At the beginning of July, many Telegram channels reported that Dmitry Shkrabets was joining the Armed Forces of Ukraine, namely, the legion of Russian volunteers and prisoners of war who had gone over to the side of Ukraine. The man allegedly reported this on his social networks. We have checked this story for accuracy.

April 14, 2022 in the Black Sea sank Russian missile cruiser "Moskva". By message Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, one crew member died while trying to put out a fire on the ship, another 27 servicemen were missing, and the remaining 396 people were evacuated. One of the missing turned out to be Yegor Shkrabets, as his mother was told Irina and father Dmitry, who is on his social networks became post other information about flooding.

On July 4, Telegram distributed a screenshot of a post by Dmitry Shkrebets from VKontakte with the following content: “There is no more strength for this lie. I understood everything. I understood everything a long time ago, but I didn’t have the courage to admit that it was my fault. I supported a war that should never have happened, and I paid the ultimate price for it. My family is no more. There is only one correct choice. I made it. I inform those who have been following my fate: I am no longer on the territory of Russia, I have left for a third country and am going to Ukraine to join "Legion "Freedom of Russia"". They are already waiting for me there. Finally everything fell into place.”

So, at the time of writing this text, posts with a screenshot (sometimes without it) are posted in the following channels: "Where in Kharkov" (over 29,000 views), "Real Belarus" (21,000), "Ukraine Speaks" (8000), “Belarusian nail puller!” (50,000), "DomBro News" (20,000), "Basta!" (16,000), "Look for yours" (141,000), "ONews Ukraine" (99,000), "Online news of Ukraine" (35,000), "100'personal" (14,000), "Moscow Telegraph" (23,000), "Russian Sanctions" (95,000). And in these channels the post was deleted: "Ukraine 24/7" (at least 5000 at the time of deletion) and "Observer" (9000). The news can also be found on VKontakte (examples here, here And here) and Twitter (here, here And here).

This post absent on Shkrebets’ VKontakte page. We also could not find any mention of joining the legion in his Telegram channel "The cruiser "Moscow" will speak". Of course, Shkrebec could have deleted the original post, and judging by the absence of many publications, screenshots of which are available in various media outlets, he has already deleted old posts and photographs more than once. However, he had previously expressed his negative attitude towards this legion.

So, on Dmitry’s social networks we found only one post about the “Russian Freedom Legion”, he published it two weeks ago, on June 23. The entry consists of a quotation text Telegram channel Baza about the detention of a man who was going to join this legion, and a comment from Shkrebets himself. According to him, he was offered to join the legion and “they even wrote how to contact him,” but Dmitry clearly did not like the idea: “I didn’t even answer these hamadryas.”

Screenshot of a post on VKontakte. Source

It was easy to find the source of the news about Shkrebets' accession request on Google, the answer was from the first link in the search results. It turned out that the fake screenshot of the post was an invention of Panorama, but not of the famous satirical news agency. There is a one of the same name on the TJ website chapter, the description of which states: “An unofficial branch of Panorama.” It was there on July 3 at 22:58 Moscow time user Wild Carrot published your fake screenshot. At the same time, under the picture there is a disclaimer: “This news is only a parody of reality. All characters and events are fictitious, any similarities are accidental.”