It’s no secret that mainstream news outlets run on clicks and pageviews. While some major outlets appear to have more integrity and less of an appetite for juice than others, it remains that in the business of news, eyes are how you make money.
Driven by this incentive, several big outlets that are widely consumed and often relied upon by other mainstream journals occasionally elevate, exaggerate, or even fabricate certain story details.
Such was the case late last week, when several major Western media outlets excitedly claimed that Margarita Reut, a 32-year-old Russian woman accused of assassinating a senior Russian military official, was an escort, without correctly referring to any previous reporting or providing evidence.
Among the outlets that spread the ostensibly fabricated made-for-media storyline were The Telegraph (Center), New York Post (Right), Daily Mail (Lean Right), The Sun (Lean Right), and BILD (not rated).
The Original Russian Media Reporting on Margarita Reut
On the morning of August 13, several Russian news outlets like Mash, Baza, Interfax, and Ostorozhno, Novosti reported on an explosion in a residential part of Sevastopol, Crimea, that killed 49-year-old Robert Shageev, an ex-Ukrainian navy man who defected to Russia in 2014.
Authorities determined that an explosive device was placed in a trash bin and remotely detonated when Shageev walked by.
The first outlet to emerge with details on the suspect was Mash, which said Crimean intelligence had detained Reut, a Russian national who resided in Sochi, as the suspect in the bombing.
Minutes later, Mash followed up with two separate reports that provided additional details on the terror attack and background information on who Reut is. Mash’s reporting was the principal source referred to by both Western and Eastern European media as the news spread.
Here are the key details, in Mash’s words, translated from Russian to English using Google Gemini and verified by a human translator.
Related to the attack:
- “She said she was paid for the explosion in crypto.”
- “When asked during interrogation whether Margarita Reut repented for what she had done… Margarita Reut answered ‘no.’”
- “In late July 2025, the young woman was fined under the article on discrediting the Russian Armed Forces – while on a train from Samara to Adler, she shouted the phrase 'Serves you right, Russians!' upon hearing news about a drone attack on the Likhaya station in the Rostov region.”
- “After committing the terrorist attack, Reut planned to fly abroad – she had purchased a ticket out of Sochi.”
Related to Reut personally:
- “The young woman was born in Yaroslavl, engaged in volunteer work (for example, cleaning up fuel oil in Krasnodar Krai), lived in Sochi, and frequently traveled to Crimea.”
- “In 2023, she had her own travel agency, but the business failed 1.5 months after launch.”
- “She traveled across the country frequently.”
- “She was also abroad – making her most frequent trips to Egypt and Turkey.”
- “She was also spotted in 18+ content creation chats.”
- “The young woman's most recent place of employment was as a research biologist; she was involved in the production of vaginal suppositories containing floral components.”
Mash also posted four photos of Reut. Three photos showed her presumably in her travels while one showed her working in a laboratory. It’s unclear where Mash sourced these photos from.
According to Mash, in July 2025, Reut cheered for a Ukrainian drone strike on her country and faced legal consequences. Last week, she remorselessly murdered a military official in an aggressive terrorist act. But the background the outlet provided on Reut leading up to those events paints her as fairly ordinary for an educated, middle-class liberal European woman of her age.
She has a penchant for travel and enjoyed warmer, less expensive destinations frequented by Eastern Europeans, tried to turn her passion into a side hustle, worked in STEM with a focus on women’s health, and volunteered for environmental causes.
The only detail that raises an eyebrow is that she was reportedly “spotted in 18+ content creation chats,” though Mash didn’t specify what this actually means, leaving plenty of room for interpretation.
Western Outlets Claimed Margarita Reut Was an Escort
The major Western outlets that covered the story, all of which are to some degree tabloid-ish, based their reports on Mash’s reporting but framed Reut entirely differently.
The Western outlets all claimed that she was some sort of high-end sex worker despite providing no evidence or other reports to support their claim. Additionally, they used photos from a racy photoshoot Reut posted on her Instagram in May 2024 as featured images and in promotion of the story.
These outlets mostly used color versions of two photos that were only posted in grayscale on Reut’s page. The origin of these versions of the photos appears to be Will Stewart (East2West News), whose name was listed as a reporter on both The Daily Mail and The Sun’s coverage, though AllSides was unable to verify the origin of the photos beyond that.
Reut’s Instagram page is public and was only active with posting from April to November 2024. As of August 16, she had 86 followers and followed 326 other users. The May 2024 post featuring these photos was the only one of its kind.
The Telegraph
On August 13, The Telegraph (Center) ran the headline, Pictured: ‘Russian escort’ accused of assassinating Ukrainian defector.
Citing Mash as its source, The Telegraph said Reut “allegedly appeared on escort websites,” though Mash never reported this, and The Telegraph did not provide its own evidence.
Though it put “Russian escort” in quotation marks in its headline and used the word “allegedly,” it still incorrectly attributed the detail to Mash. The use of the word “Pictured” is also included to generate quick interest from digital passersby by signaling that the accused assassin was an attractive sex worker.
The New York Post
On August 14, The New York Post (Right) ran the headline, “Glamorous escort accused of planting trash can bomb that killed Ukrainian defector: reports.”
