In 2014, leading Russian TV channels spread news about another publication on the scandalous resource WikiLeaks. According to the report, in declassified correspondence with Washington, future US Ambassador to Russia John Tefft, who previously held a similar position in Ukraine, called the latter’s anthem “a howl that kills flies.” We checked whether there was such a publication.

The information message in question was picked up by such well-known media as "Russia 24", "World" (post deleted) "Komsomolskaya Pravda", the oldest Georgian news agency "Gruzinform" and many others. Tefft's quote was as follows:

“It was especially impossible to listen to their anthem. It's like some kind of torture! They begin to sing in chorus: “Ukraine has not yet died...” It seems that you are being buried alive. There is some kind of oppressive, heartbreaking melancholy that sometimes it seems that flies in the area are dying from this howling. Listening to this howl is so unbearable that at times it seemed like it would be easier to die.”

And in 2019, on the official website of the President of Ukraine appeared petition with a request to change the text and music of the national anthem. The author of the petition, Nikolai Isaev, cited Tefft’s scandalous report to Washington among his arguments.

Let's turn to the original source, which is discussed in all messages: WikiLeaks. The publications of this organization more than once or twice led to big scandals, since at least some of the information in them turned out to be true. Painstaking search on the website of this resource does not lead to anything: there is no similar publication mentioning Tefft there. There is no similar news with any other defendants.

But Russian-language messages with this news, as is easy to determine, appeared long before 2014. In particular, recording authored by Vladimir Skachko, which contained the familiar text “Recently, from the records of the famous WikiLeaks and from the Internet, it became known as the American Ambassador ...”, was published on February 14, 2011 on the Versions.com website. But in English-language publications of that time there is no trace of anything similar. What could prompt one of the users to compose (or repost) such a message?

This motivator could be news dated February 10 (four days before Skachko’s publication), which stated that People’s Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Dmitry Vetvitsky presented a bill to change the first verse of the national anthem.

As for the mentions of John Tefft along with the Ukrainian anthem in reputable sources, there is only one. In August 2011, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, a congratulatory message was published on the official blog of the US Embassy article Tefft, where he, in particular, wrote:

“In 1991, it became clear that the dream of Ukrainian independence was simply driven underground and never left the hearts of people. As it is said in the text of the national anthem of Ukraine, authored by the 19th century poet Pavel Chubinsky, “Ukraine has not yet died” - “Ukraine has not yet perished.”

As we can see, he wrote quite respectfully and after a sensation of dubious origin appeared on the Internet. And the “leak” of Tefft’s letter is, in all likelihood, a figment of someone’s imagination.