Is it true that deputy Oleg Matveychev called the retreat of Russian troops an exercise?

At the beginning of October 2022, a curious statement authored by a Russian politician, political scientist and active participant in television talk shows spread across social networks. We checked whether Matveychev really said or wrote something like this.

The full statement looks like this: “We are not retreating because we are losing, this is an exercise. We will soon be able to fight for real with NATO, and the situation there may be the same as it was during the Great Patriotic War: retreats and individual lost battles are possible. How to conduct exercises for such cases? This is what we are doing now. We have already defeated Ukraine, but now it is important for us not to allow our quick victory until we try different tactical solutions. That’s why we are retreating: we have the strength to go forward to the Polish borders, but we are deliberately pretending, imitating a retreat and learning. Anyone who doesn’t understand this is a complete fool.”

Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications Oleg Matveychev is named as the author of the above quote on YouTube (more than 85,000 views), in Facebook, LJ, Telegram and on a number of other resources. Often the statement is given in the form of a screenshot with the date 09/04/2022.

Oleg Matveychev is known for his phrases, which have more than once caused a stir and even a scandal. So, in 2020 he suggested “to surgically destroy” some citizens, whom he called “liberal bastards.” And in January 2022, amid unrest in Kazakhstan wished local businessmen, who at one time demanded the resignation of Nazarbayev, “a selfie stick in the anus” and “raped wives.” Blog Oleg Matveychev in LiveJournal at the beginning of 2022 was in the top 40 in popularity.

However, neither in LiveJournal nor in Facebook, we don’t see such a statement on Matveychev’s pages in other social networks. Moreover, despite the references to September 4, both the phrase itself and the screenshot of it definitely began to spread only in October. It is impossible to imagine that such a curious statement remained in the shadows for about a month. Not to mention the fact that the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces started September 6, that is, after Matveychev’s words.

In particular, on Telegram, the earliest publications of this screenshot that we found date back to the evening of October 7, when it appeared on the channel “Anatomy of events" After this, the picture began circulating on other social networks. Among others, it was shared on October 8 by the relatively well-known political consultant, media technologist and producer Konstantin Dolgov. However, he soon reported, that Oleg Matveychev personally contacted him and declared that the screen was fake.

Considering the absence of any evidence in favor of the reality of Matveychev’s statement and even the presence of a refutation (here we are inclined to believe the words of Konstantin Dolgov), the quote we are considering should be considered fake.

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?