RFERL:

Russian state television has shown footage from the 2016 set of a Syrian film in a report pushing Moscow's claim that a suspected gas attack in Syria was "staged."

The April 22 report by state-run Channel One aired two weeks after the suspected gas attack in the Syrian town of Douma that the United States, France, and Britain blame on the forces of Syria's Russia-backed leader, Bashar al-Assad.

Those Western allies conducted missile strikes on Syrian government targets in response to the April 7 incident, while Russia denies any chemical attack took place and says "what did take place was...staged."

The Channel One report backed that same position, accusing Western politicians and media of "ignoring clear evidence that there was no chemical attack" in Douma.

As the news anchor cited alleged witness accounts that the videos purporting to show the aftermath of the attack were staged, the segment showed behind-the-scenes images from the set of a 2016 short film being produced at the time by Syrian director Humam Husari.

Images from the set of Husari's film were also used in an April 22 segment on Russian state media boss Dmitry Kiselyov's weekly current-events program on state-run Rossia-1.

The reporter for the segment, Yevgeny Poddubny, claims that there is a "critical amount of evidence" showing that "foreign intelligence services" are "staging" video materials in Syria in order to "demonize" Assad.

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