The Post said that “according to the reports,” Reut “appeared on escort websites.”
The publication cited reports from Mash, The Telegraph, and East2West News as sources throughout its coverage, though it was unnecessary, as all of the information it relayed came from Mash’s reporting.
It also used the word “glamorous” in its headline, which is a bit sensational and subjective. Though there may be less debate about whether Reut’s aesthetic is glamorous, to describe her as a “glamorous escort” is very subjective considering there is no confirmed record of her being an escort. The Post provided no evidence that Reut appeared on escort sites.
The Sun
On August 13, The Sun (Lean Right) ran the headline, “FEMME FATALE? Russia names glam suspected assassin ‘who blew up treacherous Ukrainian sub commander after his defection to Putin’”
Similar to The Post, The Sun described Reut as “glam” in its headline and said that she “reportedly appeared on escort websites.”
Its use of “FEMME FATALE” in all caps is also sensational and frames Reut as a hero. The headline also adds sensation and subjectivity to its headline by describing Shageev as “treacherous” and writing that he defected “to Putin,” implying that Russian President Vladimir Putin is synonymous with the entire country. All of this shows a strong pro-Ukraine bias.
The Sun did not provide evidence that Reut appeared on escort sites.
The Daily Mail
On August 14, The Daily Mail (Lean Right) ran the headline, “Pictured: 'Russian escort' accused of assassinating Ukraine defector by planting bomb in bin.”
The headline is strikingly similar to The Telegraph’s headline. The Mail said Reut “appears on escort websites, according to reports,” but did not provide its own evidence.
BILD
Translated from German to English using Google Gemini, BILD’s August 17 headline reads, “Escort-Woman Allegedly Killed Putin's Submarine Commander.”
BILD cited Mash’s report and wrote, “Reut allegedly held profiles on escort websites.”
BILD, Germany’s most widely-circulated newspaper, routinely publishes online stories with explicit content, including uncensored photos of naked women. Still, the publication did not provide any evidence, such as screenshots, of Reut appearing on escort sites.
Falling somewhere between Russian media and Western media are several Russian opposition media outlets that are based in the European Union.
Notably, the Riga-based Meduza (not rated) and The Insider (not rated), Amsterdam-based Moscow Times (Center), and US-government-funded Prague-based Crimean syndicate of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty all covered the story.
All of them mentioned Margarita Reut by name as the suspect, though none of them provided photos of her or made any allegations or suggestions that she worked as an escort or was involved in the adult industry.
AllSides Analysis on Margarita Reut
After several hours and over a hundred webpages of research, AllSides was unable to find a possible origin of the allegation that Reut worked as an escort other than the detail reported by Mash, which said she was “spotted in 18+ content creation chats.”
The detail is vague and can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. The first main question is: what exactly is an “18+ content creation chat” according to Mash? Secondly, what does “spotted” mean? Does it mean Reut’s account was seen in Telegram channels that featured explicit content? Or does it mean that explicit photos of her were seen? And if there were explicit photos, how lewd were they, and who posted them?
Theoretically, the photos shared by all of the Western outlets that covered the story could be considered 18+ content. Furthermore, if Reut’s participation in the chats is all that was observed, is it possible that she was a consumer? Consuming 18+ content is hardly an unusual behavior for a 32-year-old woman. And in the case that she was producing and sharing explicit content of herself, there is a wide spectrum from bikini photos to hardcore pornography that this could entail.
All this is to say that even without further clarification from Mash, “spotted in 18+ content creation chats” is a far cry from having profiles on “escort websites” and working as a prostitute, as the Western outlets haphazardly reported.
But considering the longstanding fetishization of Slavic women and the pro-Ukraine tilt of most Western media outlets, the headline of a pretty young woman in her prime who took a break from selling her body to assassinate a Ukrainian traitor was far too juicy to pass up – whether it was verifiably true or not.
From reading the original Mash report, readers would see Reut as a bright, modest, and conventional young European woman who was at some point radicalized by the military conflict between her country and Ukraine, and decided to commit an act of domestic terrorism as a result.
From only reading mainstream Western reports, as presumably almost all Americans who saw the story have done, readers would see Reut as a sexually deviant bombshell “assassin” who is no stranger to the underworld.
With the language barrier and diligence that’s required to seek out source reporting in a foreign media ecosystem serving as obstacles for Western readers, these outlets were able to get away with such framing without much scrutiny.
Though whether Margarita Reut ever worked as an escort doesn’t drastically change the outcome of the story, it raises the question – how else could these outlets be misleading readers on international stories?
The sloppy coverage on Reut is a reminder why readers should try to follow the paper trail when a major outlet dubiously cites “reports” as its source. If an outlet doesn’t mention another outlet by name and link to its report, they’re effectively relying solely on reader trust. And when shoddy “journalism” like the Western “reporting” on Margarita Reut takes hold on several major outlets, readers may be reminded why they oftentimes don’t.
Andy Gorel is the Managing Editor of AllSides. He has a Center bias.
This piece was reviewed by Malayna J. Bizier, News Analyst and Social Media Editor (Right) and Emily Allen, Education Experience Manager & News Editor (Left).
.png.webp)