Social media users were outraged by a proposal, allegedly made by Ukrainian writer Larisa Nitsoi, to oblige Ukrainians who support Russia to wear a red star on their clothes. We checked if this news is true.

At the beginning of February 2023, a quote from the Ukrainian writer Larisa Nitsa began to spread on Telegram channels that residents of Ukraine who hold pro-Russian views should wear a red star on their clothes: “This is not segregation, and we are not fascist Germany. People just need to understand who is in front of them. If you support the Russians, wear a red star on your clothes. If you go against society, against your people, then you must be designated. Respectable establishments should not allow such people in, be it hair salons, gas stations or cinemas. Let them feel like outcasts." Within a few days, the news was shared by about 200 Telegram channels, including “Solovyov"(230,000 views at the time of publication of the analysis), "Mriya"(218,000 views), "Ukraine.ru"(183,000 views), "Sheikh Tamir"(153,000 views), etc. The news was picked up by the media: TV channel NTV, "Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Constantinople", News Front etc.

This is not the first time that Ukrainian children's writer Larisa Nitsoi has made headlines in Russian publications. In August 2018 "Komsomolskaya Pravda“wrote that the writer was outraged by the presence of children from the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass in summer camps in Ukraine. In September of the same year, according to “Gazeta.ru", Nitsoi demanded that Liliya Grinevich be deprived of her position as Minister of Education because she returned “propaganda” textbooks on the Russian language to schools. And in October 2022 "Moskovsky Komsomolets" reported that the writer decided to rename a number of characters in her own fairy tales so that their names do not resemble Russians. According to Ukrainian Media, Nitsoi has long been known for her strong position on protecting the Ukrainian language. The writer is trying to fight the use of the Russian language in Ukraine even at the everyday level - she regularly reports on her page on Facebook about incidents involving someone’s refusal to serve her in Ukrainian.

Larisa Nitsa’s proposal to “brand” residents of Ukraine with pro-Russian views caused another wave of discontent among the Russian audience. Social network users drew an analogy with yellow stars, which during the Holocaust forced Jews to wear in Nazi-controlled areas in order to segregate them from the rest of the population. According to order Commandant of the Polish city of Wlocławek, Oberführer Kramer, on October 24, 1939, “Jews who did not wear the yellow identification mark in the shape of a triangle on the front and back faced severe punishment.” Type of decal varied from country to country, but most often it was a yellow six-pointed Star of David with the inscription "J" or "Jude". After Nitsa’s proposal to oblige pro-Russian residents to also wear an identification mark - a red star - on their clothes, media concluded, that “Russians in Ukraine have long become such ‘Jews of the 21st century’.”

However, none of the publications we found specified where and when the writer Nitsoi made such a proposal. A Google search in Russian and Ukrainian did not produce results. And a few days after the news appeared in Nitsoy’s Telegram channels wrote on her Facebook page that she "never said that."

The earliest publication we found appeared on February 1 in the Telegram channel “and here is my Yandex wallet”, and then spread to larger channels, none of which cited the original source. Most of the reposts referred to a certain Zhanna Stagis, whose name was signed in a publication about Larisa Nitsoi on the channel “VolgaLive_Z"(Volga region bureau "Soloviev Live"). However, in this case, the original source of the publication is of key importance, since the channel “and here is my Yandex wallet" is a satirical project already well known to the editors of Verified (analysis of its other news can be found in the "Read on topic" section). The authors of the channel, according to the profile description, publish “a parody, a satire on political reality, only verified fakes.” Moreover, judging by some comments under the post about Nitsoy, even some subscribers of the channel do not realize that they are reading satire and not real news.

Thus, the fiction of the satirical channel “here is my Yandex wallet” was once again accepted as truth. The satirical news owes much of its million-dollar coverage to TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov and the authors of the Volga region bureau channel Solovyov Live, who republished the news they saw on social networks without reference to the original source and minimal verification of the information for accuracy.

Cover photo: social networks