British media launches Russian senate speaker INTO SPACE in latest battle with ‘difficult’ foreign names

The head of Russian Parliament's upper chamber had hidden a glorious space-faring past until the Daily Mail blew the lid off her secret. Or it might just be a fantasy tale propelled by a rush for clicks instead of a Soyuz rocket.

Senate Speaker Valentina Matvienko, the Daily Mail writes in their latest insight into Russian politics, is "an MP and Soviet-era cosmonaut who was the first woman in space." That honor actually belongs to Valentina Tereshkova, who flew the Vostok 6 in 1963.

Surely that was one innocent slip of the finger, you'd think? Well, the tabloid of record not only managed to confuse the two Valentinas, but also put Tereshkova's picture in the story, erroneously captioned as Matvienko.

Screenshot from www.dailymail.co.uk

To clarify, the first woman in space is not a senator. Tereshkova is a lawmaker in the State Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian Parliament. Matvienko heads the upper chamber, officially called the Federation Council. This didn't stop another Western outlet – this time the US state broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – from calling her the "Duma speaker" in a caption.

Both gaffes appeared during attempts to cover the planned amendment of the Russian constitution, and speculate how it may result in President Vladimir Putin staying in power until 2036.

Tereshkova was the MP who proposed "resetting" Putin's term limit as part of the change. Apparently, the Mail and RFE/RL were too eager to break the news to their readers to bother with basic fact-checking.

Western mainstream media can probably be excused for not getting things right about Russia – all those strange Slavic names can play tricks on an Anglophone. Distinguished British journalists can't always tell their own legislators from each other either. But at least when it comes to their home turf, such embarrassing mistakes get noticed and fixed.

Not in Russia's case though. Both stories were published on Wednesday and have not been corrected at the time of writing, and it's increasingly unlikely that anyone will bother to now.

As a matter of fact, the two Valentinas are far from the spitting image of each other. For starters, Matvienko has blonde hair, while Tereshkova dyes hers dark with a signature single grey strand.

Valentina Matvienko (left) has never been in space, unlike Valentina Tereshkova (right). ©Sputnik / Aleksey Nikolsky / Evgeny Biyatov

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