Educational videos teaching children how to handle armed neighbors and street bombs, reportedly created by officers of the Volgograd branch of the Federal Security Service, were actually made by a Krasnoyarsk animation studio, the producers said Thursday.
The series of 20-second cartoons dates back to 2005 and was commissioned by the Krasnoyarsk regional government as part of a counter-terrorism program, a representative of the Gorod studio told The Moscow Times.
“Later, the ownership and copyright were passed to the government,” Pavel Stabrov, head producer of Gorod, said by telephone.
The story about cartoons was broken last week by Volgograd news portal V1.ru, which said the cartoons were created by Volgograd FSB and police officers to be broadcast on local television and in public places.
“As a matter of fact, we don’t have issues with the Volgograd law enforcement officials, only with the media that mistakenly identified authors of the clips,” Stabrov said.
Meanwhile, V1.ru reported on Thursday that the Volgograd region’s FSB “apologized and thanked Krasnoyarsk animators” for creating the clips.
A spokesman for Krasnoyarsk regional administration could not say Thursday whether local authorities had handed over the copyright for the cartoons to the Volgograd regional branch of the FSB.
The FSB office for the Volgograd region could not be reached for comment Thursday.
The original 2005 cartoons are available on YouTube, but the two versions only differ in the ending credits, with the earlier release displaying the text reading, “Regional Anti-Terrorism Commission.” The Volgograd clips list telephone numbers for local police and the FSB.
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