were based on testimony from Mykola Karpyuk and Stanislav Klykh, Ukrainian citizens held, tortured and extorted in Russia since 2014. Another Ukrainian citizen, Serhiy Litvinov, is also held in Russia and his forced statements were used by Russian media as 'proof' of 'genocide of Russian nationals' as Litvinov was also charged with murdering twenty 'unidentified people' and a rape. By the end of 2014, most of the charges against him were dropped, leaving one robbery charge. According to Alexander Cherkasov, the prosecution statement in Karpyuk and Klykh contains errors and inconsistencies suggesting that it was written based on the Russian Wikipedia article on Salman Raduyev rather than any actual evidence. Information war In July 2014, The New Yorker reported that "nearly all Russians derive their news and their sense of what is going on in the world" from Russian state television, whose broadcasts were described as "feverish, anti-Ukrainian, anti-American, and generally xenophobic" and "full of wild exaggeration about Ukrainian "fascists"". According to Sergey Golunov, such portrayals are part of a long-term trend that started in the early 2000s: Themes of Russia's "information war" include Russia has the right to a “sphere of influence" Russia is "only laying claim to what is rightfully hers", Russia's neighbors are "failed states" and Europe is "harming" its economy and security by building ties with them "moral equality" between Putin and the West "Western decadence" and threats to "traditional" ways of life Europe is harmed the most by sanctions Putin's government is "legitimate" and "successful" obscuring Russia's role in post-Soviet crises by presenting them as ethnic conflicts. Ukraine was the main subject of negative reports until the Russian media shifted their attention to Turkey. Other top stories, usually based on hearsay, with no accompanying evidence and illustrated by photos taken from unrelated incidents, included a "three-year-old boy crucified by Ukrainian servicemen", "parcel of land and two Russian slaves for Ukrainian soldiers," a woman with five different names and stories, a "Spanish air controller in Kyiv", "satellite photo of Ukrainian fighter jet firing at Boeing", "Ukrainian fighter jet pilot confession" (spread in Russian media as a viable explanations for the MH17 crash), Dmytro Yarosh winning the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election, and Yarosh threatening to set off a grenade in Parliament. Russia has also described other uprisings in eastern Europe, unfavorable to the Kremlin's interests, as controlled by foreign powers and fascists. In a July 2009 open