Reuters denies claim that killed staffer was spy

Reuters has denied a claim from Russia that its killed staffer, Ryan Evans, was a British spy, reports Francesca Ebel of The Washington Post.

Ebel reports, “At a press briefing Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed without evidence that security adviser Ryan Evans, who was killed in a strike Saturday on the Sapphire Hotel in the city of Kramatorsk, was registered as a former employee of MI6, an arm of the British secret services. ‘But we are well aware that there are not former MI6 employees,’ she said.

“‘This directly proves that Western intelligence agencies literally direct the mass media they control to carry out anti-Russian information campaigns. This has nothing to do with journalism, you see,’ she continued, claiming that ‘other foreign mercenaries were eliminated’ in the strike.

“A Reuters spokesperson said in a statement that the Russian Foreign Ministry was ‘factually incorrect’ in its allegations about Evans. ‘Ryan was not a former MI6 employee,’ the spokesperson wrote in an email to The Washington Post, adding, ‘it is ludicrous to suggest that Reuters is under the control of Western intelligence agencies.'”

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