explained that the article by Reuters is not questioning the results of local elections - particularly those claims that the majority in Moscow assembly has changed. The agency responded with the following:

TANJUG The news agency, Tanjug, has shared the Reuters’ reports on the elections in Moscow correctly, but we cannot be held responsible for other medias’ incorrect headlines that they derived from our text. Therefore, there is no reason for us to publish a correction. In the attachment, we are sending you two original reports by Reuters, which were used in the article title “Putin’s party lost one-third of the seats in elections in Moscow”.

Indeed, Reuters did publish two articles. By reviewing the earlier versions, Raskrinkavanje found that a hyperlink to the current article used to lead to a somewhat different version which was redistributed from Russian news agency RIA when final results of elections were still unknown. In that article, it is stated that based on the majority of votes counted, United Russia, had lost around one-third of the seats it previously controlled, but that it is still going to have the majority. Neither first nor the second article published by Reuters had questioned the majority needed to form a government in Moscow. Since United Russia still has the majority in the Moscow’s city assembly, claims that “Putin had lost the elections” and that “Putin lost Moscow” we rank as disinformation. The same rank is given to a claim saying it is questionable who is going to hold power in the Russian capital. The articles are ranked as the manipulation of facts since both articles by Reuters clearly stated that United Russia will still have the majority - which was not mentioned in an article by Tanjug, as well as in some other articles that followed. The insinuation that “Putin is leaving power”, featured in the headlines of Hayat, Cazin.NET, Kurir and Alo, even though the news was about local elections, Raskrinkavanje ranks as clickbait. (Raskrinkavanje.ba)

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